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.

I'm so inspired by Dina Wakley! (I have taken her online Art Journaling 101 class and highly recommend it!)  I created these cards using her techniques and I'm teaching them at the Scrapbook Shop in Mildmay on Nov. 23rd at 7pm. Please give them a shout if you are interested in attending! I'm super excited! Lots of messy, inky, spray painty goodness is used on these! I had so much fun making them, I kept right on going and made a bunch more!

Upcoming Card Class

I'm pretty excited to be teaching some card classes at the Scrapbook Shop in Mildmay. This is what I have planned for Nov. 9th at 7pm. Give them a shout if you are interested in attending!

Ambitions

I love the gorgeous fabrics on the new quilt I have started. There is something very pleasing about the straight lines, organization and the simplicity, but sometimes I aspire to do something a bit more freeform like this...

This was done by the fabulous fibre artst Robin Olsen. I first saw her work in my favourite magazine Cloth Paper Scissors and now they have put this article into one of their free downloads -check it out here.





 

A New Quilt

I'm so excited about this quilt! I've just got about half of the quilt top finished and I love it so far... the colours are bold, earthy, and juicy all at the same time. I will post more when the top is finished.

It's been awhile...

but, finally posting again! It has been a busy Spring while we are preparing to move here:

I am completely overwhelmed by the amazing gardens here. I am not an experienced gardener or very knowledgable about plants, but I am super excited to get my hands dirty and learn all I can! It is amazing to see what new is blooming each week! I wish I had taken more photos when all of the bulbs were blooming, but I guess I'll have a few more years to do that!

So most of my art & craft supplies are either packed, totally disorganized or scattered between both houses. But never fear, I always have access to something creative. Lately I've been doing a lot of knitting. Doesn't this look like the lovliest place to knit?

And there are serious perks to working in a yarn shop - if nothing else I've been able to squeeze in some knitting at work. A couple of things I've been working on lately...

A scarf made with Rizos yarn. There are several of these specialty scarf yarns at the store right now. They are so fun and easy to knit. It is like a wide ribbon and you knit in to the large loops on the one side.

These are some of the other yarns:

Triana

Ondas

Salsa

 I also made this sweet little baby beret and Mary Jane booties with Smiley Stripes yarn - so soft - it's 80% bamboo and 20% wool.

My sewing stuff was the first thing I moved to the new house, so I spent a couple of afternoons working on this patchwork bag for my sister-in-law. It's just like one I made for myself last year. I use it all the time now - it's become my portable knitting bag. The perfect size for a magazine, a knitting project and my water bottle. I bring it to work every day!

I will leave it at that for now! I promise to post more again soon!