Stripes

Tags

cardigan, Debbie Bliss, Knitting, possum merino, possum yarn, stripes, The Wool Co.

I’ve said before that I don’t normally like to knit children’s clothes.  However, the patterns I have found for my nieces and nephew are really quite cute.  This is the next item I’m knitting for my nine week adventure:

The Striped Cardigan is coming along nicely.  Not as fast as I’d like it to, but then I was very busy doing other things this weekend.  I’m knitting it in one piece to the armholes before separating for the fronts and backs (no point in having more seams to sew than necessary – especially when if you’re having to match stripes up!)

I thought I’d talk about the book I’m taking quite a few of these patterns from – Special Family Knits by Debbie Bliss.  I don’t think there is any other book or magazine on my bookshelf that I have knitted so much from!  I first knitted Hooded Guernsey from it.  Eric has long outgrown his jumper, but I think every now and again that I should knit him another.  It was a nice pattern.   The little fair isle cardi I’ve just finished also came from this book.  There are quite a few other patterns I think that I will eventually get around to knitting from Special Family Knits, including the Rib and Cable Cardigan (for me).   You could say it was a very good buy!

Back to the Striped Cardi, I’m knitting this in a lovely soft merino possum yarn.  I’m deliberately keeping it cropped (like in the photo) because my niece lives in a part of New Zealand where it doesn’t get very cold.  She’ll like the warmth of possum, but it will be good for her to have a bit of ‘ventilation’, as the cardigan might be a bit too warm otherwise.

Hopefully I’ll have more to show you soon.

Have a great week!

Inspiration: Anemone

Tags

beach, inspiration, Knitting, New Zealand wool, New Zealand yarn, Stansborough, The Wool Co., Wool, yarn, Zealana

I love going to the beach.  Especially beaches with rock pools, where you can potter about for hours gazing into those lovely underwater gardens, watching the sea creatures going about their day-to-day business.  My favourite time to go is in winter, at dusk.  That’s when all the little critters start to get active and come out of the holes or from under rocks where they’ve been hiding all day.

You also get to enjoy some fabulous sunsets…

The animals I find most fascinating are the sea anemones, of which there are several types at my local beach.

This one is crazy cute:

Doesn’t it look like it’s wearing baggy, stripey PJs!?

This little beauty was particularly inspiring:

I liked both its patterning and its colours.  It made me want to knit something in that scheme!

When I got home, I rustled in my stash to see if I had anything that matched.

Look what I found!

This is a combination of possum yarns from The Wool Company and Zealana, a bit of New Zealand merino yarn that I dyed a while ago using lichen, some eco-dyed yarn from a small New Zealand merino yarn producer Ihakara Wools, and some of Stansborough‘s Mythral.

And now to have some fun with it!!  :-)

PS:  My dial-up Internet connection appears to be behaving itself magnificently since my massive grizzle over its performance.  I’m making the most of it by pumping out the posts while it lasts!

Wooper

Tags

children, craft, FO, free pattern, Knitting, New Zealand wool, New Zealand yarn, Pokemon, soft toy, The Wool Co., Wool, yarn

Many of you dear readers will know by now that my little boy is a great fan of knitted soft toys (plushies).  Especially ones that have anything to do with Pokémon.  So imagine my delight when researching Pokémon toys on Ravelry to stumble across the wonderful Alyssa, who creates amazing amigurumi knitting and crochet patterns!

And this is what Eric chose and asked me to knit at speed:

It’s a free pattern, and written in a very innovative way – you almost need to do no sewing up at all as it’s pretty much knitted in one.  I’ve been used to having to knit all the pieces and then sew them up one by one… it’s rather painstaking.  So this was a refreshing change!

I am afraid I did not do a perfect job with the duplicate stitch on the tummy, but he doesn’t seem to mind, and Wooper was duly taken to school today for a show-and-tell.

Knitted in The Wool Company‘s 100% Perendale 8 ply yarn in Aqua and Cyclamen.

Thanks once again, Alyssa!

A trio of cats

Tags

cats, craft, Knitting, The Wool Co., toys, Wool, yarn

From time to time, Eric dreams up a little project for me to do for him.  This time, it was Andre – a fat, yellow, knitted cat.

Back in 2009, Eric’s father gave me a copy of the Feb 2009 Let’s Knit, a UK knitting magazine (now here’s a man who knows how to make a knitter happy!)  The kids spotted the article on the fabulous felines from the publication There are Cats in This Book by Viviane Schwarz.  So they each got one – Andre, Moonpie (tall, skinny blue cat) and Tiny (teeny tiny red cat).

Although Eric originally only got Moonpie, he kept thinking of Andre and Tiny.  He wrangled Tiny out of me quite a while ago, but last week he decided he simply had to have the last in the set – Andre.

So here they are, all together:

I’m not the best knitter of knitted toys, but they’ve passed the standard as far as Eric is concerned, so that’s good.

I knitted Tiny and Andre from The Wool Co’s perendale, but Moonpie is done in a crepe yarn, the brand of which I cannot now remember (needless to say, it’s not New Zealand yarn).