Mini Lily

I finally finished my crocheted version of Lily! This is yet another Planet June pattern. I just modified the color pattern to make it look like Lily. June's patterns are my absolute favorite crochet patterns. Her animals look so realistic and cute and the patterns are easy to follow. The face took the longest as it was the part that needed the most modification. She has much more white on her face than the corgi in the pattern.

I modified the back to add more white but didn't have to change the front legs at all. On the back legs I added one more row of black than what was there. The tail stayed the same as the pattern specified.

I also added 3 stitches of white along the back of her head.

Here is Lily posing with mini Lily.

From the back.

Now I think I will attach a hanger to mini Lily and hang her in our Christmas tree. I am very pleased with how mini Lily turned out!

Sock Collage

I realize that this blog has been highly neglected since the arrival of little Lily, but given the choice between typing on the computer or playing with this...

the puppy tends to win. She is now 14 weeks and growing like a weed.

In the knitting world I have been on a bit of a sock kick lately. They are just so easy to carry around with me. It is also easy to work on a row or two here and there in between stopping the puppy from chewing on table legs or chairs or blinds or shoes.

Most recently finished were these:

 

They are not the softest socks in the world, but I just love them. They are nice and thick and toasty warm. The yarn is called ONline Supersocke 6-ply which I believe is a German company. It is actually the same kind of yarn that my mom's birthday socks were made from last year:

The yarn has held up well through many washes which is good because I am not a fan of hand-washing my socks.

I love the color of this next pair (Cascade Heritage in the "fall foliage" colorway) but they were a pain in the butt to get just right! With a multi-color yarn you just never know what you will end up with. Many factors play into this such as the length of each color section, what size needles you use,  how many stitches you have on your needles and how tight you knit.

It took a while to get just the right combination of stitches and needle size to make the colors turn out. At first the colors kept pooling which means that one half of the sock was entirely red and the other half was gold. I ended up having to use size 0 needles and 64 stitches to make the pooling stop.

 

They are a little small but I'm ok with that. :)

Lily!

Usually I only post about crafts here, but this post is about my brand new puppy "Lily". Lily is a 9.5 week-old Cardigan Welsh Corgi.

She was born on September 15th and looked like this (Lily is the 4th from the left):

My husband and I have been visiting her and her brothers and sisters since they were 3 weeks old.

7 weeks (Lily is top center):

On Thursday she was finally able to come home with us!

Sometimes she is a crazy dog

and sometimes she is a sleepy dog.

Her favorite napping place is under the chair.

Often she is a hungry dog

or a thirsty dog.

She LOVES to play (on her hand-knit blanket - see, there is still knitting involved in the post!)

and REALLY loves shoes (both eating them and sleeping with them).

She is a great puppy and we are so happy to have her home with us and be able to watch her grow up! Woof!

Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival

Ever since I started spinning almost 2 years ago I have wanted to go to a fiber festival. (I would have wanted to go before I started spinning too, it's just that I didn't know such a thing existed until I started looking for spinning fiber.) One of the big ones on the West Coast is the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival (OFF). I have been planning on going since we first moved to Oregon and it was so much fun! I have never seen so much fiber in one place before. It was an entire fairground full of fiber animals, fiber, yarn, spinning wheels, drop spindles, knitting supplies, weaving supplies and basically any fiber-related thing you can think of.

First we got to see some alpacas

and sheep.

   

Then it was time to watch a border collie heard some ducks. The border collie had a great time, but I'm not so sure about the ducks.

Then we decided to go back to the barn to see the goats. This cashmere goat likes to pose for pictures apparently.

Once we saw all the animals we wondered around all the booths. There were so many to see and Jason patiently went with me while I ooed and awed over all the yarn. I wanted to buy everything but had to keep reminding myself that I already have tons of yarn and spinning fiber at home.

Once we made sure that we had seen all the booths we decided to go home. But then we noticed a barn that we hadn't been to yet. We went in to find that it was the lama barn. Not only that, but the lama obstacle course was in progress. Yes, I just said that there was a lama obstacle course.

We stayed to watch 3 lamas go through the course then decided to call it a day. I had a great time and already can't wait to go again next year.

Popeye Party

A little while ago I was asked to make 3 crocheted versions of Popeye. Popeye is a cat that I really like. While I have never actually met him, I have heard many stories about him and seen pictures of him. He looks like this:

He was pretty fun to make because while you can't see it here one of his legs has much more white than the others. This means that I could use this feature to make sure the crocheted cats are unique and specific to his markings.

The pattern that I used is here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/cat-sitting

I decided to make all the pieces first and sew them together at the end.

The hardest part was trying to figure out a good way to make a white pattern going down his head and body.

After his head/body was done it was time to attach the legs, ears and tail!

Here's that white leg.

From behind.

Added a nose, eyes and whiskers. All done! A Popeye party!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Yesterday was my dad's birthday and I wanted to make something for him. He is a Flyers fan so I thought it would be fun to make some bright orange socks. The problem was that I couldn't find the orange that I wanted in sock yarn. At this point I thought it might be fun to dye some myself. I got some bare knitpicks stroll yarn and lots of orange kool aid. When I got the yarn it looked like this: Click Here

I don't know the final tally of how many packs of orange kool aid it took to get to it's final color but it was a lot! I kept re-dying it with more until I thought it was finally dark enough. I would guess I used around 20 packs by the end.

When it was done and drying it looked like this:

I got some black yarn (also knitpicks stroll) for the heels and toes. These socks became my Alaska project while we were visiting parents last month. (I kept 1 project at my parents house and these stayed at my in-laws house so that my dad wouldn't see them.)

From a distance they look like a solid color, but up close they are tonal with stripes of light and dark orange just because of the way the dye happened to take. I think it makes for an interesting look.

Since my husband was at work I had to model the socks with my own foot which was a little too small. My toe doesn't even come close to the end of the sock.

Hopefully they fit him and will keep his feet toasty warm during hockey season!

J'aime Paris

I studied French for 7 years throughout middle school, high school and college. I don't know why but I have a fascination with French things. Before starting 7th grade I found out we could start taking a language class. The choices were French and Spanish and I picked French simply because I thought it sounded prettier than Spanish.  After 8th grade I got to go on a trip with my French class to Paris (and other parts of France and Switzerland). I absolutely loved Paris. Maybe it was because it was my first trip out of the United States and it was something new. Maybe it was because I had studied the place for two years and finally got to see everything in my textbooks. Maybe it was because I felt confident that I knew enough of a language other than English that I could survive in such a far away country. Either way, I have since been to many other cities including Athens, Rome and Florence and in my mind none have compared. Each new city I go to gets compared to Paris, and Paris still wins. You might be wondering what all this has to do with knitting. Well, at the beginning of July I somehow ended up on a pattern called Dinner in the Eiffel Tower Shawl and I had to make it. The yarn is Madeline Tosh and the color is French Gray. I liked how it looked and knew it would be my next project. Eventually I will get some pictures of me wearing it but here is what I have for now:

Before blocking

While Blocking

(If you look close at the right side of the shawl you can see where I must have completely spaced out and stopped knitting eyelets on the last few inches of a row. Oops!)

The Start of an Obsession

I learned how to knit when I was 9 years old - in 4th grade. My teacher required the whole class to learn how to knit. Everyone had to knit one hat and after that it was up to you if you wanted to keep knitting or not. Every day after lunch there was a corner of the class room where everyone would sit while she read to us and this was also a time to knit. I was hooked from the beginning. I started with something that was supposed to be square but I remember that it kept getting wider and wider as I was bringing the yarn to the back and making the first stitch of every row into two stitches. Once I knew how to make the stitches I moved on to my hat. I don't remember what color it was or if I even still have it somewhere but I loved knitting. I do remember that I hadn't yet learned how to purl so the hat was worked in the round entirely in stockinette stitch. This made the brim curl up along the bottom of the hat. I learned the hard way to make sure all your stitches face the same direction otherwise you get a big twist in the fabric. Instead of having me rip it back out she helped make the twist an element of the hat instead.  I believe that it was in 4th grade that I also made my first socks from a pattern that she helped me with - it's one that I still have.  I remember that they were huge floppy socks, probably made out of worsted weight acrylic but they were socks and I was so excited when they were done! I think that they are still in my parents house somewhere, but not sure where.

In 5th grade I had a different teacher but I still remember stopping by my old 4th grade classroom after school to ask for knitting help, or just to show what I was working on.

In 6th grade I was lucky enough to have the same teacher I had in 4th grade. This was the year that I moved on to the ultimate knitting project a sweater. She helped me measure myself, measure how many stitches per inch I was knitting and do all the calculations to make a custom sweater. (There is a picture of this sweater on the top of this post: http://blog.crystal-crafts.net/2012/02/12/sweater/) I'm so glad to have had such an awesome teacher who taught more than just the required curriculum.

Recently I was able to find and contact my teacher through e-mail. I was pretty excited, and I couldn't believe that after 15 years she still had pictures from some of my first projects that she sent to me. (I hope she doesn't mind that I am about to post them here).

My first socks:

Working on my first sweater:

Ashton Shawlette

So, my new goal for this blog is going to be to post at least once a week now that we are settled into our apartment. I will try to stick with posting every Sunday, but more if I can. This is a project that I finished before we left Pullman and I just haven't had time to show you. The pattern is called Ashton Shawlette and the yarn is Malabrigo lace. I love making these lace shawls and am in fact working on a new one right now. The problem is that I don't ever wear them. I guess I need to start if I'm going to keep making them. Anyway, here are some pictures:

Before blocking:

While blocking:

After blocking:

I know I have said this over and over again, but I just love blocking lace knitting. It completely changes how it looks and makes all that work of knitting it completely worth it. :)

Cannon Beach

We've been having fun exploring Oregon lately and decided to head to the beach yesterday. I thought it would be a good chance to get some pictures of the shrug that I made while back in Anchorage. I don't have any in-progress pictures since it was made in airports and while on vacation. I just kind of forgot to take any pictures of it. I originally got this yarn to make a shell-type top but got the wrong weight of yarn. I didn't want to end up with a super heavy tank top which would kind of defeat the purpose of a tank top. So, I found this pattern instead. It will be good to throw over my shoulders if I am wearing a tank top and get chilly. The pattern is Lacy Summer Shawl by Lion Brand but I used Knit Picks worsted weight comfy yarn which is 75% cotton and 25% acrylic.

It was so hot yesterday that I only put the shrug on for the time that it took my husband to snap a few photos, then it came right back off.

 

We did some walking around and searched out a yarn shop. I was so into the yarn that I didn't even know my picture was being taken.

To end the day we stopped by the Tillamook cheese factory. We tasted cheese then got some ice cream. That makes for a happy Crystal! Mmmmm

 

Haven't Forgotten..

I thought I should post just so you don't think I have forgotten about my blog. Knitting is still happening around here, but extremely slowly. We have been unpacking boxes since we moved at the end of June but have only actually been in our apartment for barely a week if you add up the random days between trips. The good news is that the craft room is almost set up! Well, technically it's the craft room/office now. We moved from a 3-bedroom to a 2-bedroom so the craft room and office must be combined. Don't tell my husband but I have kind of taken over the room. We went to Costco the other day (yay! we now live in a place with a Costco!) and found an awesome yarn storage system which doubles as our TV stand. I spent today filling it up with yarn and realizing again that I have A LOT of yarn. (I'm so glad my husband encourages the fiber crafts even if the real reason is just to keep me out of his hair.)

Check it out:

Those boxes are bigger than you would think and most of them are full. They are sorted mostly by fiber type. Two "acrylic" boxes, a "cotton", a "wool", a "hand-spun", a "spinning fiber" and a miscellaneous "tools".  I let my husband use one of the slots for the internet hookup just because I need internet to use ravelry so it seemed fair.

This craft room has huge windows which is pretty awesome since my old one was pretty dark.

I'm sure I'll have more to show you soon since I will have lots of time to knit while job-hunting.

Playful Stripes

It has been busy, busy, busy around here lately. My husband finished his PhD and was offered a job. I'm so proud of him! This also meant a move to the Portland area for us. We wanted to be able to stay in the Pacific Northwest and it is so nice to be near a big city again. Not to mention that there are TONS of yarn stores in Portland. I'm so excited to go explore and find out which are my favorites. Once we get settled I plan on trying to update the blog more often. We have been flying around the country visiting family. Had an awesome  (but extremely hot) time in Florida with my grandma and are now hanging out back home with our parents.

Right now the majority of my yarn is packed in boxes along with my spinning wheel, drum carder and loom. I kept out enough yarn for a few pairs of socks, a shrug. This seems like it will be a good amount of yarn until I can unpack my boxes. Once I get back I will show you pictures but in the mean time I have a project to show you from my backlog of projects waiting to go on the blog.

This was designed by one of my favorite designers- Alana Dakos. I am also a huge fan of her podcast "Never Not Knitting." The pattern is called Playful Stripes and it is super cute. It also ranges in size from newborn to 8 years which is nice.

I mostly used Knit Picks Brava sport weight yarn because it is acrylic and easy to wash. The great thing is that you can use small amounts of leftover yarn for the stripes. The yellow stripe happens to be some leftover Cascade 220 superwash from the flower sweater that I made earlier.

The color quality of the next 2 pictures is horrible, but you can get an idea of the construction. It was knit from the bottom up. First the body then the 2 sleeves. Then the stitches are knit across up to where the arm joins, arm stitches are knit onto the same needle then this is repeated for the second sleeve.

I kept knitting in the stripe pattern up to the top while decreasing. Then ends needed to be woven in and arm seams needed to be sewn up.

Also, the picco trim on the bottom and sleeves needed to be sewn. It started off looking like this:

Then changed to this:

Finally, a button band needed to be knit

and buttons attached.

My New Baby

For a long time I tried to stay away from weaving. I mean, I have plenty to keep me busy between knitting, crocheting and spinning. Eventually though, after reading all about looms and checking out pictures of other people's weaving I just couldn't help but ask for a loom for my birthday. I was so excited to receive my new 15" Schacht Cricket rigid heddle loom!  

I have already finished 2 scarves since I got the loom on Thursday. Weaving goes so much faster than knitting! The way it works is that every other piece of yarn goes through a slot or a hole (see pictures below). This way, when the heddle is in the up position the strands of yarn through the holes go up while the strands in the slot stay down. When the heddle is in the down position the exact opposite happens. Then you can just pass your horizontal strands (weft yarn) through the triangle (shed) that is made.

 

The first scarf I finished was with the yarn that came with the loom. The warp (long yarn) yarn was green and the weft (horizontal yarn) was purple.

  

The second one was with some left over acrylic yarn. The warp was both green and yellow and the weft was green.

 

The hardest part is trying to get the edges just right. If it's too loose you get a loop of yarn hanging off the edge and if it's too tight the edge of the scarf pulls in.

I think that this afternoon I'll start on a baby blanket. The plan is to make 2-3 panels and sew them together. Hopefully it turns out well!

Summer Flies

The latest pattern I have finished is a shawl called Summer Flies. It started as some pink Picco Accaurdi roving from Paradise Fibers. I spun it up then plied it. Unfortunately I forgot to take a before picture of the roving, but there were different shades of pink spread throughout the wool. Once spun it looked like this:

I have been wanting to make this shawl for a long time and I thought this yarn was the perfect color. I ended up adding a few extra pattern repeats to make up for the yarn being a lighter weight than the yarn suggested in the pattern.

As usual, blocking was like magic with this shawl. Before I blocked it, there were lots of curled up edges and it just wasn't very good-looking.

I was kind of excited that it was finally done and forgot to take pictures of the actual blocking process. Anyway, the shawl is done! Since it is called Summer Flies I thought it would be fun to get some pictures out in the sun. I have been waiting for the perfect day to take pictures. Today I  happened to notice that one of the trees in our apartment complex had bloomed. I decided to take advantage of this along with the fact that it is so sunny and warm outside today.

I asked my very kind husband to come outside with me, my camera, and the shawl and take some pictures. I can't decide which pictures to show so I'm just going to show you a bunch of them.

 

We also found a bunny out in the grass, but he wasn't so amused at the idea of having his picture taken...

Bigfoot

A little while ago my husband requested a pair of socks that weren't made from wool. (His feet are naturally warm, and wool socks are just too hot for him.) After looking around I found a perfect yarn for some socks. I chose Knitpicks Comfy Yarn in fingering weight which is 75% cotton and 25% acrylic. Cotton doesn't stretch like wool does, so the acrylic gives it that little bit of extra stretch. He picked out the Jalapeno colorway.

It's been a while since I have made socks for him and I always forget how much longer they take to make than socks for myself. Not to mention that his feet are extra wide, so I had to modify the pattern to make the feet wider.

I made them toe-up so I could try them on his feet as I went and so that I wouldn't have to worry about the possibility of running out of yarn by the time I got to the toe.

In the end, they seem to fit and he likes them. (Even after I made him put them on for pictures.) Yay!

From Sheep to Socks

Started with some wool and nylon.

Mixed 'em together.

Spun up some yarn.

Added some color.

Knit into socks.

Comfy feet! :)

Spring Toddler Sweater

Since it is not quite spring here and is in fact snowing outside right row I thought I'd better post something bright and flowery. I was requested to make a sweater for a 2-year-old. It needed to be lime green with pink and yellow flowers. I found a basic bottom-up pullover pattern called Cheeky. Then I found a flower motif in one of my knitting books to go around the bottom and a large flower to go in the middle of the front. I used Cascade 220 superwash yarn so that washing and drying would be super easy- just throw it in the washing machine and dryer. The sweater is knit entirely in the round without any seeming. Once the bottom of the sweater and the two sleeves are made, all of the stitches are brought together to make a large loop and then the top is decreased until you get to the neck.

I did not want to carry the strands of pink and yellow yarn around the body of the sweater which meant that there were about 50 million yarn ends to weave in when I was done.

 

But I think it was worth it since I really like how the flowers turned out.

 

After a nice wash and dry it came together pretty well, I think. Hopefully the new owner will agree. :)

It's D-O-N-E Done!

You saw the beginning of the sweater last post, but guess what? It's done! :) When I left off last time I had the back done and part of the front. Once the front was done, I used some scrap yarn to temporarily attach them so that I could try it on.

Seemed ok at this point, so I kept going with the sleeves.

Once all the pieces were done, it was time to start putting it together. The pattern has you use a 3 needle cast off to bind of the live stitches across both shoulders. Then you pick up all the stitches around the neck and start knitting the cowl. At this point everything was fine and I was ready to add the sleeves.

I used a stitch called the mattress stitch to attach the sleeves and also to seem from the wrist down to the waist. At this point everything still seemed fine. The pieces had all been blocked individually which meant that they were stretched out. Since this is a superwash yarn, the solution to the stretching is to put it through a cycle in the washer and dryer.

It came out of the dryer looking awesome except for one thing. The neck didn't stand up anymore. I took it on a ski trip over the weekend but the neck drove me crazy, and was entirely flat by the end of the trip. The neck was then taken apart and instead of trying to re-do it I decided to make a different neck.

I must have knit a new neck and ripped it out again at least 4 times. Finally I was happy with it, but when I tried it on

It didn't fit over my head.

I took out the last row and bound off again keeping the stitches as loose as I could.

Voila! It is so soft and cozy and I see many more sweaters in my knitting future.

Sweater

I have started a sweater for myself. Last time I made myself a sweater I was 11, and looked like this:

The patterns I'm using this time is here: Cabled Cowl Neck. Progress looks like this so far:

Back

Front

Apparently I seem to like this color for sweaters since I didn't even remember my first sweater was this color until after I bought the yarn for this one. There will be more pictures once it's done!

I have also been spinning.

Have a good week everyone! :)

Finally Finished

I was asked to make a baby set a long time ago. Then Christmas happened and I was so busy knitting presents that this project got put on the back burner. This is the first baby set that I have made that is entirely knit. The others that I have made have been crocheted. The reason for this is only that crochet is so much faster than knitting. In the end though, I love the look of the knit fabric so much more. First, I made the blanket. It is a super easy pattern, you just knit 1 row then K3, P3 across the next row for the entire length of the blanket with a few rows of plain knitting for the first and last few rows of the blanket. Then I put a white i-cord border around the outside.

 

Then the cardigan. This was knit in 3 pieces: the main section and the two sleeves. Once it was knit, the sides rolled in so much that I decided to pin it out and lightly steam it just to make it lay a little flatter.

Then, sewed together all the seams and attached 4 white buttons down the front.

The hat started with a simple ribbing in white, then I switched to blue and knit around until it was about 5 inches. I decreased and gathered up the top.

I thought the booties would be the easiest and fastest part, but I was wrong. I thought I had the right gauge, but the bootie came out big enough for a small child, too big for a baby. So I started over with smaller needles. The one on the left was knit 1st and the one on the right was second.

 

In the end, there is a baby set with two normal sized booties.