Playful Stripes In Grey

I always enjoy seeing my patterns done up in different yarns and colorways.

A while back an Icelandic magazine published my Playful Stripes pattern and photographed it in this combination of colors.

I would have never thought that grey would ever work with peach or green... but it totally does! I loved this combination so much that I asked my wonderful Ravelry friend, Yaena, to knit up another Playful Stripes sample for me using these colors together.

Aren't these colors surprisingly beautiful?

If you'd like to knit up a sweater just like this you will need

Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in these following colors.

[MC] Medium Grey #9

[CC1] Baby Green #3

[CC2] Soft Peach #5

[CC3] Off White #101

[CC4] Lilac #10

The pattern will specify how many you need of each skein for the size you want to make. The pattern can be found here.

I will be using this sample for a second trunk show display.

My first trunk show of samples is booked so far in advance now that I'm having another

set of samples knit up so that I can have 2 trunk shows traveling simultaneously.

This is a fun excuse for me to have my patterns knit up in different colorways to show some variety.

I think that one of the most fun things about this Playful Stripes pattern is picking out the colors.

Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino has such a great variety of beautiful colors to choose from. The possibilities are endless!

Another color combination that recently caught my attention was found on ravelry.com.

Click here to see. When I knit this sweater again, Id like to try these colors next. So cute!

You know what else is cute?

After the photo shoot, I caught Playful Stripes cuddling with Elijah the knitted elephant.

I quick snapped a picture while they weren't looking. :)

Butterflys, Bowls and an 80's Bright Bag.

Charity shop Bargain


Adorable little hand made crocheted butterfly's. These are actually purpose made fridge magnets and they where the equivalent of 50pence each. Now that's a bargain.

What & How to make
Yarn
Small magnet
Little pipe cleaner(called that in the UK fluffy bendy metal.)

The picture is very close up, so I think that if you wanted you could basically copy the pattern.

The wings are doubled(but I guess that could all be one piece and folded that way?).

The stitches are brought in using the pipe cleaner at the centre.? Maybe a little tricky.

(it would be a shame to pull one apart, but I won't rule it out)


SAAB 95


Rich new job earned a celebrating card, he is a huge SAAB fanatic(huge) and this was the perfect post card, a SAAB with the lady showing off her hand made lovely green cardigan.

Birthday Bowls



This is a salad bowl and the perfect little olive or dip bowl. It was recently my Birthday and I always like the buy something useful,(practical me) that will remind me of that time. So these are that!

I love pottery.

Rasmus liked this too, I didn't notice until uploading the pic that his big nose was in the picture.



Busy making posters


My teenage son graduates this week and so I have been busy making embarrassing posters, graduation is very big in Sweden.(not in UK) So here's my version, hand made, what else is there?

Not sure he will be that impressed...........

80's

A new chain stitch that I'm working on.

Mindless stitches

When your mind is just not in it (The knit) Crochet and knit is something I do daily
with out a thought.

Bags really are the best way to go. Quick easy and I guess they can be attached and made into a bigger bag or a bigger project or simply a little bag.

This is my 80's bag

I find that when it's a smaller piece, I seem to be more experimental in mixing my stitches.

If this bag where a cocktail it would be a Leg-warmer.

New and Improved Playful Stripes

Do you remember this sweater? My first garment design?

The sweater I accidentally made too big for my daughter at the time? Yea.. that one.

The Playful Stripes cardigan.

Well, I tried the sweater on my daughter again during this past winter

and it actually fits quite well this year!

She, at 4 years old, can finally now wear a size 3!

Now that the sweater fits well, I decided to rephotograph this piece and add the new and improved pictures to the pattern.

While I was at it I also decided to get the pattern layout redesigned...

then I figured that as long as I was having the entire pattern redone, a few numbers should be reworked as well.

One thing just led to another. :)

I'm happy to present to you the new and improved Playful Stripes pattern. The pattern is now beautifully redesigned (by a professional graphic designer) with original artwork and illustrations. There is a full sizing schematic now included which should prove very helpful, and there has also been some refinements made to the fit of the garment.

Here is the pattern information to those of you who are interested in knitting this design:

SIZE
3 months [6mos, 9mos, 12mos, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] (shown in size 3)

FINISHED MEASUREMENTS
Chest: 18 [19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28] inches ( 2 inches of positive ease)
Length: approx 9 [9.5, 10.5, 11.5, 12.5, 13.5, 14.5, 15.5, 16.5] inches after blocking

MATERIALS
[MC] Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino [55% Merino Wool, 33% Microfibre, 12% Cashmere; 137 yd/125m per 50g skein]; color: Off White #101; 2 [2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6] skeins
[CC1] color: Light Pink #601; 1 skein
[CC2] color: Chocolate #011; 1 skein
[CC3] color: Baby Blue #202; 1 skein
[CC4] color: Pea Green #503; 1 skein
1# 32-inch US #4/3.50mm circular needle
1# 24-inch US #4/3.50mm circular needle
1# 32-inch US #3/3.25mm circular needle
4 pieces of scrap yarn to hold underarm stitches, safety pin markers, and stitch holders
5 (5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7) Small buttons
Tapestry needle

GAUGE
24 sts/36 rows = 4" in stockinette stitch on size 4 needles

This really is a fun little sweater to make. It's knit from the bottom up in one piece and the striped yoke is so addicting! That part went so fast for me. I just wanted to keep adding one more color to see what it would look like.. it went by in a flash!

I certainly hope that you enjoy it too!

Karin's flower, my bag and a charity shop Sweep.

Karins flower and this weeks school knit cafe made my bag.........

I was attempting to make three little of my own flower pattern, when karin made this Ravelry version and it blew mine away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravelry

So here is a collaborative bag made by two knit cafe members. Lady Gaga, is in the background and still unfortunately on hold.

My own stitch and in three colours, the simple rectangle bag envelop method.

Purple

Coral pink

White, acrylic.

I added a piece of card to keep the shape, maybe a fabric snifter could be used here that's something new to look into.

My charity shop sweep.

20kr's (£2)

Charity and thrift shops are a real gem for the avid knitter/crocheter. Pick a regulars one, so you know where to look, ask if you can not find.

(Easy, cheap and available!)

Mine, I am pretty impressed with, very rarely they have noting, from yarn to needles and hooks, always something. But today an over load.

40kr (£4)

The bargain of the day...........

80kr (£8) at 10 balls of rag.

I brought two lots of this, as I felt that new and packaged
was a complete bargain.;-)

All the blues...........

Yet more doily's , yes I can never have enough..........

10krs

Pan stand and a doily.

Art to follow;-)

our winner

Thanks to all of you who entered the dutch oven

giveaway sponsored by CSN Stores.

I loved reading your comments and now

have many great ideas for using

my dutch oven.

Our winner was chosen at random...

Search RANDOM.ORG

True Random Number ServiceRandom Integer Generator

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111

Timestamp: 2010-05-21 23:10:55 UTC

...and is Manitoulin Girl.
Carmen, Congratulations!

ManitoulinGirl said... "I would absolutely love to try making that bread - looks fabulous. I make a lot of baked beans and also Coq au vin in the cooler weather.

Thanks for hosting another giveaway."  Carmen

{Carmen, please e-mail me with your contact information and mailing address ~ thanks.}

in the garden & my flea market table

In the garden today...

the roses have bloomed by the fish pond.

The resident frog was hanging out in the sunshine.

A little bird seems to be making his home in our small souvenir-from-Maine bird house.

And, my little painted table has found a spot on the deck by the glider.

I just sanded the top to remove the dried on paint spills, and then gave it a few coats of wax.

I couldn't have asked for nicer weather today in which to enjoy it!

Fixing Mistakes in Colorwork

There are two ways to fix mistakes in colorwork other than frogging back until the mistake and starting to knit over again.

The first way is knit to the exact column where you see the error and purposely drop stitches until you get to the mistake. That's the easy part - the hard part is making sure you pick up THE RIGHT FLOAT as you are picking up the dropped yarns again. For instance if your mistake is 4 rows down and you're knitting with 2 colors per row there will be 8 strands of yarn and you'll only use 4 of them when picking up the stitches again. I'll get photos of this process soon - it really is a challenge to get it right.

I use basic duplicate stitch to fix colorwork mistakes that I notice long after the possibility of dropping stitches is over. That's what happened with the Christmas Bells mittens - I actually didn't even notice the mistakes until I looked at a photograph of the mittens.

So here I goofed and knit a "U" instead of an "O".

I never anchor the yarn by weaving in the ends before I start duplicate stitching - instead I wait until after I'm done to secure both ends. Usually to start I just thread the needle and insert it from the outside several inches from the spot I'm fixing. That way I can use both ends to adjust the tension after I'm done with the duplicate stitch so it looks its best.

The yarn starts from under the stitch to be fixed and goes around just like the original knit stitch. I always do duplicate stitch from right to left, from bottom to top. It looks much neater when you always do it in the same direction.

Fixed.

Knitting Nanna's and getting older........

Knitted By Nanny

Shreddie's a cereal advert, I saw this when I was in England and have only just gotten to research it........Ding dong (very funny)

http://www.tellyads.com/show_movie_miss.php?filename=TA3698





This is a tiny picture/all I could find of a knitted Shreddie.(look close)

And the funny thing was that as I child I used to think how do they knit them together?

As Shreddie's if you do not know are delicate little grids of cereal.

NOW I KNOW..........Knitted


Shawl number two.


Naughty dogs and boardrooms.....Boredom (spell check)

I'm just not concentrating on life.......or my big projects or even my Uni work..........

Why?

It could be that.........

My friend is in Labour as I type and that's really made my concentration be completely off. (Gemma;-)

Another factor

My birthday was this week............actually on the due date of above baby that simply did not want to share my day!

So it's that time again change my 36 to 37!
(three years to 40!)
Oj oj oj

Or the fact that I leave the country by the end of June.

So when I finished easy odds and ends shawl number two and went to find my camera to document that fact. Two minutes I left the room, enough time for Rasmus to climb on the sofa (a place that he is not really aloud;(bossy Rich) and curl up and comfortably fall asleep.

Now this made me laugh, how cute he really appreciates my work;-).

Stitches up close.

And again as for shawl one, I have made this shawl using six or so strands. All different shapes and sizes of yarns and on a 16mm hook.

Easy crochets it really is so fast to complete.

My favourite card.

A Knitted Happy Birthday, reminded me of South Africa.

I just loved it, thanks Carmen.

Words of wisdom, or should I say pearls/purls of wisdom.

This weeks Metro

It's Bjork in yet another madly crocheted creation?
I have know idea who it has been created by.................
I'll get to that this week, I just wanted to share it.

It was my birthday so I was aloud a little yarn splash.
(its only acrylic no bank breaker)

Funny thing the bright look like I was inspired by Bjork. But actually I brought the wool the day before the metro (Strange)

I figured whist my brains mush, just keep it simple. Marie Antoinette and lady Ga-ga on hold.

Make some basic......

Not a lot of thinking........

Or brain matter required..........

BAGS

Watch this space


The B'S

Burgundy based and the Bright's.