Knitting is kind of like obsessive fiddling

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know I go on tangents. For a week or two at a time, I get drawn into something and can’t seem to get enough. Gardening, at the beginning of the season last year. Books, from December until the end of March, one after another, as if words were keeping me alive. I’ve also been obsessed about pet photography, writing, and of course, this blog. I stop being able to talk about anything but.

I’m on a new bender, guys.

It all started when I finished the baby blanket last week. The combination of finishing something beautiful and the endless possibilities of starting something new did something in my head that blocked out most other thoughts than knit one purl one knit one purl one yarn over knit two together passover knit one purl one, you get the picture. I spent a few days knitting a lacy baby booty that turned out to be for a giant baby, then settled on this pattern.

Image via HedgeHog Fibers

I’ve been working on it every single spare moment I have. Waiting for the bus. On the bus. Walking to the subway platform. On the subway. On the next subway platform. On the next subway. Walking to the last bus. On the bus. And then, home again at the end of the day. I finish the day off with a few hours of knitting in front of the television. 

I can’t get enough of the feel of yarn in my hands. 

I’m probably a little over halfway done and already planning another project. A coffee mug cozy is definitely on the list:

Image via Ravelry

Or, a pretty scarf or shawl, full of complicated lace stitches.

Image via Ravelry

Crochet or knit? It doesn’t matter. Just, yarn. 

Happy Friday everyone! 

A Baby Blanket for Baby F

About two month ago, I got a phone call from my best friend. Keep in mind, we’re both millennials, and while we like to think we’re not typical when it comes to our professional lives, we will quickly acknowledge that we share the millennial aversion to telephones. We don’t call each other often, preferring to maintain our friendship through emails, Facebook, Google chat and, most importantly, face to face. So, whenever I get a phone call, I know there’s something up.

There was indeed something up. Something so exciting, so life-changing, I could hardly sleep. My best friend, the one I’ve known since we were babies and have been like sisters with since we were 7, is pregnant!

The very next day, I went to Michaels and bought yarn.

There’s something kind of special about creating a baby blanket for the unborn child of someone important in your life. Each stitch somehow holds more significance, each row feels more important. I finished it this past week, wrapped it up, and went to visit the excited mom- and dad-to-be, exactly two months from the day I started it. I don’t think I’ve ever finished anything of this size quite so quickly.

(Of course, the knitting club helped!)

I used a really simple free pattern for this one, found on Ravelry. The nature of crochet is leveraged in the pattern to make it, in a sense, ‘reversible’. On one side, it is predominantly blue. On the other, it’s predominantly orange. I edged it in a simple border of single crochets. It’s a heavier baby blanket, perfect – as my mother pointed out when I showed it to her – to lay out for the baby to play on. It’s soft enough, though, that it could also be used in a crib to keep the baby warm, especially in the winter.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I didn’t use traditional ‘baby yarn’. I have a thing against baby yarn. True, it’s super soft and delicate for newborn skin. But. Pastels? Not my thing. Also, not really the thing of this baby’s mom. Instead, I used Red Heart Soft yarn. I’ve used it before and love it.

Tangerine and Sea Foam. I see orange and blue, but those are the colour names on the yarn’s label. I always have a bit of a difficult time choosing yarn colours when I start a baby blanket, so I was kind of grateful that this pattern only required two – though I could have chosen to use up to four! There was the added difficulty in the fact that I have no idea of the baby’s gender. Whatever, I thought. Little girls can like orange and blue too! I am a girl, and I like orange and blue. By the time I finished the blanket, any niggle of doubt that I had chosen the wrong colours was gone. 

I think this is my favourite project to date.

For more project details, check it out on Ravelry!

Do you have anything on your hook – or needles! – right now? I have lots of plans, but nothing currently in the works.

Yarning For U-Knitty: How To Start A Knitting Club

Over the past month and a half, Thursday nights have been my favourite. I arrive at my church, pull some chairs out of the closet. I arrange them in a circle, then settle in to wait for the others. I pull out my yarn, my crochet hook, my scissors if I need them. For about an hour and a half, I let my fingers dance while I listen, talk, share.

Approximately 8 of us have started up this ‘knitting’ club. It’s a surprising group, too! The average age is about 23, and we’re missing the stereotypical grandmotherly knitters. This is just a touch disappointing – they would have so much to teach us. As it is, many of us are still learning. I’ve taught one to crochet, and helped others as they struggled with their hooks and patterns that seemed alien to them. Another is learning to knit, discovering yarn-overs and fancy, fuzzy yarns. I, myself, am taking the opportunity to get back to knitting, to push myself to try a sweater for real, for once, now that I have access to a little hand holding and someone who is more knowledgeable than myself.

But first, I need to finish this project.

Photo, from my phone, snapped by a fellow yarner.

It’s a blanket in a beautiful, almost ‘reversible’ pattern and I’m so close to finished. Unfortunately, as with every crocheted blanket I’ve ever made, the last part is the most painful part: working in all those ends, one at a time, laboriously, without cutting corners. It’s such an important part – I did cut corners once, working the ends in minimally and snipping them off. I paid for it in all the holes I had to fix when I pulled it out of the dryer following its first wash. But, I will be so happy to finally work in that last long tail.

 I hope to be able to share this project with you properly next week, when I have finally finished it. Until then, I’m going to suggest something crazy. You could start a knitting club too. True, you need a few fellow knitters to get involved. But it’s not hard, not in the least.

How to Start a Knitting Club

1. Ask your friends, particularly those you know have an interest in knitting. Ask the ones who don’t have an interest too. They might want to learn!
2. Find a place that is easy for the majority to get to. If you belong to a church, ask if you can use one of the classrooms! It’s a good neutral place to meet that doesn’t put any pressure on a host. Or, see if one of the people interested might offer up their living room.
3. Set a time and a day of the week. 
4. On that time and day of the week, show up at the decided-upon location with your knitting bag in tow.
5. Knit! Or crochet. Or, if you’d rather, quilt! Or, maybe do some beading. A knitting club doesn’t have to be just knitting.

See? Easy!

A doggy sweater for a real winter

I consider this our first real winter in Toronto. True, we moved here in 2010, but that year, we were living in a condo building with underground parking and an indoor pathway to the subway. We were completely cushioned from all the affects of snow. Last year, well, we hardly had any snow at all. Finally, this year, we’re discovering how difficult snow removal really is on narrow residential streets.

And I love it. I grew up in the snow belt. Winter storms were common. The grey days would wear on and on in a swirl of snow. I loathed winter then, the way the cold seemed endless and the snow dangerous as it blew in visibility-reducing drifts across the road. Winter would last from the middle of November to the beginning of April. It would wear me down. But now? I didn’t realize how much I missed the snow until that first big storm hit and shrouded Toronto in a deep layer of white.

For some reason, though, when the cold descended, the Husband decided that the mats in Mocha’s fur were completely unacceptable. He took the clippers to her shortly after the first big snowfall. I took one look at her and knew I couldn’t just leave her so shorn. What does a woman with a freshly-groomed cockapoo, piles of snow and below freezing temperatures, a crochet hook, and a stash of yarn do?

Of course. She makes her puppy a sweater!

Mocha loves it, which kind of surprised me. I thought she’d be going crazy trying to get the thing off, but, in reality, she seems to understand exactly what it’s for and even gets excited when I pull it out to slip over her head. It’s a super simple pattern and took me only a night to whip up, then a second day to tweak a few spots. ‘Cause I like to share, here’s the pattern so you can make one for yourself.

Super Simple Puppy Sweater

You’ll need to measure your dog in these places:

• Around your dog’s neck
• The width of your dog’s chest, between the front legs
• From neck to back legs along the chest and stomach
• From neck to back legs or tail across the back as far back as you would like the sweater to go 

I recommend a good strong yarn, durable, and easily washable. I used Red Heart yarn, picked up at my local Walmart a few years ago. For Mocha, who is 20 adorable pounds, I used about half a ball.

Use a medium sized crochet hook. I used a size H – 5 mm.

For the neck: Chain enough stitches to stretch the line out to your dog’s neck measurement. Join the ends to make a loop. You may need to play with this a bit – you don’t want it too loose, but not too tight either.

Chain three, then skip the first stitch and double crochet in each remaining stitch to the end. Join the last double crochet to the three chain, then repeat – chain three, double crochet in all stitches, etc. etc. Repeat this until the band is as long as you would like the collar of the sweater to be.

For the chest: Chain three and double crochet in all the stitches as before until you reach the measurement of the width of your dog’s chest. Chain three, flip the sweater and double crochet back. Repeat until the flap is the measurement of the neck to back legs along the chest and stomach. Bind off.

For the back: Return to the collar. Beside the start of the chest flap, join your yarn with three chain stitches, then repeat the process of on double crochet in each stitch until the stitch before the chest flap. You may also choose to leave the leg hole wider by leaving more stitches between the two flaps. Work the back until it almost reaches the measurement of the neck to back legs/tail across the back. When you’re almost there, begin to decrease. In the first decrease row, chain three, then skip the first two stitches instead of just the first one stitch. Chain in all remaining stitches except for the second last stitch. Repeat for three to five rows. Bind off.

For the sides: This is where my pattern turns to guess-work. Starting at the edge of the chest flap, work into the side of the flap. Chain three to begin, then double crochet in the first available hole. Chain one, then double crochet two in the next available ‘hole’. Continue like that until the side of the sweater is as large as you would like it. I repeated this pattern approximately 8 times for Mocha, which means about 16 stitches. Turn the sweater and repeat the process in the opposite direction.

I did about three rows of this for Mocha and I think it’s still a touch too loose. Experiment a little for your dog. The number of rows will depend on the width of your dog and it’s a little hard to tell how far the sweater will stretch until it’s finished and your pup is wearing it. Stitch the last row to the back of the sweater using whatever method you prefer. Then, repeat for the other side, ensuring that, when you stitch this side to the back of the sweater, it lines up with the other side as perfectly as possible.

Work in the ends, flip inside out and slide on over your dogs head!

I think she looks pretty darn cute in it. In a way, I’m kind of grateful that the Husband decided to give her a haircut. After all, how else would I have gotten him to agree to let me dress up our dog?

Do you think I can get him agree to a matching one for Kingsley now too?

Three Things for Thursday

I don’t really have much to blog about these days. I like alliteration. So, why not?

Three Things for Thursday

One

Mocha has fleas. Pekoe has fleas.

It’s our big crisis of the week. How many of you with pets have ever experienced this particular crisis? Come on. There’s no shame in admitting it. It happens far too easily with a single visit to a dog park (Sunday), or an encounter by our indoor-outdoor kitty with an infested animal. And, ka-bam. Bugs on your pets. At least their not bed bugs, which would infest the whole house and be a pain to get rid of. At least we caught it really quickly and can work fast to control it. And, at least we have enough animalia in the house to keep them satisfied and not chewing on us. And, at least we don’t have carpet. The pets have been treated. Every blanket in the house has been washed. All fixed.

Two

We still don’t have door hardware on our kitchen doors. Don’t ask me how long it’s been. Please don’t look back through this blog to find all the posts about our kitchen to figure out how long it’s been. It’s been too long.

Part of the reason it’s been so long, I think, is because I have no idea what I want to even start looking. Today, I took a peek at Anthropologie’s selection, not that they’re an option considering the price of shipping on top of the price of the hardware itself. But aren’t these cute?

I’ve been craving colour in the kitchen, but haven’t been able to figure out how to work it in, outside of the splashes of spaghetti sauce that occasionally seem to end up on our white doors. Why not in the hardware? True, you don’t see it often, but hardware can be easily changes. If I like it now, why not?

Maybe this is something I could DIY…

Three

I want to make one of these:

Because it’s about time I replaced the one I made three years ago that Mocha ripped holes into during her puppy stage. And I’ve never seen a crocheted afghan look so good on a bed. Besides, the Husband and I have different body temperatures. To get to sleep, I need the duvet and an afghan. He needs neither and often complains of being ‘stiffling’.

Yup. I should make an afghan.