Prepare to DYE!

I had one heck of a good weekend. On Saturday, I spent my morning at Windy Hill Alpaca Farm taking a natural dyeing class called, "Prepare to Dye!". I loved it, and not only because of the pun in the class title. Ryan surprised me by finding this class all on his own and booking it for me. One of the best surprises ever! He knows me well.

My favorite dye we practiced Saturday was definitely mint [2 right skeins]. We dyed small skeins of alpaca yarn that started off as white/cream. I just love how the mint turned into a sage-y green color. I learned a lot, and am excited to experiment with other natural dyes - I'm even going to give dyeing with wine a whirl!

 

Since the class was on an alpaca farm, I naturally walked around and saw a bunch of alpacas. Including this 1-day old baby alpaca! 

I ended the day going to my sister's place with Ryan to babysit our nephew and niece. We had some serious bubble time.

Hannah was obsessed with blowing bubbles. Obsessed I tell you.

What a glorious weekend!

New Yarn

A couple weekends ago I ventured all over LA to participate in the LA Yarn Crawl with my fellow knitters. It was a blast and I came away with some awesome yarn. I did break my rule of buying yarn without a pattern to go with it...but I'm sure I'll come up with something for these lovely colors. They're Borecco's Maya yarn - a lightweight cotton and alpaca blend, and I'm in love.

I'm making another cowl pattern to knit with this blue and yellow yarn - it will be my Swedish cowl. :) When I'm finished I'll share the pattern with you all.

I'm usually not a big meme fan, but I found this one rather appropriate since I came back from the Yarn Crawl with 7 skeins of yarn and 2 bunches of roving...

Happy knitting, everyone!

New Wool

Back when Ryan and I went to Arizona, I scored this awesome raw wool from Tempe Yarn & Fiber. It was a great shop, I highly recommend it if you live in the area and are into yarn and/or roving.

What sold me was the cute picture of the lamb it came from! Look at that cute lamb face!

I love it because it has some natural curl to it, which I think will make for some super cute tomte beards. They were a big seller at last year's Lucia fair, so I hope not to run out this year. I also am hoping to design a Lucia for this year's fair. Either needle felted or a combination of mediums - wish me luck!

Have a wonderful day!

Yarn wrapped bottles

Yesterday I decided to go through some of my Pinterest boards and actually make one of the things I've been pinning.  I love Pinterest, but I find that it can be a little bit of an overload (for me) at times.  There are so many cute things that I "pin" then never go back to make it.  

So as I was perusing my pins yesterday I came across these yarn-wrapped bottles.  It's quite self explanatory.  Take leftover yarn and wrap it around an empty (clean) bottle.  I used a little hot glue here and there to help keep the yarn from slipping.  And now I have a yarn bottle ready to decorate a bookshelf or hold a flower or two.

Here is the original yarn wrapped bottle post.  They did 6 in solid colors and it looks pretty sweet.  

Hope you are having a great week! Happy Wednesday! 

Baby blanket

Despite the hot weather here in SoCal last week, I've been knitting up a storm.  I just started  knitting this baby blanket for my sister - woo!

I don't think I've shared the news yet here, but one of my sister's (I have 3) is expecting again! Wooooo! I love being an aunt!  It's like the best of both worlds.  You get to hang out and love a cute little kiddo but still get a full nights sleep.  I love my sleep. A lot.

That being said, I just started this chevron baby blanket pattern.  I'm using a pattern from Purl Bee (love their patterns and blog!) and it's coming along rather quickly.  It's knit on size 11 circular needles and is a relatively simple pattern if you're a beginner knitter.  I highly recommend it!  

It's going to be striped white, light gray, and light green.  I bought a skein of yellow too, but can't decide if I like it combined with the green...we'll see what happens there.  They aren't finding out the sex of the baby so I am trying to keep it to neutral colors.

In other news, Ryan just has 1 more month of school!!!!  Yay!!! : D

New knits and a Scandinavian fest

If you live in the Los Angeles area and are interested in Scandinavian things (or even if you just like a good cup of cofffee), you should come check out the Scandinavian Festival taking place at Cal Lutheran University this upcoming weekend, April 14 and 15.  Ryan and I, along with a few fellow Scandinavians, will be checking it out Sunday afternoon.  And I think it's safe to say tha Ryan and I are equally excited to see the ABBA Girlz perform.  :)

I will post pictures sometime next week and let you non-LA folk know how it went.

Unrelated to the upcoming festival, I've been working on a new knitting project this week:

I'm trying out a new stitch I haven't used before, the zig zag.  I think it's pretty fun, but in retrospect wish I had used a solid color so you could see the design better.  Alas, next time.

I started knitting the swatch without a specific thing in mind and now that it's coming along I think I may make it into a pillow? Maybe...we'll see.  I used a yarn combo of the Vanna's Glamour and a gray rayon blend.  I really love grays and yellows together.

When I knit, I often listen to random music on Spotify.  Recently I've been a little obsessed with this band, the Ditty Bops, and this song, "Sister Kate".  It's fantastic! However, I don't believe the video does the song justice.  I highly recommend you give them a listen on Spotify.  And the title of their most recent album cracks me up: Jelly for President: Yes we Jam! (Ha!)

Well, that's about all I have for today.  Hope you all have a lovely weekend! 

Knitting from the 50's

During a recent trip to Micheal's, my eye caught a new line of yarn: Vanna's Glamour.  Apparantly Vanna White is now endorsing yarn.  Naturally, I bought a skein in honor of my oldest sister who is obsessed loves  Wheel of Fortune, or as she likes to call it - "the Wheel".

The yarn is a yellowish-mustard color, for some reason it looks quite dark in the picture below.  I wasn't sure what to knit at first, and I can't say I have an exact idea of what I'm making, but I'm fiddling around with what will perhaps turn into a cowl?  I found a new stitch in a 1950's McCall's Knitting book called the "easy lace knit stitch" and am giving it go!

I acquired three of these fabulous McCalls Knitting magazine-books from the 50's from an older lady from my church back in Michigan about 10 years ago.  She also gave me her stash of knitting needles (which quadrupled my then amount of knitting needles) and some yarn.  I guess you could say that's when my knitting obsession kicked in.

  

And below is the new stitch I'm trying out, easy lace pattern.  And there are tons of classic pictures and poses in this book.

Remember when your soccer coach would wear a hand-knit cardigan?  Yeah, me either.  But apparently they did.

And I'm seriously considering making these for me and Ryan.   They're pretty spectacular.  And they just look so happy wearing them.

But the picture that takes the cake is definitely this squirelly-looking man.  The poses that all of the models make in the book are priceless.  But there's something about this guy that just cracks me up.  I'm laughing at him right now actually. Ha.

Here's to knitting up a storm!

New knit cowl for "winter"

Some of you may know that while I currently reside here in LA, I was born and raised in Michigan. Home of freezing winters and snowstorms galore. I then moved to Chicago, which also has its fair share of blizzards and frost, and then I finally wised up and moved to the West coast where sunshine abounds.

That being said, you'd think that a midwestern girl like me wouldn't be getting cold here in LA when it drops below 70. I've completely lost my edge, I get cold so easily now. It doesn't help that our apartment doesn't even have heat yet! Ryan and I were going to try to make it through the LA "winter" without having to turn on our gas (so we can have heat), but we finally caved and the gas man is making his way out to turn on our gas....in another 2 weeks!?! So, until then, we will be under mountains of blankets and thinking of warm places. And just so you don't think I'm completely crazy and can't hack the cold, it's been crazy cold for LA this past week - Ryan even had frost on his car last week!?

All that to say that I have been knitting like crazy. Because I knit when I'm cold. And I came up with my own pattern for an LA "winter" cowl. And I want to share the said pattern with everyone and anyone who wants to make their own.

You will need:

size 13 circular needles

1 skein worsted weight yarn (I used a nylon/acrylic blend)

The Pattern

Cast on 165 stitches* (no gauge for this pattern, it doesn't really matter)

Row 1: Work in knit stitch for first 4 rows (4)

Row 5: Purl 3 rows (7)

Rows 8-28: Repeat rows 1-7, 3 times

Row 29: Knit last 3 rows. Cast off.

*Be very careful not to twist your stitches when connecting them on the circular needles. I may or may not have worked 24 rows before realizing mine were twisted. Oops.

Because it is knit on such large needles, you can wrap it around up to 3 times.

Wear your new cowl, or give as a gift!

(Photo credits: Ryan, my funny hubby who can always make me laugh.)

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A Christmas Hat

I just finished knitting this Christmas stocking cap for my little nephew. I have yet to have him try it on, so I hope it fits!

I used an alpaca wool blend and it will certainly keep his little head warm! I'm knitting him one more before he heads to the midwest for Thanksgiving/Christmas and it will definitely be more Scandinavian looking. I'll try to get a picture of him modeling them both when they're finished!

Hand-spun yarn

As I was organizing some bags of craft supplies, I came across a few older crafts I haven't done in a while, like these balls of hand-spun yarn. I began spinning in college and was instantly hooked. I used a drop-spindle, and while it takes quite a while to get a decent amount of yarn spun, it is so addicting!

These are just a few of the balls I completed. I only ever knitted a hat from the yarn I spun, but would love to do a bigger project with all hand-spun yarn. I love multi-step projects. Buying the wool (one day I'd love to have my own sheep for wool!), spinning the wool, winding into balls, choosing a pattern, knitting the said pattern and then wearing (or gifting) the final product!

My next knitting project will be knitted Christmas stockings for me and Ryan's first Christmas!