FO Friday- double edition

Because I have finished two things!!!!!1

The baby hat is finished! Turns out I can knit an entire baby hat in a week (including time needed to finish spinning the fluff) Aside from one slight hiccup where papa tried putting the hat on upside-down (I think it’s called that? Maybe back to front???), it seems to be well received.

(Picture posted with both parents permission). And as you can see, there’s plenty of room for growing, something I planned for then thought I’d messed up so there wouldn’t be any. Phew!

I alsooooooooooooo, finally finished breathe!!!!!!!!

Not that you can really tell on that picture, but I’m really relieved it’s done! For those new people, this is a thing where every year I come up with a word/phrase of the year and create a hoop of it in some way, so that when I’m a ‘proper’ adult I can hang them all up on a wall. Last year was preparation, and now I’ve got less than 2 months to come up with next year. I’m thinking maybe Ravenclaw, since that’s my Hogwarts house and I’m thinking I want to try a word which I can aim for, if that makes sense. We’ll see…

 

A different finished project

Soooo, who remembers the blanket I was putting together?

It’s all done now!!!

About half the ends are now darned in; the other half should get done next weekend at my spinning group meeting. Then it should get washed but probably won’t bother before taking it to work to use as a lap blanket when it gets cold (like now! It snowed this morning!)

I’ve got a lot of partial balls of yarn left…any suggestions? I’m thinking crochet hexagons but nothing’s decided yet.

The Secret- the big reveal

So, most of you will remember a while ago I wrote a blog post about a super secret thing I couldn’t show some people who read this blog…well, it’s now ready for the big reveal. So, everyone settle down while I lead Florian and Jacob through all this 😀 (Yes Florian and Jacob, this is deliberately set up so you’re reading this after I’ve gone to sleep. )

In the baby room there is a present that looks like this 😉 (There aren’t any gift tags bc I have no idea what to write on the damn things most of the time)

…Yes, I want you to open it. For those of you who don’t have such a present in the baby room, this is what they’ll see.

Baby quilt!!!!! It’s (still) brighter in person, but that’s probably bc I’m using my phone camera at 7 in the morning 😛

The back shows off the quilting gorgeously!!!!

Most of you will remember that I had to send it off to be quilted. The quilter supplied everything else, including the binding, so all I had to do when it came back to me was hand stitch the binding down at the back (Oh, Jacob and Florian, if it starts unravelling let me know and I’ll fix it 😉 ). I learnt several things while doing that

-hand sewing isn’t as bad as I keep thinking it is

-using a thimble is really fiddly. Not using a thimble is painful. I think I need more practice at hand sewing…

-hand sewing is so slowwwwwwww. Put something fun on tv and just mooch through it. Don’t time yourself, you’ll just get irritated that it isn’t going faster…

-keeping secrets is haaaaaard! There were so many times I nearly sent them pictures of the WIP to exclaim over how pretty the whole thing is. It’s sooo pretty!!!!!!!

-I now want to make All The Quilts. Send help. (Or fabric…)

I finished a thing!!!!!

Finally, I managed to limp this cardigan over the finish line! Last week I:

Sewed the buttons on

Sewed the underarms shut and darmed those ends in (no picture, also I was a muppet and didn’t sew the ends of the button band in at the same time for some weird reason)

 

Steeked it! No idea why everyone thinks this is terrifying, (maybe because I used a very sticky yarn, my stitches weren’t going anywhere!)

And worn it!

(Yes, I still have 4 ends to weave in. So?)

Flurry of finishes!

So, things have been busy here, and I have brief moment of calm in the eye of the proverbial storm! And I have some finishes to show off to you all. Firstly: the cross stitch stockings from…ooh, a while ago!

Finished! I’m really happy how these came out, although I have no intention whatsoever of replicating these ever again! Working with the felt was definitely a challenge, but now I’ve mastered it, (basically how to angle the needle to go through the hole cleanly), I don’t feel the need to try it again!

In other news (and another finish!), I finished the second pair of my mothers socks! I’ve had a quick look through my queue for which pair to start next, and I’m overwhelmed…*facepalm*. I’ll have another look tomorrow I think.

And the wedding sampler. I had no votes on which way to go, so I’m going around really! The ‘I do’ square (ignore the fact it’s a square out, it doesn’t matter that much…) was really fun to do

It’s finished now, and I’ve done most of the heart above the middle section. Busy busy busy 🙂

FO Friday- double edition

Yes, that’s right everyone, two new shiny finished things to show off 🙂 I am clearly very productive over holidays!

Firstly: the pillowcase. Technically this isn’t yet finish-finished, but eh. The knitting is all done, so I’m unilaterally deciding it counts.

Now it’s done, I’m going to take a break from scrappy knitting (at least, knitting with my sock scraps. I’m still working on the other scrappy project, because that’s not really scrappy.) I need to build up my scrap collection again before I do myself a pillowcase. In mitred squares. But in a while. 🙂

And my second finish: the wolf!!!!!!

I am soooooooo glad this is finally finished! In the end, I raced to the end- there is a lot of backstitching in the bottom left corner, and I did a ‘will I finish or throw it accross the room and ignore it for three months’. Luckily, I finished first. I’m completely ignoring the mistake I made with the wolf whiskers- they’re supposed to be done in a different colour, but I can’t tell the difference between thin blue and thick blue lines, and I’m not fixing it now. Now to find a frame for it- it’s 6 by 8 inches so I should be able to find a suitable photo frame for it. Now, onto the next cross stitch project 😀

FO Friday- Hello! edition

So as I mentioned on Wednesday that I finished the Hello! cross stitch, so here it is!

I completely forgot to record how long it took me to sew, (oops!) but it’s so adorable!!! I just love both the watercolour effect and the negative-space writing. Gorgeous work :D. It will be finished properly in a hoop next weekend when I go back to my parents in Salisbury.

Now, what to do next??? I know I said I’d get back to my stockings, but there’s still that wolf to stitch which is calling me…hmm…let’s see what happens! What do you guys all vote?

FO Friday- Christmas cards

All the Christmas cards have bnow been finished (probably!) I need 13 (well, 12 if I get away with giving my parents a shared card), and I’ve made 12!

I showed the first 6 last week, and then I completed another 6 this week. Somehow I have lots of free time (despite feeling massively busy all the time???)

Anyway, onto the snowflake cards!

I’m not wildly keen on this design (I dissect everything, clearly. Why can’t I just smile, wave and move on???). I feel that there are too many lines in the innermost star, and I really didn’t like stitching the outer bits. Ahh well, pretty card, lesson learnt!

This one was great fun to stitch, although I’m less impressed with the final outcome. It also looks wildly different from the original hole punching, which I find very amusing!!!

And finally:I love this one! The hearts are cute, and the inner circle was great fun to stitch 🙂 I even think I prefer the snowflake this way around, rather than having the point on top 🙂

 

And so now these are finished, I can start a new project at my desk… check back on Sunday to see what it is (hint: it’s an old one I’m digging out of the UFO pile…)

FO Friday- blanket edition

Yes, ladies, gentlemen and non-binary peeps. The epic blanket of scrappy awesomeness is officially done. (I say officially because I intend to keep adding random hexagons to it, it just isn’t going to be steadily worked on any more).

This blanket has been more than a year and a half in the making, and I am ridiculously proud of myself for finishing the thing. I’m not quite sure how much it weighs (the bathroom scales say ~400g, the kitchen scales say 450+g). It has 161 hexagons and I’m going to have to list all the yarns it uses…

purple (solid) (used up)

blue(solid)

steel

Lorian Quinn (used up)

Silvanis Wrenn (used up)

Roan

Lia (used up)

Aster

the other Hermione sock yarn

hand warmers (used up)

sea stripes (used up)

dark purple bright

orange and red bright

high viz (used up)

zombie(used up)

stripes (used up)

green cameo (used up)

sunshine (used up)

rainbow

the other purple one (used up)

light purple

red mixed

dark and bright (used up)

Ok, I think that’s all of them. 23 yarns used, 13 used up. Wow. I’m impressed with that. (Btw, if anyone wants more detail on any of the yarns I mentioned here, let me know and I can give you the proper info on them! Most are listed on my ravelry projects).

And my favourite hexagon? One from yarn that I haven’t actually mentioned here. I used Regia hand-spun effect for a single hexagon, and so didn’t really think that I should mention it as yarn used up.

I just love that gradient. The perfect little hexi 😀

More details about this blanket: I used 1.5mm needles (big mistake. Won’t do that again. Those things HURT!) I sat on the needles twice while making this, both times at KnitSoc. The needles I used are Karbonz, and tbh I won’t get them again. The idea behind karbonz, for those who don’t know, is that the main part of the needle is rough, so your stitches stick to it and don’t slide off, but the tip is metal so the stitches do slide easily and so you can knit faster with less effort. Great idea, but not so great in practice. The tips have a habit of coming loose (some of my needles I had to re-glue several times), and the carbon part splits and small flecks break away, resulting in a needle with a jump in size from the middle to the edge which is really awkward to slide the stitches to knit. But hey ho, lesson learnt I guess!

I do also have plans for future scrap work: my next project is going to be a garter stitch entrelac rectangle to sew to one side of a pillow case. I want to do it sideways so there aren’t any triangles, and it’s going to be on 2mm needles. Excellent excuse to buy another 2mm circ 🙂

The scarf is finished!

And currently blocking 🙂

(Note to self: get blocking wires)

Whew. This was an Advent MKAL, which I mainly managed to keep up with. I missed a few of the pattern days because I didn’t like the pattern, but I’m loving the overall size. It’s slightly taller than I am, and 10 inches wide, and I *think* I have enough of this yarn left over to make Frost at Midnight. Hmm, we’ll see.

This scarf was originally intended for my aunt, for Christmas this year. However, when my mum and I met her before Christmas, she mention that she doesn’t like mohair, because of how it gets up her nose. Right. New plan: I keep this scarf (woot!), and make her another one, in non-mohair yarn. Until my mum thought that I was really sad about this, and commented that she’d like it. Fine, my mum gets this one, my aunt gets another (I have enough beads), and I either make myself one, or that cardigan. We’ll see, I’ve got lots to do before then!

Either way, this is one present finished this year, so yay about that!