Weekend Crafting

Just back from a wonderful weekend of crafting with the girls! It's such a great break from everyday life. We all need that so badly sometimes! Gabbing, scrapbooking, knitting, collaging, painting, eating, watching movies, drinking, staying up too late... It is renewal, restoration, just plain good!
I wish I could say I accomplished more, but I got what I needed. And Aidan is so happy with his new slippers. I will try to get some better photos of other projects I worked on soon.

This was the first time I used this pattern, called "Non-felted Slippers" which I got from Ravelry. I made them just as the pattern suggested - same needle size and everything. I made them with a couple of shades of a chunky weight yarn that I have had for a while. The pattern says they make a ladies size medium and with a 5.5 mm needle they are plenty big enough for me and will fit Aidan for at least a year or two. If I make myself a pair, I will go down one needle size. 

Painted Forest

Winter is still here... Not enough snow for snowmobiling, but cold enough to wear some wonderful, warm and wooly handmade goodies. I'm enjoying this Bulky Mobius Cowl that I made recently with Nashua Painted Forest bulky wool. 
Plus, I love how it looks with my new Fossil bag!

Freeform Knitting



I completed this scarf months ago, but I'm a bit behind on blogging. This was my kind of knitting! I roughly followed Jane Thornley's "recipe" for her Baked Squash Scarf - find it on her blog or ravelry.com. She encourages making it up as you go, which is the kind of thing I love! A bit of feather and fan on the top and bottom and random stitches for the rest, just making holes here and there. The ribbon section in the middle is done increasing and decreasing numbers of yarn overs, which are all dropped on the following row. I like the monochromatic colour scheme, but I can't wait to try this with more colours too.  This was made with 5-6 different balls of yarn - mostly natural fibres - cotton, wool, bamboo, linen - it feels lovely.

It's Despicable

I finally finished knitting this Gru scarf for George. He loves the movie Despicable Me and identifies with the character Gru! LOL It's a very soft scarf for such a crusty character - yes, I mean George! Ha ha.

It was knit it using 4mm/US6 needles and a gorgeous DK weight 100% Alpaca yarn (purchased at Signature Books & Crafts in Goderich) - 2 balls of black and about 3 1/2 balls of grey (50g balls). 

It was super simple to knit:  simply cast on 44 stitches and knit the entire scarf in K1P1 rib, slipping the 1st stitch of every row. I knit 18 rows of grey and 10 rows of black for each stripe with an extra 4 rows of grey at the beginning and end. Final length: 100 inches! It still needs to be washed and blocked to even out the stitches, but I think it turned out pretty good.