Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

Hard to believe that it has been approx 6 months since I blogged. It has been very busy in my work life this past year, and although that doesn't look set to change anytime soon, it is important that I carve out time for those things that I enjoy. That of course includes crafting and blogging.

Over the holidays I was able to finish a couple of Christmas stockings for Naomi and I.


Naomi helped stitch these which means there are extra special memories built in. There was also the usual requests for felted slippers, and I was able to churn out 8 pairs of those over my Christmas break. Naomi also tried her hand at knitting by assisting me with these - a few knit stitches here and there. A great start! I'm not convinced that I have a crafter on my hands, but I do enjoy her natural curiosity and desire to have a go.

My new year project is a clementine cowl. A couple of friends have been making these, and they were turning out so beautifully that I wanted to join in the fun. The pattern calls for 2 skeins of dyed in the wool, which is an interesting fingering weight yarn that looks like a handspun.

I selected one colorway I liked and then partnered it with yarn from my stash that is deliciously soft.

This project is close to completion, so I'll have to pick a new project for my work travels this week. Probably a bertie's blanket square. Before the holidays I had received squares from Andi and Sarina... aren't they gorgeous!

As a result we are now only 4 squares from finishing this blanket... yup good plane knitting right there.

Wishing you a great week ahead, and a wonderful 2016.
Sam XXX

Pink Pop Socks

The weather in Colorado has finally turned from a rather unusual gloomy and wet few weeks, to summer! (Well summer interspersed with hail storms, tornado warnings and some crazy rain!). On the sunny weekend days I've been enjoying some R&R in our back garden, which has included knitting on these 'pink pop socks' while our little water baby runs through the garden sprinklers, or wallows in the inflatable pool.



The socks started out with a really fun pattern, but I was simply too frazzled from work to do anything but a plain vanilla sock. So I ripped them back and reverted to my old faithful pattern. The yarn is from Creatively Dyed and is a lovely mix of cream, brown, burnt orange, hot pink and navy. 





As I was knitting, the dominant colors appeared to be the burnt orange and brown. Which is nice, except I was really hoping the hot pink would pop out. It was at that point I decided to add a heel and toe in a similar hot pink handspun yarn to really make that pink pop... it did the trick! Love how this turned out.

In other yarny news, I've been shopping! I should know to avoid my local yarn store because there is always something to tempt me. And sure enough there was this lovely Anzula Nebula yarn in shades of olive, some fun hot pink Madeleine Tosh, and this gorgeous gradient yarn from the Neighbourhood Fiber Co.







Lastly, I've picked up knitting squares for the Bertie's Blankets - the hospice blankets. These are a really simple square to knit from the Kraft Tanken Patches pattern - free Ravelry download. A couple of you had asked if I was still collecting squares... I'd really love it if you could donate one of these sock yarns squares for the next Bertie's Blanket. Thank you.



Wishing you a wonderful week ahead and fun summer plans.
Love, Sam xxx

A little of this and that

The crafty gifts continued to come in last weekend - check out this adorable sheepy yarn bowl that my step kids gave me for my birthday. It is adorable, and so are they :) We'd spent last weekend together in San Antonio, Texas, at a family wedding. It was a really fun weekend and good to have that time together.

With some of my big work projects going live this last week I've been able to pick up the knitting needles again. First I pulled this hexagon blanket out of the WIP pile. According to my ravelry notes, I started this one back in 2009. Yikes! Its amazing to me that it has been 'in progress' for that amount of time (where 'in progress' primarily means sat on a shelf and awaiting some attention!) I'd also finished the first pink pop sock, and now onto the next... about to turn the heel and then on the home stretch. Really pleased with these. Look how lusciously soft this yarn looks all knit up. Yesterday I was also playing around with some liberty fabric squares. I am thinking of making these into a cushion cover. Loving the pinks and purples. And last but not least, I received this thank you card in the mail for the Bertie's Blanket sock yarn blanket. Thank you again for all your help with these hospice blankets. The recipient was Porter Hospice in Littleton, Colorado.

Hope you are enjoying a lovely long weekend. Mine started with a day trip down to Colorado Springs, visiting Garden of the Gods and taking a ride up Pike's Peak on the Cog Railroad. For the rest of the weekend I am taking it easy and I'm thinking that also means craft time :)

Wishing you a great weekend,
Sam xxx

A little of this, a little of that

First up: A huge than you to all of you that sent sock yarn squares for Bertie's Blankets.
The original idea was to make one large hospital bed sized blanket out of these squares. But after I started to assemble them, I decided that there were enough squares to make 2 good sized lap blankets, and why not spread the love :) This is the first of those lap blankets that I dropped off at a local hospice this week. It has been over 3 years since Dad was in hospice care, and so I wasn't expecting the emotions that came with dropping this blanket off. A mix of sadness for what has been, together with gratitude and happiness thinking about all of you that have been so kind to support this effort. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

That's the biggest news this week.  Other than that, I've been playing around with a couple of different projects all of which have one thing in common - they needed to be an easy distraction after some busy, and mentally exhausting work days:

• There's the Evie box sweater in the red yarns which is a beautifully simple garter stitch in a variety of yarns.
• A sock, which originally was in a cute pattern but required too much mental processing power, so riiiip, it became a vanilla sock.
• Free-form embroidery on some Liberty of London decorator weight fabric which I turned into an envelope cushion and gifted to a friend today.
• Upon completing that cushion, Naomi wanted a cushion too, so I pulled out the British bunting fabric that I picked up in the UK last year and made another simple envelope cushion cover for her bedroom.
• Finally these darling little pin cushions using some espresso sized cups, fabric and a hot glue gun!

And that's it my friends. It has been good to craft this week.
Hope you are well.
Love,
Sam xxx

This week in review : March 15

Lovely new Vespa self-striping sock yarn and a beautiful project bag from a friend.
Seaming Bertie's (hospice) Blanket - the very pretty sock yarn blanket, for which you kindly donated squares. Isn't that pile of threads so pretty.
A relaxing jigsaw puzzle that I stumbled upon at Barnes and Noble, showing an illustration from Sarah Watts (a fabric designer that I like).
Some pretty new fabric.

The weather here is glorious. Naomi is a bundle of energy and wanting to test out her new big girl bike at the local park. I hope you also have fun plans for this Sunday. And Happy Mother's Day to all Mums in the UK.

Love
Sam
xxx

WIP Weekend

I had all good intentions of writing a WIP Wednesday post, that almost became a Things-a-progressin Thursday, and then... well, you get the idea, it's the weekend now, so WIP Weekend it is.  The main work in progress has been the secret socks. I started knitting these the other week and got to a point where I decided that I wasn't loving how they were looking. They were fine, but they weren't great. Do you ever feel that way?

There were a few things that were bugging me:

1. They seemed too big and baggy (and I'm sure Joe doesn't want Nora Batty socks)
2. The hearts seemed a little squooshed
3. I was knitting a couple of rows from each end of the ball to give it a striped effect...  but the stripes weren't showing up

After much umming and aahing, trying to decide if these bugs were deal breakers, I ripped the sock out and started again, with the following fixes:

1. Cast on fewer stiches and changed from straight stocking stitch to K9, P1 - this touch of ribbing seems to pull the sock in nicely and give it a little bit of leg huggability
2. Added an extra row to the hearts so they are a little less stumpy
3. Ditched the stripes

Now I'm happy!  I don't love ripping out, but when I find myself knitting and knitting and questioning myself about the end result, I figure sometimes its best to just go back to the drawing board... or little notepad, in this case.



The socks are now coming along nicely, although I am currently in that mental phase of  'I just want to be done' after doing rounds and rounds and rounds of the K9, P1 stitch pattern.  I may add in the afterthought heel right now just to break up the monotony.  But all in all, pleased with how these are coming along.

Other than the knitting, there's also been some purchasing.  First up, this lovely Spun Right Round sock yarn.  I don't have any plans yet... it just called to me like a siren song:



And some fabulous Kaffe Fasset fabric: 



My uncle has asked if I would make him a quilt with bright, happy, seaside colours.  Here is our colour inspiration for the quilt.
 


I think these fabrics will above work well with some that are already in my stash - I wanted some golden sand, and sea blue colours in there.   I might need some other brights too, to make it pop.  I'm still playing around with ideas at this point... I love this part of the process.



I also pulled out the WIP Berties (hospice) Blanket.  It's been a thoughtful week for me:  A sweet high school friend passed away from breast cancer last Friday.  It has haunted me all week, and that gave me the nudge to pull this out, so it can be seamed and handed to a local hospice where it can bring someone some comfort.  Thank you to all who contributed squares - this is going to be a beauty.  I just have one last square to complete and then onto the seaming.



Go hug your loved ones xxx

Wishing you a good weekend,
Sam xxx

Where does the time go?

I am having a hard time believing that it is April next week...  Do you feel the same way? 
Time just seems like it is flying by this year. 

I thought I'd take the opportunity to do my monthly recap now since its the weekend (Yay!) and I don't have any FOs to share just yet.  So... the crafty input/output resolution... it seems that I am not making strides in the right direction.  Am I surprised?  Umm, truthfully no, not really.  The upside is that I have some lovely goodies to share with you on the blog :) Ha ha yes, what an excuse!

So here's the walk of shame:

1.  Yarn:
On the output front I have a sock:



It needs a friend.  But one is better than none :) 
I've been travelling for the last 2 weeks for my work, and all this time on planes has given me the opportunity to get some knitting done.  I've made a start on the second sock, so hopefully I'll have a completed pair to share soon.



I've had a hankering for some handspun sock yarn for a while now, and I'm really enjoying working with this Crown Mountain handspun yarn and seeing the color changes in the yarn.  It may come as no surprise that I acquired some more:





And then the monthly installment from Skein came in.  Its a lovely color, and I was sorely tempted to retain the subscription, but ultimately saw sense and cancelled my subscription.  Baby steps in the right direction.



Ooh, I did finish another square for the Bertie's (hospice) Blankets.  Thinking I may lay the blanket squares  out this weekend.  It's pretty close to completion, thanks to all the kind folks that donated squares.



2.  Fabric:
I made a couple of squares for another one of the gals at quilt guild.  Love the colors in this - bring on Spring!



There was the infinity scarf from my last post.  But I also picked up some more fabric for the Local Quilt, which I'm eager to try my hand at.



I almost forgot, I also made a 'huggie' for my cross stitch frame.  It helps keep the edges of the cross stitch linen protected. And it's plain old cute since it goes with the 'Once Upon a Time' theme of the cross stitch.  :)



I have the perfect project bag for this cross stitch project.  This bag has tremendous sentimental value:  After my Grandma passed away last year my Mum was packing her things away and found this hand quilted bag that Grandma had made.  Mum knew that I would love it.  My Grandma was a wonderful lady who I miss dearly.  It makes me so happy that I have something that she made.   







3.  Cross Stitch:
I finished the first in the 'Frosty Forest' Series:  Raccoon Cabin.  So cute!



I've started the 2nd square in this series, but I'm also itching to get started on the Once Upon a Time sampler - I am 3 months' behind.  Yikes!

Wishing you all a lovely weekend.
Sam xxx