I have finished the second sleeve, forgetting to take a photo once again. Here’s a photo of the first sleeve, they’re worked exactly the same so they look the same. Haha!
Now I have two sleeves completes (yay!) the instructions say to work the back first. So I’m starting on the ribbing for the back next. So excited to have pieces completed! This is gonna come together I know it!
Just to break up the monotony of the sweater construction a little, I’ve decided (probably with a great deal of stupidity) to start another project. This is the same decrease pattern shawl from the Getting Gauge: Perfect Knit Fabric Every Time, Craftsy Course instructed by Sarah Peasley that I’ve already completed one shawl on and have another shawl in progress. So this now makes 2 shawls in progress.
I have cast on and knit the first three rows. I used the same methods to ensure accurate stitch count that I wrote about in my blog post for the olive coloured fine yarn shawl that is progress. You can check that post out that uses the Beregere De France Angel Soule Yarn by clicking here.
If you want to see my first attempt at this shawl pattern using chunky yarn you can check out the post by clicking here. I made quite a few mistakes that I couldn’t be bothered fixing at the time, so I thought I’d try harder on the next ones. I probably wouldn’t wear the chunky shawl out because it’s a bit grotesque, but it still functions so it’s nice to keep warm at home.
This yarn is the Jaspee Lavandin yarn from Beregere De France and it’s a nice mid-weight yarn. It’s for the Goldilocks’ of knitting; it’s not too chunky and it’s not too thin. It’s really beautiful to work with and I love the combination of the needles that I received for free from Beregere De France as one of their special promotions. Every month to a couple of months they have a new free gift to giveaway when you order a certain amount. They know my weakness for shopping haha, get me to spend more with the promise of a free gift! The yarn and the needles just glide. Superb!
I have completed the fair isle pattern of blue and orange on the second sleeve, but I get sooo into the project that I forget to take photos of my progress. But it’s the same as the first sleeve, so here’s a photo I took of the first sleeve progress that is about midway through the fair isle pattern:
Let me know what you think of this project and I’d love to hear about what projects you’re working on! How long does it take you to complete a project on average?
Because I’m starting to feel rushed with this project now, I’ve started taking the project everywhere with me. Only problem with that is that it can sometimes run into mishaps… 😦
I was a passenger in my older brother’s car, returning home from work and chatting away when at a set of traffic lights, I realise something’s gone very wrong with my knitting and I’ve lost some stitches and my working is quickly falling to pieces. I panicked, wrapped it and put it away until I got home and could look at it without bouncing around.
Once at home, I laid the sleeve as flat as I could on my table and once safely on the table, I went to fetch my smallest crochet hook. With crochet hook in hand I put the hook through the ‘V’ and pulled the fallen strand behind through the ‘V’ from back to front creating another ‘V’ and stepping the row up by one.
I continued like this with all fallen stitches and as you can see, it’s all right as rain again! That got the hearth pumping, for sure!
And now I’ve finished the first few rows of the pattern. This is getting pretty tricky and I need to spend most of my time on the sweater for my partner as I have to finish that by the end of January so he can take it with him to Japan. I probably won’t work again on this project for another month or so… sorry shawl, but you’re going back into the yarn box.
Still using the safety pins as stitch markers to make sure that I don’t lose my place and get ahead of myself, I’ve continued working on this project and managed to knit the first three foundation rows. And I’m still on the right number of stitches. Phew!
My little brother has been a little depressed lately and I jokingly asked if he wanted me to make him a rainbow teddy bear to cheer him up. Next day, I’m rummaging through my stash and find this! So it’s totally going to become a reality. Haha!
I really love a lot of the courses Craftsy have to offer and I’ve been wanting to try out the layouts taught by Paige Evans in the course “Patterned Paper Play” for quite a while but with how hectic my work schedule has been lately, my crafts – especially my scrapbooking, have unfortunately been put on hold.
I have annual passes to Australia Zoo that expire in January 2016, so I wanted to make sure I got back there before they expired and thought young Ben would enjoy having an outing and some photos and gifts to show and tell when he got back to school. So off Ben and I went with my partner to Australia Zoo on the 17th of December.
For this layout I used Basic Grey Scrapbook paper. All papers were loose that I have received in a few orders from Basic Grey when they do their warehouse clearance boxes and the beautiful bright neon green coloured paper bordering the top and bottom is from the Basic Grey B-Side Collection and is called “Hey There” and the main grey background paper is from the Basic Grey Sunkissed Collection and is called “Palm“, which I ordered these papers when Basic Grey had their Black Friday sale.
I chose two of the favourite photos of the day. We all really enjoyed the dinosaur sculptures at Australia Zoo and we didn’t get to see all the dinosaurs last time we went, so it was good to see something we hadn’t seen. We actually saw quite a few things we didn’t see last time, deciding to take a different route and there’s so much to see and do there that the annual passes I think are really good value; I think there’s too much to see and do in one day.
I used an assortment of stickers, die cuts and washi tape from different collections but all except for the washi tape are from Basic Grey. I believe the I cut a green sticker in half and placed one at the bottom of the left-hand photo and the other half at the top of the right-hand photo and that was from the elements sheet from the Vivienne Basic Grey Collection. The “Fave”, “Yes” and the arrow stickers were from the Highline Collection. The “Fave” and arrow were from the Elements Sticker Sheet and the “Yes’ is from the Title Sticker Sheet.
The date/location sticker, the hello sticker and the best day sticker are from the Basic Grey Hey You Collection and the red chipboard title letters are from the Basic Grey Paper Cottage Collection.
I finished up with some journalling using a white pen along the edge of the torn paper after the “Jurassic Fun” title. I really love how this one turned out and how the papers and colours look with each other and I can’t wait to get it framed to gift to Ben.
It’s amazing how so many rows and stitches can just come together and although it’s been quite a while, at the same time it also feels like it’s come together really quickly! I’ve started learning about blocking and the difference it can make to your fabric and the finished look of projects and when all pieces for the sweater are finished, I’m going to give blocking a shot. I really want this one to be amazing for when my partner goes over to Japan.
This card is super kawaii, which is fantastic because I’ve posted this card off to Japan!
I made this card for one of my Japanese friends, so I put extra effort into make this one cute (or kawaii). Using the adorable bunny pattern paper from the Lawn Fawn Snow Day 6×6 paper pad, I adhered that directly to some card stock.
Then using plain white card stock, I created a scalloped border using the Fiskars scallop border punch. I adhered this strip to the bottom center of the car using foam squares after wrapping some candy red and white striped twine around the bottom and tying a bow. It was a two person operation to get that cord and bow on there so pretty! I had my friend help by holding the paper and the strands straight while I fumbled with the bow! Haha!
After stamping the sentiment using “Merry” & “Christmas” from the Simon Says Stamp Christmas Sentiments set in Tim Holtz red inks, I found I had smudged a bit of red on top of the page. At first I wanted to try and cover it up using the bunny I had stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black Ink from the Lawn Fawn Arctic Critters stamp set, but I didn’t like the look of the bunny in that position. So I placed the bunny over the CH of the “Christmas”.
Instead to cover up my boo-boo, I stamped some snowflakes, also using the Lawn Fawn Arctic Critters stamp set, die cut them out and then adhered them over the marks using foam squares. And I’m pleased with the final results! I hope she likes it and get at least as much enjoyment as I got from making the card.
