Scarves and More Scarves

My Christmas gift projects started out with a scarf for my daughter. A couple of months ago, I mentioned to her how I was tired of knitting with thin yarn and yearned to make a project with thick, chunky yarn. She quickly let me know how much she'd love a long scarf made with chunky yarn. How cool was that?! One of the knit groups was meeting that night and it was the perfect opportunity to get started. I left home a little early, equipped with several sizes of thick, chunky knitting needles, and stopped in at the local Michael's store,where I picked up a couple skeins of Wool Ease Thick & Quick yarn in the color "Spice". I went to meet up with the knit girls and quickly got started. The ladies were such a great help! I kept trying different needle sizes and scarf widths until I finally found the right combination that we all felt would work out just right! I knitted for over an hour and realized that two skeins might not be enough. I dashed over to Michael's to grab another skein, hurried back and kept knitting. The next day, I decided I might need one more skein and went back to buy the last one in that dye-lot. It turned out that I didn't need that fourth one but I was happier to have too much than not enough. I love how it turned out and my daughter does too. She's been wearing it everyday since Christmas!


Three skeins, size 17 needles, and 20 stitches across seem to have been just right. The garter stitch texture is wonderful! And, the length works out really great to wrap around her neck like she wanted. I haven't measured it yet but it's reallllly long! She ran upstairs on Christmas night and hung it over the loft wall...


I knitted this scarf with some gorgeous Bernat Rockport yarn that I had in my stash (about 170 yards) and I used size 13 needles. I cast on 12 stitches and knit it in garter stitch.


It's a long and skinny scarf and it looks great wrapped around the neck and hanging long in the front with a white shirt and blue jeans.


The colors and textures in this yarn are yummy! It reminds me of ice cream and fruit. I love the fluffy nubs of white. So pretty!


I made this one for my niece, Sophia. She is in middle school and her mom told me that her favorite colors are pink, purple and green. Imagine my delight to find yarn with all three colors! I used two skeins of Loops & Threads Charisma yarn from Michaels. I used size 10 1/2 needles, cast on 17 stitches and knit it in a knit one, purl one rib.


It's soft, squishy and so cute for a young teen. The acrylic yarn is suprisingly nice and will work great for machine washing.


I crocheted this scarf for Sophia's little sister, Lucy. She's six and her favorite colors are pink and purple. I had a little trouble finding yarn with those colors that would be fun and pretty for her age. I finally found a skein of Red Heart Ltd Kids Multi in the colorway, "Playful". I forgot to note what size hook I used but I ended up chaining 13, turning, making a single crochet in the second chain from the hook and continuing on in rows of 12 single crochets. I tried several different hook sizes and every size twisted! I've never had this problem with all the single crochet scarves I've made in the past. But, I tired of trying and seeing no change and decided to just go with it. I've decided to call it the "Magic Swirly Scarf"! lol...


I discussed this twisty problem with a knit/crochet friend. She had never experienced this problem either. Since it's acrylic, blocking probably wouldn't have helped. But, I kinda think a six year old wouldn't care...in fact, maybe those swirls are kinda neat!


It lays flat when it's folded...


The stitches and colors sure are cute!...

A Shower of Shawls

I sure did catch a case of shawl fever this year! I think I'm up to 12 in 2010! The three most recent shawls were made over the past few weeks to give as Christmas gifts.

I made this one for my mom. The pattern is the South Bay Shawlette. I crocheted it with an "I" hook and one skein of Knit Picks Stroll Tonal yarn.


The colors are pretty but this skein was horrible! I will never buy this yarn again! It was filled with bad spots...knots, breaks in a single ply, little lint pills, etc. It was a frustating to have to keep cutting the bad spots out, reconnecting and then having to tuck in all those ends. I don't remember how many times I ran across bad spots but it was enough to dislike the yarn! The skein was supposed to be 462 yards but after all the breaks, I had much less than that! I do love how it looks though. The colors are so pretty!


We've had a lot of stormy, dark days. So, good lighting has been a rare event. That explains the dark photos and differences in color between them. Here's a close up of the shawl I made for my mom...


I made this shawl for my sister-in-law, Michelle. I chose black because it's her favorite color. I used an "I" hook on this one and two skeins of Knit Picks Sroll solid black yarn. Here it is during blocking...


I really like how it turned out! And, I'm really happy that she loves it! Yay!


It looks so elegant in black.


When I block these shawls, I've started doing extra pinning on the edges. I love how much prettier they're turning out.


I made this one for my sister-in-law, Kim. She likes purple and I think she was pretty happy with this color. It's another South Bay Shawlette (can you tell how much I like that pattern?!).


It's also crocheted with an "I" hook. I used two skeins of Knit Picks Stroll solid in the color, "Duchess Heather". I know, it's hanging on the front of my dress form...it seemed like a good idea at the time. lol And, besides, I was in a hurry. I blocked this on Christmas eve and on Christmas morning I blow dried it some more to be sure it was nice and dry, un-pinned it, photographed it and quickly wrapped it. Talk about last minute!


I love the different shapes in this pattern, depending on how you look at it. The hole patterns look like flowers. The sections of double crochets look like mushrooms or little tropical huts. So cute!


I did get burned out on crochet shawls a few months ago and it seems like I'd be reallllly burned out after doing three in just a few weeks. But, believe it or not, I'm not! I'm actually thinking of starting another one. Theyr'e sooo much fun! :-D

Signs of Christmas

We really enjoy making gifts. And, lucky for us, our family seems to like receiving them. We've even been told that when we don't make them, they miss it. How cool is that?!

We've made lots of different things over the years...baked goods, flavored olive oil and vinegar, gift baskets, quilts, crochet and knit items, wooden toys, etc, etc.

Three of the gifts we gave this year were signs made of wood. My husband and I come up with the ideas and designed them, he cut out and sanded the wood, did a lot of the painting, and I painted the letters.

We made this sign for his aunt and uncle. They love spending about half the year in Idaho and when they're home they can't wait to go back. So, we thought they'd enjoy this. Hubby even made a metal arrow for them to move as the time gets closer to leaving for their summer destination...


This one was made for my husband's grandma. She's almost 90 and still plays bunco regularly. I think she's been playing with the same group of ladies for over 20 years! She loves her sign and can't wait to show the ladies when they meet for bunco at her house in a couple of weeks...


This one was for hubby's grandpa. He's 90 and loves his beer! We saw a sign with this saying on it and thought it was funny. He doesn't drink this much but we thought he'd enjoy it...

Meowy Christmas

We had a nice Christmas but I can't believe it's over already! It always comes so quickly and is over in a flash! I started working on my Christmas projects a couple of months in advance and all of a sudden Thanksgiving was over and it was time to decorate. Lucky for us, we have our very own kitty supervisor to make sure we do everything purrrfectly...


We set up our faux tree this year. We like to put it on top of a half wine barrel (fitted with a board inside, a couple inches down from the top edge). It looks great, adds height to the tree, and makes it easy to pile presents around the tree.

I found out that the drummer stool my daughter uses to play her harp also works great for putting lights on the bottom part of the tree. What a back saver!

I seem to have recovered from the bad case of scrooginess I had for a few years. Yay! I really got into the gifting spirit and made most everything we gave. My husband helped out and my daughter made lots of gifts too. It made quite a pile around the tree...


Duchess even supervised the card making...


My snowman cards had a simple look but they were a little labor intensive! I made templates to trace and cut out 40+ snowmen, scarves, hats, carrot noses, and shiny stars. Then, I had to glue all the pieces on and write a greeting in each card...


The greeting says, "Wishing You a Merry Christmas and a Bright Shiny New Year!". They were fun to make but took a lot longer than I had planned. I finished in time to give some cards out but I still need to address envelopes for the ones that need to go in the mail.


My daughter's cards look much more complicated but they were super quick and simple. She used ready made cards, cut rectangles of pretty glittery blue paper, cut rectangles of pre-cut snowflake sheets of paper, glued it on and wrote greetings inside. She was done in a flash! They're so pretty and she even coordinated her gift wrap with the cards (that's what all the blue packages are under the tree)...


Duchess loves Christmas! She hangs out for decorating, gift making, and even sleeps under my daughter's Christmas tree for a little while each night...


She's such a great little girl that helped make our Christmas purrfect! :-D

Creamy Cables

I saw a pattern on Ravelry a few weeks ago that I instantly fell in love with and had to make. It's called "Cranberry Sauce" (the original was made with red yarn). I love the look, the chunky yarn, and I love knitting cables. I just had to make it...even though it required the purchase of two new pairs of circular needles in sizes I didn't have!


I'm not in love with the results though. The yarn I used worked fine but it smells awful and it's really itchy...even on my head! It was Bernat Alpaca. The color was just what I wanted and the price was great but I'll never use this yarn again! I might make the hat again though...but, definitely, with a different yarn!

Pottery Invasion

My daughter is finishing up her second year of college, already! It's hard to believe it's been that long since she graduated from high school! Anyway, one idea I shared with her when she started college was to try and take a fun class each semester to lighten the load, reduce stress, try new things and have a little fun. She tried it out right away and has done it ever since. Her fun class this semester has been ceramics. She loves it and is pretty good at it too.

Being as the semester is ending, all of her projects have been coming home. And, they've been taking over the kitchen counters. Check out her teapot...


All the required projects and much more...cups, bowls, vases...


What a great set of mugs. I love the blue color and twirly handles. They feel really nice to hold too...


These bowls are pretty cool. She's calling them "Utah Bowls". One of them chipped before firing. So, to keep them looking like a matched set, she chipped the rest, smoothed out the edges and gave them a beautiful orangey glaze. They remind us of Utah and Arizona landscapes with the red/orange soil and hills. Pretty! We enjoyed eating some delicious beef and barley in them a couple nights ago for dinner...


She made some other great stuff but I can't show it all because some of the things will be Christmas gifts. Maybe I'll be able to post them after Christmas. :-)

Fabulous Fall

My blog has been pretty quiet the past few months. My life has been very busy and I kind of lost my blogging mojo. However, I think I feel the mojo returning. Yay! What have I been up to? Here it is in a nutshell...well....sort of...

This Fall has been pretty fabulous, for the most part. I've gotten my yarny mojo back and have been knitting, crocheting and even spinning! I'm excited that a lot of the gifts I'll be giving this Christmas will be hand made. I still have several gifts to make but I feel pretty confident that I'll be able to finish in time. I'm still working on making Christmas cards and that'll be a bit of a crunch to try and get them finished and in the mail before Christmas...better late than never though! :-)

We've had an unusually cold and wet Fall here in SoCal. That has been wonderful in many ways. I've been able to wear my shawls and scarves! And, it was cold enough to give us Fall colors like we almost never see here. I've been wanting to capture the gorgeous reds, oranges and yellows with my camera but the most brilliantly colored trees seem to be along the roads when I'm driving and there's usually no place to pull over or I don't have my camera. The colors are breathtaking though and I'm soaking it in and enjoying it as much as I can and for as long as I can. We do have a bit of color in our yard. Here's our fig tree...Salsa likes it too...


The rain we've been getting has allowed us to turn our sprinklers off a LOT. That has had an amazing impact on our water bill! I'm sure our lemon tree has been enjoying the rain too. I'm so excited about how many Meyer lemons we're going to have this year. Check this out...


Life hasn't been all fabulous but I'm hoping for fabulous outcomes...my parents have had some health issues the past few months. My mom found out that she had bladder cancer. The good part is that the doctor feels he got it all out during surgery and applied a chemo treatment during surgery that he feels pretty confident will keep it from coming back. She'll have regular check ups to be sure. My dad found out that he has a heart problem, atrial fibrilation (I think that's what it's called). The way I understand it is that the top two chambers of his heart aren't beating correctly. This can cause blood to pool up in those chambers and put him at a higher risk for heart attacks and stroke. So, he's been on a roller coaster of meds and dosage adjustments to try and get his blood thin enough to prevent stroke and to try a treatment that would shock his heart back into a normal rhythm. This has become a challenge for the doctors to find another blood pressure medication for him that will work with the blood thinners and still keep his blood pressure in a normal range. When a loved one is ill, it's already hard, but having two ill can be a little stressful...especially on days when I've had to take both of them to the hospital. I'm hoping they'll both be doing much better very soon.

One more fabulous thing this Fall...my husband and I just celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary. We spent a relaxing and fun day together. We went for a hike, went out to breakfast, did a little shopping, went for coffee, a movie and then an fabulous Italian dinner. I still can't believe how lucky I got when I found him! :-)