Tag Archives: shawl

Aug31

August roundup

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A few things happened this month. The main life change I experienced was leaving my job of nine years.

There had been a few rumblings of discontent for a while so when my boss decided it was time to move on to a new job it felt like the right time to make my move.

We had a great team and we all knew our responsibilities well and things ran pretty smoothly. But with the linchpin removed, what followed was the exit of four more key employees, including me.

I stayed on the longest and I did my best to hand over the tasks to the new management. They are doing amazingly well considering they were thrown in to a tough situation.

My last two scheduled shifts didn’t actually happen. That week, we had a major forest fire grow quickly out of control and threaten neighbourhoods only minutes from where we live. In the last week thousands of people have been on either evacuation alert or order, and some have lost their homes.

Our family of five has four cars between us and we had them packed and ready to move in case the fire moved our way. Thankfully it didn’t cross the highway…but it did jump the lake. Burning embers blown by the wind landed and caused fires on the other side and more people had to evacuate.

The store where I worked was in an alert zone and actually closed for four days.

Pre-blocking

So that beach day I enjoyed in early August was the only one I had all month. My Nightshade shawl did get knitted, just not at the beach as I’d hoped. In fact I finished it today and it’s currently blocking.

As you can see from the photo above, I had about one gram of the red left at the end, so I’m glad I decided to make the lacy sections smaller to conserve my yarn.

Doesn’t it look different when it’s had a wash and been pinned out on the mats!

I sewed a very cosy sweater from this pattern. It’s view A with the curved hemline. The fabric is chenille with a fluffy fleecy backing.

I’ve been cutting squares for a quilt from my cotton stash. I’ll be talking more about this and my other crafting on the next vlog which I’ll be filming in a couple of days. Please do visit – Stitches and Slapdashery on YouTube.

Mr Fixit and I managed to get out of town for a couple of nights, despite the fires, for my birthday. We revisited a little cabin that we’ve been to a few times before and it was very peaceful and less smoky than just about everywhere else.

And I buzzed my hair! Initially it was going to be maybe 10mm, and I was going to give it a fresh dye job, then I accidentally cut a 3mm swath through it and had to make it all that length. It was on my bucket list and now I’ve done it! That was two weeks ago and it’s grown a couple of millimetres so today I added colour. If you want to see it, you’ll have to go watch the vlog. I still need to shampoo the excess dye out of my scalp!!

So that’s it for now. Take care and be safe.

Aug13

Day 1

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Vacation time!

Waiting for our first flight (of three) so of course I cast on my travel knitting project! A two row repeat, garter stitch, super easy!!

The other day I made a couple of tote bags which are for my father-in-law. He likes bright colours. Guys are often hard to buy/make for, but I think he’ll use these.

I have custom ear plugs for sleeping, which I use every night, so I brought those for the 9.25 hour flight across the Atlantic, and I felt that adding an eye mask might help me get some sleep. Usually I find it really hard to sleep on planes unless I’m exhausted, because you just can’t get comfortable in the cramped seats. Blocking out sound and light gives me a fighting chance.

I can’t remember which YouTube channel this was on but it was really easy to make.

Mar23

Random stuff

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Well, life has been a lot less stressful lately. British Columbia lifted the mask mandate and my employers followed suit. Whilst I respect everyone’s choice to wear a mask or not, I have chosen to go without. Bliss! In addition I don’t have to police people who come into the store and so there is far less friction in general.

It’s funny though. We had one customer complaining that our staff should still be wearing them. I feel like proclaiming to the world that working in retail has been utter shit at times over the last two years and getting back to some semblance of normal life is a sanity-saver.

Talking of sanity-savers, I had a day off today and I feel like I achieved quite a lot. I did an hour’s workout at the gym. Vacuumed the house and aired it out by opening the windows for a while. Made some reflective armbands for when we go walking in the dark.

Made some mesh laundry bags.

Added pleater tape to the top of four store-bought curtain panels so we can hang them up in our family room (we have an Ikea system, not rods).

Made lasagna. Ate lasagna. Went to yoga.

Crocheted a thing (sort of a bunny container from a tutorial by Repeat Crafter Me) though it doesn’t have any features yet. I pulled out four colours of cotton from the stash the other day, hence the green basket, and there may be something else to come in yellow and lilac.

And cast on my Freesia shawl that I mentioned last time.

Only seven rows in. No more crafting tonight. It’s nearly 10pm now and I’m pooped! Time for bed.

Mar19

Fluffies and goodies

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I showed you the beginning of the grey cowl last time. It only took three days to knit two cowls. Ten mil needles and furry yarn make a project fly off the needles.

This is Spindle Buttersoft which is a discontinued yarn from the store where I work. Shame because it was very popular. It only took 42 stitches and about 40 rounds to use up the skein.

The Vegan Knitters and Crocheters group on Ravelry is planning an April KAL. It’s going to be a shawl knit/crochetalong, so knowing I wanted to use my stash of Berroco Modern Cotton in the colourway Matunuk I did a search on Ravelry for something in DK that wasn’t too challenging but also not completely mindless.

This shawl design by Annie Baker looks perfect. It’s a paid pattern on Ravelry. I don’t buy many patterns but this one drew me in. Freesia I caked up the three hanks of yarn last night. Doesn’t the yarn coordinate perfectly with my Caspian knitting needles!

I had some happy mail yesterday too.

A while ago, maybe a couple of months, I heard my name mentioned on the Little Drops of Wonderful podcast. Ali said I had won something in one of her makealongs and I was very excited! The package arrived (and was a total surprise because I had forgotten about it by the time it got here)!

I won a project bag and book and Ali had put in a couple of ‘You are a Little Drop of Wonderful’ pins and stickers. Fun!

I’m itching to do some fun sewing this weekend. Not sure what yet. Depends how much time I have.

Jun22

A bit of everything

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A bit of everything

There’s been knitting…

Since I took that photo, it’s grown quite a bit. This is Age of Brass and Steam which is a free pattern that I found via Ravelry. It’s very popular with thousands of projects linked. The yarn is Cascade Ultra Pima Paints, a lovely tonal cotton.

There’s been crocheting…

I won’t say too much about this because it’s a test for someone. But it came out CUTE!

And there’s been sewing…

A vinyl zipper pouch based on a Crafty Gemini tutorial (YouTube) called a pinch pouch.

And an actual garment which gave me grief and I had to redo the neck binding but I think it’s wearable now!

Gawd, it’s 34 degrees today with a forecast high for the weekend of 38. What the heck?!?!?!

We don’t have AC so the only way to be sitting here and not dripping is to have the big floor fan going. Downstairs, where my sewing room is, is somewhat cooler. I can see the big maple tree in my front yard blowing about in the wind and I can imagine it’d be like standing on front of a giant hairdryer right now.

And now I have to make dinner so the fan is getting moved to the kitchen!

Jun30

The end of June already…

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The end of June already…

Hi, bloggy friends!

Wow, summer is one-third over and so far it’s been very comfortable, temperature-wise. In fact, we’ve had quite a few rainy days, including thunderstorms. I do prefer it when the thermometer reads less than 30 Celsius.

After I finished the baby blanket that I showed you last time, I had a bit of a slump, when I WANTED to be making something but couldn’t figure out WHAT I wanted to make. I have some nice yarns in the stash, fabrics too, but nothing was calling to me.

There’s been the extra stress at work – what with enforcing the customer limit and mask policy, and the volume of sales, and on top of all that trying to get everything ready for inventory, there have been extra hours worked and extra pressure on the staff.

This has made my days off even more precious and even though I have had an outwardly relaxing day today (baking bread and zucchini cake, crocheting while watching YouTube videos, prepping dinner) I can feel the tightness in my stomach and I am hoping a visit to the gym later will help burn off some of that feeling.

I did whip up a quick shawl. It’s a pattern I’ve used before – the Me Shawl from Clare at bobwilson123. Last time I made it, I did the popcorn/bobble border and it looked awesome but this time I wanted it to be quick and easy. So I ended up doing just row 1 of Clare’s Jessica shawl edging, which is just a simple shell.

I used Caron X Pantone Bamboo which I bought last summer. I bought very little yarn last year but this was from a trip to Michaels where I fell hard for three braids of this yarn plus some cute Loops & Threads Meandering Minis because they were on clearance. Each braid comes with 20 grams each of five colours and I had wound them into cakes some time ago. This shawl used ten of the small balls, so 200 grams in all.

It was nice to have yarn running through my hands again, but it was a super-quick project and now I need to find another one!

I am feeling a little discombobulated about something else in my life too. Ravelry has been a big part of my interwebs time for 12 years. I have over 700 projects recorded, my pattern library (admittedly quite small), my queue of things I’d like to make some day, my favourites, my stash and over 13000 forum posts on record.

I have invested a lot into Ravelry over the years, added to the database, linked my free patterns through the site, given tonnes of advice to people asking for help in the forums. It’s been part of my everyday.

But suddenly, Ravelry had a facelift. A couple of weeks ago, the look totally changed. It was all right, I suppose, though there were some things that were a bit annoying, like text not fitting into boxes properly, and other bugs. I thought, hmmm, ok, learning curve, I can get used to this. Then people started to talk about the problems they were having with the new version. Eye strain, headaches, migraines and even a few seizures triggered by something within the new design. Reluctantly, it seemed, the site owners gave us the option to click back into “classic” Ravelry, with a warning that it was temporary.

Now, I’ve never ever had a problem with any website before, but something about the new site bothered me. The turquoise boxes with the hard black drop shadows were glaring. I found that I was wanting to spend less time browsing the forums. I started to get headaches. Going back into “classic” didn’t get rid of the headaches. So while I’ve wanted to follow the discussions in the forums about the whole situation, I’ve had to pop in and out as quickly as I can. I have a lot of sympathy for those who are susceptible to migraines because some have had to stop using Ravelry altogether.

Yes, I know the site is free to use.

Yes, it’s up to the owners how their site looks.

Yes, I know I have a choice whether to use the site or not.

BUT Ravelry has prided itself on being inclusive in so many ways. Rainbow flags, Pride month threads, Black Lives Matter threads and donations. So why have they just taken a backwards step to make themselves LESS inclusive of people with visual/neurological issues?

There are many people online who are saying, “What’s the problem? I like the new look!” But those people are obviously not experiencing any new symptoms and have no empathy for those who are.

I am sad and annoyed and missing my usual dose of Rav. No doubt there is a reason for this new look and I don’t think it is just cosmetic. Some of it is to do with setting up the design for future development, but maybe there are other, as yet unannounced, plans in the pipeline which preclude going back to the old look.

Just in case, I have downloaded all my data from Ravelry – it’s all in raw form, and I hope not to ever need the contents of that file, but it’s my insurance!

Apr18

WIP: Cakes shawl

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I am loving the way these two cakes of Lion Brand Mandala are playing off against each other.

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I have a teeny regret that in the first part I used three small balls of yarn that were separated from the original cake and I feel I should have put them in a different order, starting with lighter pink then going darker (at the top there, against the green). I prefer the stripes that visibly segue into the next colour rather than a hard colour change. But I can see myself making another of these.

I am almost finished with the cakes, but have to remember to leave enough for a picot edging.

I have also made another bag, what I call my Quadrant bag. This is the third one, and it’s 3″ taller than the first two. Did I say how much I really dislike sewing circles and cylinders together? Oh yes, multiple times!!

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And I wasn’t going to make any more masks, but the people at my favourite tea shop think that they may only be able to stay open if they wear masks to work, and commissioned me to make them some. They paid me in tea!

This bamboo flannelette print is just perfect for them.

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It’s been an absolutely beautiful day. Sunny but still with a hint of coolness. Mr Fixit and I went on a totally essential trip to a plant nursery to buy new plants for the garden!

It was nice to get out of the house and a little further afield than I have been in weeks.

And we had a wonderfully simple but tasty dinner of bannock, vegan cheese (Daiya Smoked Gouda, mmmmm), olive tapenade and a huge salad. Feeling blessed and replete!

 

 

Apr13

What happens when you….

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….cross a Gnome and a Troll?

You get this:

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This pattern is called Cakes Two to Tango and I found it on Ravelry. It’s a free Ravelry download and it uses two cakes of colour-changing yarn. Of course I still had some Lion Brand Mandala in the stash, and I put two together that I wouldn’t normally have combined – but I’m loving the result.

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Gnome left, Troll right

The stitch pattern is easy peasy – just sc1, ch1 – which I think may be called granite stitch or something like that. Of course the rows get longer and longer as you go, but with the colour combinations changing all the time as you crochet through the cakes it keeps things interesting.

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I did some yardwork today. Mr Fixit was outside planting potatoes and I did some pruning of roses and pyracantha, and pulled out some dead stuff from one of the beds. Afterwards, I sat on the deck in the sunshine, and ds1, who just turned 28, was building this:

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You’re never too old for Lego!

 

Jan10

Saying goodbye to an old friend

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(Have you entered my giveaway yet? It’s here and is open until January 21st, 2020.)

I had a call on Tuesday morning from a friend’s husband. She was in hospital, and knowing that she hadn’t been in good health or spirits for some time I called Mr Fixit and we arranged to go and see her in the afternoon. I almost waited until Thursday, my next day off, but I’m very glad I didn’t. We didn’t stay long – it was basically a Hello and an I Love You and a Goodbye – but I am grateful for the opportunity to have said Goodbye as she died that night.

We are, of course, sad to see her go. We will miss her terribly. But she was ready. She had made her plans, dictated her obituary, given her husband her computer password, etc. Much as we hated to lose our friend, an outspoken, encouraging, flamboyant artist and writer who was generous and grandparental with my boys, we knew it was time.

And life goes on. Specifically, the crafting goes on.

I finished this…

 

On my Ravelry project page, I called this Sunseeker on Maui. The yarn is Cascade Sunseeker, a cotton/acrylic with a teeny bit of sparkle (a multi, with pink and grey, and a solid). I made it up as I went along, using half doubles, singles and double crochets, and I ran out of yarn after single crocheting along the bottom edge. I did at least get to cover a few yarn carries where I striped the pink and grey for a few inches, but ideally I would have liked to have gone around the whole thing.

I’m now down to two WIPs, the knitted tube blanket (the colour options for which are boring me and I may let it languish for a while) and the Moe of Change crochet blanket, which I really need to persevere with as a friend is having a baby in the summer and it would make a great gift.

I have an idea for a good fundraiser for a local farm sanctuary and I bought a panel of fabric on Wednesday and some coordinating cotton so that I can make more project bags.

The plan is to use my collection of old jeans for the bag bases. With that in mind I made a trial bag today. I had to use a certain size square because the fabric has 9″ squares with pictures of cute animals on. I started out with two pieces of  camper van fabric from my stash, 9.5″ square, and the same size of denim for the bottom.

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I’m not particularly happy with how it turned out. It’s pretty and perfectly usable, but it’s disproportionate. It’s too tall, or too narrow, depending on your perspective. I boxed the bottom corners too deeply as well. I should have cut out a 1″ square instead of 1.5″.

I may have to see if I can make the animal squares rectangular (shorter vertically) without losing any of the words,  and boxing the denim corners more frugally should make the base look better.

Maybe I’ll make another tonight with different measurements. Glad I didn’t cut into the good stuff yet.

Mr Fixit had a nasty fall this morning when he went out to clear the snow off the driveway because of ice hidden under the new snow. Hurt his elbow and hip. The arm was numb for a while, then painful. So I cleared the drive this morning (in my Hello Kitty onesie for the amusement of any neighbours who may have seen me). Then I cleared the neighbour’s drive across the road. Thankfully it’s below freezing so the snow is light. It persevered most of the day, so after I returned from grocery shopping ds2 and I went out and cleared ours again. Then we cleared two more neighbours’ drives. So that’s five driveways, which are not small, and they are sloping, so I had a lot of exercise today. No need to go to the gym. My left rotator cuff hates me now. It was bad enough when I woke up this morning – I had probably been sleeping on it – and while I tried to remember to wield the shovel with my right hand in front it was still a challenge.

The Greek Potatoes have been baking for nearly two hours now so I need to go and throw together a Greek salad to go with it. This blog post got long, didn’t it!

Jan2

WIPing in the New Year!

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WIPing in the New Year!

Happy 2020!

I have three WIPs that I’m bringing with me into 2020. I frogged the Party Cardi (granny square type cardigan) because I couldn’t see myself wearing it, so that was one off the list. And I finished the granny square blanket just after Christmas, and that felt good. Three Works in Progress are manageable, and what I feel comfortable with. Any more than that and it bugs me.

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WIP #1: Moe of Change with Lion Brand Mandala

I added a teeny bit to this last night. I was bored. Didn’t want to look at my computer screen. Didn’t want to sew. So I pulled this out and just focused on the one thing. I had put it down mid-round 21, so I had to work out where I was. It’s going to be pretty. Must keep at it!

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WIP #2: stashbuster blanket with various worsted weight yarns

Not pretty, but useful and will be very warm. I knitted a bit on this yesterday. It was nice to reacquaint myself with my WIPs. It’s only about 12″ of work so far, but there’s no deadline. It would be good to have it done before the weather gets too warm to have it on my lap though.

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WIP #3: no-pattern shawl, using Cascade Sunseeker

I started out with just a few stitches, used half double crochet, and increased every other row. When there wasn’t much left of the pink, I striped in the grey using single crochet rows.  I didn’t want to do that for long because it meant stranding the yarn up the side which means I’ll have to add some sort of edge treatment later. Carried on with hdc and grey, until I figured I should start decreasing. Changed to double crochet and decreasing on every row. (The dcs are taller stitches, but I wanted the decreasing to happen faster than the first part of the shawl.)

I am hoping that the grey will last until I get back to 3 or 4 stitches and that I then have enough of the pink left to go around once with sc.

And now for some exciting news! I had posted a request on Ravelry for anyone who might have been willing to part with a swift, as I now have quite a few hanks of yarn which have not been wound into balls. My initial method was to place a hank over the back of a chair and wind by hand, because I only needed to do it occasionally. I do have a yarn cake winder, but tend to use it with commercial skeins. Someone sent me a link to an online photo tutorial, and I asked Tai Chi Man if he was willing to make me a swift. He seemed amenable, I sent him the link, and in his usual way (Mr Fixit, very handy) he decided he could do better.

Using some scrap wood he had, plus a lazy susan from Lee Valley (the metal spinning part) and a dowel from Home Depot, he created an Amish-style yarn swift for me.

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Of course, as soon as he said it was ready, I had to test it out. I wound up the two cakes you can see in the above photo, and then tried a small one from a 25 gram hank.

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Because the pegs are movable, it can fit just about any size of hank, though I probably wouldn’t bother trying to cake something smaller than 25g.

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And I have spare pegs in case any get lost. It works great, all for less than $10!

Thanks, Mr Fixit!