Carve Me out a Bit of Inspiration

For some reason February is never a good month for me. It is the New England winter without the holidays of December or the optimistic brand new year-ness of January. And this year was no exception. While we didn't get hit with the snow that the mid-Atlantic did, the bitter cold seemed to freeze any creative inspiration I had. I couldn't figure out what to knit for the Knitting Olympics and while I watched my fair share of aerials and speed skating and I did not once pick up a pair of knitting needles.

Last week March finally arrived and with it came temperatures in the 40's and my niece's birthday. I always try to make at least a portion of her gift.  She is still into fairies and since I already knit her little fairies last year so I had to come up with something else this year. I figured some rubber stamps in the fairy motif would add to her drawings. 

Hopefully, this will re-spark my creativity and get me back to stitching or knitting or what have you,

Mary, Skeletons and Bacon, oh my!

I can show off some embroidery I did now since my friend has received her gifts.  A few years back I was sitting at my weekly Stitch n Bitch and I was working on some embroidery instead of my usual knitting. And it struck me as funny because all these knitters kept saying "oh my that looks so complicated, too hard for me" and they were totally serious.  Included amongst them was my friend Ariel who was probably in the middle of knitting socks on size 2 double pointed needles.
Any one who has visited Ariel's place soon notices her collection of religious and Day of the Dead well, stuff so I knew the Dia de Los Muertos patterns from Sublime Stitching would be just up her alley. I stole this first photo from her blog she took because for the life of me I could not get a decent shot of the skeletons. I embroidered these and then made them into teeny pillows and while I am proud of my embroidery, my sewing skills are still a bit well, sucky. It's not my fault, the sewing machine is possessed!

And for some added silliness, I crocheted up some bacon 'cause also if you know Ariel you know how she feels about bacon. 

Totoro and his Mittens

Last month Craftzine had this post showing Totoro mittens, and I immediately thought of my cousin who is a big fan of Totoro.  The next day I get an email from said cousin hinting strongly that she loves those mittens and she did have a birthday in January.....

(By the way, Totoro is from Hayao Miyazaki’s Japanese animated film "My Neighbor Totoro".  I have it on my Netflix queue but there is a Loooooong Wait for it. )

Since it does not take a whole lot of arm twisting to get me to A) Make something cutesie and B) Knit stranded mittens - I knew what what my next project would be. I had some Berroco Ultra Alpaca in Winter White leftover from the scarf I had made my cousin for Hannukah so her new mittens will match perfectly. I headed downtown to my LYS to pick up a blue or grey and found this great new colorway of Ultra Alpaca called Blue Steel.  A great color (I like greys) and the added bonus of sounding like a cheesy 80s action movie. Then woman ringing up my sale asked my what I was making, it turns out she is a huge Miyazaki fan and was thrilled to talk knitting and japanese film. 

I seemed to bang out the mittens pretty quickly, there are some long floats that you have to deal with but otherwise a straightforward knit.  I think they are pretty sweet.

After the mittens were done I still had a ton of Blue Steel left over so I scanned through rav and found the cutest stuffed Totoro.  Turns out a ingenious ravelry user had adapted the stuffed cat, Kate from Knitty into Totoro and was kind enough to put all the changes in her project notes (I love rav).  I got this guy done in one night of insomnia with just some detail work to be done the next day.  He is pretty frakkin' adorable if I do say so myself.

Elijah & Sheldon

I am a bit late with these guys but a friend of mine had twin boys a few months back and I am just finishing up their gifts now.  Initially, I scoured ravelry looking at patterns for sweaters, hats, blankets but then I realized I love knitting toys but really don't want to keep them so this was the best of all worlds.  I feel a kinship to the new baby boys since it turns out I was there when my friend started labor, she was completely unphased and was sure it was Braxton Hicks (um, it wasn't)  and we kept chatting away.  Her boys arrived bright and early the next morning - on my birthday. Well, our birthday now.

First there is Sheldon the Turtle. I have wanted to knit this up since that issue of Knitty came out.  I even used the recommended yard and colors. It's actually a bit fiddly for a toy, there's some crochet in there, applied i-cord but it was all worth it. I love that you can take his shell on and off.  There are a whole bunch of examples on ravelry where people have made other outfits for him, lions, cowboy, police, Santa even ick a bat.  He's like his very own Village People.

Then there is Elijah.  This adorable elephant is done with no seaming at all.  Yay, for that! More than once I thought about how her design process must have worked because there are some ingenious parts to it. Since it involved knitting the limbs by picking up stitches I found it easier to use *gasp* DPNs instead of Magic Loop.

The two have become fast friends already and I look forward to hearing of their adventures with my friend's little boys.

Present for Me

I posted previously some handmade gifts that I made but now I have show off the handmade that I got!!! 

While I was knitting away on my sister's radishes she was busy putting the finishing touches on my awesome new apron. 



I had seen some cool vintage styled aprons around at craft shows and on etsy and I thought well hell, I could do that. But then I realized my sister sews far better than I do and she knows how to use them pattern-y things and to cut fabric straight and do all the things that I tend to screw up when I sew.   So I hinted that this would be something I might like.   And by hinting I really mean saying, "Hey, you can make me this for my birthday/Hannukah/other gift giving opportunity!" 

Apparently forcing her to shop for fabric is similar to asking a knitter to shop for yarn not a big hardship for her there; something tells me she probably picked up a little something for herself along the way.

It's got some red to match the KitchenAid mixer (doesn't everyone accessorize to match their appliances?) and I totally never would have thought of florals for me but they are bright and happy and offset with polka dots (sis loves polka dots) and I love it. You can't really tell from the photo but it skirts out so I totally feel like I am channeling my inner Betty Draper from Mad Men when I wear it. Now I just have to get around to doing some cooking....

Holiday Knitting on Parade

We exchanged most of our gifts in the family over New Years this year so I am now able to show you some of my holiday knitting. 

For my brother-in-law I knit him the We Call Them Pirates hat. I was afraid it was going to be a bit snug but it seemed to fit well and even covered his ears which is necessary with the wind chills putting us into single digits around here recently.



A few months back my sister and I are chatting on the phone and she says "you'd knit me radishes, right?" To which I answered "of course I would."   Seems like a normal conversation to me apparently to others it's a bit weird, bah. Turns out she had a copy of Marie Claire Idees with a pattern for french radishes.  So I had to go and translate the pattern from french to english.  Time to put that French Lit degree to good use! Only I wasn't that familiar with french knitting terms but luckily I found this French Knitting dictionary on Chez Plum, a great find that has been bookmarked for future endeavors. I did adapt it to knit it the round, less seaming, but otherwise I stuck pretty much to the pattern, I think.  They came out very cute and my sister loved them.



Also for those keeping track at home I knit the Squirrel and Oak Mittens (same designer Hello Yarn, as the pirate hat) about a year and a half ago (my first stranding project) and they came out a wee bit small. My niece has finally grown into them (go milk!) and is now their proud owner. It's nice to know they are finally being used to their full potential (making a snow woman in the wilds of Maine - no pictures to show you since I was not crazy enough to leave my warm cocoon under a pile of afghans on the sofa to face the cold.

Live from New York It's A Snowy Saturday Night

Happy New Year!! I hope everyone out there ended 2009 in a happy way. 

Not surprisingly I am a bit behind and will have to have some 2009 related posts before I fully surrender to the new decade.

The week before Christmas I headed to NYC to stay with Non-Crafty Meg and to go to Saturday Night Live.  Of course there was a doozy of a winter storm coming up the east coast but I was lucky and made it there before the snow hit and buses and trains were cancelled. 

With a dim sum lunch in Chinatown shortly after I arrived I was fortified to up into the wee hours.  We braved the snow and crowds at Rockefeller Center to see The Tree, well, it was across the street from the studio so really how could we not?

Non-Crafty Meg with The Tree behind her, it's hard to see but it's there

The Tree at Rockefeller Center

Watching SNL was really cool.  I had never seen a tv show filmed before so it was neat to see all the inner workings and how much goes on so during the commercials of a live show.  And for my cousin, Celeste, yeah James Franco was really hot.

For you knitters out there I also managed to make a quick stop at School Products before I left and picked up a cashmere-silk blend and some Karabella yarn of which they have more colors than I have ever seen.