Crossroads

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This was a quick test for Elena of Anadiomena Designs.

Pattern : Crossroads Hat by Elena Nodel

Yarn: Colour Adventures Sweet Merino DK in Aegean Sea and Debbie Bliss Wool Cotton Colour 125.

My Rav Project Page

A sweet little hat that is perfect for using up all those scraps in your stash.

The whole hat uses approx 50 grams of yarn.

 Stripes are addictive by themselves but seeing that slip stitch pattern emerge really had we wanting to keep knitting until it was finished.

 A great unisex pattern to whip up for a gift.

I gave T a couple of colour options and of course she chose blue. It paired up very nicely with some grey left overs I had kicking around.

Little T is just getting over a bad bout of pneumonia and actually her first time being sick other than a runny nose. It was quite a shock for all of us when we found out she was so ill, at first we suspected the flu but when she wasn’t getting any better we knew something was up.

Its so nice to see her smiling face in these pictures and know that she is back to the fun loving little girl we are used to seeing.

Definitely a deserving recipient of one of Mama’s hand knit hugs!

Business Casual – Chugging

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Sorry this is a little late this week folks! Lots going on and I just couldn’t find the time to sit down and get this done.

My socks are coming along nicely and hopefully I will have some pictures for you next week.

 You all have been knitting up a storm and I love all the FO’s that keep rolling in!

Let’s take a look at those finished Socks!

Nzfriend knit her kitty approved Casual’s in Knit Picks Stroll Tonal in the Thunderhead colourway.

Hege completed her second pair in Garnstudio Drops Fabel. Love how these ones stripe.

Victoriasmum used Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Lightweight. Such a beautiful semi solid!

Jhocy Indigodragonfly MCN Sock in the colourway “And then Buffy Staked Edward. The End”

Sara of Lunden Knits finished her second pair in Plucky Knitter Primo Fingering in Gus and Clara.

Claire of Far From Harm Farm knit her in Plymouth Yarn Happy Feet.

There are still lots of pretty socks in progress too!

From left to right by: Tanis Lavallee, Dimples74, TammyG

From left to right : Rosehiver, Porcupine, Jansezknit.

We are at the halfway point now with almost 4 weeks left to go!

I’ll have more prizes for you next week as well so keep chugging so you don’t miss out on a chance to win!

Book Review – The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa

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I finished a great book over the weekend.

The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa.

I’m not one for vampire books/ movies, I have yet to read the Twilight Series but the synopsis of this one drew me in.

The book is set in a futuristic world where Vampires rule. The Vamp’s live in the Inner City while the humans live on the outskirts. Human’s are to be registered and are used as blood cattle.

Allison an unregistered lives in the outskirts of the vampire city, The Fringe with her crew. To stay alive she scavenges for food, and tries not be attacked by roaming vampires or rabids *zombie like animals/humans that are dangerous to both humans and vamps.*

Until the day she herself gets attacked and she has to make a decision, die or become one of them…..

This book really reeled me in from the get go.

Allison was a strong, independant and stubborn character that you could easily attach yourself to. She met many colourful characters along the way, some equally as strong  that you will love and others you love to hate.

I love how the book was set up into three sections. I would finish reading one section, sad that that part was over and then suddenly get sucked right back into the next part of the book.

I don’t want to give too much away but I would definitely suggest picking this one up. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book that has drawn me in as much as this one has. I’m really looking forward to the second book in the Blood Of Eden Series and I might even stretch as far as reading her Iron Fey series…. I’m still on the fence with Iron Fey, its about Faeries…. but we will see!

Thanks to Net Galley for providing me with a copy of this book to review!

Business Casual KAL – Prize Alert

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We have more beautiful FO’s this week!

Rhonda of JediKnits finished her pair of Business Casual’s in Tanis Fiber Arts Blue Label in Pink Grapefruit. I have a soft spot for the Pink Grapefruit colourway and might have gasped when I saw these. Love!!

Viki of Ruby in Stitches used Hazel Knits Artisan Sock in the Twilight colourway for her socks. Love the semi solidness of these!

Sarah of Wicked Stitches knit her socks toe up and two at a time using Tanis Blue Label in the Dove colourway. Another beautiful grey pair. *Grey seems to be a popular colour for this KAL.

Mel of Knits with Camels used a variegated skein of Tanis Blue Label in the Aquarium colourway. I don’t recognize this colourway, not sure if its an OOAK or an older colour…. I love that this pattern works well with solids right through to variegated’s. Endless possibilities.

  Tracylw knit Business Casual’s for her husband who has a size 14 foot!!! She used  Tanis Blue Label in the midnight colourway.

DivaDar used Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock Multi for her socks. Love the striping of this Pleasant Prairie colourway.

SOMESylvie knit her version with Squoosh FiberArts Merino Cashmere Sock in the Blackberry Crush colourway.

RoseHiver knit these gorgeous BC’s out of Tanis Blue label in a OOAK *one of a kind* colourway Raspberry Burst.

Hege of Cloudberry knit business casual’s for her husband using Garnstudio Drops Fabel in colour 300.

Pam of Califishknits finished her socks using Knit Picks Stroll Multi in the atmosphere colourway. Another fun stripey pair.

Well done everyone for finishing your socks so quickly!!

Since we are on the topic of yarn…. how about a few more yarn prizes!

The lovely ladies of Wandering Cat Yarns are generously offering up a skein of their delicious hand dyed yarn as a prize.

 This is Wandering Cat Yarns House Cat.

400 yards of 100% merino in the Water Dragon colourway.

Thankfully this prize isn’t at my house because I don’t think it would ever make it to the mailbox!  Thank you so much ladies for this beautiful prize.

Megan of Stockinette Zombies dipped into her own stash and is offering a skein of Tanis Fiber Arts Blue Label in the Thrills colourway for one lucky finisher!

Photo copyright Tanis Fiber Arts used with permission.

Thrills was the May 2012 colourway from Tanis Year in Colour Club.

So 3 skeins of yarn are up for grabs if you finish your socks and have a picture of the FO up by March 25th. I do have more prizes coming up but I’m going to hold off on those for a while yet :)

How are your socks coming along this week??

I know quite a few people that finished early have started a second pair!

Making Winter 2013 – Playdough style

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I’m joining Claire today in Making Winter 2013.

The idea being that we post once a week things that we are doing for fun to get through the winter.

On the weekend we had a Nor Easter blow through. We didn’t end up with much snow because of the blizzard like conditions and lots of drifting.

Since we couldn’t go outside to play in the snow, we set up in the kitchen to make some new play dough.

We tried salt dough, but while we were in the process I realized I didn’t have the cream of tartar called for in the recipe.

We forged ahead to see if it would work without.

We used food colouring which worked very well but made our hands turn a rainbow of colours.

The dough did turn out in the end until I put it in an air tight container to store away….. the next day we opened it up to find it had completely gone to mush.

After our flop with the salt dough, we went back to a recipe that was quick, easy and that we knew would work.

Kool-Aid Playdough
Ingredients:
 • 1 1/4 cup flour
 • 1/4 cup salt
 • 1 pkg unsweetened Kool-aid (we use two)
 • 1 cup boiling water
 • 1 1/2 Tbsp vegetable oil
Directions:
 1.  In a bowl, mix flour, salt and
     kool-aid.
 2.  Stir in water and oil
 3.  Knead with hands for about 5 minutes.

Perfect every time!!

How are you getting through this weird winter?

Join us with your own Making Winter post!

Business Casual KAL -Travelling Stitch

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I made great progress last week on my socks. I’m cast on one sock in each colourway and have been tandem knitting them back and forth. This method seems to be working out well for me and Iove being able to play with both colours at the same time. I managed to turn the heel of each sock this week.

 The Tanis Fiber Arts Blue Label in Brick.

This colourway seems to be pooling a bit but I think the colours are close enough that they won’t be that noticeable once they are complete.

Tanis aptly named this colourway Brick. The colour is spot on!

Wandering Cat Yarns Barn Cat BFL in Parrotfish

I thought this was going to be a variegated skein but to my surprise when I started knitting I realized it was striping. I’m really enjoying this colour combo, reminds me of the beach.

Now how have your socks been coming along??

Woweee! We have two finished pairs of socks already!

Sara of LundenKnits knit her socks in a mere 3 days! Incredible.

She used Tanis Purple Label Cashmere Sock in Sliver Plume.

I love the shades of grey with subtle pops of pink in these socks.

The colourway is a special kit colourway and not available through Tanis shop.

I believe Sara has a second pair on the go already!

Monika of Smoking Hot Needles also finished her socks in 3 days.

I want these ladies sock knitting stealth for sure!

Monika knit her version with Wandering Cat Yarn’s Alley Cat BFL in the Fern Gully colourway.

Everyone else’s socks are looking good!

Here are a couple of WIP’s from this week.

Left to Right : Versions by Deadlysmurf, Laina and Hotcheese

Left to Right : Versions by Fancybell, Redknitz, and Tracylw.

Make sure your projects are tagged CCObusinesscasualkal because there are ton’s more WIP shots to come next week!

I’m going to leave you with a short video of how I do the travelling stitch. I know some folks are having a bit of trouble so I’ve tried to explain how I do it.

The video was a quick job because I have a sick little girl at home so hopefully this won’t confuse you even more!

Travelling Stitch

Welsh Country Socks

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Pattern: Welsh Country Socks by Nancy Bush from the book Folk Socks

Yarn: Patons Kroy Sock, undyed and Knit Picks Stroll Solids in Ash.

My Rav Project Page

I have been wanting to knit this pattern for years. In fact Folk Socks was the first sock book I ever bought back in 2006. I’m glad I finally took the time to make them. Simple with just enough colour changing and stranded knitting to keep it interesting.

If you are looking for some mindless socks with a few simple changes I would definitely recommend this pattern.

Mods: I started out with 82 sts and decreased down to 64 for the foot. If I were to knit these again I would cast on less stitches for a tighter leg.

I also added the stranded motif to the start of the toe as well as the leg. The original socks in the book were knit this way and I think it really ties everything together nicely.

 I finished knitting these almost 3 weeks ago but am only now getting around to taking pictures of them. I knew there was no way I was going to start a sock KAL with socks still on my needles. I would have been doomed from the get go. I don’t plan on having any languishing UFO’s this year. I’m going to knit and complete everything in a timely manner and not bombard my needles with too many projects. I may even tackle some of my poor sock UFO’s from last year that I just didn’t have the heart to frog.

I  already have a list of sock patterns ready to cast on once my business casual’s are complete so I best get knitting!

No Snow Blues

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Winter has been anything but spectacular so far this year. We had a few dumpings of snow although nothing has really stuck for any length of time. Last week it was -37C  but during the middle of the week we had a huge wind and rain storm with temps going up to 10C…… Mother Nature just doesn’t know what it wants to do this year.

The wind storm we had caused mass power loss across the province, trees were dropping like flies and people loosing shingles left and right.

What we are left with is straw coloured grass and lots of fire wood to cut up for next year…..

I’m glad that through all of this I at least have some pretty knitting to look at.

I’m testing Splitstone for Alicia Plummer in the most gorgeous shade of Cascade 220.

My Rav project page

The colour number is 9456 in case you are interested.

The cable pattern adorning the front of this one is very intuitive and is making for a quick knit. I only had two skeins of this in my stash but managed to track down another one from my LYS. I’m currently at a stand still while I wait for it to arrive.

In the meantime I’m enjoying looking at this brilliant blue.

It is definitely helping the “no snow blues”.

Business Casual KAL – Casting On

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I’m so excited so many of you are joining me in knitting Business Casual. I expected 10 -20 and got 115 participants to date! I am gobsmacked to say the least and cannot WAIT to do an FO Parade. Just think of all those finished socks!

Of course with that many people joining me I couldn’t just leave it at one prize…… I’ll be adding more to the list as we go along so keep a look out for Prize Alerts!

Tanis has given us the go ahead to use the picture above for our project pages and blog posts about the KAL so feel free to spread the love. Don’t forget to sign up HERE to be eligible for prizes and tag your project pages with CCObusinesscasualkal so I we can all see each others progress. I will be using some of your pics for update posts, with permission of course. If you need help tagging let me know and I’ll walk you through it.

I loved hearing what yarns you have chosen to use so I think its about time I share mine with you.

I have this lovely skein of Tanis Fiber Arts Blue Label in the Brick colourway that I’ll be using to cast on with for my business casuals.

Its a semi sold so those different peaks of colour will add some interest to the diamond pattern as I knit.

That isn’t however the only pair of business casual’s I’ll be knitting. I won this skein of Wandering Cat’s Barn Cat in the ParrotFish colourway last year on Monika’s blog.

 I always thought it would make a nice pair of variegated business casuals and since I couldn’t decide whether to do a variegated pair or semi solid I’m just going to knit them both!!

All caked up and ready to go!

Now before you all go running off to cast on I wanted to show you the cast on method used in the pattern. Tanis refers to it as an elastic cast on. It is my first time casting on this way  but one that I will absolutely be using from now it. It leaves a wonderfully stretchy edge and takes most of the fiddle work out of casting on and joining that first row.

I know some of you are fairly new to sock knitting and even those who aren’t new like me, may find it interesting!

Elastic Cast On

Now GO CAST ON!!!

If you would like to link blog posts about your projects for others to catch up on feel free to do so below with the link.

 

Acquisition

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 A yarny package in the mail is the perfect pick me up after everything that went on last week.

Last year, and it has almost been a year now, I received the most wonderful birthday gift from Monika. A gift certificate for the Wandering Cat Yarn’s etsy shop. *Thank you Monika* I didn’t want to make a spontaneous purchase with no project in mind so I held onto the gift certificate and kept my eye on the Wandering Cat’s shop updates waiting for THE yarn to pop up.

If you read Monika’s blog you know she uses Wandering Cat Yarns in a lot of her projects so there are always tons of colourways been thrown at me.

A few weeks ago she flashed a new acquisition and I knew immediately it needed to be mine.

I contacted Rhonda and in a matter of days she custom dyed me a skein of Alley Cat BFL in the English Toffee colourway and had it on route. Now that’s customer service!

Here is my lovely just waiting to be knit!

Monika has already made her skein into a pair of beautiful Hex socks.

I have just the pattern in mind for mine and once the Business Casual KAL is over I’ll be casting on!

Do you have an acquisition’s just waiting to be knit up?