A braided cowl

I originally posted this photo as part of Project 365, which I began on January 1, 2014. It lasted about 10 days before I sadly gave up! On the bright side, a tutorial on this and the Braided Infinity Scarf are in the works. Stay tuned!

Braided Infinity Scarf

Such a simple little scarf to make! It’s three long crochet strands braided together. I’ll post a tutorial for this scarf soon–I’ve got a couple patterns in the works, so as soon as that’s done!

Digging myself out!

In the past few days, I’ve managed to dig myself out from beneath the mass of boxes, packing paper, damaged furniture, sweat and tears that a move the the other side of the world with three children under the age of 4 inevitably brings with it. Our house still needs a lot of work, but it’s now our home, which after two months of travel and living out of hotels–I couldn’t be happier.

With the new house in its various states of unpacking chaos, I haven’t really had a chance to work on much. I did find time, however, to design a new hat, cowl and fingerless mitt trio. I still have a few finishing touches to put on the pattern, but here are some photos of my handiwork!

I’m really excited for this pattern to go live, mostly because I haven’t had a chance to put anything new up in a while. I’ve had so many ideas swirling around in my head and not enough time to really dedicate to it.

Also, in the early phases of pattern writing is a hat I worked on with leftover yarn for Miss Penelope. Penny really needed a hat that she couldn’t pull off because she pulled a hat off while on my back in the Ergo. It’s so sad to lose something that you spent so much time making. Anyway, Penny can’ t just have any little hat. It needed to be extra cute to match the ridiculously cute hats her brothers go out in! 😉 So I worked on this bunny hat, and I worked especially hard to get these ears to stand up.

It still needs so work, but I’m hoping to have it all worked out in the next couple of weeks.

And finally… I managed to get my new sewing machine out of the box, and best of all… I actually sewed something!

It’s just a tiny little thing for Penny, but it’s a start. And I’m happy to say that I made it out of a pillowcase. I now have all these new ideas for how to use old sheets and clothes that the kids have grown out of. If only I could sew better. 😉

Anyway, I suppose it’s time to call it a night. There’s a load of laundry to fold, and my bedtime is fast approaching…

Glee Knitting Projects Complete!

My Glee Knitting Projects are complete and have been sent off to…somewhere with the hopes that they’ll either be used on the show or given to the actors. My hat for Finn/Cory Monteith was completed a while back, and I’m pretty sure I shared a rather crappy photo of it. However, seeing how beautiful some of the other projects were, I kind of felt bad for Finn. So I made him another hat. 🙂

Here are the two hats:

This is the original hat, made with Berroco’s Vintage Chunky, a machine washable wool blend. I used a free pattern called Hat Fit for a Boyfriend, and as GradSchoolKnitter warned me, following the pattern would produce a hat that’s quite short, barely covering the top of the ears, so I added an inch before I began the decreases. DH actually really liked the hat and wants me to make one for him to match the scarf I made him a few years ago. I just need to find matching yarn somewhere…

For the second hat, I used the second skein of Vintage Chunky (I bought two and only needed one for the first hat), and I had a bit of leftover Vintage Chunky in a beautiful blue color for some stripes. the pattern is Turn a Square, which can be downloaded for free from Ravelry. I didn’t have too much of the blue yarn, so I was only able to make four rows of stripes, but still turned out pretty nice.

I wish I was able to take a photo of the crown of both of these hats, but it’s pretty much impossible to take a photo of the crown of your own head… :-p I need to get a mannequin head. DH laughed at me when I first mentioned it, but now he agrees because he’s not too crazy about the idea of modeling hats for me.

Originally, I’d wanted to knit something for Mercedes/Amber Riley, but by the time I signed up for the project, she was already taken. But, as it turned out, the person who signed up was unable to complete the project, so I had a few days to crank something out for her. I wasn’t able to make what I originally wanted because DK yarn on size 5 needles takes forever… So I held two strands of worsted weight yarn together and using size 15 needles, made this beautiful cowl for Mercedes/Amber in two nights!  And the best part is, I made this with a lovely alpaca/wool blend yarn that I picked up on clearance for $0.99/skein! It took 3 full skeins to knit this up, using the very simple pattern, Bulky Knit Cowl. I love it!

So my projects are complete with gift tags and all… I put them in the mail today, and if they end up on the show… I’ll definitely be blogging about it! 😉