Christmas Sweater update

I'm starting to wonder if there should be this many bad thoughts knit into a sweater. I thought that I'd finished this sweater in September and all I had left was the seams and finding the perfect buttons. Since I didn't have the perfect buttons, hate seaming, and had a new sweater waiting I put the pieces in the stash and decided to deal with it later. At the beginning of November I was in a knit shop and found the perfect buttons.

Once I got home I put in the shoulder seams for the sweater and started working the button band. I carefully figured out the placement of the buttons and sewed them on. Then I worked the collar and came down the other side and began making holes. Things were working out great until I approached the bottom of the sweater and noticed my sweater looked like this.

Having watched Pooh when I was younger I knew that Piglets sweater unraveled from the bottom in the Blustery Day scene. I also remembered last year the Yarn Harlot made a similar mistake and unraveled the piece from the bottom rather than undoing the button band, collar, shoulder seam, and 10+inches of knitting. I have enough yarn left over and enough time that if I messed up horribly I could just redo it so I poured a drink and unknotted the end. I waited for the whole thing to unravel like Piglet's sweater. It didn't.

There was a ray of hope in a loose yarn tail that I could pull out stitch by stitch. It was very slow going, but was faster than having to reknit the entire piece. After I got past the ribbing the yarn unraveled like a normal piece of knitting does. When I had frogged to the point where the ribbing stopped on the other side I put the stitches back on my needle, knit the ribbing, and cast off. 

The way this sweater is going I was terrified that there would be some horrible mistake with the sleeves, but those went in smoothly and the sweater is now finished. After Christmas I'll share pictures of the completed sweater. 

(In my research of this technique I learned that the stitches will all be moved half a stitch over so if you're doing something like ribbing you need to undo to the beginning of the ribbing or work a row of decorative stitches to hide the wonkiness.)

Butterflies and Pinwheels

It's been a while since I've posted an update on my butterfly quilt. I've been working on it steadily for the past three months and have officially reached the middle of the quilt! My guild has a quilt show in the middle of May every year and I'm hoping to have the quilt finished by then. I might just be able to pull it off.

This quilt is a larger one so it's hard to take a good picture of the whole quilt when it's only half finished. I have three rows of pinwheels quilted in the ditch and two and a half rows of white blocks quilted with a teal flower design.

I can't wait for this quilt to be done and hanging on the back of our couch. It's going to be such a wonderful quilt for those chilly spring evenings.

Hobbit Blocks

This weekend I decided I'd finally assemble the Northshore Cardigan. Despite measuring carefully the buttons would not line up with the holes. I finally laid the thing out and realized that the right front is three inches longer than the left front. I know that there's a way to undo knitting from the bottom, but since I don't know how to do that the cardigan is banished into storage again.  I've also been busy working on the Hobbit quilt. The final lay out was announced at the beginning of the month and I'm working to catch up. I still have quite a few more blocks to go, but here's a few more of the new blocks.

It plays more heavily in Lord of the Rings, but I don't think you can do a Hobbit quilt without the ring of power.

The bridge to Rivendell

I think Sting is the most challenging block I've done so far for this quilt. The original design called for a blue tip, but since the entire blade should glow blue I chose to do it all in silver and use a blue background.

Owl Sweater

In March I saw the cutest sweater ever. I knew I had to have it. I headed over to Ravelry and purchased the pattern. That's when the trouble started. I didn't have the yarn recommended but found out that many people made the sweater with Lion Brand Fisherman's Yarn (which happened to be in my stash.) I cast on only to realize I had the wrong size needles. I ripped back and changed to the right size needles and started again. Everything was going great until I realized I'd forgotten to do the shaping for the back. Finally I got everything right and in mid-April finished the main part of the body. Then I realized that I didn't actually know how to do cables or how to attach the sleeves. At this point I was so frustrated with the thing that it got banished to the bottom of the stash for the summer.

As the days began turning cold I decided to bring the owls back. It turns out the sleeves weren't as I difficult as I was making them and the cables for the owls were actually really fun to make. I managed to finish this sweater at the end of October and have finally gotten pictures to share.

Don't you just love those owls?

Halloween, a bit late

Sorry for the long absence. I wish there was a good excuse, but there really isn't. I tried sharing these pictures Halloween weekend, but couldn't get the internet to co-operate enough to upload the pics. (The joys of harvest. No, we don't farm, but the dust in the air pretty much takes out the internet here.) Last February my brother-in-law and his wife made me a very happy aunt. Then in the summer one of my friends from college had a baby girl who I couldn't resist spoiling. I'm determined to win the title of craftiest aunt (even if I'm technically only aunt to one.)

I found this adorable hat on Lion Brand's website a few years ago and have been anxiously waiting for someone I know to have a baby the chance to make it. This was a really fast knit (I think it only took me one evening to make each hat.)

*If anyone is curious, I used the yarn suggested by the pattern.

This summer I was in the grocery store waiting to check out. I looked down at the magazines and there was a purse on the cover that looked exactly like a monster. I was so excited I immediately grabbed it to add to my cart. As it was heading towards my cart I got a better look at the "monster" purse. Apparently normal people don't make monster bags in July. What I thought were teeth were just half square triangles along the bottom and the eyes were just the handles knotted through some grommets. It was a cute purse, but wasn't nearly as cute as the monster bag I thought I saw. 

Then I started thinking and realized that I could make half square triangles and create my own monster bag. I wanted to really make it look like a monster so I replaced the knotted handles with square-in-square blocks. 

I struggled to get a good picture, but this gives an idea of what they look like. As I was laying out the blocks my husband suggested I turn the HSTs to make bigger teeth so credit for the green bag goes to him. 

Sadly this is the best shot I got of the yellow bag. The original picture I saw only had one row of HSTs, but I thought that two made it look much more like a mouth. 

Halloween Door

I was at my local library when I found a Halloween magazine from last year. On the cover of Women's World was this super cute candy corn wreath. Since I've never been one to worry about what's "in style" I decided to ignore the fact that the magazine was from two years ago and make the wreath anyway.

I used a styrafoam wreath, black duct tape, hot glue, 2 bags of candy corn, and black ribbon. Unfortunately I was so excited about this project I forgot to take pictures of the wreath in the making. For this wreath I used a rounded form, but I think if I make this again I'll use a wreath that is flat on the top. I laid out one stripe of candy across the wreath, then I worked in quarter sections of the wreath and laid out rows based on my first stripe. (This is where a flat wreath would have been better. Had my candies stayed where I left them I would have laid out the sections of this wreath and then gone back and glued it down.) The candies didn't line up perfectly so I made sure to tie my ribbon over the seam. I attached the candy on the top and sides and left the back of the wreath empty so that it would sit flat against the door.

We live in a first floor apartment and the front door opens straight into our living room so privacy was a big issue with this door. Many of our neighbors cover their windows with sheets of paper, but my crafty side said that I could do better. I made a frame out of card stock and covered it with candy corn tissue paper. It felt like it was still lacking something so I used black tissue paper to spell the word BOO! Our apartment building isn't very attractive so you'll have to take my word on this, but at night the letters look like stained glass. It's a very cheap and cute solution to privacy.

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Chocolate Dreams

The past few weeks have been very hectic. Normally I'm not much of a cook, but I took a group of my clients to an apple orchard recently and came home with two pecks of apples. I'll share my canning adventures later on, but today I want to share this delicious recipe for no-bake nutella cheesecake I found onA Law Studen'ts Journey. I meant to post this on Saturday but the Chicago Fire was playing. I'm pleased to report we won, but watching the game didn't leave time for much else that day. (Those of you not familiar with Fire they play soccer.)

Anywho, I wanted a fast and easy dessert to enjoy with our game day meal and found these adorable little cheesecakes. For the crust I mixed 12 crushed oreos generic fudge cookies (it's called a budget) and 3T melted butter. Once they were combined I pressed them into the bottom of my glasses. I love desserts in jars and four of these divided perfectly between four jelly jars.

For the filling I whipped together a block of cream cheese, 2/3c. of nutella, and 1 t vanilla. After they were whipped together I used a spatula and folded in a tub of whipped cream. If I were fancier I'd probably pipe it in, but I just scrapped it in using my spatula.

These would be really fun and easy to do for a party or shower as dessert shooters. The recipe would be super easy to double or triple as need be.

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