glamour shots to catch up

While I was out photographing my North Sea wrap yesterday, I decided to take advantage of the beautiful day and great lighting to take pictures of some knit pieces that I have finished since 2021 (and also a way better picture of my Shetland shawl than I had).

Shetland shawl August 2017 - June 2019. Literally one of my favorite things I've ever made and I never took very good photos of it. It's 6 feet square, so that's a challenge. It's folded in half here the way I've been wearing it. 

Phoenix started week 22 of pandemic, according to blog post titles (August 2020) and finished Aug 16 2021which is the day after I went back to work.

This is a pattern out of my Colorwork Shawls book by Melanie Berg and made with some beautifully hand dyed wool and silk yarn from a woman I met at Stitches West the one time I went. The stripes between the green and blue yarn didn't workout quite as well as I imagined, but the wash of color against the bright orange is still pretty and you can still see the interesting geometry of the sideways construction. 

Scarf of my own design Feb 20 - Mar 27 2022. Very cozy yarn from Monarch Knitting in Monterey. I can remember purposely choosing a combination of colors that I don't normally wear. 

Unlike many of the wool-based knits I make, this one feels good on my skin and doesn't seem to irritate it if I wear it a long time. It's extremely soft, and I wonder if I'd ever be brave enough to knit a sweater with it. 

This crochet blanket was a fun thing I made in April of 2022. I can't remember how, where, or why I got this yarn but I suspect the pattern may have been something from the label. 

I made the blanket shorter than was called for and got to play with making some wonderfully dense pompoms to add onto the ends using the rest of the yarn. It's a great blanket for the couch, and those pompoms never get old. 

Fractured is a cowl that Dave picked colors out for a while back on one of our trips down to Monterey. It's Brooklyn Tweed yarn from Monarch Knitting, and I finally cast it on this past year and worked on it sporadically from January to December.

I started it in January intending to have it done for his birthday in February, but it was slower going than I hoped. I blocked it out over the holidays and am amazed at how much everything evened out. It looks great and I'm hoping it suits his oceanside lifestyle.

holiday crafting

We were so lucky this holiday season to have my parents and nieces come stay with us for two weeks! Before we moved our trips involved a lot of going out and exploring the Peninsula and San Francisco in part because it's fun and also to be honest our place was small for guests. Now that we've moved further from the city and have more room, we had a lot of fun exploring the new town and local area as well as sticking around home to cook, craft, and putter around. It was marvelous! They left yesterday, but I've enjoyed looking back on some of the projects "the girls" got up to. 

First things first, Mom brought a kit to make a paper wreath for our French-ish bedroom. There was a lot of hot gluing involved, and Mom was an expert paper roller. The girls had fun trying on the cones as unicorns and seeing if we could put pom poms in them to make them ice cream cones instead. It turned out really well and is hanging in my craft room waiting for us to finish up our bedroom so it can find a good home. 

Oh, did I mention pom poms? We made a lot of pom poms. At first it was kind of just something fun to do with some scrap yarn I had. We even went out to Joann's to get some really fluffy yarn to make huge ones. We made long hangers on them and hung some from our chandelier in the dining room for a festive atmosphere. (Anthropologie, eat your heart out!) Then Mom and the girls pulled up some of their Pinterest ideas and showed me a bunch of pom pom wreaths. Well. That had to happen. 

Observant viewers will also see another project that I don't have great pictures of - unicorn ornaments! We had a lot of fun with glitter paint, sculpey clay, and hot glue to make ornaments that look like whimsical unicorn heads. And narwhals. And a kitten. They were well worth the effort. Back to the pom pom wreath. We spent a few minutes here and there over the days making pom poms until we thought we had enough to fill out a 16 inch styrofoam wreath. We've got sizes from about 5 inches all the way down to an inch and a half. I thought we'd hot glue them on, but instead we ended up using a combination of tying and pinning to get all the fluff balls fixed onto the wreath. It turned out looking super cute and is hanging up on my craft room wall where it makes me happy every day.

One of the last nights everyone was here, mom and daughter got to do a project together just the two of us. Mom had found a tutorial for these Danish stars and wanted to try making some. They take just four strips of 2.5" wide fabric to make and the only sewing required was to sew the strips in half longways so you had a thin strip with fabric print on both sides. Then essentially it was a folding game. We combined a few different prints I had into four stars, one for each crafting gal we had. 

When we were finished, Mom had the bright idea to hot glue a twine hanger into each of them so we could use them as ornaments. Mine quickly found its way to the tree. 

And of course, no trip is complete without a last minute project. This one finished literally minutes before everyone headed out the door to the airport. I wanted to make Mom a julekuler this year but wanted her to pick the pattern. I forgot until the last night - yikes!

Luckily, it only takes me a couple hours to make one at this point since I've made so many by now. Mom picked this pretty tree motif and I started it one evening and finished it off, stuffed it, and made a hanger the next morning. Phew! 

It was a wonderful holiday and end to/start to the year. 

Crossroads throw

I love these poofs. I attached gold pom poms to the edge of my mosaic throw and it was just what the project needed. The extra pop of color sets off the mosaic nicely and their texture and floppiness give it a whimsical finish. Because it is a crochet fabric it can tend to be a little bit stiff, but the weight of the pom poms on the edges help to get it to drape.

I ended up taking the eight pom poms and splitting them evenly down two sides of my mosaic square.  The diamond pattern gave me a handy guide to help with spacing, and I just tied them on with yarn pulled through the center of each ball. This evening I made some more pom poms in peach and a slightly smaller size (2.5") to consider adding in between the gold ones, but after attaching one side with some temporary knots I decided against it. I really like just the gold, and it was *gasp* just too much pom pom. 

Overall I enjoyed making it and learning this new crochet technique. The finished fabric looks super impressive and this was a perfect use of a self striping Caron cake. I like the slant rhyme to primary colors that I ended up with after adding the gold, and I think the navy was a great choice for a background color to contrast with all the peaches, pinks, and browns in the cake. 

I really like Dave's suggestion to use this as a lap throw. It isn't really a blanket but it covers my legs down to my ankles on the couch which is just enough to keep me cozy. I can't help but think that this would totally look cute thrown over the back of a llama. Maybe it's all the llama prints I've been seeing around lately... no llamas here, so I'll be keeping it for myself. 

Pattern: Southwestern Mosaic Cross Throw, free on Ravelry (my Ravelry page)

Yarn: Caron Cakes in 'Cinnamon Swirl', Loops and Threads Impeccable in 'Navy' and 'Gold'

Hook: US J (6 mm)

Size: about 36" square

pom pom progress

My pom pom makers finally came in the mail, and I spent an evening watching tennis matches and winding many yards of yarn. I thought about other ways of making pom poms like forks or cardboard, but when I went looking for these guys they aren't that expensive and seem like they make it easier. It takes a little bit of thinking to get the first one down given all the movable bits and pieces, but I got the hang of it in no time. I used hand quilting thread to tie them together, I'm hoping that will be strong enough to hold once they are attached. Quilting thread should be strong, right??

Turns out if you make big pom poms, you need more yarn! Of course that's true, but I didn't realize just how much yarn these 3 3/8" poms would eat up. From one ball of 277 yards I got 8 very satisfyingly poofy poms with some (not much) leftover yardage for attaching. I was hoping for 14 for 7 on each of two sides, but I'm going to start with these and see how I feel about it. I can always go get more gold yarn, or I have some peach I used in the last row of the mosaic that I could use for more. We shall see!