Collage
Thursday, May 26, 2011
In and Out
This is a quick little post saying that no, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. Kitchen renovations have consumed everything in our household, including my crafting (and blogging) time. Hopefully things will settle down next week, and maybe even before that I will have a chance to knit and take updated photos!
Monday, May 9, 2011
Getting Away
Its been a little while since I last posted, but that's because I was on vacation! Friday morning hubby and I left for Geneva, NY. We stayed in the Belhurst Castle right on Seneca Lake. I have to say, it was THE best vacation we have taken so far. Even though we were only gone Friday to Saturday, the place we stayed was great, the area we went to was beautiful, the food was amazing and it was the perfect little get away. Here's a picture of where we stayed:
This is the Inn attached to the castle. You can see the lake to the left of the picture... our room faced the lake and we had a whole wall of windows to enjoy the view! One of my favorite parts of the trip was the food! I'm a bit of a foodie, so when I got the chance to have blue crab fondue appetizer, bibb lettuce caprese salad, seafood risotto, and peanut butter pie for dessert I was ecstatic. Everything was wonderful. Stay tuned for more crafting content!
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Favorites
On Ravelry there is a section called "favorites" where you can add patterns, projects, designers, posts, and other things you want to be able to find later all in one place. This week I added quite a few patterns to my favorites, so I thought I would share some!
The first pattern I favorited a few days ago, called the Austin Hoodie. Its a very cute cardigan hoodie, and I'm forever queueing and favoriting cardigans. I wear a lot of them and have only knit myself one so far, but I hope to knit many, many more. The only downside to this one is that it calls for fingering weight yarn, which looks great, but will take me FOREVER to knit.
The rest of my favorites from this week are all home-type stuff. Must be I'm itching to outfit our new house with hand knits! The first is the Hemlock Ring Blanket. I'm sure most of you have seen this pattern (if not already knit it!) because its very popular on Ravelry. I favorited this because its really pretty and would make a lovely gift for a couple getting married. I don't have any plans for it in the near future, but its there if I need it!
The next pattern is called Stjarna, and its a 3 dimensional knit star. I'm always on the look out for cute hand knit ornament patterns because I have a small fake Christmas tree that I eventually want to completely decorate in hand knit ornaments. I liked that this one had very defined points to it.
This next one really appealed to me because I love to read: the Book Sweater. Its a knit cover for books and from glancing at the pattern it looks like it would be easily customizable to different book sizes. I think this would make a great gift for a book lover!
The last one is the Quickie plastic bag holder. I don't know about you, but we always have a lot of these laying around. We try to put them all into one bag, but they always seem to spew all over the bookcase we keep them on. I might just be whipping one of these bad boys up in the next few weeks!
The first pattern I favorited a few days ago, called the Austin Hoodie. Its a very cute cardigan hoodie, and I'm forever queueing and favoriting cardigans. I wear a lot of them and have only knit myself one so far, but I hope to knit many, many more. The only downside to this one is that it calls for fingering weight yarn, which looks great, but will take me FOREVER to knit.
The rest of my favorites from this week are all home-type stuff. Must be I'm itching to outfit our new house with hand knits! The first is the Hemlock Ring Blanket. I'm sure most of you have seen this pattern (if not already knit it!) because its very popular on Ravelry. I favorited this because its really pretty and would make a lovely gift for a couple getting married. I don't have any plans for it in the near future, but its there if I need it!
The next pattern is called Stjarna, and its a 3 dimensional knit star. I'm always on the look out for cute hand knit ornament patterns because I have a small fake Christmas tree that I eventually want to completely decorate in hand knit ornaments. I liked that this one had very defined points to it.
This next one really appealed to me because I love to read: the Book Sweater. Its a knit cover for books and from glancing at the pattern it looks like it would be easily customizable to different book sizes. I think this would make a great gift for a book lover!
The last one is the Quickie plastic bag holder. I don't know about you, but we always have a lot of these laying around. We try to put them all into one bag, but they always seem to spew all over the bookcase we keep them on. I might just be whipping one of these bad boys up in the next few weeks!
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Casting on
Its been a whirlwind of a weekend! Not only were we busy working on the house and attending different events, the new term started in the HPKCHC, which means classes went up, OWLs were able to be proposed, and there is a general feeling of happy scurrying as everyone makes plans for the rest of the month (and in the case of OWLs for the next three months!)
This term I decided to try for 2 OWLs. I've been back into knitting long enough that I felt comfortable tackling that many large projects, plus I've got a new plan for time management (but more about that later). I actually haven't looked too closely at the classes yet, but here's what I'm doing for my OWLs.
My first OWL is an Ancient Runes OWL, which is just the category I was able to fit this particular project into. This category has to do with charts. I honestly have never used a chart for my knitting- until now I've always used written directions and avoided projects that only had charts. However, this term I felt it was time to face my fear! I'm making the Vespergyle Mittens out of Knit Picks Palette yarn. I've never made mittens before, so this adds to the difficulty of this project. Its going along pretty well- I'm about 1/3 of the way through the cuff chart. Watch my progress on my project page here.
The other three patterns make up my second OWL, an Astronomy OWL. My proposal was actually a bit different the the norm. Most of the time these projects include extravagant lace shawl with beads (to represent the sky and stars) or people will actually craft a solar system. These are awesome projects and I love watching people's progress, but I had no interest in doing either of those. The idea I came up with was to craft three different shawls representing constellations. The first is the Saroyan shawl, representing the Pegasus constellation. I'm knitting it out of Malabrigo worsted yarn and I have to say, I don't know what I love more, the yarn or the pattern! This seriously is a joy to work on. Watch my project page here!
My second shawl is the Boneyard shawl representing the Lyra constellation. This shawl is great- I'm a fairly plain dresser and I can totally see myself wearing this shawl under my fall jacket as a scarf all the time. Its nice to work on while listening to something as well- it doesn't require so much concentration that I can't do anything else. The yarn is Knit Picks Gloss dk, which I'm really enjoying as well. This one will probably wait until I finish the Saroyan shawl, but I might just have to work a few rows here and there just because! The project page for that shawl is here.
My last shawl is the Multnomah shawl representing the Hydra constellation. This is being knit out of Cascade Yarns Heritage Paints (stash busting!). This shawl will probably be the last one I work on, and honestly I hope I come to love it more as I work on it. I still like the pattern and the yarn is working up beautifully in it, its just that out of the 3 shawls this one is my least favorite. Here's the project page for this shawl.
In other news, my Harry Potter read-a-long and swap has started, so I need to go get my books from my parents so I can start! We're also supposed to be getting a new movie from Netflix today, so be on the lookout for another movie review :) Also more on my time management and some progress pics!
This term I decided to try for 2 OWLs. I've been back into knitting long enough that I felt comfortable tackling that many large projects, plus I've got a new plan for time management (but more about that later). I actually haven't looked too closely at the classes yet, but here's what I'm doing for my OWLs.
My first OWL is an Ancient Runes OWL, which is just the category I was able to fit this particular project into. This category has to do with charts. I honestly have never used a chart for my knitting- until now I've always used written directions and avoided projects that only had charts. However, this term I felt it was time to face my fear! I'm making the Vespergyle Mittens out of Knit Picks Palette yarn. I've never made mittens before, so this adds to the difficulty of this project. Its going along pretty well- I'm about 1/3 of the way through the cuff chart. Watch my progress on my project page here.
The other three patterns make up my second OWL, an Astronomy OWL. My proposal was actually a bit different the the norm. Most of the time these projects include extravagant lace shawl with beads (to represent the sky and stars) or people will actually craft a solar system. These are awesome projects and I love watching people's progress, but I had no interest in doing either of those. The idea I came up with was to craft three different shawls representing constellations. The first is the Saroyan shawl, representing the Pegasus constellation. I'm knitting it out of Malabrigo worsted yarn and I have to say, I don't know what I love more, the yarn or the pattern! This seriously is a joy to work on. Watch my project page here!
My second shawl is the Boneyard shawl representing the Lyra constellation. This shawl is great- I'm a fairly plain dresser and I can totally see myself wearing this shawl under my fall jacket as a scarf all the time. Its nice to work on while listening to something as well- it doesn't require so much concentration that I can't do anything else. The yarn is Knit Picks Gloss dk, which I'm really enjoying as well. This one will probably wait until I finish the Saroyan shawl, but I might just have to work a few rows here and there just because! The project page for that shawl is here.
My last shawl is the Multnomah shawl representing the Hydra constellation. This is being knit out of Cascade Yarns Heritage Paints (stash busting!). This shawl will probably be the last one I work on, and honestly I hope I come to love it more as I work on it. I still like the pattern and the yarn is working up beautifully in it, its just that out of the 3 shawls this one is my least favorite. Here's the project page for this shawl.
In other news, my Harry Potter read-a-long and swap has started, so I need to go get my books from my parents so I can start! We're also supposed to be getting a new movie from Netflix today, so be on the lookout for another movie review :) Also more on my time management and some progress pics!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)