Ta-Da!!

Hello Knitters,

I finally finished my lacy anklets!! I did the end of the edging this morning, and now they are off my needles. What a HUGE relief! I had no idea they were weighing on me so much, but now that they are done I feel tons better. It's not that I don't like them, I just for some reason lost interest in them when I was done the first one, but I wanted to stick to my goal of not knitting anything else until I was finished the pair, and that was a lot harder than I anticipated. I'm just so glad to have them done and can't wait to begin knitting something new.


I didn't get much sewing done while I was trying to complete the socks, but a couple of days ago I made the "Summer Nightie" from One-Yard Wonders. The fabric I used was from my Fabricland-sale-stash. It's very light and airy, and I've been enjoying wearing it these last few nights since It's been a bit warm. It was a super fast project and I finished it all in one day.

Yesterday afternoon I started working on a bag from the One-Yard Wonder's book, but I didn't get very far. I spent about an hour working on it though and I hope to get back to it today.

Well, I don't have much else to report, so I think I will go and start looking for my next project. Have a great afternoon everyone!

Happy Knitting!!

Happy Belated Canada Day!!

Hello Knitters,

I know I said I was going to be back on Wednesday with a picture of me in my dress I sewed, but you know what, I forgot my camera at home when we went to the graduation! My Aunt did get a picture of me, so hopefully I can get a copy from her and share it with you soon. I wanted to write on Wednesday and update you all, but I wasn't feeling very well, so I just laid low and relaxed. Yesterday was super busy, I baked bread and worked on various things and before I knew it the day was done! So here I am today :-) Ready to share a few projects.

First off, last Sunday after I finished my Seaside socks, I began another pair of socks using Knit Picks Felici Fingering weight in Positively Pink. I'm using a pattern written for a child's sock and adjusting it to fit my feet. I really liked the design and wanted to have a pair of my own! So far it's working out. I've gotten to where I'm about to start the heel. These are anklets so I can wear them even on warmer days. Here's a picture:



The next thing I wanted to show you all is the finished project bags for the giveaway winners. They are now all ready to go. I'm hoping to mail them out on Monday. I thought it best to wait till after the holidays to send them out.

And last, but certainly not least is my most current project. It is a Wrap-Me-Up Puppy from Itty Bitty Toys. I'm making it for a special someone and will reveal more once it's complete. I started this on Wednesday, but soon realized I forgot my fiberfill at home last week, so this evening my sister and I are going to Fabricland to look for wedding related material, and I thought I'd pick up a bag while there so I can get this little one finished soon. I also hope we get a chance to go to Walmart so I can pick up a ball of cotton yarn to make the blanket with since I don't have any colours that I want for it here. My goal is to have this done by the end of the weekend.

Yesterday was Canada Day here. We didn't do anything exciting, but I'm hoping that on the weekend we will be able to have some sort of a celebration. I'm thinking of combining Canada Day with the Fourth of July since part of my Dad's family lives in the States and I feel like I have a small little bit of American on the inside of me :-)

I hope everyone is having a lovely start to the long weekend. Take care to be safe and enjoy the festivities!!

Happy Knitting!!

Chats and Socks

Good Morning Knitters,

How is everyone doing this lovely day? It's quite windy here but other than that, it's sunny and beautiful. My Mom is coming up today and we're going to go out shopping for a bit this afternoon. Tonight is my cousin Matthew's high school graduation. I started sewing myself a dress for the occasion (can't remember if I mentioned that or not) and it's almost done. I just need a little help from my Mom with advice about the hem and some hand sewing. Hopefully I can get some pictures of me in it and post those tomorrow. The fabric that I used is a cotton voile, and it's so comfy. I've never worked with cotton voile before, but I'm so glad that I chose it for this dress. It's flowy and silky which I was surprised at for being 100% cotton. Anna Maria Horner has some voile in one of her lines that I've been looking at, so now that I know how it wears, I think I might have to purchase some in the future.

As promised, I'll give you all an update on what I did this past weekend:

Like I mentioned earlier last week, my sister's bridesmaid Jessica came for a weekend visit. It was so great to see her since I haven't in about 5 years! She's such an awesome friend, and I miss her so much! It was great to get to catch up. We didn't do a whole lot of things other than chat! On Friday Mom and I picked her up at the airport in the morning, then we got some lunch, headed back to my sister's and just talked. My sister came home from her business trip that evening and that brought a lot more catching up! Saturday Jess taught me how to cook ribs and we made a nice dinner of Maple Glazed Ribs, Broccoli Cheddar Salad, Jell-o with Fruit Salad, Whipped Mashed Potatoes and Baguette. For dessert I made a Chocolate Snack Cake. It was so much fun to cook together and I learned a lot. I'm excited for the next time I can make a full meal. Improving my cooking skills has been a goal of mine. Last night I made my sister a Mushroom Wild Rice Soup, she said it turned out good, and I found I really enjoyed making it. I've already begun to plan meals for the rest of the week/weekend. Since July 1st is on Thursday, I'm going to make something special, and then I really like to make things for the 4th (it's my inner American coming out!), so I need to start planning that as well. I think I will do some research online for some cute ideas. Now where was I....oh right, Jess's visit. Sunday we were planning on relaxing until her flight time at 4:00 pm, but she got a call around 12:00 pm, that said her flight was cancelled and they were putting her on an earlier one, so we all rushed around to get ready and managed to get her there on time. After that, Sayja and I went to the grocery store and then came home and just laid low the rest of the day. Jake came over in the evening and he and Sayja watched a movie while I did some knitting. All in all, it was a great weekend. A bit too short in my opinion, I would have liked to have had much more time to spend with Jess, but it was great the time we did get to spend together. She says she'll be back again before the wedding, so I'm looking forward to that.

I did manage to get a knitting project completed over the weekend (chalk it up to all that talking time). I started and finished a pair of toe-up socks using Felici Sport in the Seaside colourway.

I also never got the chance to post a picture of the socks I made a little while ago using Felici Sport in Neapolitan. I wanted to share these with you earlier, but I some how managed to leave one sock at home and had one sock here, so I couldn't take a "pair" picture. Now they are together, so here it is:

These ones are cuff-down. I tried to match the stripes on these ones, while the other ones I just decided to wing it. I like how both turned out, but I must say that the toe-up ones are my favourite because the heel is very comfortable. Sometimes when doing cuff-down I end up making the heel pick up stitches bulky on the inside, but with toe-up, that whole process is completely eliminated. This is by far some of the best sock yarn I've used though. Very soft and warm and great since it's sport weight it knits up so fast!

Well, that's about all the news I have to share right now! I should go and get myself ready to go out this afternoon. Have a great day everyone!

Happy Knitting!!

A Pattern, a Prom, a New House and a New Project

Hello Knitters,

Happy Memorial Day to all you Americans out there! I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend full of fun with family and friends and lots great weather! Today it's a bit rainy looking and much cooler than it has been for quite a while, but that's alright with me, we desperately need the rain here. The wind just picked up and I can smell rain in the air, so I'm pretty sure it will rain soon.

I do have a little something for you my dear blog readers. If you look on my sidebar under "My Free Knitting Patterns" you should see a spot where it says "Fairytale Knee Socks Pattern" that is the pattern I wrote up over the weekend for the knee socks I made a while back. It's a super easy toe-up pattern and you don't have to make them knee socks if you don't want either, you can end the sock at whatever height you'd like. I hope you all enjoy that pattern, I know I had fun knitting them! If you find any errors in the pattern please contact me and let me know since I wrote it up a while after I actually knit the socks. I used Knit Picks Imagination yarn which you can substitute with any sock yarn you would like to use, however, I thought I should mention that there are five new colours of Imagination that came out last week, so there's a very nice selection of colours. Click here for the Ravelry page for the Fairytale Knee Socks!

I do have a few things to catch everyone up on. I wanted to blog for the last so many days but all sorts of things have kept me busy so I didn't have time. First off, during the middle of the week my Aunt asked me if I would like to make a corsage with silk flowers for my cousin's girlfriend. Their prom was on Saturday. I said yes and then got to work. Her dress was white and black so that was the theme. Here's the final outcome:

On the weekend we moved some of my sister's things into her new house. She is going to be moving in very soon once the appliances arrive and everything is ready. She said I could come and stay with her sometimes since she'll be the only one living there until after the wedding when her fiance (well he'll be her husband then) will move in. I think that would be a lot of fun. She's usually super busy with work and then by the time she drives the hour it takes her to get home, she ends up going right to bed, so we don't get to spend much time together. When she lives up there, she will be able to come home from work earlier so if I stayed up there sometimes, we'd get to hang out more. I'm actually looking forward to it. We haven't really hung out together much for the last eight years. She was away at school for 5 years and then when she came back home, she started working and has been busy ever since. It'd be really nice to be able to spend time with her these last few months before she's gets married and starts her new life. Her house has some very lovely flowerbeds and even a garden plot, which I'm very excited about. She also said they will have high-speed and even wireless, so I can blog much quicker! How cool will that be?!? We only have dial-up here, so it takes me forever to upload pictures and download things and just use the Internet in general.

For news on the knitting front, after finishing up some special knitting, I cast on for a new summer bag. The pattern is the Guernsey Style Bag from the Spring/Summer 2010 Debbie Bliss Magazine. The yarn I'm using is Debbie Bliss Eco Aran in red. I'm enjoying the pattern and yarn so far. I thought it was a perfect summer project.

I'm also still working on the rainbow socks for my Mom. I'm almost done the first sock, and then I need to start the second one. I really like how the stripes worked up, they're so pretty!

I haven't done anymore dyeing lately, but I do have some blue yarn I hope to share with you all soon. I just have to throw it into the wash to make sure all the dye is out.

Well, so much for my prediction of rain, the sun is back out and looks like it's going to be another nice day! I guess all that wind blew the storm clouds right away. I think I better stick to my knitting and not weather predicting! I hope you all have a great day!

Happy knitting!!

Mother's Day Preparation

Hello Knitters,

I was going to start this post by showing you all pictures of my knee-socks I finished last night but....we woke up to SNOW here this morning and it's been dreary all day...definitely not conducive to picture taking. The snow has melted, thankfully, so I should have some pictures to share soon.

The socks turned out very much like I was hoping! They're the perfect thing for cold winter nights, or even cool summer nights when you're wearing shorts. For those of you wondering, no, I do not agree with the shorts, socks and sandals thing, but these do look incredibly cute worn with shorts and no shoes, just around the house. I'm a huge fan of knee-socks so I have a feeling I will be making more of these in the future. The yarn is fantastic as well - it's Knit Picks Imagination in Unicorn. It's so soft and warm!! It is hand-wash, but I think it's worth it.

Today I did a bit of cooking. I made this although I can't tell you how it turned out yet because I froze it to use when we have company over. I needed to use up some extra chicken I had left over after making chicken salad which is part of my Mom's Mother's Day lunch tomorrow. I also made a strawberry-pretzel salad for dinner tomorrow. I thought I'd try and get as many things done ahead of time as I could because I think we are going to run into the city to see my Grandma who is in the hospital right now. I'm trying to figure out how to strategically plan out everything since I'm making breakfast, lunch and dinner. So far I think I have it figured out...wish me luck!

For Mom's Mother's Day gift, I made her two pairs of earrings using two of her favourite colours; sea glass green and turquoise. These are a surprise, she is picking out the rest of her present herself. She hasn't quite decided yet, but she's thinking either some flowering trees to plant in the yard or some lawn furniture.

Tonight I'm hoping to start knitting with some of the new Felici I got the other day, now that I'm done the knee-socks. I have a certain plan in my mind....we'll have to see if I can get it to work or not though.

Well, I should go and get to it! To all you Mothers out there, Happy Mother's Day!!! I hope you have a wonderful day filled with family, love and knitting :-)

Take care everyone and enjoy the weekend!

This Week's Adventures

Hello dear knitters,

How is everyone today? This week we have had a visiting evangelist at our church, so every night we've been going to meetings from 7:30-9:00 or 9:30 pm. They have been wonderful meetings and we've all been enjoying learning so much. Tonight is his last sermon, and I'm sad about that, but I'm excited to hear what he is going to preach about tonight! God is SO good!

On the knitting front: I'm still working on my socks. I'm onto the leg part of the second sock, so I hope to be finished soon. They are knee-highs though, so it might be a little while longer!

Yesterday my Mom and I went to the city and I got to pick up my Knit Picks order with all the new Felici yarn! It is so soft and beautiful! The colours are amazing. I can hardly wait to start knitting with it. I got the 6" Nickel Plated DPN set to go with the sock yarn, and I just switched my sock over to them. Boy do I ever really, really, really like them. They're so much better than the 8" dull old grey ones I was working with before, and the Nickel makes them so nice and slick. I also got both of Wendy D. Johnson's books Socks From the Toe Up and Toe-Up Socks For Every Body. I want to start planning out socks from the books to coordinate with all the new Felici! I guess this means I better stop yabbering on and get back to my sock!

Have a great day everyone!

Thank You!!

Good Morning Knitters,

First off, I have to say a HUGE thank you to all of you who have commented on my 100th Post Giveaway! You are all so kind! I never even realized so many of you were reading my blog. THANK YOU!!

On another note, I'd like to explain why I haven't posted in so long. My Mom and I have been cleaning out the bush around our place for the last week or so, and each day by the time we come in I'm usually so tired that I just don't have the energy to come online. We're finally getting very close to finishing it though, so I'm hoping that I'll be around more often!

I have been working on a little bit of knitting. It isn't anything too fancy, just very simple since by the end of the day, I can only do something easy. It's my first ever toe-up sock. I wanted to do them this way because I have to skeins of yarn and I wanted to be able to use them both up and make long, warm socks. I've got one partly done so far. I found doing the heel a bit tricky, but I think I figured it out. I'm basically making my own pattern as I go. I seem to have a little bit of trouble sticking to sock patterns...I like to experiment with them.

Oh, I should also mention that the new Knit Picks Felici fingering and sport weights yarns are out! (Although I'm so late in posting this, I'm sure everyone already knows about it, but on the off chance that at least one of you does not, I thought I should say that) I placed an order on Tuesday morning, and it shipped the same day! I'm very excited to see the new colours, and the yarn. I've never worked with Felici, but I've heard so many good things about it. The new sport weight will be nice because it will work up faster (which I always like) and be a bit warmer and squishy on my feet. :-)

Well, I'm off to do a little more clean-up outside. I hope you all have a wonderful day!!

Happy Knitting!!