random saturday

The warm weather is finally finally here, therefore I want to work strictly on small or lightweight projects for the next few months. So currently in progress are some socks, a shawl, a fingering wt. scarf, a cardigan for me and the cardigan you see above which is something I'm designing for a fabulous woman named Mona who owns one of the yarn stores here. It's in sport weight cotton, sized for children and will have a cardigan or pullover option. I'm pretty happy with it so far.

I also put together a bird, nest and tree-themed wall in my diningroom (click on photo to en-biggen).

a. this is what I started with, as I've owned and loved this antique photo of a bird on a tree (complete with real feathers at the bottom) for years

b. my fabulous cousin sells these in her shop here . I adore everything she makes.

c. print by Matte Stephens - his shop is here. Awesome, no?

d. I owned these already - original prints of trees by a local artist whose name I don't have - they were in a pile of prints for sale in another artist's studio when I toured through one day

e. print on page from a dictionary from this shop

f. print of birds in the forest from this shop

I love Etsy. Since I'm talking about it, some of my other favourite Etsy shops are: here for spinning fibre, here for handdyed yarn, and here for wooden buttons.

I hope your weekend is going well. Now I must take my dog for a stroll in the sunshine.

we'll buy a dog named...

Pattern: Seeds

Yarn: Cascade Superwash Sport, colours 900 (dark grey), 1946 (light grey), and 1910 (light teal)

I decided to try out Cascade Sport for stranded projects since I can buy it at my LYS, so I made another of my Seeds hats. I really enjoyed this yarn. One of my beefs with some superwash yarns is their "filminess" of superwash coating. This one doesn't have that. It's lovely and soft instead. I want to make a whole sweater out of this now.

And because I know you are all on the edge of your seats, the name we finally picked for the sweet beastie below is: SOPHIE.

About 2 months ago while my daughter and I were still haunting the humane society every saturday and I knew every adoptable dog in the city by name, my daughter started singing this Backyardigans song over and over again. That made us decide that if we were to ever get a girl dog her name would be Sophie. Then we got this dog and got sidetracked with a million other names until finally circling back.

But it made me laugh when I saw this comment here last week:

Anonymous said...

I'm going to embarrass myself by de-lurking & offering the name that instantly popped into my head: Sophia. Her eyes are calm & wise (but not w/o sass). I love dogs, I hope she's your girl.

Amazing and cool. Happy weekend, peeps.

new things that are great

Things have been busy lately here in the Doodle house. First I have to show you these fantastic socks I've been testknitting for Susi. She is such a fabulous sock designer. I can't say enough about them. They're challenging, graphically intriguing and super warm and well-fitting. My Rav project page is here. I used a mix of stash yarn to get the colours I liked. Many fingering weight mostly-solid yarns would do. She's also done a fingerless mitts version, which I love.

Thanks Susi for this wonderful pattern!! I know I'll be making these again.

The other news is we have a new friend in our house. She's a 6 month old Lab cross from one of the wonderful shelters here. She's been in foster care for the last while with a fantastic guy and his 2 wee dogs, so he did lots of great work socializing her and helping her with her shyness. This is her first day with us, and she's already adjusting really well. We hope very much that she likes it here. As several of you know I've been searching for the right dog for us for quite awhile.

We're still trying to figure out what name she needs and have come up with a long list of candidates so far. Something will click soon.

Hope you have a great long weekend. Happy Easter!

socks are hard

So I got it in my head about 6 weeks ago that I wanted to design some socks. Seeing as I've knit lots of them I thought I knew my way around them a bit. So I started charting and knitting and more charting and more knitting and ripping. It's 6 weeks later and I have knit a total of 4 complete socks and have 1 to show for it.

Pretty frustrating, but each time I kept telling myself "hey. it's just a little sock. not much to rip back and reknit....after its timeout." It started having 3 charts; now there's 2. I've also switched up the heels and ribbing. Susi offered a very helpful tip, as well; many thanks!

I think it's there. It's super comfortable and warm. But I guess now it needs a mate.

expectation

Pattern: Expectation (mine)

Yarn: Sanguine Gryphon 'Eidos' in Zeus and Thales

I am really happy to finally show you this cardigan I was working on a few months ago. It's in the new Sanguine Gryphon collection of patterns for spring and it's the first time I've been published by someone other than myself, so I'm pretty excited. I took very few photos of it back in January before entrusting it to the postal gods, but you can see their lovely photos at the link above. They always have inspirational themes for their calls. When I was in Fine Arts, one of my favourite periods was Art Nouveau - the theme for this collection.

Gustav Klimt's Stoclet Frieze paintings inspired the curvilinear colourwork in this sweater. The paintings are 'Expectation', the 'Tree of Life' and 'Fulfillment' - the 'Expectation' portion is the female figure on the left.

The talented people at Sanguine Gryphon were really wonderful to work with and their yarns are amazing. They also donate regularly to Heifer International - an organization which provides animals to families in need worldwide and they're also donating 50% of all pattern sales until April 15th to the Red Cross for aid to Japan.

My kids are on spring break, so we're having fun relaxing this week. They're riding their scooters on the still-ice-encrusted sidewalk, hoping to encourage the warmer weather to arrive. I can't post photos of plants sprouting out of the ground like many of you have, but we did roast hotdogs and marshmallows and spend 3 hours outside yesterday afternoon, so that's not bad.

Happy Tuesday. :)

some people do crosswords...

I really adore pretty much anything to do with the act of knitting, knitting tools and knitting techniques. But were I to be stranded indefinitely on a desert island and could only bring one knitting project with me (totally plausible)...it would be something complicated, super time-consuming and stranded. Thin yarn and charts provide such great entertainment value per dollar spent and per hour knit.

Speaking of which, the uber talented Kirsten just released her Urban Mandarin pattern and I am really looking forward to doing this one. It has fabulous style and I absolutely LOVE this motif. It's in Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport, one of my favourite yarns. There are some great FO's, too. This is going to be a fun knit.

(photos by Kirsten used with permission)

I'm currently test knitting these wonderful socks by Susi, who is another designer of fabulous stranded knitwear. I love Latvian braid and the crisp contrast of the black and white. It's very exciting to me that there are so many knitters doing really interesting things with colourwork design right now.

I'm also working on this. Which is part of a humble sock I have ripped and re-knit a couple of times but which I think is finally getting somewhere in the vicinity of where I want it.

Hope you're having a great week. Spring is coming. I can almost feel it.

pattern release - Hibernate

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I thought it was fitting to release a green sweater pattern today and I'm hoping the weather will warm up enough in the next few weeks I can shed my parka and just wear this outside.

Pattern: Hibernate (see sidebar)

Yarn: 8 (8,8,9,9,10,10) skeins Quince and Co. Puffin (100% American Wool); 112 yds/102m per 4 oz / 100g skein). Shown in #129 ‘Parsley’

1 skein Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran; 100 yds/91 m per 50g skein). Shown in #300008 (dark brown) or about 60 yds of any aran or worsted weight yarn

Notes: The body is knit from the top down with the upper body worked in pieces to the bottom of the sleeve openings and then joined together, then worked in pieces for the pocket openings. The sleeves are worked from the top down using short row caps.

I recommend wearing it with 2-4” of positive ease, as it's a bulky yarn. It's suitable for a beginner knitter.

As with many of you, I'm sure, my heart and mind have been with the people of Japan this week and the horrific situation that they are continuing to be faced with. For the next month I'll be donating 50% of sales from all my patterns along with my own donation to Doctors Without Borders to assist Japan.

Happy Spring to you! Here's hoping a green sweater will encourage some new green shoots of life through all the snow.