Tag Archives: beanie

May5

April wrap up

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April wrap up

Hi all

I’m overdue for my April roundup, aren’t I! It was a making, vlogging, walking sort of month. Mr Stitches and I have been getting between 5000 and 10000 steps in every day, and I have also been supplementing with a few home workouts. Trying to get fitter again. 

Ali of Little Drops of Wonderful has had her Dodgy Bag Makealong in progress, and there’s an active thread in her Ravelry group. I’ve posted quite a few photos in there of bags I’ve made, including the one for my swap partner in Alberta. 

She sent me a lovely package of goodies in return. A bag that she made, some ceramic buttons, stickers and a cute toadstool charm. 

I’ll pop a few photos of the things I’ve sewn below.

Caroline bags (photo tutorial on this blog) including some smaller ones just for fun

Bum Bag – this was a pain as there was binding on the inside and I do not like binding!

Laptop bag – my own invention

Tote from upcycled denim

Forage bag – a Noodlehead pattern

Scrappy continuous zipper bags

Arm band for phone – another invention of mine so I can log steps when  working out at home

Scissor keepers – a SewingTimes tutorial

Tiny zip pouches – I made a YouTube tutorial for these

Turtle mop – an idea I saw on Facebook

Coral denim bag – another YT tutorial,  this time from Mama Project. Struggled with this one. Not good enough to sell but I used it today and I love it so I’m keeping it. I dyed the jeans with Rit.

There’s been quite a lot of crochet too. 

Turtle

Crochet pussy hats – I’m on the third one so far this week. Yarn is Ice Yarns Picasso.

I had another fun outing with friends one weekend. We drove a little way south and had a lovely time in a small town with a yarn store (that was really busy as they were having a special event with wine and cupcakes and everything) and a quilt store. So we spent lots of time browsing and inhaling yarn and fabric fumes and then went and had a coffee and a snack. 

I’m writing this on May 5th, and today was my first market, selling my bags. I did sell a few, and made a reasonable amount of money, but a lot of that was thanks to my friends who came to say Hi. I certainly didn’t expect them to spend any money but they did and I’m grateful for that. 

It was a tiring day of getting up at 6am (because I woke up before my alarm and thought I may as well get up) and driving to the venue and spending 5 hours “peopling” (I’m out of practice at that). Packing up didn’t take long, but I got home desperate for food and tea! And then Mr Stitches and I went out for a 7pm show of Taiko drumming which was absolutely awesome and made me forget my tiredness. 

Mr Stitches’ recovery from cancer is going quite well, though the after-effects of the radiation come and go. He will be going back to work next week, but only 4 hours, 3 days the first week. And then gradually working his way back to full time. I have also started looking around to see what part-time jobs there are in the vicinity but I haven’t gone as far as updating my resumé.

If you haven’t yet gone and checked out my YouTube channel, Stitches and Slapdashery, please do go and visit.

Thanks for reading.

Sep30

September roundup

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September roundup

Hello! September was a pretty good month, if you ignore the fact that there was another major fire south of us. Thankfully, with the cooler weather, it was far less devastating and didn’t burn down any homes.

It’s hard to capture the deep orange-ness of the sun when viewed through smoke.

I did get to enjoy a few more beach days before the chill set in.

The water was…..refreshing?!

Last time I showed you a pile of quilt squares. These were assembled and backed and quilted and the result is…

…a 6 ft square bed-sized quilt with a scrappy binding and machine quilting radiating out from two points on the quilt. It was quite the challenge to get all that bulk under the arm of my machine.

I have already given this to the intended recipient, a lady I’ve known for 25 years and who lost her home in the wildfire in August.

A super fun project I sewed this month was this sweater.

The fleece is printed to look like crocheted granny squares and I knew I had to have some as soon as I saw it.

I made sure to buy enough to make a matching beanie.

My friends and I had a sewing day, which was a belated birthday celebration for my 61st, and we made Japanese knot bags.

These were mine. As usual, the sewing wasn’t perfect but the cute fabric makes up for it!!

Earlier this year, I made a batch of drawstring bags as a commission. This month I made another batch of 25, lined this time, as a donation to Vegfest. Of course I decided that the fabric had to have a fruit or vegetable theme.

These went into the goody bags on the day. My friend said that next year we should jointly make 100 so that every bag gets one! We’ll see!

Vegfest was fun. It’s so nice to be surrounded by so many vendors selling stuff that I can eat or use without worrying that it has animal products inside. I had helped to round up donations ahead of the big day, and the day before we were filling gift baskets. On the day we had more donations to add, and I was busy with that in the morning, on the door in the afternoon, and helping to clean up at the end.

A finished project that I’m really excited about, that’s hot off the needles today, is my second Sporto sweater. It’s a free pattern on knitty.com and last year I made a grey version. Last February I cast on this green one.

I didn’t plan it ahead of time, which meant that while I was knitting it I was trying to decide how to incorporate the contrast colours. The yarn is Scheepjes Truly Scrumptious Aran, and the main colour is Spirulina Bites. The pink which I finally used on the sleeves is Acai Bowl. I also have some Honeycomb (a mustard yellow) but it didn’t end up in the sweater.

The reason it took eight months? It sat in its project bag for months while I figured out what to do. I started to add a pocket then ripped it out. I finished the body but it was too short so I ripped back, added more length, and did a split hem. And then someone in the Vegan Ravelry group suggested a Finish Your WIPs-along and that was the impetus I needed.

So happy it’s done!

So the vlogging is ongoing over at Stitches and Slapdashery.

This is the latest episode. I’m still learning. I had to get an SD card for my phone because videos take up a lot of memory. I want to record a crochet tutorial but I’ve been having the darndest time setting up the camera in such a way that you can’t see the tripod legs! And I’ve had my new mic run out of juice and had to re-record footage, and the beanie tutorial will be redone because of camera shake! I’ll get there!

I’m looking forward to an October full of creating, and enjoying wearing the warm layers which I have spent so much time making! Happy times.

Oct9

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m grateful that we are all over the worst of the covid and life is getting back to normal. I was back to work Friday, worked yesterday, will be there again today, and then I have three days off.

I don’t think it’s worth cooking a big Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow because some of us are still tasting things weirdly, if at all. But I will sit down with pen and paper tonight and make a meal plan for the coming week in case I need to shop for ingredients.

This is what I made with the T shirt yarn that I showed you last time. I saved the prettier colours for the walls of the basket because that navy and tan is kind of ugly.

The handle is braided from the T shirt hems.

I will definitely cut the strips thinner next time for easier crocheting and a less chunky result.

And the swatch cap is finished and I’m happy with the gauge so I can cast on the sweater.

The sweater is Sporto https://knitty.com/ISSUEwbis11/KSPATTsporto.php and is a free pattern from knitty.com. It’s a top down seamless design, interestingly started from the top of the hood. It’s written for lots of options, either homespun or commercial yarn, a specific gauge or a recipe into which you plug your own gauge.

If you’re in Canada, I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving, appreciating all the joys of fall, family and food.

Oct6

The plague has hit!

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The family was taken down this week. Oldest son was spared, maybe because he has his bedroom and bathroom downstairs. But Mr Fixit and the two younger sons and I all succumbed to covid so there has been a lot of sleeping, nose-blowing, coughing, etc happening.

Now that the headache has gone, and the cold-like symptoms mostly gone, the things I’m having the hardest time with are the sore mouth (a dry mouth and braces do not mix – I hate waking up to find my braces sticking to the inside of my mouth) and the loss of smell and taste. Sweet stuff started to taste bitter a couple of days ago, but now I really can’t taste anything. That’s a kick in the teeth!

We have all been doing what we can to rest and recuperate and after a couple of days of doing nothing I did manage to put some meals together, do some laundry, and knit a bit.

This is what Elizabeth Zimmermann would have called a swatch cap. I have a sweater in mind that I want to knit so I checked how many stitches were in the body for the 42″ finished size and it was 160. So I cast on 80 and am knitting a beanie which will turn out exactly half the circumference of the sweater. A useful and accurate way to check gauge! That EZ was a genius!

Please note I did not pay full price for that yarn. It was vastly overpriced until it went on clearance at 70% off.

The cowl I was crocheting in the last blog post has been finished for a while. I used up every scrap and it is the perfect length to double up around the neck. I think I may have to get more of this yarn (Lion Brand Mandala Ombre).

So far, three scrubby dishcloths have been made with the other clearance yarn I picked up recently. These are going to be made in between other projects, or if I need something portable.

I have made notes, and will write up the pattern one of these days.

Today I dug out some T shirts I was saving for T shirt yarn. I cut off the bottom hems and cut from bottom to armpits in a spiral to make long strips. I was pretty slapdash as usual and made the strips wider than intended but I think my crochet hook is big enough to accommodate the thickness.

I intend to make a crocheted basket and possibly braid the hems for handles. Not sure how to use up the rest of the pieces but I’d like to keep most of it out of the landfill.

I will show you the result later.

Happy pumpkin season!

Sep24

I love fall!

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I love fall!

Reasons to love autumn/fall:

Not so bloody hot.

Nights are cool.

Evenings are drawing in.

Socks and sweaters.

Friends can come over and not die of heat exhaustion.

Rain (hopefully).

Long walks outdoors without burning up.

Fleece pajamas.

I could go on. I think September might be my favourite month.

I’ve made a few things in the last week. Some have been for work. I brought home a preprinted cotton  panel and sewed up these trick or treat bags. After I hung them up at work, the fabric sold in a flash.

Today I sewed these stockings from another panel and will take them to the store tomorrow for display.

The sewing pattern I mentioned last time has now been transformed into this:

It looks a bit disproportionate because it’s on a decorative mannequin which is way smaller than I am. But this one will return to me for keepsies once it’s hung at the store for a month.

From the pile of yarn I showed you in my last post, I made these:

A beanie of my own design and a teeny elephant  https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/amigurumi-elephant-25

To accompany these little gifts all the way over the Atlantic I cross-stitched another elephant and glued it to a card.

And from a <ahem> yarn purchase at work because it went on clearance, I have started crocheting dishcloths with a scrubby centre like the ones I made a while back. They are great in the kitchen.

I hope you too are enjoying the season you’re in and finding ways to get out of your head and into your hands, as Kate from The Last Homely House says!

Sep12

Hats!

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Since getting back from holiday, there hasn’t been a huge amount of crafty activity. I did enjoy a day of blitzing my sewing room which I love to do periodically. It reminds me of what I have in the way of fabric and yarn. It makes me look critically at things I’ve hung on to for months or even years and so by the end of the day I had tossed a lot of stuff in the recycling or trash or thrift store pile.

I went through the fabric and yarn, rearranged things more logically, vacuumed into the corners, and now the room is ready for a new project.

The beanie above was made with a 10mm hook and three strands of the same Lion Brand Mandala Ombre that I used for the shawl. I made it up as I went along. I’ve made a tonne of hats in my time and the bill/peak was just a case of experimenting with what looked right.

When I was at work yesterday, business was a little slow in the pm, and my brain turned to things that could go on display. I checked with the boss and she was OK with me crocheting a beanie with store yarn.

Today being a day off, I had some quality sofa time and I had this made in an hour and a half.

It’s crocheted with a bulky chenille yarn and an 8mm hook and the pattern off the ball band.

Next up will be a sewing project. I have the pattern and flannelette fabric ready to make a knee length robe. The fabric is so cute.

The contrast is a solid blue. It’s still drying at the moment.

I just pulled out my Knit Picks Brava oddments from last year.

I’m wondering about some sort of scrap project or perhaps some amigurumi. You may notice my new knitting mug – it says “If I can’t take my knitting, I’m not going!” And the black blocky thing is my new Anker Bluetooth speaker. I wanted one for my phone but had no idea which one to get so took the recommendation of my eldest son who also has one.

I’m currently playing some awesome 80s music via YouTube music (free, so I have to put up with the ads)!

So that, plus work, is the last two weeks. Oh yeah, and I had a very fun meal out with friends for a belated birthday celebration.

Feb3

Two FOs and a WIP

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Hello! I hope everything is well in your world.

I’m very pleased that this beanie is finished. The moose and trees look a bit lumpy – not my best colourwork ever – but I like the way the text and snowflakes showed up.

You may recall that this was a free pattern on Ravelry. And the name of it is obvious: it’s called Fuck the Cold hat. I knitted it with 3.75mm needles using Lion Brand Mandala for the background and Stylecraft Special DK for the contrast.

If I made this exact hat again, I would use 4mm needles. And I’d start the Mandala yarn at a different place in the cake so it didn’t jump from turquoise ribbing to the dark shades and back to turquoise at the top. I used the colours as they came, but I did trim some yardage in places so that I’d see as many of the colour changes as possible.

The granny throw is still growing and it’s my favourite project for these winter evenings. It’s about 56″ square now. I still have quite a lot of grey and black yarn left, and a basket of colours, but my choices are getting more limited. I know this is a stashbuster but I may need to supplement with a few new skeins!

Finally, a sewing FO. This took a couple of hours this afternoon. One of the ladies at work has an 80th birthday coming up so I made her a bag. This fabric is heavier than the usual quilt cotton and I liked it so much I bought a metre to add to the stash. Now I’m getting to use it along with a piece of vinyl that was damaged at one end.

I thought she’d use a tote rather than a zippered pouch or drawstring bag, and I added a magnetic clasp and a D ring on the inside. Next I think it would be nice to get some chocolates to put in it.

Tonight I’ve had my bean burrito and salad and now I’m cosied up for some crochet time. Heaven!

Jan22

Weekend WIPs update

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I seem to be falling into a weekly blog habit. I don’t have a schedule but when a week has gone by without a post I get a niggling reminder in the back of my brain that it’s time to write something.

Do you like the heart? My sister’s stepson makes these, back in Blighty. She sent it to me for Christmas. They are sold to raise funds for Healing Waves in the island of Jersey, which is a charity that takes people with different challenges out into the chilly Atlantic Ocean to surf.

So what are the WIPs this week, I hear you ask!

Version 2 of the Fuck the Cold Beanie. I’m using Lion Brand Mandala for the background and cutting out some of the yarn to make the colours change a little quicker. The gold for the tree and moose is Stylecraft Special DK. Needles are 3.75mm/US5. The gauge is tighter, the stranded colourwork is neater and I’m much happier.

Granny is nearly four feet square. Still lots of yarn left in the bags!

A taster of the sashiko stitching on my denim vest. This has a long way to go but that’s OK.

A small side project inspired by the upcoming Valentine’s Day and gnomie love quilt cotton! Upcycled denim hearts which I am embellishing with fabric, ribbon, buttons etc. I spent a couple of hours faffing about in my sewing room this evening and I intend to complete all six of these before Tuesday.

We had a potluck lunch with friends today and as usual we ate enough that I didn’t need any dinner. So we just wound up our day with a turmeric tea.

I hope your weekend is going well and that you’re making time to be crafty and creative.

Jan15

Galloping grannies

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The giant granny blanket continues to grow. It’s not much of a giant yet – about 37″ across – but I’m hoping it will be huge. I’m prepared to buy more black and grey if it means finishing up my random colours.

Sadly the beanie has had to be frogged.

At the end of the moose/tree section I knew it was likely to be too big. I forged ahead anyway and completed the text part.

Then, I had to be honest with myself. The circumference was 24 inches, bigger than my head, and with the snowflakes and the crown decreases the total height would have been 12 inches. The design wouldn’t have been visible with so much slouch so I made the decision to frog.

I still want this hat so I’ll look at the DK yarn that I have and use some smaller needles and start again.

After seeing a knitted bumwarmer on Ravelry, I picked up a small piece of jersey knit fabric and sewed a tube. It can be worn around the hips for extra warmth, or even the torso Japanese-style or just as a cowl.

Since the big freeze, we’ve had milder temperatures. Minus 3 feels very comfortable now. So the roads are clear of ice again and there’s been lots of melting, though the piles were so deep they haven’t disappeared yet.

I’m working this weekend so I will wrap this up and take myself off to bed. See you soon

Jan4

Happy New Year

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Hello 2022. My brain is having a hard time catching up to the fact that it’s two years since we first heard about The Disease That Shall Not Be Named. It wasn’t last year that my workplace was shut down for 7 weeks, it was two years ago. I feel like 2020 and 2021 have just blended into one long year. A VERY long year!

Anyway let’s focus on the here and now.

Shall we talk about the fact that our winter has been bitterly cold in recent weeks? I think the lowest was -30°C but mostly it was around -17 for quite some time. When it warmed up to -5 the last couple of days it was quite pleasant!

We’ve had lots of snow that’s not had a chance to melt between falls so the roads have been icy and the piles along the sides of the roads and driveways have just got higher.

Mr Fixit is back at work after his week off. Oldest son has had a month off due to his workplace accident but should be back at work tomorrow. Youngest had two weeks off and returned yesterday.

I just had a bonus 4 day stretch – my first New Year’s Day off in 7 years!

Last night three friends came over to knit and drink tea and generally be loud and funny.

The ‘Fuck the Cold’ hat is coming along (pattern is a free download on Ravelry). I cast on on the 1st and I’m halfway through the trees/moose section. Some of my friends are also making this – we are having a knitted colourwork makealong.

And my stashbusting worsted weight granny blanket has grown to 23 inches across in just a few days. My colour order is black/colour/grey/colour. I’m expecting to use up all my random medium weight yarn and hopefully end up with a king size blanket.

As I sit here on the couch writing this before heading down to my sewing room I see snow falling again, the neighbour clearing his drive again, and I’m glad I don’t have to go anywhere today.

Be careful out there!