Category Archives: Crafts


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the one that should have been posted friday march 14

BUNNIES!

I tried to knit just one…but you know how they multiply! 🙂

I have an old friend from high school who moved away a few years ago and got married. She came into town recently with her 2 and a half year old daughter, and I had a chance to catch up with her for the first time since she’d moved. I brought Jakob with me and was pleasantly surprised when my friend presented Jakob with a gift. I also felt bad, because I was empty-handed. I emailed her that afternoon to ask what her daughter’s 3 favorite colors were, and I cast on for the bunnies as soon as I heard back with a reply. (It was pink, purple and blue…I think those are the obligatory favorite colors for all girls under the age of 8).

I used Kate’s Bunny pattern, and a 4.5mm needle. (Or a 4mm. Shoot. My notes are downstairs. If anyone really cares, email me and I’ll check). The first one was knit with purple Fun Fur only, and while it was fast and easy to knit, I HATED the seaming. I think I’ve mentioned here before that I enjoy seaming, and my preferred method is to mattress stitch. With this fuzzy yarn mattress stitch is not an option (at least not without some really good light and a magnifying glass), so I had to seam with a whipstitch on the wrong side of the work. It came out ok, but I didn’t want to have to do that again. This wasn’t Kate’s fault, it was mine for forgetting that I hate to seam with Fun Fur.

I also wanted a bigger bunny. The pattern comes in 3 sizes (Baby, Mama and Papa), and the purple one was knit to the Mama size. I didn’t want the Baby bunny to be any smaller than the Mama already was, so I went stash-diving and came up with some white Bernat baby yarn.

This blue bunny was knit to the Papa sized pattern. Same needle size as the purple one, but this time I did 2 rows of the smooth white yarn only, and 2 rows of the white with blue Fun Fur carried along. I wound up with a bunny that was much bigger than the first one (which was what I wanted) and also with a bunny that allowed me to see the stitches so I could work a mattress stitch seam (which was really what I wanted). The nature of knitting fur-type yarns has most of the fur wind up lying on the purl side of the work, which was the wrong side for this pattern. I had the option of turning it inside out before seaming, but I liked the less-fuzz/more-stripes look of the right side.

 

The pink bunny was knit exactly as the blue one, but with (duh) pink Fun Fur carried along. She is also knit to the Papa bunny size.

I was going to give them eyes but I didn’t feel like embroidering them, I don’t know where my sew-on googley eyes are, and sewn-on buttons made the bunnies look dead. So they will remain eyeless.

I tried to get something in the photo that would show scale, but I couldn’t figure out what I owned that would be standard everywhere. (Now that I’m typing this, I am coming up with a ton of items I could have used. Ah well. Hindsight/20/20 and all that). Here you have the Bunny Family with Yannick’s sunglasses.

And yes, it was done deliberately that a blue Papa and pink Mama make a purple Baby. ;]


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the one that should have been posted tuesday march 11

I’m going to try and recreate a week’s worth of posts tonight before I go to bed. I had a lot of stuff I wanted to share but didn’t, and I know if I keep putting it off then I’ll never get around to it, so I’m going to try and get as much out as I can remember.

Last Tuesday Jakob and I left work in the early afternoon to attend the Shiva for the grandmother of one of the other moms in my playgroup. I mean Jakob’s playgroup. Yeah – it’s for him. I mention this because it will become relevant by Thursday. This was my little guy all dressed up for his big day. (Thanks for the vest Debbie!)
p.s. these are Yannick’s legs!!
Anyhoo…Tuesday night was the March MKG meeting.
This month instead of having a topic discussion we were all encouraged to bring some random stash yarn that would add up to a chunky weight, and we were to knit 1 hour hats which would be donated to a charity. I brought these yarns:
I know the thin glitter strand is from my Bubbie’s stash that I inherited. I’m pretty sure the burgundy tweed is from there too, and the peach polar fleece was a thrift store find. The two thicker yarns were not ones I could ever see using on their own, and I threw in the glitz to keep myself awake while I knit the hat. Because I spent most of the meeting helping one of the members with a crochet pattern I didn’t get the hat knit in one hour, but I DID finish it when I got home that night.

Voila-
I wasn’t consistent about what order the yarns landed in on the needle (sometimes the peach was first, other times the darker one) which is why the hat doesn’t have a uniform color. When the peach was first the burgundy became the predominant color on the following row, and vice versa.
It is a simple stockinette stitch hat, knit flat and seamed up the back, with a rolled brim.
This is why I’m glad it will be given to a charity, and is not intended for me to wear. Man I look stupid in hats. :] I’m 1 step away… LOL

(Although I think this one came out kinda cool).


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presenting…

…the swatches! I am so happy with how the yarn turned out! I think I’ve been over using the word “love” lately (I love the yarn, in love with certain patterns, love the way things come out) so I don’t want to sit here and say there’s yet another thing I love. I might have overstated my affection for some other projects. There might be projects that I merely like, projects I wouldn’t mind seeing again, and projects I think I might have a future with. But this yarn? This yarn I really do love!

I did the swatches with a 2.5mm needle (my usual for socks) and on 64 sts, which, depending on the pattern, is roughly my size.
Here’s the Black Cherry. This photo shows a pretty good variation of color, but is lacking the deep tones of wine that permeate every strand, even the deep blacks. This will be stunning with either an open lace or a cable pattern. Yannick would like to claim it for himself but it is mine! This is one side of my Oxford swatch. I took a photo of each side to show you how the yarn will behave on a larger swatch (or a sock). You see how the black-striped section starts at the lower left and moves up on a diagonal to the top right? And how the colored section with no black seems to do the same?
Here’s the other side of the same swatch. # 1 had one dark section in the middle. # 2 has 2 dark sections, one on top and one below, with a lighter middle. What I’m trying to show here is that the two areas of color will spiral around each other, and around the sock.
Look at this! It worked! I can’t believe it worked! I made a self-striping yarn! There is so much I enjoy about this one, especially the palest row of green right above the darkest one. Something about the way one looks near the other really tickles me. If I was to do this again I would only change the concentration of dye to water to try and get another shade in there, as I feel 2 of the rows look the same. It might be related to where I cast on from and how the yarn is wrapping around itself, though.

I have been knitting Bunnies for the last week. The pattern is great, but I’m knitting in Fun Fur which is such a pain! I knit the first one only in the Fun Fur stuff, but seaming it was NOT fun, so I knit the second with the FF held along with a strand of white dk weight acrylic. It made the FF somewhat more bearable.

I’m knitting the Bunnies as a gift for a friend’s 2.5 year old daughter, who brought a gift for Jakob when we introduced them, and I unfortunately showed up empty handed. I found out her favorite colours are pink, purple and blue (is there any 2.5 year old girl who doesn’t have those as her favorite colours?) so I’m knitting a pink mommy bunny, a blue daddy bunny, and a purple baby bunny. As of tonight only the pink is left to knit. Photos tomorrow after the Guild meeting.


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the one with some yarn and a wave

Last night, after Jakob was in bed and Maaike had left, I commandered Yannick’s arms (I still don’t have a swift) and wound up the yarn I dyed Monday night. They wound easily but it was quite a sight to see Yannick standing with both arms outstretched and the Celery colorway wrapped from arm to arm, around his neck and under his foot in an attempt at keeping it taut. (I don’t have a niddy noddy either for rewinding a smaller skein). MUST add those items to my stash soon!

Well, without further ado, here are the yarns I dyed:

BLACK CHERRY

I love how this came out. There are some true black spots, and some raspberry areas, but most of it is a tone-on-tone mix of black/red and red/black and it is so subtle and striking. Did I mention I loved it? Unfortunately it is really hard to take a good photo of at night and indoors, so this is the only shot you get. The other angles came out really dark.

CELERY

This came out exactly how I wanted. It is a soft transition from the darkest to lightest shade of a, well, celery green. (Or is it sage? Or moss?)
There isn’t a lot of variation, but I wanted a yarn where the colors had interest but wouldn’t compete with the stitch pattern. I think this might work perfectly! (I love it too).

OXFORD

This yarn came out really funky. I’m reserving my opinion until I work up a good swatch, but I think I’ll like it no matter what, if for no other reason than the fact that I made it.
If things worked out correctly than the black third will spiral around with the colored two-thirds. It will be busy, but it was designed to work with a plain stockinette stitch sock.

I made sure to post this tonight because Yannick’s parents are sleeping over tomorrow night and I don’t know if I’ll have time to get to the computer before they go to bed. I know it is a short post, so to make up for it I’m leaving you with a video of Jakob. I took this on Feb 29th (the leap year day) at work- you can see my messy desk in the mirror. Just about a week ago and he was waving with minimal coaching. Now he’ll wave for fun, if you say the words “hi” or “bye”, and when he doesn’t want to eat any more he waves “bye-bye” to his food. I think it is the most adorable thing!

(Don’t you find he waves like the Queen? You know, that “arm in the air, wrist moving back and forth” thing”? I love it!)

p.s. I posted this at 12:43 am EST. Youtube takes a few minutes to process the video once I upload it, so if the link isn’t working for you just yet, please wait about a half hour and try again. Thanks!


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no idea what title to put

Here’s Mommy with Jakob at 41 weeks (last week). I know it’s not the clearest of photos, but I love the way he’s cracking up, and couldn’t resist posting it.
Here’s another shot. I know he’s not looking- but guess why I posted it? I’m wearing the Kosher Sweater! You can see here that the sleeves are a little baggy, but otherwise I love the sweater. It’s great to throw on with a pair of jeans, but boy- the Decor yarn is warmer than I’d thought!
Here’s a photo from today, of Mommy with Jakob at 42 weeks. I need to start wearing makeup, or tanning, or something- I look so pale and washed out!

This is a photo from yesterday. Jakob was having fun sitting and “hiding” in his little tunnel, and popping his head out to “surprise” me. Did I mention that he crawls now? And he waves to EVERYONE. I have it on video, I should post it one of these days…

So is anyone out there wondering what I did on Monday night that I was so excited about? Get your minds out of the gutter- I dyed yarn for the first time! Maaike and I went over to Gillian’s house (another member of the MKG) and Gillain taught us how to dye yarn. We used regular dyes that we mixed with rubbing alcohol (as opposed to Kool-Aid or natural dyes) then heated them in the microwave to set them, and we each dyed 3 skeins.
This is what mine looked like after I got home, re-nuked them, did a few rinses and hung them up to dry. The one to the right I dyed in an attempt to get a fake “Fair Isle” look like the self-striping Regia yarns. I find the colors look very “preppy”, so I call it my Oxford yarn. The one in the middle is my Black Cherry yarn; it is mostly black with random splashes or Madder and Grenadine colors. The one on the left is my best achievement, I think. It is dyed to be self-striping (the stripes are longer than the number of inches it takes to work 1 round) and goes in 5 shades of green from dark to light. I worked hard at watering down the colors to get a subtle transition, and I LOVE it. I also dyed this yarn, my Celery yarn, with a specific project in mind. I’ve wanted to knit Mona‘s Embossed Leaves Socks (ravelry link) for the longest time, but have mostly striped or patterned sock yarns in my stash, and wanted something a little more solid or subtle to let the lace show up properly. I also wanted something “leafy”, be it green, brown or orange tones. Well, I can’t wait to start those socks now, because this yarn is exactly what I was looking for!
I should have taken photos of the yarn twisted into traditional skeins, but I forgot. Anyways, here’s Oxford. I know it looks weird to have the solid section and the striped section. I’m hoping that as I knit it will make 2 spirals up the foot, one solid, and one patterned.
Here’s Celery. This photo actually shows a pretty accurate color. I don’t have the stripes lying in order, but you can kinda see the transition from one shade to the next.
Finally, here’s Black Cherry. I love this color too! I’m hoping to find a good pattern for this yarn, something with cables maybe, or perhaps lace…but something that works well with a more solid yarn. I can work a project like the Jaywalker Socks (Ravelry link) in any old striping yarn. The pattern for this sock has to be special!


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finally the photos of which i spoke

I was going to post this earlier but I had a scary drive in to work this morning and by the time I got there I was a little shaken and distracted. I was in a tunnel that splits in two directions, I was in the middle lane (the middle and left lanes go to the left) and a truck (no container, just the cab part) was in the right (which becomes another tunnel veering off to the right). He lost control, did a bunch of drifting Zs across his lane and mine, then slammed into the right hand wall of the tunnel, bounced back off the wall almost exactly like I did in my car accident two years ago, and crashed into the middle wall of the part that divides the two tunnels. He was no more than 20 ft away from me when he started sliding and I saw it and slowed down to be alert to what he would do next, but by the time he crashed into the middle between the right and middle lanes he was no more than 6 ft away from me. I was so scared that he was going to slide back instead of forwards- if he’d come backwards my car was right in his path and there were cars in the left lane that couldn’t see he was sliding and wouldn’t move away to let me get by. Luckily he came to a stop after hitting the 2nd wall and, although he was 3/4 blocking my lane, I was able to inch around safely. Once I was cleared from the tunnel I called 911 to let them know what had happened, and that was when I started shaking from the shock of what could have been.

Sometimes it’s not good to have a vivid imagination.

So- I’ve decided to put aside some of my current projects to focus on other ones. Jakob’s birthday is coming up in a few months and there is also a contest I want to enter, so I will make those knits my priority for right now. Shawls and stuff can wait until later. In preparation for all that stuff, I’ve gone through my photos from the last week or so and am presenting you with all the outstanding photos. Enjoy.

This is the Marble hooded cardigan. I’m making the 1-2 year size, and hope to have this ready for Jakob for his birthday. It will be too warm and hopefully too big for him in May, but I want to put it together with some other items for his gift.
The colors (and clarity, LOL) are more accurate in the first photo, but the flash obliterated the cable. Here you can see the cable that runs up either side of the middle of the two fronts.

Here’s Mommy with Jakob at 40 weeks. I couldn’t get one of him looking into the camera.
Here’s Yannick and Jakob at last Sunday’s swimming lesson. We tried out this new one-piece bathing suit for the first time (thanks Robyn!) and it worked great! The last few weeks Jakob has started to cry when playing some of the games in the water, and when testing different things in his bath one night we discovered he started to cry when we made him “jump” in and out of the water. We think he was getting cold and that’s what made him cry. I don’t know if that was the exact problem, but this week they even did a part where the kids sit on floatie boards completely out of the water, and he didn’t shed a single tear. Plus he looks like a little skater boy (not sk8tr boi, avril).
These are my dinosaur swatches. See the blue one? That’s the same yarn I used when I knit the dinosaur for my little cousin Oliver. I did the swatch with 20 sts and 20 rows. Next to it is some leftover Homespun from the sweater I made a few years ago. That’s also 20 sts and 20 rows. Nice difference, huh? The dinosaur for Oliver came out to about 20 inches tall, so if this works out according to gauge I’ll end up with a dinosaur over 3 feet tall! I’m going to try to make both dinosaurs from the Family Circle Easy Baby Knits book, hopefully I’ll have them both done in time for his birthday.
Here’s a grin, just because I can’t get enough of them. It’s so sad- he went to take a nap at work yesterday and woke up with a cold. His nose is completely congested and runny, and he coughs every so often…he looks so exhausted half the time just from trying to breathe. At the same time he looks so funny because he’s keeping his mouth open to breathe through it since his nose is blocked, but he’s letting his tongue hang out so he looks like a panting dog!
This is the progress on the Silk Rumple shawl. Everything from the orange marker (middle of the right side) is new. I worked on it last week until I decided to concentrate on Jakob’s projects.

Here’s what I got to see the other day when driving to work. Do you see what I see? No? Here, look closer:
I don’t know if I should be upset that gas is priced so high, or if I should find it amusing that the price of gas was 1.234$.
Here’s another one, just because. He loves to feed himself, and often the only way I can get him to let me feed him something from a spoon is to give him something he can feed himself at the same time. Here he’s enjoying the feel of mashed potatoes between his fingers.
Finally I have a FO that is now more F’d. Remember the Baby Cabled Hoodie? It was done, and looked cute on Jakob, except that (ignoring the whole ineffective hood thing) while the sleeves were too long and the body was big on him, the length was much too short. It barely came to the top of his jeans, and if he raised his arms- forget it. I’d been meaning to fix it for a long time, and this past weekend I finally got around to doing it.
Better eh? I know the zipper doesn’t go down to the bottom, but I can live with that. I had more of the brown Decor in my stash so I picked up sts all the way around, one for each existing stitch, and worked the same cable pattern in reverse. Once I had done a few inches I tried it on him, and when it was at a good length I bound off loosely. I think it even looks like the pattern was always supposed to be this way, and it fits him, and I’m happy.

Now I’m off to watch Big Brother.


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happy day after valentines day

I forgot to mention that I went to see a great show on Wednesday night. I saw Houdini the Musical at the Saidye – whoops, I mean at the Segal Center for the Arts. I met up with a bunch of moms from Jakob’s playgroup, and I brought my mom, and it was so much fun! Our tickets included a “petit souper” (light supper in hors d-oeuvre form) and wine and a raffle. Oh yeah, and I won a prize! $50 gift certificate at a local spa. That will be fun! It was strange seeing these women without our kids but it was so nice to have a little time together as grown ups. We HAVE to do it more often!

Here’s yesterday’s progress on the Silk Rumple. Everything from the orange marker is new. I feel like all these photos look alike, because it is growing so slowly! At least the first ball is showing signs of depletion (the single skein turned out to be 2 smaller ones together).
And here’s the progress on the Noro striped scarf. 144 rows as of last night’s TV watching marathon. Speaking of last night’s TV- any one else super annoyed with which team won on Celebrity Apprentice? Piers or Omarosa need to go home!
In other reality TV complaints- I find I’m kinda irritated at Big Brother for splitting up the real life couple with other “soulmates”. I know they probably did it on purpose to try and trigger some drama, but I still think it’s tacky.


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a contest!

Dianne is having a contest over on her blog, and is looking for your favorite tips or techniques.  Here’s one of mine!

One of my favorite knitting tips that makes my knitting life easier is how to calculate how much yarn you’ll need for a long-tail cast-on. How many times have you ended up with a tail that is much too long, or run out right towards the end? Here’s an easy way to know how much yarn you need:
Let’s say you need to cast on 100 sts. Cast on 10 sts then unravel your cast on and see how much yarn it took. Multiply that length by 10 (10 x 10 = 100) and that will show what length yarn you need. Add a few inches for weaving in (or a longer length for seaming, if necessary), and that’s it!

(Obviously you need to multiply the 10-st-co length by whatever number it will take to give you the number of sts YOU need to cast on).

(If you decide to enter, please leave in the comments that I referred you. Thanks!)


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happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy 10th birthday dear knitting guild, happy birthday to you

First of all, a big apology to those of you who get here directly via http://www.jeloca.com/. I’m sorry it appeared as if my blog had gone bye-bye. Apparently my domain-forwarding-provider decided that since they never sent me a renewal contract, I clearly must no longer be desiring their services, so they dropped me like a hot potato. I swear our phone call went like this:
Me: How come my website isn’t working?
Them: Because you haven’t paid for it.
Me: Well, you never sent me an invoice.
Them: We don’t send invoices until after you pay.
Me: If you don’t send me an invoice, how am I supposed to know it’s time to pay again?
Them: Well, we don’t send invoices until after you pay. Your payment was due in January.
Me: How did you expect me to know that you wanted more money in January?
Them: We sent you an email in December to tell you.
Me: I never got it.
Them: You probably didn’t check your email.
Me: I check my email about 15 times a day. I didn’t get it.
Them: We’re sure it was sent out.
Me: Can you check?
Them: No. The emails are all sent out autmatically and are generated by our system. We can’t check to see who got them. They were sent in December.
Me: But I never got it.
And so on. Ugh…At least everyone is happy now. They have my money, I have a blog that works, and you don’t have to finagle your way here via the http://www.jeloca.blogspot.com/ address. It’s all good.
There was hardly any knitting today, and I might do a few more rows on the Striped Scarf before bed, so I’m saving my row count for tomorrow. Tonight was the 10th anniversary party of the Montreal Knitting Guild, and it was a potluck event. There was so much food! I ate much too much, and knit much too little.
I do have a photo of that Marble Cabled Hoodie thing I mentioned the other day. I’m about 10 rows farther than this, but I’ve put it aside to try and finish the Striped Scarf instead.
Instead of stripes, I leave you with a tutorial on how to eat toast.


Step 1: get toast into mouth


Step 2: get toast into mouth

Step 3: get toast into mouth
Step 4: get toast into mouth
Step 5: grin with accomplishment (and toast in mouth)
Step 6: pose for the camera


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thursday’s stuff

Mommy with Jakob at 38 weeks. One more week and he’ll be at the same number of weeks of my pregnancy he was born at (he was delivered at 39 weeks).
The next photo isn’t the most flattering of me, but I have to share it.
Jakob gives kisses. It’s the cutest thing ever- he actually takes your face in his hands and plants one on you. It’s usually open-mouthed, and mostly slobber-covered, and occassionally he bites, but they are kisses just the same. Sometimes he grabs me for a kiss at least 10 times in 3 minutes, and if I don’t get my face up to his fast enough, he grabs me by my hair and pulls me to him. We were at my cousins’ store this afternoon and Amy caught this photo of him kissing me.
He’s so delicious!
She also caught a photo of his other latest thing:


He waves!


I forgot to post this yesterday, but last night Yannick helped me wind these two skeins of Woolly Bully by hand. Um, yeah. Two skeins. This is a case (Maaike) where a yarn purchase ISN’T a yarn purchase. I already HAD one skein, so I only bought a second one so I’d have enough to make something worthy of it. (I asked Yannick, he said it was ok). 🙂 These balls are huge! Each one is the size of a cabbage!

Here’s the latest on the Silk Rumple shawl. Again, everything from the orange pin (on the right) and up is the new stuff from today.
And finally, here’s tonight’s final view of the striped scarf. I’m at 118 stripes, but realized this am that it doesn’t really matter if I beat Maaike in the stripe count unless I beat her by a lot. I have only 41 sts per row, whereas she has 45. So for example, last night she’d knit 92 or so stripes and had finished the first 2 balls, but I’d knit 98 and needed another 10 or so stripes to finish them. I finally finished mine, though, and am about 10 stripes into the new balls. This officially makes me more than halfway through!