giant julekuler

Made for Dave and the cats, who now live in Santa Cruz. The moose pattern has been his favorite, and we affectionately call Laker "moose" so it felt especially appropriate. Instead of the usual size, I used some chunky yarn leftover from a pair of hats we've got and some vampire-slaying needles. It turned out looking great, I should keep that in mind for more. 

 

it’s julekuler season again

It’s just after my birthday, so you know what that means - julekuler season is upon us! I got this book for my birthday a few years ago and have enjoyed making a few baubles a year since then. This year is no different. These two I started in August when I just couldn’t resist the siren call of this book on the shelf. Now that the tree is up, it’s REALLY time!

I’m still working off the same yarn I’ve used before; I keep it in it’s own little project bag so I’m ready to go whenever the fancy strikes. This year I had a rocking horse to make for a friend who is moving (who also happens to have a black horse... not a coincidence), and I decided to make patterns that I’ve enjoyed previously.

These knit up pretty quick, in a few hours, but I find that the quickest and most fun ones to make don’t have long color runs requiring a lot of twisting. The horse is an exception because well it’s a horse. But other than that I really enjoy the patterns with a lot of... pattern? Whatever the right word is, here’s a few that are done already.

julekulers begun

Soooo week 23 post quarantine went by in a flurry of anxiety because of the wildfires. Ick. Not much of anything except reading CalFire updates, worrying, and more worrying was happening until just a couple days ago. We finally found a little bit of comfort the last few days in both the fact that the fires are getting more under control and (for me) in knitting these little guys. 

Julekulers are definitely comfort knitting! They’re quick and fun, and I really enjoy reading the little blurbs about the different patterns. I’m not sure how many of these will get made this year, but I’ve got a good start already. I’ve been mostly browsing through the book looking for patterns I haven’t made yet. I’m finding that I enjoy the ones where there isn’t as much behind the scenes twisting of the yarns. The red and white one had short enough color runs in each row that there was NO twisting. It went much faster and I was much less frustrated by tangled yarn. I would like to try some in chunkier yarn and in leftover colors that aren’t necessarily holiday related, too. I think they would look quite pretty as well. For now I’m sticking with holiday baubles for gifting. Can’t wait until I have a bowlful. 

week four

Week four of sheltering in place is in the books. We had a video Easter dinner with some friends of ours up the peninsula, so that was nice. It's amazing what a difference the video chatting makes vs talking on the phone! It's also a way for whole groups of people to feel like our rooms are somewhat connected. In the meantime, I finished up my last three patches of Arne & Carlos's knit along last night, steamed them this morning. 

I love the way the pink and navy lily came out, the contrast is perfect. And the vine block in the middle with the two greens actually looks pretty good from this distance. Annoyingly despite being very different colors in balls next to each other they started to feel blended in as I knit, especially with this pixelated design. The teddy bear is not my favorite block, but he turned out pretty cute in gray. I guess he's more of a polar bear. Below is my collection of patches from the last month, the first four weeks of these strange times of social distancing and face masks. I used a part of every single partial skein/scrap of fingering yarn I had in my stash except two. One of those was not enough to do anything with and the other was very like another green I'd already used. 

It's been fun to have these to distract this last little while but I'm ready to move on and focus on my sweater for a bit. I'm looking forward to seeing their directions on how to sew these up and make them into a pillow, because I'm not sure I "get" it yet. In my mind I'm seeing stretchy seams and stuffing coming out the knitting, but I know I must be wrong! In the meantime I suppose I'll tackle weaving in all those ends. 

week three

The third week of our sheltering in place and the third week of the knit along are both in the books. Here are my five patches from this week. I tried again to use a variegated yarn and failed royally, but the subtle star is still kind of fun. The rest of the week's color combinations went a little smoother. I really like the blue and green combo in the butterfly block, but I definitely lost at yarn chicken. Serendipitously it was near a decent part of the top wing for a color change so I stuck with it and just did the rest of it in yellow. We'll call it a design feature! I love them all. 

It's a little strange to think that we as a county are approaching what would have been the end of our original shelter in place order tomorrow. Three weeks ago it seemed unthinkable that we'd be out of commission for almost a month. Now we are looking at more of the same through the beginning of May and it's amazing how quickly we've adapted our thinking. Now instead of unthinkable it seems like "oh that's a good idea". The rhythm of life is actually starting to take shape into something I am rather enjoying. To be clear, not the reason nor the requirement, and it's not all sunshine and roses, but some of the unintended consequences on our lives can be perceived positively - the slower mornings and lack of a sunrise commute; having Dave working from home; leaving behind what felt like a rat race most days. Nowadays the rats are strolling rather than racing. What is most worrisome to me, aside from the obvious hope that everyone maintain their health, is that this whole event will definitely have a global impact in many ways both predictable and not. We still have our health and the ability to work from home, even if it's less work than usual, so for now I will count ourselves lucky and hope very hard for minimized impacts and speedy recovery for those less lucky. 

I have been ruminating on these and many other thoughts while working on this kaleidoscope of patches the last three weeks. This knit along, while it may seem frivolous, has given me a good space to think on what is going on while allowing me to put it down for the rest of the hours of the day. I'm inclined to be a worrier, and it is nice to have a tool to help put a box around the amount of time I can spend thinking over things I cannot control. That said, I have also been enjoying the color play and creative process. Looking over the photo of all the patches I am enjoying the way they all look together while also 100% knowing that I wouldn't have ever thought to throw this many different colors into one project. Just three more patches to go before pillow assembly.

inversions

Chunky yarn is great. Hats are great. Hat's made with chunky yarn? A knitter's addiction. The last couple evenings I took a break from tiny yarn and tiny color work patches to try out yet another Arne & Carlos pattern, this Norwegian color work hat. It's from their New Nordic collection with Rowan, and I have to say it was so fun I did it twice!

I jest. Actually, when Dave and I went to Monterey one of the last couple times we visited a yarn store and he bought me this pretty chunky yarn with the request "can you make me one of those hats Arne makes?" (he may have watched more than a few YouTube videos with me...) How can a girl say no? His second request was that I make one in inverse colors so we could match. I married a good one! 

I'm pretty proud of my tension on these, the floats on the back also look superb. If I had to do it over again I'd probably go up a needle size. I must knit somewhat tightly? They fit, but I did try to wet block Dave's to get it to relax a little bit more. That worked but it's taking forever to dry! Also, the red yarn bled a LOT. I didn't want my white one to get red stains on it, so I decided not to block. I'm sure it will grow over time like the other hats I've made. Dave also made that point ("well, they don't get any smaller with wear, dear") 

It's not exactly winter here. In fact, Spring is in full swing in our garden with flowers and leaves popping out everywhere. We've had several salads and meals of kale from our veggie garden, too. But! These hats were too cute and too fun to wait until winter again. You never know, maybe we will have another cold snap and then we can be "that couple" when we go out. Even with social distancing folks will know we are a pair. 

week two

The second week of quarantine, and the knit along with Arne & Carlos, has come and gone. I find myself getting a lot of little chores done at home. It seems there are no excuses anymore! Not to say that it's all been productive and full of accomplishments; there have been a fair share of hours sitting on the couch with the cats trying to stop reading the increasingly worrisome news online and plenty of time on the phone with friends and family. The higher frequency of phone calls especially seems to be a nice side effect of the strange times. 

Most days I get my patch done, sometimes I don't and then I catch up with a couple the next day. The ones in the photo above are steam blocked, which worked really well instead of wet blocking (the colors didn't run at all) and had the wonderful effect of evening out some of the wonkier stitches. A couple of the ones I wasn't super happy with because the contrast with the variegated yarns wasn't great improved a bit upon being tamed with the steam. They still aren't perfect, but I like them all. 

It turns out we will be making a cushion! I mean, folks are making whatever they want at this point, but A&C have set out with a cushion in mind and I'm curious to know how they will approach the construction, so a cushion these will be. This green and gray vine patch is the last of the nine for side number one. They have decided to continue the knit along for two more weeks beyond their required two weeks of quarantine, so there will be nine more patches for the second side. Mine are small because I'm using fingering weight yarn so I will have to see if they make a decent pillow size or if I should make more patches for each side. Not sure what I'll do yet. 

I could of course just use all 18 patches on one side, but there's this. In a clever nod to the isolation protocol, the "Love" patch is intended for one side and this "Hug Me Later" patch is meant for the other. So when we're all done with this mess, we can all love each other and stop forgoing hugs! I enjoy the tongue in cheek nature of that design feature very much. 

quarantine knit along

After traveling during the ramp up of the COVID-19 epidemic, Arne and Carlos, wonderful people that they are, have started a mystery knit along while they are quarantined at home. Their daily podcasts are a nice diversion (as their videos always are) and they have generously shared a pattern each day for color work patches. The intent is for this to go on for two weeks, the length of their quarantine, and I just finished the last patch from week 1 last night. They suggest using dk weight yarn, but I've got way more fingering weight scraps so my patches are turning out as miniatures. This is a fun no-rules creative exercise in an otherwise trying time.

Our county's shelter-in-place order took effect on St. Patrick's Day, so that's when I started my first patch, choosing festive greens. Similar to the embroidery hoop I just finished, this is a really nice skill building exercise. I'm learning how to do flat color work, which seems to me much harder than working in the round even though it shouldn't be. Maybe it's all the purling, who knows. It is getting easier though. I'm enjoying these small squares so much think I might even start swatching for projects! Hah. Maybe not. Let's not go overboard.

I'm also getting to practice more color combination skills. Each patch takes just a couple of hours and then it's on to the next, so getting to pick out new pairs comes much faster than it would if these were larger color work projects like shawls or sweaters. I'm learning what works and what doesn't in terms of value and variegated skeins for charted patterns, that's for sure. Sometimes these speckled and variegated yarns work up in surprising ways! The green and pink yarns above seemed to be a great pair while sitting next to each other but are maybe a little too close in value to provide the contrast needed to make the pattern pop. The one next to it worked out much better. I like them all, to be sure, but it's nice to note. Arne had a wonderful point - pick a couple of colors from your stash and you will probably love them in combination because you loved each color and bought the yarn in the first place - and I find that to be true.

The last block of the week, Love, was very fun. I took a couple of ocean inspired colors and worked it up last night. I'm very pleased. Looking forward to the next week of patches, though I wish the reason for the KAL did not exist. Everyone is taking things one day at a time so far and thankfully I get to include these fun little knits as part of my day. 

Julekuler 2019

I've been busy making little potato chip knitting projects (i.e. julekuler) among the other crafty things that have been happening lately. These are great things to sit down to a football game with, and there's lots of that going around this time of year! This is the second year of julekuler knitting from the Arne and Carlos book Dave got me last year, and it's just as fun this time around as it was the first.

The patterns above are: Bird on Branch, Greek Cross, Xs and Os version 1, Hearts, Secret Rose, and Handcraft Border from the book. I wanted to try out some of the patterns that had lots of cross/diamond-like patterning to them. I think those are my favorite type of designs. And of course, the bird I made in red as a cardinal, in my mind at least. I miss hearing their chirps since we don't have them out here in California. 

The ball below is a very special one I made for Andrea, who is a puppy raiser for an organization that pairs service dogs with veterans and autistic children. Elwood was a black lab she had for almost two years and is now paired up with a teenage boy helping him through life. He was a wonderful dog and it is so rewarding knowing he has a job at last! I found this paw chart online and adapted it for the julekuler pattern. If I had to do it over again, I'd leave the toes all black rather than trying to checker them, but this one looks cute too. 

They were all steamed, stuffed, and finished this afternoon. Some may be destined to be gifts, but the majority we will keep and grow our collection year over year!

it's that time again

It's heeeeeere! Julekuler knitting season is once again upon us and I'm starting up with gusto. I love knitting up these little guys - instant gratification that can be finished in just a few hours and there are so many different patterns in this book to keep things interesting. 

I've already gotten a few traditional designs knitted up, and I experimented with a three-color puppy paw. If you can find a chart of something online or set a design into graph paper yourself, then you can stick it on a julekuler. 

I'm a big believer in leaving November for my birthday and Thanksgiving rather than getting on the Christmas train early, but for these I make an exception. Onward!

mandarin votter

Vacations are for knitting! This is Dave's happy face when I finished the second thumb and his mittens were all but complete. Worth every stitch. 

I started these just a few days before we went to visit his folks for the holidays and ended up taking them with me to work on while there. Not airplane knitting, but definitely couch knitting. (Maybe someday I'll want to do serious color work on a plane, but I'm not there yet.) I finished them a couple days before we left for home.

This is another wonderful pattern from Arne and Carlos in their book Favorite Designs that Dave got me for my birthday. I've had an A&C end to the year for sure! They are called Akle Mittens and use a diamond motif found on traditional tapestries hung in Norwegian homes (or so the book tells me). The pattern says they are sized 'for women and girls', but since finished measurements were also listed, I ended up making the girls size for Dave. These would fit me too. Maybe they like their mittens very large? Or they have large hands? Regardless. These fit. 

I used the same leftovers from the hat I made for Dave in October plus some white I had as one more accent color and the blue I bought last month for the background. I really like that blue, especially with these colors. I did not end up using up any of these yarns so I added one more leftover to the stash, but I still think this was a marvelous stash buster project as I had all but one of the yarns already handy and ended up with these fabulous mittens. In the balance there is likely less overall yarn in the stash. 

There were, as I told Dave this morning with yarn needle in hand, approximately 35,000 ends to weave in. But I ripped off the proverbial BandAid and sat down to do it last night as soon as we finished unpacking. I managed to finish one mitten before declaring defeat and heading to bed. The second got finished before breakfast. Just look at how satisfyingly neat the insides look. The double thickness of wool will make these especially warm. 

The knitting went fairly quickly because, unlike most of the Christmas balls I've been working on, there was no float twisting required. Since the floats are relatively short the way it is designed, I could just set up with one yarn on each index finger and knit away. In that way I think this pattern is actually a really nice one to start learning stranded knitting. 

Mandarin Votter is Norwegian for Tangerine Mittens, to go along with the Tangerine hat. Of course, since these are some of Dave's favorite colors these mittens will go with several of his other hats and scarves as well. For blocking I did a quick press with a hot iron and a damp cloth around the mittens. These are comfortably snug right now so I didn't want to stretch them out anymore like I did the stranded mittens I made for myself. In this case I think they will loosen a little bit with use to be perfect. 

It is no exaggeration to say that these were one of my favorite knitting projects ever. I love the geometric design, making them was relatively easy (it's always hard for me to do thumbs), and they worked up fast. VERY satisfied.

Pattern: Akle Mittens from Arne and Carlos Favorite Designs book (my Ravelry page)
Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca in 'Barley', 'Grove Mix', and 'Persimmon', Patons North America Classic Wool in 'Winter White', and Cascade 220 Heathers in 'Blue'
Needles: US 2.5 and US 4 dpns

jingle all the way

Well here is the answer to "what did she do with all of those Christmas balls???" Door hangings! (The deer head stayed at home with us but was also a cute place to take these pictures as well as where we hung ours this year).

I found the large bells at the beginning of the holiday season and snapped up a few with these in mind. Putting it all together was relatively simple; it just involved cutting some decorative twine, some square knots, and deciding the right relative length at which to hang everything. I thought there were hoops at the bottom of the bell too, but turns out I was wrong. Luckily stringing the twine through the bottom of the bell the way I have it doesn't affect the ringing at all.

First, the one we kept: Moose, Christmas Stocking, Squirrel

One for my brother's family: Decorating the Tree, New Snow, Hospitality

One for my parents: Halling Border, Mittens, Dovre

One for Dave's parents: Selbu, Christmas Bells, Poinsettia

I love the way these turned out, and I had so much fun making them. I am really glad I managed to make something for everyone this holiday. I love the handmade decorations and ornaments I have and enjoy remembering their makers every year when we deck our halls at home.

more barn gifts

And what to my wondering eyes should appear... more Christmas balls! And these are horse themed for barn friends. After getting gifts for my family squared away, I had a few days before leaving on our trip to Kentucky tomorrow to get some fun ornaments done for horse people. 

This one is for someone who really likes unicorns. I searched around online and pretty easily found a chart for a knitted unicorn head and made just a couple of modifications, moving a stitch here or there in order to make it work for the size space I had to work with. Not bad!

This second one is for a woman I recently got to know who has also just gotten herself a new horse! Lucky lady. He is black and sweet and lovely, so I thought this rocking horse would be appropriate in black and white. The pattern is another out of the 55 Christmas Balls to Knit book which says the rocking horse is a symbol of good luck and prosperity - something I certainly wish for the two of them!

This last one is another case where I found a chart online and adapted it for the ball pattern. This guy had columns taken out in the belly region to shorten his body and I changed his head a little bit too. I am actually really pleased with the black on red look. It's actually quite elegant looking and the contrast is really strong, something I wondered about. 

I'm super happy with how these turned out, and everyone really enjoyed receiving them. I think they are really great gifts, and now I know they can be hyper-personalized if needed! It was so easy. I suspect some more of these horse themed baubles may be coming along in the new year...