So about ten years ago I made this shawl. It was my first attempt at large scale lace, and I only made it because I wanted to try my hand at a big lace project. I don’t often wear shawls, and so it stays in my closet most of the time. About the only time it gets use is if I need such an item for a theatre costume. My mother has seen and admired the shawl for the last ten years, but shown no particular interest in it. Then last December I loaned the shawl to a friend to use as part of her costume in Miracle on 34th Street and a picture of it ended up on facebook. My aunt admired it and commented that she wished I’d make her one, so I said she could have this one. My mother’s reaction, “You could have offered it to me!” *sigh* Mothers. So now I’m making another, identical shawl for my mother, to keep the peace (I gave her the choice of taking the original one, and I’d make another for my aunt, or of getting something different. This was her choice.) At this point in its construction, it looks sort of like a mermaid’s tail.
My latest audiobook has been released! A Charming Magic, by Tonya Kappes, is the 5th book in the Charming Cures Mysteries.
Publisher’s Summary
Bubble, Bubble….
Magic is floating all around Whispering Falls. There is a new flower shop, Magical Moments, and an upcoming wedding that has the town on cloud nine.
Cures and Trouble….
Arabella Paxton, the owner of Magical Moments, is smart, beautiful, and has her eyes on Oscar Park. Not even the dark cloud looming over Whispering Falls is going to stop her from what she wants.
Magic Stirs….
Village president and A Charming Cure owner, June Heal, is on a mission to find out why things are dying in Whispering Falls, including her relationship with Oscar Park.
And Trouble Doubles….
There is a perfect storm brewing and a beloved Whispering Falls resident has been poisoned from a potion bought at A Charming Cure. June Heal has to use all her sleuthing skills and a little bit of magic to not only clear her name but help Oscar remember that she is the love of his life.
I’ve finished the last of the baby sweaters for friends who’ve been having babies this year! I have this half feeling that I should make one more, so it’ll be an even dozen, but there’s no way I’d get it done before the end of the year. 🙂
This pattern calls itself “Easy Aran”, but the only cabling is in the top section just below the collar. The rest of it is more of a guernsey (also known as gansey). For those who aren’t familiar, traditional Aran patterns (the knitting style that originated in the Aran Islands, which are part of Ireland), tend to incorporate lots of texture in the form of cables, where the stitches are worked out of order, in order to pull them in one direction or another, and form what look like plaits, or sometimes, diagonal lines of stitches. Guernsey patterns originated on the Channel island of Guernsey, and also incorporate texture, but tend to knit/purl patterns instead of cables. In both cases, these started as fisherman sweaters, and needed to be thick and warm. The texturing traps air, and depending on the stitch, can double the thickness of the fabric, making it warmer.
I’m a big fan of the show Tabletop on Geek and Sundry. I was already familiar with Settlers of Catan before I started watching, but have since been introduced to a whole lot more European style board games, and I love them!
One of my favourite little features on most of these games is the score track along the outside of the game board. Keeping score with paper and pencil isn’t my favourite activity, and these games have spoiled me. So I decided to make myself a score track that I could use on games that don’t have one built in, like Qwirkle. It’s just foam board, and the game markers are painted wooden spools, but it does the job and it was cheap. The supplies cost me less than $10.
Two more sweaters (nearly) in the bag! These two needed to be the same size as the previous three, since the two sets of babies were born around the same time, but I hadn’t marked down the size I used for the first three (6-9 month), and chose the wrong one (3-6 month) and ended up with a too-small sweater. So, technically, I have three more sweaters (nearly) in the bag, because I went ahead and finished the too-small one for the next person on the list.
For my second attempt at the first twin sweater, and before I realized that the error I had made was choosing the wrong size, I decided to use the Tulip sweater from the last set as my base again, and just add the colourwork from the other sweater. I chose to put the colourwork on the yoke, however. I ended up liking this shade of blue better than the original too.
The second twin sweater also has the Tulip sweater as a base, and colourwork from a different pattern. This time, the original pattern had the colourwork on the yoke, and I decided to put it at the bottom of the body instead, because my brain is weird and doesn’t like doing things the easy way. This one still needs the ends woven in and the buttons sewn on (sheep buttons!).
I have one more baby sweater on my list, but I’m taking a break from baby clothes for a little while to knit a blouse for a co-worker. I’m uncertain who it’s for. Our first conversation led me to believe it was for her; the second that it was for her sister. They picked out the yarn and pattern together, but my co-worker never even started it. I get the sense that, when it came down to it, she was out of her depth, and so kept putting it off, to the point where her sister has stopped asking about it.
I’ve nearly finished the trio of sweaters for a set of triplets. They’re two boys and a girl, so I decided not to make identical sweaters. I started with the tulip yoke sweater in my previous post, and then used the same basic pattern but with different colourwork for the two boys’ sweaters.
The paw print sweater has a bear on the back. I was able to find flower and bear buttons for the tulip and bear sweaters, but couldn’t find any buffalo buttons at the store, so I was making do with some random cute sheep buttons, until one of the ladies at the knitting circle mentioned that she had once used some buttons made from old buffalo nickels. The woman is brilliant. Look at these. Aren’t they just perfect?!?
I’m just waiting for them to arrive, and then this set will be completely done!
Next up, identical sweaters for identical twins.
They must have put something in the water around here recently, because I’ve got eleven (yes, 11!) baby sweaters in the works! Granted, two of them are for older siblings of new babies, but that still means nine new babies among my friends. Yikes!
I started with the two paired sweaters; the same two patterns in two different sizes. Hopefully, come winter, they’ll both be able to fit in their sweater at the same time, so they’ll match and be adorable.
First pair.
Second pair (the second sweater in this pair still needs the ends woven in and the buttons added).
And now I’m working on the first of three sweaters for a set of triplets.
So, a few months ago, I posted about using Magic Loop to knit a pair of items at the same time. My test case was a pair of mittens.
The organizer of my knitting and crochet group asks members to demo various techniques or crafts at our meetings, and a few weeks after I finished the mittens, the demo was knitting in the round on two circulars. Well, I’m perfectly happy with Magic Loop knitting, but I did find it a bit tangly, when knitting the mittens – since I was doing stripes, I was having to juggle four strands of yarn – so for my next pair project (socks, this time), I decided to give the two-circulars method a try. I have to say, I really like it. I’m not going to give up Magic Loop, but for knitting two at a time, I much prefer the two-circulars method.
Pro-tip: It really helps to have a pair of needles that are not identical, either different coloured tips, or different coloured cables, because you are supposed to knit from one end of one of the needles to the other end of the same one, and if you have identical circulars, it’s way too easy to get confused and accidentally knit onto the wrong needle.
Here are my socks in progress. Notice that one of my cables is purple and the other is red; nicely contrasting.
My latest audiobook has been released. Murder on the Orient Espresso by Sandra Balzo is the 8th book in the Maggy Thorsen series.
Maggy Thorsen, co-owner of the Wisconsin gourmet coffeehouse Uncommon Grounds, is in South Florida at an annual crime-writers’ conference. She’s attending with her beau, local sheriff Jake Pavlik, who is due to speak as a forensics expert.
But Maggy’s pledge to behave solely as a tourist becomes much trickier than she anticipated. The conference’s opening night event turns out to be a re-enactment of the Agatha Christie’s classic, Murder on the Orient Express. As Maggy and Jake reluctantly set off on the night train into the Everglades to solve the literary crime, they soon find themselves embroiled in a real-life murder mystery as creepy and baffling as any work of fiction.
A Charming Spell (Magical Cures Mysteries, Book 4) by Tonya Kappes has now been released.
There is a new store Whispering Falls, Kentucky. Ophelia Biblio, the owner of Ever After Book Shop, has a power that no one else in Whispering Falls has. She’s a witch and her shop is magical. June Heal is on a mission to come up with a special cure for Sheriff Oscar Park to help him regain his memory, while working hard at being the best newly elected Village President of the magical village. Alexelrod Primrose shows up on June’s doorstep begging her to block the opening of Ever After Books, making her wonder if opening the village doors to witches is a good idea. When one of the Spiritualists turns up dead and Oscar Park is falling in love with someone else, June has her hands full trying to solve a murder and fix her love life.