Test Knit - Team Colors

Another hat pattern that I tried is The Big Easy and I knit it out of the new Red Heart Team Colors worsted. I used the purple/gold colorway. I understand that is Lakers, LSU and the Vikings, there may be more that I have not heard mentioned yet.

The pattern is great, the yarn not so much. This version of acrylic is back that crunchy feel, may be the over dyeing that they have to do to get the richer colors, not sure, but not fun to knit with for me. I will be using this pattern for some Malabrigo Rios that I just got and expect a much better finished project from it.

This hat was a fun knit and proved very portable when I took it to Employee Appreciation Day and had it nearly finished by afternoon. Happy Knitting to All~!

New Knits - Chevron Beanie

Another failure this summer was the class that I was taking at Green Valley Weavers and Knitters that was scheduled to wrap up the Sunday they closed Highway 24 because of the Waldo Canyon Fire. The instructor lives up the pass and was unable to get to the shop. Since then I have heard nothing about a rescheduled make up day so I guess that class is now over.

So I repurposed the yarn that I had purchased for twined mittens into a couple new hat projects. The first one is a Chevron Beanie from the book by Cascade Yarns that features their new sportweight yarn, 60 More Quick Knits for Cascade 220 Sport.

The pattern for this hat is number 55 in the book. It turned out really cute in the purple and lime colors. I will be making more of these.

I hope everyone is having a good end to their summer and are as excited as I am about cooler fall weather coming soon~!

Camp Loopy 3 - Frogged and Failed

As you may of noticed, I have been off the map for a few, okay, several days. I think that all the stress of the last 6 weeks has finally caught up with me and I lost my mojo. I am working on regaining my motivation, hopefully it will come back with the cooler weather.

In the period however I did not finish my last camp project. I ended up restarting it twice and was still not pleased with how it was knitting up. And I knew I did not have time to find another pattern to use the yarn in, so I decided to frog it and call it good enough for this summer.

I really like the virtual camp, guess this year was too chaotic to keep focused on knitting. I will repurpose the yarn into something else later. I hope everyone had a great time at camp this year and we will see what Sheri comes up with for next year.

Dormant Passion Arises

I have been bit by the sewing bug. It is a long dormant passion of mine, so I guess it needs to be resurrected for this blog, since it is about passions.

The trigger for this rising was a chance meeting at the shop in Woodland Park with Gwen O'Leary, who wrote When Life Hands You Alzheimer's, Make Aprons. She has designed the cutest apron ever and will be giving a class in September based on that pattern.

I got so excited about the idea of taking a sewing class with my peeps that I gathered up all my stray sewing tools, inventoried what I have and what I needed, went out and filled those gaps and bought a new machine. I got one that is lightweight so it can be portable as well as have enough functions to do some basic quilting and craft items. In the past, I mostly sewed clothing items, I think that I will be doing more gift items and crafts this go round.

I have not even taken the machine out of the box, because I think there is a learning curve involved with it and I need more time to concentrate on that. What I did do was warm up my hand sewning techniques and created the cutest owl ever. He is the featured picture here.

More on sewing later this month. I still have to finish the last Camp Loopy challenge so, back to the knitting~!

Camp Loopy Three - Cowl

Back on the needles again. I had to frog this project at the inch and a half mark because I realized that I had a twist in it from the join.

It was frustrating to begin again because I have so limited time to knit right now. But I did it anyway and I am back to the point I was last week. I hope to get this done by August 20th so I can get it blocked for the final TLE gallery.

The pattern, Array by Shibui, is a fun, easy slip-stich colorwork pattern. Once you the feel for the pattern you can almost knit it with your eyes closed.