Manly Socks.

 So when I first moved to the States and married Mr. H, I did not have a job. I got pretty bored. We lived on the outskirts of a small town in Idaho, and we only had one car. This is when I started to knit. At the time I could pretty much only make squares and rectangles, so scarfs were pretty much all I made for years. I made scarfs for all my family, except my other half. He has always told me not to make him one. Even when I started branching out to other knitted items a few years back, he didn't want me to knit him anything. For me giving hand knitted items as gifts is really my way of saying I love you. The fact that my own husband had none of that love was pretty weird! Now we live in a great house, which my husband works out of his home office in our bacement. It gets pretty cold down there in the winter and he is always complaining that his feet are cold. So I decided it was time I tackled hand knit socks. For the first time in our life together, he agreed to me knitting him something. Horay!

I used this pattern called Thuja from http://www.knitty.com/. They are knitted up in Berroco Vintage in boring, manly, black. I got a little help with my sock knitting by reading Getting Started knitting Socks by Ann Budd. I was at my local library and I got chatting with a lady knitting socks, she recomended this book to me. I'm so glad she did. If you are thinking of knitting your first pair of socks I would check it out. I also had a friend from my knitting group to show me how to knit majic loop. So this was a project of firsts for me.

 I finished them up on Valentines day, and I'm so glad I did. I'd been afraid of knitting socks for so long. My Mum had kind of put me off by telling me turning the heal would be too hard. I think I'm going to have to get her to try socks now. I'm looking forward to knitting more socks soon.

This and that.

 I still haven't got round to posting these two pictures of things I worked on during the crazy holiday period of Oct/Nov/Dec 2011. These were not Christmas presents though. The picture below is of a knitted patchwork blanket and baby. She had spent the first five or so months of her life in hospital. I've been sporadically attending a knitting group at my local library and one of the members came up with the idea of us all contributing a few squares toward this. One of our group members crochet them all together and put a lovely crochet edge around it too. The great news is the little girl got to finally go home just before Christmas wrapped up in a little bit of love from us. I've been knitting up more squares for a future blanket that we may well raffle off to raise money for our library.

The other picture is of a bib, hat and slippers that I knit for my sister, Mrs W., new baby. I wrongly predicted that she was having a girl, and lo and behold a boy was born. I sent the hat and bib, but I will save the slippers for any future baby girl that comes along. My sister told me the hat was the only one she has that does not slip down and cover her little ones eyes when they are out and about. So I will have to use this pattern again.

I haven't been completely hibernating during the first few weeks of 2012. I've worked on a couple of hats, and got one of my sisters Birthday presents done already. I took a trip to a great yarn store called Yarn Love and picked up all I needed to knit my first pair of socks. So I'm still keeping busy with my little projects after my kids have been tucked into bed. I'm looking forward to sharing the finished results with you here soon.

Manly Apron

 My husband might kill me for this first picture. He hates it, but I don't care. I do pretty much all the cooking in our home, and I'm pretty cool with that. But there are some things, being a vegetarian, I won't handle. So around all the major Holidays, and whenever he wants bacon, my other half is forced to don an apron and get to work in the kitchen.

I finally got sick of him wearing my apron and decided it was time for him to have his own. I picked up another apron pattern from JoAnns when they were on sale for a dollar and got to work.

I think he had already put the lamb to cook when he opened this on Christmas, but there will always be another opportunity to put it to use.

Fairy Bunting

 I made Miss C an apron for her birthday last year. When she said she was going to come and visit us for Christmas this year I thought I needed to make her something with the leftover scraps. I decided on some bunting. I imagine her throwing tea party at her flat with her bunting hanging up and her serving scones in her apron.

I had to buy a 1/4 yard more of two complimenting fabrics and some bias tape binding. I have made bunting before for little Miss M's room, but it was very time consuming, although very cute. I went with a quicker but equally cute version this time.

There are lots of tutorials out there for bunting, but if you have done any sewing before you can figure this out for yourself. It was quick and easy.

I started to worry about here not liking it at the last moment. She kept saying things she liked, but never once mentioned bunting. I needn't have feared though. Her reaction when she opened it was all I needed to know I had made a good choice.

Mum's Market Bag

So I've had a long absence from my crafting blog. Mostly because the Holiday season is pretty busy, and almost everything I've made were Christmas gifts so I couldn't share until they'd been received. Here is the first of a few hand made gifts I sent out this year.

The pattern can be found here as a free Ravelry download. I had it on my queue for quite a long time. But if you should know anything about me, it is that my queue is getting very long but my spare time is not! I used knit picks comfy worsted yarn in Crème Brulee and Ivory. I really loved the square bottom of the bag. It knit up really easily. However I had trouble with the lace/mesh. I kept spotting mistakes and couldn't figure out why. It is a really simple pattern and I was baffled until I realised that the stitches were slipping over my too small stitch marker. I ended up ripping it back to the the bottom of the bag and then joining a bunch of my stitch markers together so the stitches couldn't slip over anymore. After that it knit up like a dream. I highly recommend this pattern and yarn. I'm really pleased with the way it turned out.

A Birthday Cowl

 My youngest sister, Mrs. W. has her Birthday today. I asked her her favorite colours right now and she said, green, mustard yellow and orange. I made her brown/green slippers last year so I decided to go with mustard yellow. I picked out this pattern from the Lion Brand web sight for a simple cowl. She says it will look good with her green coat after she's had her baby. I'm hoping she can get some use out of it before though. I used to 2 skeins of knit picks swish worsted in turmeric for this project. It's a lovely soft superwash wool. I was a little disappointed in it though. The first skein had a lot of weak spots/joins in it. It kind of made my knitting look a sloppy. The second skein was perfect though. I don't know if I just got unlucky with the first one. I love the colour. I think she should go out and eat a curry while she'd wearing it. That way if she spills she will never see the stains.

 

Happy Birthday Mrs. W. I love you.

Cobra Costume

 My eldest has a wild imagination. He also has and enormous amount of faith in my abilities to make anything. He really loves snakes. His favorite is the King Cobra. It came as no surprise to me when he asked to be one for Halloween. I got searching on the web for a pre-made costume and came up with nothing. Then I went searching for a pattern or some idea of how to make a snake costume and I came up with nothing still. I headed to JoAnns with a vague idea of what I was going to do and came back with some sparkly, stretchy, scaly, fabric and a pattern for a kangaroo costume. Obviously I had to make many changes to the pattern. The hood was the trickyest part. I made it once and wasn't happy with it. I wanted the cobra flaps to not look like monkey ears. I took it apart and used some plastic and some wadding/batting to line them and give them structure. I used felt for the eyes, teeth and tounge.

Mr M. was plenty happy with it, so I was happy too. I think this might be anouther costume that I will have him wear for years.