A Knitting Hiatus

I have been taking a break from knitting in order to better acquaint myself with a new (well new to me) sewing machine. A woman my mother works with had this old sewing machine and since she has hardly ever used it she gave it to me. It has this fantastic table it came with that hides the sewing machine beautifully when not in use.

She still had the original book it came with and when I looked......the machine is older than me :)

I have been making Halloween costumes for my little ones and between dress-up birthday parties, Halloween parties, school parties, and the real deal on Friday they have/will get a lot of wear I'm sure.

Here is "tinker bell". She wanted purple so we did purple, I wanted to ensure warmth while trick-or-treating so she has pants instead of the tinker bell short dress.

I did not make the skirt or wings, they were purchased at a craft fair. I made the body using
McCall's pattern M5732. She seemed very pleased with it this morning when we put it on for school. She was "flying" around the front yard.

My son will be Elmo from Sesame Street, pictures of that costume later.

My kis are little and can't participate that much in pumpkin carving. So as not to leave them out we had a different kind of pumpking carving. Armed with pipe cleaners, stickers, googly eyes, and more the kids decorated their pumpkins and had a blast.

Cute huh? Love Halloween....

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Shrug

First off I want to thank everyone for all the help with Millie . I got so frustrated with it that I made notes from your comments, muddled through and figured out how to do the increases into the panel and then put the whole project in a bag in the corner of my closet. As Suzanne would say, I put the project in time out :).

While Millie has been waiting for me I picked up some yarn and knit up this shrug. I wanted/craved something fairly mindless, stockinette stitch was preferable. This pattern kind of snuck up on me. It fit all the criteria, it wasn't too big, it wasn't too small, in short to channel my inner Goldilocks it was just right :).

The Streakers Shrug is the first knit garment that I have made for myself that ever saw the light of day so to speak. I've knit hats and scarves that venture out into the public eye but never a garment.

I think what first caught my eye about this shrug was the length. I am not someone who would ever wear a short mid-chest shrug because I have broad shoulders and since having my two babes I don't have a mid-section that I necessarily want to draw attention to. It wears more like a small jacket which I like. The second thing that drew me to it were the cuffs. A little lace pattern to make them interesting (the sleeves aren't quite as long as the picture shows).

I used 8 hanks of Berroco Inca Gold in Granate. Love the yarn! It is warm from the wool but the silk makes a nice sheen and drape to the yarn. Would definitely use it again.

I would have liked some better pictures to show it off to you but after an hour in the yard with the camera on a timer and not getting any pictures worth showing these will have to do.

Now I'm going to go get Millie out of seclusion and finish her up!

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My swap

Viv and I had a swap in August. Yikes! Talk about taking your sweet time to blog about it :).


She sent me some lovely things. Officially for the swap I was going to knit something for her and she was going to send some of her adorable hand sewn shoes from my son.

Aren't they great? They have gotten a ton of use. He walks around the house holding them up saying "shoes, shoes" to anyone who will listen and hopefully put them on his little feet.

As a bonus gift, because she didn't want anyone to feel left out, she also sent this beautiful and very useful roll of colored pencils for my daugher. So generous!! I just have to say that she is too talented, too generous, and I am very grateful for her gifts.

For my portion of the swap I have to confess I was riddled with indecision. Do any of you ever suffer from gift anxiety? A little known illness that afflicts many. It can strike at any time and to anyone. Usually a person is struck with the idea to give a gift. Maybe a little knit something. They peruse magazines and websites. Searching and searching for "just the right" pattern and yarn for the project. The casual perusing turns to anxiety laden page turning and mouse clicking as the person realizes they aren't quite sure if this one or that one will do. The once lovely idea of giving a gift to someone turns from pleasure to terror. What to do? A hat? What if they don't really wear hats? A cowl maybe, but then some people don't enjoy things around their throat. How about mittens? Are they allergic to wool? Now they are up against a looming deadline and don't have anything yet!

As you can see I clearly suffer from this illness :) I finally bit the bullet and bought some luscious yarn from Debbie Bliss, her alpaca silk aran to be precise, and decided on a cowl and a headband/ear warmer for Viv.

This was a quick knit and I loved knitting it. I got the pattern from One Skein Wonders.

It is cast on with a provisional cast-on (my first time) and then you use kitchener stitch to bind off and connect it.

Here is the cowl and I loved it so much I ordered up some more yarn and knit one for myself.

The pattern can be raveled here.

The thing I liked it about this particular cowl is the shaping. As it gets longer there are increases so it is not too snug but snug enough under the chin and longer at the bottom so it sits beautifully on your shoulders.

All in all I loved doing the swap and hopefully someday I can relax a bit more when giving a gift.

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I have a question

Before we get to the posting part of this post I have a question. I need some help....

Here is a passage from the pattern for Millie on the sleeve portion.

"inc 1 st at each end of 3rd and 4 foll 4th rows, working inc sts into Panel D, then on every foll 5th row until there are 75 sts"
??????What the heck does the part in red mean? After that I understand that I work the increases in Panel D every 5th row until the desired stitch limit of 75. Right? What am I doing until that? Increase one stitch the third and fourth rows and then each additional fourth row and then when exactly do I switch to the fifth row? Anyone? Please leave a comment if you have any ideas, directions, tips, anything. I have already found one error in this pattern that took an embarrassingly long time to realize was a pattern mistake not my mistake but I am truly stumped on this one. The Debbie Bliss website has no contact information and there aren't any pattern corrections for this pattern. I contacted the company who I got the pattern from and they said I needed to contact the Debbie Bliss Company. So I am at an impasse and I now look to anyone who may have an idea, tip, or trick.

Anyway....

Today instead of posting a long overdue post about my swap with Viv, I am going to show a haunted cookie house my daughter and I worked on today.

Every Christmas when I was growing up my siblings and I together with our aunt would make a gingerbread house. I have continued this tradition with my daughter every Christmas. I thought it would be fun to make a haunted cookie house for Halloween.

Now you may be asking why haven't I posted my swap photos yet. Well I was going to go outside today and take some photos with all the lovely colors of fall as a background. Everyone has been blogging about all the things they love about autumn and I whole heartedly agree. The picture outside my house though is a bit confused. Mother Nature decided to have a little bit of fun because right now as I type this it is snowing outside. Not just a powdered sugar kind of dusting but a, the ground is covered with an inch of white kind of snowing.

What the %$#*?

Since this photo was taken the truck and street are completely covered.

Here are some of my sad little tomato's....

My four-year old daughter's reasoning for this early snow storm is that Santa is thinking really hard about Christmas so he sent us some snow, I kind of like that rationale :)

So instead of knitting I give you a haunted house and mother nature. Darn, I guess I'll have to play in the snow with my kids and then curl up by the fire with some hot tea and knitting this afternoon :).

P.S. It is supposed to be back up to the mid seventies by Monday.....hopefully I can get some good pictures by then. Have a good weekend.

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Little Pumpkin Hat

Happy October. I knit up a little hat for my son I wanted to share with you all. A little pumpkin hat.

I was really hoping to get some good shots with my model (son) but he wasn't so cooperative. So here is our one action shot (a good yank off the head as I try to take the picture)

Don't have a pattern for it just thought it would be cute for my little guy to wear at the pumpkin patch.

I just got this in the mail today and I am going to snuggle up with a hot drink and dream up the perfect sweater, and if the reviews are accurate learn how to create a pattern for it.

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