Wee Update

The Knitticrafty household is seeing some big changes this year. First a house...

...and now Gatsby is getting a sibling!

I've been sitting on our happy news for a while, and now seems as good a time as any to share it. We'll get to meet the wee one in February, and in the meantime I've got lots of little baby projects in mind to keep me busy. I figure that once baby arrives, my crafting life will be put on hold indefinitely. Must fit in as much as possible between now and then!

Today was a good finishing morning - I finally sewed in loose ends, kitchener-stitched toes together, and blocked. Here is my first FO for baby, the placket neck pullover from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I know, I've already made it four other times, but it's just so cute. And you can't beat the minimal seaming - it's all knit in the round! The yarn is Kraemer Tatamy Tweed DK, an acrylic cotton blend that should be easy to machine wash. It's made right here in Nazareth, PA too!

Yarn: Kraemer Tatamy Tweed DK in Birch
Needles: US 7 dpns and circulars
Pattern: Placket Neck Pullover (Last Minute Knitted Gifts by Hoverson)

Next up, my mom's socks are done!! Yippee! I don't think she'll mind the fact that one is slightly taller than the other - can you tell in the photo? I guess I over-enthusiastically added half a pattern repeat. Not sure how that happened since I was trying to follow the chart...

Yarn: 2 skeins of Plymouth Happy Feet (from Conversational Threads in Emmaus),
with enough leftover for a pair of baby socks
Needles: US2 dpns
Pattern: Pomotamus Socks

Amelia is coming along as well...I've got the sleeves pretty much done, minus a couple more increases on one arm, and I've got about 4 inches to go on the body. Sadly, this cardigan is not going to fit around the girth of my ever-expanding middle - I should be able to button it up at the top for now. I've made a few mods so far: cast on for size 34" sleeves, but for the body I cast on 191 stitches to get approximately a 36" size (the pattern jumps from 34" to 38") and I played around with the positioning of the stitch markers to get more or less the right ribbing placement. I'm a little worried about washing this yarn...I touched it with a wet hand a few weeks ago and ended up with deep teal streaks across my palm. There's probably something I can wash it with to help set the colour or remove the excess dye.



Have a great week! I'm off to knit night tonight for a piece of chocolate cake...mmm.

Knitting and Pottery

Spending a week in Deep River was not only very nice family time, but very productive crafting time. There was lots of knitting and pottery, along with some good beaching, kayaking and swimming. And some good butter tarts.

I started the worsted-weight Amelia cardigan by Laura Chau, using Valley Yarns Northampton in Ocean Heather. It'll be fall before you know it, and I'm getting a start to my cooler-weather knitting. One skein has so far gotten me through 1.5 sleeves, which is good because I only have four more skeins left. I think I'll make it.

We tagged along to the pottery studio and played with clay while D's mom worked on new pieces for her display at the Valley Artisan's Guild (click to see some of her work!). Inspired by a photo, D made this cute Trojan horsey donut on wheels:

I managed to throw two rice bowls in a row that looked decent, despite not having been near a wheel in a year! Those cylinders, I tell you...I think it was a plot to prevent us beginners from making too many pieces and crowding the kiln.


I asked D's mum for a brown glaze with ash spots that I think will look really cool, here's hoping they turn out!

Today is the first day of school at D's college, all the eager young kiddies coming to class, probably terrified and getting lost on campus left and right. It made driving a pain in the arse because they were all J-walking all over the place. I told D he should really give them a good scare and tell them how hard his class was going to be...hehe. Seeing as it's not first day of school for me, I am going to spend the afternoon knitting, cooking, shopping, and doing some general organizing. Salmon cakes are on the menu for tonight. No more liver for me!

Finished: Lilac Cherry Cardigan

As promised, here she is, the finished Cherry cardigan!

Pattern: Cherry Cardigan from My Fashionable Life
Yarn: Jaegar Aqua 100% cotton, 7 and a bit skeins
Needles: US6 and US3

The is going to be a very wearable knit - it's springy, feminine, good with jeans or skirts, buttoned up or open. The eyelet detail along the waistband is a nice touch, so you can weave in any tie or ribbon you like. As you can tell, I'm quite happy with it - I've been parading it around Columbus the past week, and I think it will be coming on holiday with me as well. The pattern is from My Fashionable Life and is easy to follow - I'll hopefully be making a couple more using the basic instructions, but maybe with another motif. Amazingly, I was even able to make a few adjustments without any major catastrophe. My mods: I swatched and got a tighter gauge than required, so instead of going up a couple of needle sizes (memories of the disaster with the Drops jacket), I just knit a bigger size that fortunately gave me the right measurements. Second, I knit the body to 14" long instead of 15", because I am short-waisted and noticed that the waist detail on other Cherries sat fairly low. The whole cardigan is knit in Jaegar Aqua, and took about 8 skeins total on US6 and US3 needles. The buttons and ribbon (the only roll of matching ribbon in the entire store) are from Joann, and although I originally wanted a grosgrain ribbon, the sheer one with blue trim has been holding up just fine. Seaming, as usual, was a pain, particularly setting the sleeves. Somehow, my sleeves were a bit on the tight side, so if I were to knit this again I would probably make them a tad bigger (I guess I have big arms). Next time I'll probably knit the back and sides as one pieces to reduce seaming.

I had artistic intentions of photographing Cherry at the park, but impatience and time constraints meant cleaning off (i.e. shoving to the side) the windowsill and snapping a few pictures with my webcam so that I could blog about it before my trip. They're a little washed out, but what can one do without a full time fashion photographer and one's beck and call? I'll be sure to get D to take a few pics in a nice garden in France.

From the back: Birdie pattern

We arrived in Toronto yesterday (leaving poor Gatsby behind) and will be spending a few days here before our flight to Europe. Before we left, I borrowed a whole bunch of audio books from the library (which, as usual, shocked me with their vast selection) including Julia Child's My Life in France, Inflight Croatian, Italian 101, basic French, and Paris Walks. So far we are really enjoying the Childs memoir, which should keep us entertained on the flight - she lived such an interesting life, and the descriptions of her Paris experiences are wonderful.

I have one more blog post I can put up before we leave, so check back here to see the efforts of my first jewelry class!

Wednesday Crafty Update

What's this! A combo jewelry-and-knitting post, you lucky folks!

Today was our second jewelry class which was much more satisfying than the first week considering we actually got to do some real metal work (and make a huge racket while hammering our projects). Our class demo today was: Sawing. And being the safety gal I am, I wore safety glasses for fear that fine metal dust would get in my eyes (thereby preventing me from ever being able to enter an MRI scanner). Better safe than scanless. We also had a demo on operating the drill press, which was pretty much how I remembered it from Grade 8 shop class, but with a few additional steps that will keep our metals looking nice and unmangled.

Sawing free-hand through brass - more difficult than you'd think

Here is my copper, all hammered with lovely little dents. I only hit my thumb once while flattening it out with a rawhide mallet (somewhere on Zarafa's blog, there is probably a picture of my hammer in motion). Next week we glue our paper template to the metal and start sawing! It doesn't seem like much for 3 hours time, but there was a lot of sitting around and waiting for the instructor to come by. While I do like the relaxed feel of the class, sometimes you can't get the direction you need quickly. It's a trade off, I guess - it's probably more enjoyable when you're a more experience student.

This weekend is the student art show at the CAC - there are some amazingly talented students displaying their projects, so stop by and check it out if you have a chance. After class, as a reward for our finger-jeopardizing work, we stopped by Pistachia Vera for a treat - lemon pine nut tart and coffee, mmm.

Knittingwise, Cherry is just one front panel short of being assembled. I finished the sleeves on the weekend and blocked the pieces last night. The pattern looks great after blocking - I'm excited to see how it looks all seamed up. Almost there...

On the work front, things are changing again. Some good and not-great news. In addition to leaving the private practice, it seems I might be leaving the bakery cafe too. My counter-help-in-exchange-for-pastry-work deal with the owner hasn't really panned out the way I'd hoped. He's had plenty of excuses, some legitimate, but none that motivate me to help him out any more than I need to.

The only pastry experience he's offered me is on weekends, so I'll be going in this Sunday to show him what I can do and see if it will be a mutually beneficial arrangement (i.e. I like it enough to give up my weekends). Apparently, if I'm any good, he says he might be able to give me a pastry shift on a week day. Honestly, how do you expect to keep your staff this way? After this weekend, it's hard to say if I'll be going back since I'm also taking a long vacation very soon.

The good news is that after I come back from vacation, I will be doing some freelance cake decorating for a lovely little bake shop on an as-needed basis. Very, very excited about that!

Cinnamon Buns!

Our leisurely Saturday morning started with coffee and scones at Cafe Brioso, followed by a couple hours of book-browsing at the wonderful library. I brought home a huge bagful of baking, jewelry and pottery books, including some Ruth Reichl that I'm eager to start. I took out the King Arthur baking book, which seems to have lots of good instructions, diagrams and explanations - lots of potential here!

So, as a little treat this morning, I made their cinnamon buns - it uses a yeasted dough, which mean it took some time for the rising and baking, overall about 3 hours from start to finish. The dough contains flour, egg, water, dry milk (I used evaporated milk and reduced some water), sugar, salt, yeast and softened butter.

Rolling out the dough

The amount of butter in the buns was not nearly as scary as I had imagined - for 12 buns, the dough itself contained 1 oz, and the filling contained 2 oz.

Thin coat of butter for filling

Cinnamon sugar rolled inside

Puffy rolls of sticky goodness

They were done just in time to take picnicking at the Whetstone Park of Roses (beautiful park - the roses will be in bloom in June, so we'll be back for that for sure!)

And to leave you with a little knitting, here's Cherry - she's gradually growing. Although I keep getting bored with the piece I'm working on and starting another piece. At this rate, it might actually get some wear in a month or so :)

Progress...

How's your week going? Mine's been good - splitting time between the bakery and the office, doing a little crafting and reading, and hanging out with D. No updates on Pistachia Vera, but I'm pretty content. The owner of the bakery returned from his trip this week and was very appreciative of my extra helping-out during his absence, and has promised to make it up to me by getting me involved with the cakes. Yea!

The back of Cherry is about two thirds complete - a pretty fast knit so far. I had to take a night off from knitting though, because I was having severe neck and shoulder cramps. Does this happen to anyone else? Knitting is supposed to be this relaxing, meditative hobby and instead I give myself neck strain. Anyhow, I modified the decreasing and increase a little to make it a more petite fit - in other words, a shorter upper body. Instead of decreasing every 7 and 8 rows, I did every 6. Same with the increases. Overall, it is an inch shorter in length than the pattern specifies.


Remember when I was swatching for the charcoal vest? Unfortunately I'm learning that I'm a seasonal knitter, and with the warm weather and all, it has been temporarily abandoned. if there's a cold spell, I may pick this one up and knit a few rows...

I have some movies to catch up on tonight - Hairspray and Becoming Jane - girly movies that I rented while D was away but never got around to watching. I'm sure he'll be thrilled.