The Cat on the Back

Last year I tried to use up some green wool DK I had on hand by knitting it into a pullover with some new yarn I'd bought for the purpose. It turned out that the yarn refused to spring back -- nothing I did to the finished sweater fixed the rumpled and rutted look of its green stockinette. I used the second yarn I had bought to make two new projects this year, and with that done, it was time to see what could be done with the green. I thought I could felt with it. I didn't even have to use the Ravelry project database to pick out a pattern, as I immediately thought of one that I had on hand.

This is the Panda Backpack, designed by Linda Cyr. It appeared in a nineties-era issue of Family Circle Knitting, which I had in my knitting library. And how cute is it? I thought it would be the perfect thing to make for my friend's toddler, my honorary niece Olivia. I found some teal yarn (actually, small amounts of several very similar types of teal yarn) to accent the green, and some cream yarn to go with them both. But rather than putting a panda on the bag's pocket, I decided to put a cat on it. Olivia is cat-fixated. Her first word was "cat", and she gets very excited whenever she sees a cat anything in a store. And hey, why not feed her obsession, since that's the kind of aunt I am? For the cat image, I used the graph from The Cat's Out of the Bag felted tote bag pattern, designed by Deborah Tomasello.

Here's the finished bag. I ran into a few snags during the process. For one thing, the green yarn refused to felt, despite my most strenuous efforts. I put it through a hot water machine wash twice, tried felting by hand first in hot tap water and then in a steaming pot of water on the stove, and also put it in the dryer three separate times. No dice. I don't know what kind of yarn it is, but I do know it is 100% wool, so it must have been superwash wool. I can't say my efforts were entirely wasted, though, because I did manage to get rid of that awful rumpled look -- the yarn sprang back. This at least meant it was worth proceeding to finish the project. It's bigger than it's supposed to be, of course, but it's still a very suitable size for a toddler.





The other problem I ran into was that I couldn't seem to find a toggle that looked right. Rather than buy one of the ones Fabricland had, I decided I'd save my money and make a knitted flower that would serve as a toggle and echo the flowered print I'd chosen as a lining. The pattern doesn't call for lining the bag, but my unfelted version really needed lining to give it shape and structure, because it was sad and limp-looking and would stretch all to hell as soon as Olivia put any of her little treasures in it. I used a cotton floral print and the stiffest interfacing I had on hand. The bottom interfacing is hair canvas, and the body and top flap has some sort of thick, soft, fleecy interfacing. The lining I made ended up looking so good and fitting so smoothly into the bag that I was half-tempted to turn it inside out. And it gave the bag quite a good shape and body -- it can nearly stand alone.

So, all's well that ends well, but I wasn't too thrilled with this one. It's okay, but it's not as cute as the sample bag. But Olivia will probably like it, and that's what matters. As you can see, I also got her a book to go with it. I would have put a cat-themed print lining in the bag too, but couldn't find one that went with my colour scheme.

The Best Laid Stash Busting Plans

The project plan for this item began when I saw that I had some pale peach yarn in my stash that I wanted to use up. I'm planning to make a dress in the near future, out of some pale peach linen and a light peach and green plaid that I have tucked away. I couldn't quite see any of my jackets working with the dress, and decided it would be a nice idea to make myself a little shawl out of the peach yarn and maybe another colour, since that very pale peach shade doesn't do me any favours, and use up a good bit of that peach yarn.

After some browsing of the shawl patterns on Ravelry, I came up with this one, which is the Burlesque Shawl, designed by Miss Vinegar. It's a free pattern. For a complementary colour to the peach, I chose a skein of Cascade Yarns' Ultra Pima in "Summer Moss" (Ravelry has the shade listed as "Sage"). I no longer have any idea of what brand the peach yarn is.

Here's the finished shawl. As you can see, there is nary a hint of peach yarn about it. I got close to being done making the shawl in green and peach and realized I hated it. The yarn, which had been knitted into something else and then ripped out, was all separating into strands. The loose strands bulged out of the piece and looked terrible, as though it were covered in snags. I decided that, instead of proceeding to finish the shawl as was, I would rip out all the peach and replace it with a different yarn, perhaps something in a paler peach. I went looking for a replacement yarn and couldn't find a suitable peach yarn in cotton. Instead I bought a skein of Berroco's Modern Cotton in "Sandy Point", which is a cream colour. Then I finished the shawl. I ran just slightly short of the cream yarn -- I had to omit two rows from the lace pattern and finish a third of the last row with a little piece of a very similar coloured wool and cotton blend yarn from my stash. This is almost certainly because Modern Cotton is listed as a worsted on Ravelry, though I didn't find it felt or worked up any thicker than the Ultra Pima, which is listed as a DK.

I was fairly pleased with the shawl, if somewhat cross that my stash busting efforts had backfired. And I was a little put out to find that I couldn't seem to find much in my existing wardrobe to put with the shawl. Here's the shawl on a dress I already have. It'll look so much better on the peach and green dress I'm going to make in the coming year.

All in the Snow Family

My sister is Christmas crazy and goes all out when decorating for Christmas. She sniffs at my Christmas decorating style, which involves hanging a wreath on my front door, putting a dozen or so decorations around my living room, dining room, and front entry way, and no tree. I consider this decorating style restrained but festive. She says it means I don't like Christmas.

My sister has an especial thing for snowmen, and usually when Christmas shopping I come across some fun snowman decor item or other for her and get it for a stocking stuffer or her gift. Over the years, I've given her snowman tins, tea towels, napkins, muffin cups, a little enamel and diamanté snowman pin, a snowman Christmas stocking counted cross stitch kit, a little snowman stand with numbered blocks one arranged to count down the number of days before Christmas, a snowman clock that plays a different Christmas carol upon each hour, and a number of other things I can't recall now. In another demonstration of the discrepancy between our tastes, I wouldn't have that clock in my house as it would drive me stark raving mad within a day, but she seemed much more pleased with it than the snowman pin, which I thought was adorable.

At any rate, several years ago when I first began coming across various patterns for knitted snowman families, it occurred to me that she would like such a snow family, and decided to make one for her. I don't like working in the small scale, though, and put the project off repeatedly.

My Ravelry library tells me I purchased this pattern in October 2014. It's the SnoBuddy Family design, by Chris de Longpré. There are a number of such snow family patterns out there, but this one struck me as especially cute. This is an inexpensive project to make because it takes just one skein of white worsted (I used part of a Bernat Super Value skein of worsted in the appropriately named Winter White) and some odds and ends of various coloured yarns to make.

Here's my finished version of the snow family. I went with reds and greens for their accessories and used just four yarns because I wanted them to look coordinated, but now I'm wishing I'd varied the selection of yarn a little more. As for modifications, I think I made just two: I fringed the edge of the mother snowperson's scarf, and I used dollar store glass marbles instead of the pattern-directed dried beans for weighting the figures, because that means this little family can take a bath as needed. As you can see from the picture at the top of this post, I also bought a dollar store snowman gift box for the snow family, figuring that besides being a cute way of wrapping the gift, my sister will be able to use the box to store these little guys for the other eleven months of the year.

Subtracting the weight of the marbles and the stuffing, I estimate that this project used up 280 grams of stash yarn.

A Tale of Two Necklaces

Sometime back in the summer of 2016 I found the patterned Czech beads you see above while browsing in Michaels, and bought them on impulse. Impulse buys are rare for me these days, as I am trying to plan all my wardrobe purchases carefully and only buy what I really need and will use. I certainly did not need another necklace. But I fell in love with those beads on the spot and justified my purchase by saying it was a treat for my upcoming birthday, and that it would go with the plum-coloured sweater I was planning on making. (Item: The plum sweater is still unmade.) I bought a few strings of other beads I thought would work with the Czech beads as well, and I intended to make the necklace on my birthday, but though I spent some hours working on it I couldn't get the necklace to look right. Over the next year and a half I made sporadic trips to Michaels and all the bead shops on Queen Street and tried to find other beads that would look right. In the end I bought three more kinds of beads and a pendant, and after each purchase I'd have another frustrating session with my bead board.

In the end I used two of the four kinds of beads I bought with some silver spacer beads I had on hand, and left off the pendant entirely. I'm not thrilled with the result but I think it will do. The colours work well.

The second necklace, which I put together on the same day as the first, was much less fraught. I needed a present for my mother's 79th birthday, which is today. I looked about at Michaels for something to build a necklace around, found this pretty pendant, and bought two strings of coordinating beads to go with it.

As it turned out, I didn't even need both those strings of beads, and was able to return one. The other string combined with some gold space beads and discs that I had in my bead box made this necklace, which I was able to put together in one sitting. I can never be sure whether my mother will like something, but if she doesn't like this necklace or want to wear it, I do and will.

Sock it (to Me)

As documented in a previous post, I bought both of these yarns, the olive Alpaca Merino Fine by Estelle Yarns, and the variegated Manos del Uruguay Alegria, in a fraught effort to use up some spring green DK yarn I had on hand. After making a beautiful sweater out of these two yarns, I was pretty sure I had enough left for a pair of socks.

Given that I was taking some risk out of running short on yarn, I chose the Chipps pattern, by Stephanie Mason, for the sock project, not because I wanted to do the project in stripes, but because it was the only toe-up free fingering weight sock pattern I could find. If I knitted the socks toe up, I could adjust the length of the leg to suit the amount of yarn I had.

Here are the completed socks. As it turned out, I needn't have worried about running out of yarn. These are a little longer than I wanted and I still have about 15 grams of each yarn left (just as well as I'll need it for darning). But at least I got to try something new, as I'd never made socks toe-up before.

And though I've made a number of pairs of socks in my life since I knitted my first pair at 14, this is the first pair of socks I ever knitted for me. I can now confirm what my father and brothers have told me: that handmade socks do feel way better than commercially made. I'll be making more. My current set of wool work socks are getting worn (and paint splashed) and will need replacing within the next few years. I aim to own a set of eight handknitted wool socks by the time I discard all the old ones.

This project used up 80 grams of stash yarn.

The Memories of Former Projects Top

This project plan began when I thought the cream, coral, and robin's egg blue cotton yarns lying in my box of cotton yarns looked good together and would make a pretty summer top. I no longer know what brand of yarn the cream cotton is, but it was left over from the cream Nin's Cardigan I knitted earlier in 2017 (I got a new cardigan and a sleeveless top out of an old cardigan! How awesome is that?). The blue yarn is Butterfly Super 10 left over from a top I made in 2014. I am fairly sure the coral yarn is also Butterfly Super 10, and it was left over from a little dress and hat I made for my grandniece in 2011 -- which in turn were made from a top I made myself and that proved too unflattering. Do you find that when you look over all the odds and ends of yarn in your stash you remember exactly what project they were from? I usually do.

I searched for a suitable pattern and found Fair Play, by Rosee Woodland. It called for four colours, but that was okay by me since the cream, coral, and robin's egg blue looked as though they could do with another colour to pull them together anyway. It was a bit of a challenge to find a yarn that looked right with both the coral and the robin's egg, but I think I managed it when I found a dark peach-like shade in Sublime Egyptian Cotton DK's "Spicy Lily" shade.

And here's my completed version of the Fair Play design, paired with a twill skirt I made several years ago. I don't think I modified the design at all. I do wish I'd reversed my use of the coral and the spicy lily. I had bought just one 50 gram skein of the spicy lily and wound up running short, so I had to buy a second skein and then only used 10 grams of it. If I'd flipped the two shades, I would have used more of the coral and been able to make the one skein of the spicy lily do.

Oh well. As it was this project resulted in a net stash loss of 255 grams, so I didn't do so poorly from a stash-busting perspective.

The Leaves and Robin's Egg Vest

The project plan for this vest began when I fell in love with a pattern. I'm trying to do much less of that these days, and to make clothing for myself based on need, but I saw this pattern about two years ago and have never been able to talk myself into scratching it off my project list.

The pattern that was the object of such stubborn affection was the beautifully and intricately cabled one pictured above, and is named Kärhö, by Anni Laine. It's a free pattern.

When it came time to decide on a colour for the vest, I reluctantly decided not to do it in green, though green suits the leaf theme so well, because I already had a green knitted vest. I thought I'd do it in a robin's egg blue, which would go with some trousers I had. The yarn I selected was Sandnes Garn's Sisu, in a passably robin's egg blue-like shade.

And here's the finished result. The pattern was a size 37 -- too small for me -- so I sized it up to a size 40 by adding extra ribbing at the sides. The pattern called for the vest to be 21" long, which is too short for me, so I made the vest 23" long. I also knitted a narrow ribbed edging into the neckline, which was supposed to be left as it was, because I thought it looked unfinished without it. I didn't knit the vest in one piece and then steek the armholes, as the designer did that with this original sample in order to keep the colour striping consistent, as there was no need to do so when working with a solid colour yarn. And though I'd planned to wear this vest with trousers and jeans, I did find that one of my skirts went quite well with it when it came time to put it on the dressmaker's form, which as an old-fashioned lady doesn't do trousers.

I used 5 skeins of yarn and finished this project with 30 grams of wool to spare, which as the yarn was purchased specifically for this project, means a stash increase of +30 grams.