Rollags made from blue and white shetland wool top from Jamieson & Smith.

Fingering weight yarn spun on my Ashford spindle.

Next I brought up an old box of yarn from the basement looking for another project that I’d started but not finished many years ago.

White Buffalo Yarn sweater.

After looking at this project I realized there were some leftover balls of yarn in the same box so I thought that I would try and find some room in my large tote for them. My tote has all my acrylic leftovers in it along with a few whole balls of yarn as well. Mostly it was a mess so I thought that if I wound all the balls into layer cakes I’d make more room for the new/old balls.

Messy yarn.

Bin partially filled with layer cakes. Filled it to the top by the time I’d finished winding the above yarn.

After winding all the yarn in the bin, I discovered that I didn’t have any extra room than before I’d started so all I can say is that I wasted an afternoon but I do have a tidy tote bin full of layer cakes. I just have to find somewhere else to stash the other balls.

Karen

“Kids Like Fair Isle Too” from Beehive Nordic Knits. Baycrest Shetland chunky yarn.

When I first started to knit Fair Isle all those years ago the book I learned from was from Beehive and called Nordic Knits. Now after all these years, children, work, quilting and back to knitting I’ve come full circle.

Karen

First up a coat that I knit the back and one front of. I actually have a blog post somewhere way back when on this project but I grew to hate the way the patterns of the yarn came out and then the colour itself.

Sean Sheep – Cairns

The next project was a kit I bought on sale at Chapters and it was supposed to be a crocheted baby dress but I never finished on time so it is now frogged as well.

Lion Brand – Wool Ease.

Now all I have to do is to decide whether or not I want to keep the yarn or give it away. I might try to crochet one square of the multi-coloured and see if it works out otherwise I’ll try and find a home for it.

Karen

I decided to give it a go and make a skirt for Charlie out of one of my Aunt Grace charm packs. It was pretty easy to do the only problem I ran in to was that I started on the bottom tier first when I should maybe have done the two smaller tiers to check on the length. I ended up not putting on a yellow waistband and instead used the upper tier to make into the waistband casing instead.

I would have taken a picture of her but needless to say she didn’t want anything to do with the skirt, lol.

Karen

First up I did finally manage to finish the pair of socks I was making for my dad. The only problem being is that they ended up fitting my husband’s feet instead so they are now his.

Paton’s Kroy FX socks in the colour Cadet. Picture of my feet hanging up there amidst the ceiling.

Next I decided to indulge in visiting Value Village yesterday. I was looking for two things, more tupperware (as if I don’t have enough) and I always look to see what knitting and science fiction books there are. I’ve been looking for any of Alice Starmore’s books for a long time and finally I scored one yesterday.

Tudor Roses by Alice Starmore. This book is currently valued starting at $99.00 on the used book market. It goes up from there and if I were to order it online through Amazon.ca I’d be paying $200.00 and change for it. Of course this (as my husband pointed out) is only if I’m willing to sell it. Someone in Ravelry said that the book is being re-issued and when it does the value will drop right down but that’s to be expected. I’m only surprised that with copies of used books being sold for over two hundred dollars that the publishers haven’t released the book sooner. Anyhow it’s in perfect shape and since it was a buy four books get one free I can pretend it’s my freebie

Another interesting thing about the book aside from all the gorgeous sweaters in it is that it gives the history of the Tudor’s and Henry and his wives so even if I never make a sweater from the patterns at least I can read the book and learn something. The patterns are very complex so I might not ever get around to trying out one of the sweaters but they are beautiful. The sweaters are the type that you pull out and work on a little bit at a time until three years later it’s done. LOL, then you hope that it fits and it looks good on you.

Some of the other books I scored:

I’ve been reading Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s book “Knitting Rules” and its been a fun read so far. Nice to see that I’m not abnormal and share several traits with my fellow knitters, vbg.

Last but not least I thought I’d post a couple of pictures of the snow that fell overnight. Unfortunately by the time the pictures have shrunk small enough to put up on the blog you don’t get the idea of the snow on the branches but it’s really pretty. I guess the snow fell without the wind blowing so it’s just sitting there decorating the trees just like the ideal picture of a Christmas tree decorated for the holidays.

Snow in Whitby, February 28th, 2013

Karen

Paton’s Kroy FX Effects sock yarn. I believe the colour is called Cadet.

It snowed overnight.

The depth of the snow on the arm of the chair is how much it snowed as there wasn’t any snow there before. It’s a winter wonderland.

And last but not least, John took a picture of a deer that came up out of the ravine to munch on our grass. This is one of two that takes great delight in chowing down on my green beans in the garden.

Female deer feeding in backyard.

Karen

The latest tutorial caught my eye as it was for a quick and easy tote. I’d been thinking of making a tote bag to carry all my knitting supplies and I have a few books that are for making quilted bags but this tutorial looked so easy I had to give it a go. Tote bag tutorial

Instead of using charm squares as in the tutorial I decided to use one of my Moda scrap bags that have been sitting in my drawer forever. I only used about 1/3 of the bag so it doesn’t take much. I also wanted a larger bag that would hold my spindles and knitting needles and my plastic art bin. I decided to add a pocket to the lining as well. The pocket has four openings that are open at the bottom so the spindles and knitting needles can slide down to the bottom of the bag. I guess I could just have made a longer pocket but I only had a smaller piece of fabric left over so that’s what I used. The other sections of the pocket are sewn shut and hold the smaller needles and ruler.

Tote made from Moda scrap bag.

Hand-dyed lining with pocket to hold spindles, Knitting needles, double-pointed needles, circular needles, ruler. Bag has plenty of room for my plastic art bin tote and lots of yarn/fibre.

Front view of bag loaded with gear and ready to go. I’m thinking of putting in a snap as a fastener to close it up a bit so stuff won’t fall out.

All in all a very quick tote to make and I made it using fabric that had been hanging around the house for a few years. Even the batting was leftover pieces that I sewed together to fit the bag so I’m well pleased.

Karen

Here are some photos:

J&S natural.

Single ply before washing and plying.

Unwinding setup. It didn’t work that well so I made a ball of the two plys but I didn’t like that either so now I just take the toilet paper roll and join the two ends and ply that at the same time.

1st and 2nd skeins. The second skein is thinner spun.

My first true skein with J&S.

Second skein washed.

J&S natural black, actually so dark brown it looks black.

J&S grey top on spindle.

Plied grey J&S skein before washing.

Grey skein after drying. The yarn shrinks a bit and gets crumply/springy.

Starting to soak.

Shrinking in hot water.

Charlie needs a new winter hat so grandma had to try her hand at knitting one so here it is. Hopefully it will fit.

Random worsted weight yarn knit with various 4.5 mm needles.

Package from Lerwick, England.

I have a spindle that I’ve been practising on for several weeks and I finally ran out of roving so I ordered some more from Jamieson and Smith since they had the best prices that I could see with good shipping as well.

I placed the order on December 19th and it was shipped the next day on the 20th and here it is at my front step on December 27th. Talk about fast I feel like a little kid in a sweet shop.

I didn’t know how much to order but decided to order as much as I could for the first level of shipping costs. This should keep me busy for a while.

Shetland sheep combed wool tops from Jamieson and Smith.

The shipment consists of:
1-kilogram ball of white/natural
2-sample packs of naturals, each sample pack has 5-25gram samples of white, black, moorit, fawn and grey.
2-sample packs of coloured wool, each sample pack has 14-25gram samples of various colours.
1-ball of yellow J&S-2ply jumper weight yarn.

I like the yellow yarn and have a project that could use it so I tossed it in the order as well.

Just this morning I finished plying a single I had spun and was considering buying some more roving from my local yarn store so this was excellent timing.

I looked up my spindle and it’s an Ashford student spindle. It weighs around 3 ounces and has a 3.5 inch wheel. I’ve found that if I try to spin very fine then I have to be really careful that the fibres don’t separate and the spindle drop. I’ve since read online that I really need a lighter spindle to spin a finer strand of yarn.

Even though some spots of the yarn were fairly fine and even other areas weren’t so when plied the whole thing looks very chunky. In the spindle forum they call this designer yarn, lol.

I’ll just keep on practising with this spindle for a while and then maybe I’ll try and make a lighter one and see how it goes from there.

Karen

Today I went out at 7:45 a.m. to hit up Michaels and take advantage of their boxing day specials. I might not have bothered except Linda had given me a gift card for sewing up the aprons for Charlie’s birthday party so I wanted to make good use of the card because Michaels had 25% off the order including sale items.

A friend on Ravelry had pointed out that the bags of Kroy sock yarn were being advertised and even though our store had sold out I was hoping that they had brought more in for the sale and they had.

They had some really nice colours as well so I bought most of them thinking of my dad who wants more socks. There were a few pretty ones for me as well.

I also scored on some storage totes, which by the time I paid for them ended up being 75% off so five dollars and change for each tote. I’d bought a couple of these totes last time there was a big sale and I really love how they hold the smaller balls of yarn and the totes are easy to handle in and out of the closet.

Bought some gift wrap for future Christmases and then some Vanna’s choice because Charlie needs a new hat and mitts so also bought the little pattern book as well.

All told an excellent haul. I figured with the sale bags and discounts on everything and the taxes I didn’t pay I ended up saving $364.33 over regular prices. Not bad indeed.

Kroy socks

More Kroy socks

Vanna’s Choice yarn

Storage closet with totes

Storage totes stacked. These totes are scrapbooking totes, I guess for paper. They work well with small balls of yarn.

Karen