Tag: yarn

Yarn, Knitting and Crochet

Projects Finished and What’s Next?

Iris Rose

Last Saturday found DD1 and I at the Fibre Shindig. Wow, what a wonderful experience but very hard on the budget! Lots of gorgeous squishiness leapt into my shopping bag to come home and join the stash party.

Speaking of stash, I am using up my stash of worsted ends with charity hat knitting.  I know that I wrote about this before but here are a some of the hats that I made this month.

Do you ever hit the wall creatively? I am so there. I haven’t even got the creative juice to clean up my new patterns and publish them. Do you think it might be spring fever after the long dark winter? I hope so as I am ready to rock those needles and hooks if I can just find the right project! I will update you next week; my mind is cooking up an idea while I am writing this!

Okay, enough of the grumbling! I have made a new toy and I am tickled with the result. How is this for some serious cuteness!
I started with my monster pattern, which is free on ravelry by the way. I made longer ears and left out the hair rows on the body piece. It is an easy adaption and a quick make.


I finally got this little sweater sewn up this week. It had been languishing in the UFO pile for only a short time, but I am determined that the UFO pile is going to stay at two week finish or frog status.


I also found this little cradle bag, almost finished, when I organized (sort of) my stash and finished it up this week as well. Looks like I am on a roll!

Happy crafting this week and may all of your yarn pull easily from the centre!

Crochet

Spring Flowers (No Rain!)

Iris Rose

This week I am switching up my crafting and presenting my latest crochet endeavor to you. I needed some decoration for my craft sale on May 5th and really didn’t have anything around that would do.

All of my booth and table decorations are geared toward Christmas as I normally only do sales at that season. Etsy, Made in Canada, is now promoting year round local sales with three, one each in spring, fall and winter. Robyn (aka DD1) made a string of crocheted Christmas lights last year that really looked great draped along the front of our table. She suggested doing something similar in a spring theme, so the idea of a flower garland was born.


I love to simply crochet, to heck with a pattern, when I am making three dimensional things. I have made many flower decorations for baby hats, so I am quite confident in basic flower design. If you are not comfortable winging it and want to create some loveliness for home, I highly recommend the Mypicot website. For a one time fee, you can download hundreds of stitch patterns including booklets of flower and leaf designs.


Back to my flowers, I made these in the evenings by trial and error, lots of error, and am really pleased with the final design. I crocheted a double yarn chain and joined all of the flowers, varying size and colour of both flowers and leaves.


I am very happy with the finished garland. It is more than I imagined; don’t you love it when that happens! I have a few extras that I am going to leave as individual with leaves attached for scattered adornment, maybe with wired stems.


I have been sweating over my knitting machine as well and have another almost sewn up yoked sweater done. I will post that photo next week after it is blocked.  Now I just need to settle on a hand knit project!  I have kind of hit a creative blank so having the garland turn out well is a big morale boost for me.

Happy crafting and may all of your yarn be untangled and all of your work come together beautifully!

Knitting

Done Dollies!

Iris Rose

Last week my subject was undone dollies. This week, tada, they are almost finished! I only have two little mermaids left to sew up and I am all done with this portion of my sale stock.  I went from this

to this

in just five days!  The little babies are about 15cm or 6″ tall and the little kids are 10cm or 4″ tall.

I had a good time putting these together. I usually have fun knitting these little toys; so much fun in fact that I keep on working on the knitting part with no regard as to how long the finishing will take. I normally regret my knitting impulse but this time it was different. I didn’t hurry through the process last weekend. I took my time with the faces and hair and really enjoyed myself.

  
I confess that I do like all of them but one. I am just not happy with the face on one little one but have a plan to redo the eyes and I think that it will make a huge difference. A couple of the little mouths are crooked but, as in real life, I am just going to accept them as they turned out. Someone will find them huggable I am sure.

  
I need to get back to reducing my stash and knitting little toys is definitely not the way. I see a blanket or two or at least a couple of bulky sweaters in my future project pile. Now if I can just get to it.

Have a happy week and enjoy whichever craft you decide to work with.

Crochet, Knitting

Undone Dollies

Iris Rose

Well, another week has zipped by and I seem to be amassing more UFO’s! I actually have a couple of topics this week, but I will start with the UFO problem that seems to be growing again.

I am setting up at an Etsy craft sale in early May (May 5th in Okotoks at the Elks Hall for any of you that live in the Calgary/Okotoks area) and, as I was reviewing my stock, realized that I am woefully short of babies. I always think that little knitted dolls won’t sell and they always are the first to go.

     

I like to knit or crochet while watching TV in the evenings so this was a project that fit the bill to a T. Look at what I have done! I have created a monster pile of dollies to finish and I can’t watch or read while I am doing it. Oh well, I had better dig in and start sewing. I have all the needed pieces made including the wigs (fuzzy stuff at the top of the photo) and found two elephants and a hippo with their dresses that I knit on vacation over a year ago and forgot about. I am on a roll, just don’t know where to!


I joined a machine knit KAL to make a rainbow yoke sweater last month and finally got around to making it last weekend. The pattern was great, thanks Claire Djuve, and I really like the finished sweater. It was my first go at a yoke and found it surprisingly easy even without the garter bar that I was too chicken to use. I will make the first row of the yoke in the body colour next time to minimize the jogs from the short rows.  The small size (4) was a good way to start as well. Fun stuff and I will be making more as this style seems to be a current fashion trend.


The next topic that I want to discuss is patterns. I have talked about this before and really am still stumped. Why do you download free patterns? Is it simply because they are free and you can’t resist free even if you will really never make them? Do you buy patterns that you never make? I am guilty of both of these. What makes a pattern more appealing than other, photos, recommendations, posting of finished projects?

These stats are from my Ravelry store:
Another Cake Shawl
Added May 26, 2017
8205 unique downloads       111 projects

If you have completed a pattern, free or paid, that you downloaded from Ravelry, please, please post your finished project. It means so much to designers to see that someone has liked their pattern enough to not only choose it but to actually make it.

Thank you, I will step down off of the soap box now.
Have a wonderful week and I hope that all of your yarn is untangled and every needle and hook is right at hand when you need them.

Knitting

Knitting and Pancakes, Love ‘Em Both!

Iris Rose

Here we are, almost into April! My goodness how the time passes by when you are not looking.  I have been busy this week.  Two new charity hats are in the bag and I have knit three babies and two mermaid dolls.  I have a big bag of unfinished dollies now so I better get to work on the sewing and stuffing.

I have been procrastinating about publishing my little cardigan pattern. I finally finished the test knits and have them blocked so will push myself to get the final draft of the pattern out next week.
In the meantime, I have been playing with my knitting machine (still) and spent my spare time this week embellishing a little pullover with crocheted appliques. I was hoping to finish it yesterday but, life, you know how that goes. Here is the almost finished sweater. I am quite pleased with how it turned out. I used to make a baby version of this but haven’t done one for a while. I never write this type of finishing down, I should but I do love the creative process of just winging it!


Do you have plans for this long weekend? We are having the family over for a visit and dinner on Saturday. I can’t wait! I always love to see my kids and grandkids. I always like to make a special breakfast for DH and myself on Easter Sunday. I think that this year I will make pancakes with my homemade sausage and cook a couple of eggs as well. If you missed my pancake recipe that was featured in a prior post and would like to make it this weekend, here it is again. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

Iris Rose’s delicious pancakes:
These ingredients will make two very large (plate sized) pancakes.
3 Tbsps of butter
Melt the butter in a 9” or 22cm frying pan over medium heat. I use two pans to cook both pancakes at once and melt butter in each. You will be using the excess butter in the pancake batter but leave some to brown with the batter.
1 cup of flour
1 & 1/2 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
Combine these ingredients in a bowl big enough to hold the wet ingredients too.
1 egg
2 Tbsps honey or maple syrup
1 cup of buttermilk (Don’t have any buttermilk? Just add a tsp of vinegar to plain milk or mix in a good dollop (2Tbsps) of sour cream or yogurt to plain milk to make a cup.)
I mix these ingredients using a 2 cup measuring cup in the following order: beat the egg, beat in the honey or syrup, mix in the buttermilk.
Pour most of the melted butter into the wet ingredients and stir. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet. Mix with a few quick stirs until all of the dry stuff is wet. Don’t worry about lumps and don’t overmix.
Pour half of the batter into each pan. Here is where you make them fun. Top the batter with sliced banana, sliced peaches, blueberries, sliced apples, you get the picture.
If you want savory pancakes, top the batter in the pan with cooked diced ham, cooked sliced mushrooms, grated cheese, shrimps and so on.
When the pancake has some bubbles that pop and is starting to look dry around the edges, be brave and flip the whole thing over. Your added goodies should have sunk into the batter and will cook while the second side is cooking. I wait a couple of minutes and turn off the stove at this point as there should be enough heat in the pan and the cooked side to finish the pancake without burning your yummy addons.
In a couple of more minutes, flip the pancake onto a plate and admire the pretty pattern made by the additions. Serve with syrup, preferably maple, and enjoy!