End of Summer

Two weeks and more have passed without a blog post, but it doesn't mean I have been idle (all that time). First I made some new bibs and used up some leftover bias tapes.

Then I knitted a bear cub beanie but it turned out to be newborn size and not grandchild size.

I finished the luxury yarn scarf I was struggling with last time. No big unraveling was needed

and I even figured out how to make the lace edge wider to use up all my yarn.

This is the same pattern I used for my beige scarf last year. this time I used bigger needles and the yarn was little heavier too, but both are from one 100 g skein.

In my enthusiasm for lace knitting I decided to use one of my daughter's leftover yarns. The curly skein on the left in front of the green yarn used to be a tightly crocheted wrist warmer. She didn't want me to crochet her a pair for it with the ball of unused yarn, so I washed the curly yarn and it straightened perfectly.

I knitted a cowl in the same lace pattern I used for the Kidsilk Mohair shawl this Summer.

The 3D effect disappeared totally when I damp stretched this one, and it grew in length too, but I just wrap it one more time around my neck or let it hang more.

It is time to replace the Summer flowers with Chrysanthemums. The cooler Autumn air feels SO refreshing after a too hot Summer.

December 14 - Knit knit knit

Now we have entered the wool room of Villa Cooper. As you can see, many of the members are knitters, and wool socks and stockings are one of our big hit articles especially for Christmas.

On this wall are the larger sizes, so the colours are more masculine.

Not just socks but also hats and beanies and scarfs, cowls and shawls are there. Mittens too, but my camera seems to have missed them.

Luxury scarf

The messy little knitting was like the ugly duckling who grew up to be a beautiful swan. After damp stretching my scarf grew in all directions, shows now an almost perfect lace pattern and will be proudly worn in the cool April weather.

The free pattern Nurmilintu by Heidi Alander can be found here at Ravelry, also in English and in several other languages.

My blue and white quilt top is finished. The herringbone pattern looks a little like knitted stitches too.

Here is an Easter Bunny for you. I don't like the little brown eggs he leaves behind so I bought us some Mignon eggs from the shop.

Happy Easter!

Half Square Triangles

Completing the Paper Lantern quilt top in a short time made me think I could keep on piecing simple quilt tops that don't take a year. While I was suffering from a nasty cold. I thought of all the shirts I have waiting in cardboard boxes, cut apart and ironed, sorted according to colour. Blocks have been cut from them, but there are large bits left. The blue box is full, especially because I didn't use any blues in the big Shadow Plaid quilt. Dolores is making a red and white quilt to celebrate Canada's 150 years of independence, so I thought I could do the same in blue and white for our 100 years.

I cut the fabrics in 7" squares and made them into HSTs. Ironed and trimmed to 6½".

Much time and 107 squares later:

The 8" Bias Square ruler is perfect for trimming any HSTs. I place the diagonal line on my diagonal seam, and the squares will be not only the correct size but also look correct.

The trimmed squares waiting for the next step.

After the baby sock project I needed something different, so I dug out the scarf I have started maybe two years ago. The yarn is lovely and very fine, 800 metres for 100 grams, alpaca and silk.  The lace pattern is very difficult to follow when the knitting looks like this:

I laid the project aside all those months ago after I had to unravel a whole lace repeat of 18 rows. Now I tried again and I think it went right this time. I didn't want to take the risk of running out of yarn in the middle of the last lace repeat so I knitted less garter stitch between the lace rows. Naturally there was some yarn left. I need to get some kind of urethane board so I can stretch my fine scarf into shape. I'm back to sock knitting again!

Yesterday we saw the first robin of the spring, and today came the first finch. I don't have new pictures of the newcomers so I will show you the treecreeper hiding on our oak in February:

Have a happy weekend!