This pattern is called Nineteen Hundred House Dish Cloth and it is sooo addictive. Wouldn't several of these in different colors make a cute housewarming gift?  If you could bear to part with them, that is. This yellow one is in the stack on my dresser.


Happy New Year!!! Wishing you peace and blessings and joy in 2013.

Stacy xoxo

It was a relatively quick, easy knit, with just a few issues that were due to my inexperience with sweaters. Note to self: When casting on and binding off, leave looooong strands of yarn to use for sewing the seams. I didn't do this and ended up having to weave in about a zillion ends, which is one of my least favorite things about knitting.


Speaking of Lily, here is a photo of her taken earlier today. She is eleven months old now and getting so big. I'm looking forward to her first birthday next month so I can give her the basket full of gifts I've been collecting for the occasion.

I know I've been gone for a while. Not sure what happened, just needed a break I guess. I do plan on participating in Knit and Crochet Blog Week next week and would love it if you did, too.

The mitt pattern is an improvisation that only took a few hours to knit on size 9 needles. They are a bit loose and uneven, but the cotton feels warm and comforting, especially on my achy wrists. I didn't realize how chilly my hands get in my apartment at night until I put these babies on.

Speaking of babies, some day I will knit a pair for these little hands.

Ta da! I knit my first baby crossover jacket last week. The pattern is from the wonderful book, Vintage Knits for Modern Babies , a gift from a thoughtful friend. I added the pink crochet edging on the sleeves and went with matching pink buttons.


The jacket fits my four-month-old niece Lily perfectly.

It seems like I did lots of knitting over the summer, but when I looked through my bag of finished projects, there wasn't all that much. (But I actually have a bag of finished projects, so that is something!)


Just today I finished knitting this jumper for my niece Lily. Like most of my projects, it looks better photographed than in real life. But it does feel good to have seen it through to the end, even if the tension is uneven and there are holes where I switched colors. The pattern is Little Girl's Jumper or Sundress. Lily will have to wait until she is one year old to wear it.


By the way, here is Lily. She is three months old now and so beautiful.


I taught myself new stitches this summer, and this one worked out well for a kitchen towel. It's a little scary, but I can't remember which stitch this is and where I got it from. Yikes.


These are cotton swatches knit in new-to-me stitches from my Vogue Stitchionary. I'll probably give them to my sister to use as baby wash cloths.

What did you make this summer?

When I started this blog almost two years ago, I had a vision, albeit a blurry one, of what it would be about. I wanted to design original knitting patterns, share them on Ravelry and improve my skills by knitting larger and more complex items.

I did end up designing a few things. Nothing terribly complicated, just some easy scarves, bags, booties and fingerless gloves. My mesh bamboo scarf is the most viewed page on my blog, and with the arrival of cold weather the gloves are getting a little bit of attention. It's gratifying when someone knits one of my patterns and posts the project on Ravelry.

But it's been a while since I designed a pattern. And I've not attempted to knit anything too big or complicated since I started this blog other than a lace shawl (which turned out to be rather small and easy). At this point in time, I'm knitting garter stitch scarves.

Garter stitch scarves. The kind that are your very first knitting project, the kind that are supposed to get monotonous after you've made one for each member of your family. I've read enough knitting books to understand that garter stitch scarves are kindergarten knitting; they are the finger painting of the fiber world.

But the truth is, I like how they look and enjoy knitting them. I don't have to remember to use my row counter or glance at a pattern every few minutes. It's like being transported back to a simpler time before you knew about tricky techniques like a Turkish cast-on or three-needle bind off, when you had no idea how to use circular needles and didn't care, when terms like K2TOG and YO made your eyes glaze over. In those days, knitting with acrylic yarn was perfectly acceptable and the smallest needle size in your collection was maybe a US 6 (but you never used it).


So here I am, finger painting scarves while forgetting how to do a proper wrap and turn. Simply knitting. While I do plan to return to the world of purl stitches, yarn overs and short rows, for now the basic act of creating something with two sticks and some pretty string is enough.

Thank you everyone for your warm wishes and congratulations on my sister's little one. I stopped by her place yesterday and saw the picture from the ultrasound ... oh my gosh! I think it is safe to say it is the cutest 9-week old baby I have ever seen :o)

I spent Friday night and Saturday morning knitting what turned out to be the biggest newborn baby bootie ever. I can't figure out why it turned out so huge-- I did a gauge swatch, something I almost never do. So now I'm thinking with a little bit of embellishing it can be a Christmas stocking for the baby.

My knitting mojo comes and goes. Do you ever get the urge to knit something new and exciting but just can't get started? That's what has been happening to me. I look and look and look at Ravelry and through my knitting books, hoping something will grab me, but nothing does. I did manage to finish the Yarn Harlot's one row scarf shown above. It's a little short, so I'm trying to decide whether to go ahead and bind off or order one more skein online.


Dogwood came to visit today and we walked to downtown Willow Glen for lunch and a little shopping. I bought this crochet coin purse I've been wanting for a while. It's not as cute as Thimbleanna's blue beaded purse, but I had to have it.

Finally. Someone I know is pregnant! I get to knit for an actual baby, not just for the love of tiny little things. I used Frog Tree Pima Silk for the seed stitch booties, and oh my, it is wonderful to work with. I'm not exactly sure what it is about cotton/silk blend yarn that makes me so happy ... maybe it's the softness, the way it glides smoothly over the needle, or the slight sheen. Or maybe all three.

Matching caps are in the queue.

I'm getting close to finishing the Apple Tree scarf-- finally! It has taken an unbelievably long time to knit and I'm not sure why. It's only a four row repeat on size six needles. But I'm happy with how it looks. Soon it will be packed up and mailed to Jen over at Miss Punkie Pie for a little swap we are doing.

My life has been so busy this last week that I've only had the time and energy to create simple little things. (Not that I ever create large complex things, but you know what I mean.) I must say I adore this knit heart. It sits on my coffee table and serves as a coaster/place mat/doily.

After seeing what the Hana Ami Flower Loom can do over at The Purl Bee, I had to get one. The Michael's near me had them in stock, but when I got to the counter I discovered my 40% off coupon wasn't good until the following Sunday. Aaargh. I had to wait three whole days, and every morning when I woke up my first thought was "I'm just going to go and buy it." But somehow I held out and finally bought it yesterday, and I did feel a bit warm and fuzzy about saving eight bucks. I've only had a couple hours to play with it and look forward to learning about all of the different possibilities.

The rest of this week is looking busy with lots going on at work, so I'm going to take a break until Saturday. I hope you will join me then for the Mad Tea Party.

Have a great week!

The situation: An enormous stash of yarn and general boredom with knitting.

The challenge: To knit with a color that I don't particularly like, a color that makes me uncomfortable.

The purpose: To renew my enthusiasm and breath fresh life in to my knitting practice by trying something different.

The added benefit: Using up yarn in my stash that might otherwise languish for years.

The choices: An array of yarn in colors that I normally wouldn't touch, purchased long ago for reasons now forgotten.

The selection: Blue Sky Alpaca Dyed Organic Cotton in bright red. (Note: my issue is with the color, not with this brand of soft and lovely yarn.)

My knitting has slowed down considerably since the weather warmed up. One item on the needles is this Apple Tree Scarf (link to Ravelry). It is knit in a chevron pattern, and I've been thinking about frogging it because the sides curl too much, in spite of the selvage stitches. But I'm going to think about it some more before I do anything drastic.

Still working on my Multnomah shawl (another Ravelry link). I'm up to 200 stitches and almost ready to start working on the lace section. It's an enjoyable pattern. This is the best I could do for a photo because it's all scrunched up on circular needles. I wish you could see how pretty the colors actually are.

I'm having a great time reading Pride & Prejudice sequels and adaptations. There are SO many out there, and they range from extremely dull to extremely raunchy. One of my favorites so far is Suspense & Sensibility by Carrie Bebris. It is the second in a series of Regency mystery novels featuring the Darcy's, and this one in particular also has characters from Sense & Sensibility. (It also has a supernatural element, so if that is not your bag you might not like the first couple of books in the series.) I picked up three more in the series at the library this evening and can't wait to read them this weekend.

I finished my Forest Canopy Shawl last night and it's blocking on my futon right now. Hurray!

It's smaller than I thought it would be and I had a little trouble with the bind-off, but other than that things went smoothly. I figured it would take me at least two or three months to complete this project, so it was exciting to finish it in four weeks. A big thank you to Kate at Lazy Kate Creates for initiating the Adventures in Lace knit-along. It motivated me to learn to knit lace and I'm completely smitten.

I feel like my blog has been pretty low energy lately and I know I haven't been posting as much as I used to. I've been debating whether to talk about why that is and decided to just be honest about it. It's tempting to only write about happy sunshiney things, but doesn't feel very real. Since mid-January I've been consumed with problems with a disruptive neighbor and it's been hellish. Things came to a head last weekend when the police got involved, and the problem neighbor will be moving out next week. I'm looking forward to getting my life back and feeling happy again instead of beaten and broken down. The stress of the situation had begun to permeate every area of my life. I learned some painful lessons, especially about not allowing myself to be bullied.

On that cheerful note, I'm going to turn off the computer and turn my attention to American Idol. Don't forget to leave a comment to enter my giveaway-- I'll pick a winner Thursday morning.

Well, it's been a week and I've managed to keep my new year resolutions goals. It might be a record for me.

The stack of wash cloths is growing and I'm still enjoying knitting them.

This is the last wash cloth I completed. It's a fun pattern from the 2010 page-a-day knitting calendar my mom got me for the holidays. I made a mistake near the bottom. Can you see it? I'm kinda proud of myself for just leaving it-- it took a fair amount of restraint not to frog it.

I'm currently working on this dish cloth, also from the knitting calendar. I've never run across this pattern before and while I do like it, for some reason the cloth has a diagonal shape. It doesn't look like that in the picture, but that's okay, it'll work. Plus I love an interesting stitch in plain white yarn.

Pile of scrumptious cotton yarn waiting in the wings.