May the 4th

May the 4th be with you!

Halloween 2015

Since I talked yesterday about my Christmas window, I totally forgot to show you my Hallowen window from this past Halloween! We had fun with this fall/Halloween window this past year. You’ve already seen the Katia cushion that we turned into the witch, but there was some more fun parts to this window that I’d like to show you.

We had a skeleton knitting….

 

And a pumpkin that I knit using 4 strands of Cascade Lana Grande on 15mm needles. I followed the Jack Be Little Pumpkin pattern by Elizabeth Murphy except for the fact that I super sized it! The stem was Diamond Luxury Collection Embrace held double stranded.  

 

I crochet some overalls for the two scarecrows in the window.

That was just a freeform crochet project, with no pattern. I used a 5mm crochet hook and Schachenmayr Wool 125 in orange.They were both a one evening project.

Not part of my window, but a project I wanted to finish in time for Halloween was my Hallowig, which I had started the year earlier but then got sidetracked from it. This did not come out big enough and I knitted it as per pattern. I am very disappointed in this project. I am going to see if I can undo the cast off, rip it back, add length to it, and fix it… Though, I am not sure I would ever wear it at this point, so I am not sure if it’s actually worth it.

And to end my Halloween post, here is a pic of my boys on Halloween night. I’ve got a hockey player, a Batman and a G.I. Joe trooper of some kind. They had a great time trick or treating this past fall.

Christmas Window

This was my wonderful Christmas window at the shop. It was a whole community event! We held some knit-along dates where we had the customers come in & knit the bears together. It was a lot of fun, and brought the community together. One of my suppliers supplied us with yarn to knit up the bears. Once the bears came out of our store window, they were donated to a local women’s shelter, where they will be distributed to little kids who come to the shelter, to bring smiles to their faces. This is the window I talked about in this post back in November 2015.

 

Big Alabama Cushion

This is a shop sample that I knit las summer. I wanted to show how the yarn (Katia Big Alabama) knits up. The cushion took 5 skeins of the yarn, with no leftovers. I stuffed the cusion with 2 pillows to fill it. It was an interesting project. Not sure I would knit this again. If I were to make something like this again I would use a much chunkier yarn. This pattern seems to not be on Ravelry. It’s Katia’s Big Alabama Cushion. From their video is looks like they don’t close the bottom of their cushion, however I closed mine on both ends. At Halloween, we dressed up the cushion and had him on display in our shop window. One thing I noticed in the pattern, they don’t actually tell you in words how many stitche to cast on. However, it does say, in the legend 63p. P=stitches. So you cast on 63 stitches and it’s seed stitch/moss stitch for the entire rectangle.

Bountiful Butterflies

I had these Bountiful Butterflies on display in the shop window from May to July 2015. I made 2 mobiles. (Here is the first and here is the second). Two of myknittng buddies helped me string all the beads. The butterflies were a lot of fun to crochet. I used up all bits of leftoever worsted weight yarn that I had in my stash. I used a 5.5 and a 5 mm crochet hook for this project. If I had a daughter, this would have been a fun mobile to make to put in a nursery.  

I used an embroidery hoop as the ring that the butterflies hang off of. I wrapped it with a nice satin ribbon. The beads were a large assorted pony bead bag that I picked up at Walmart. This was a fun project!

Polar Opposites

Polar Opposites was a fun thing to knit. I really enjoyed knitting this one. I used a combination of SMC Tahiti yarn with SMC Fashion Mouliné Art yarn. It took about half a ball of the Tahiti yarn and 3 skeins of the Mouliné Art, though it could have used 4 skeins if I knitted it a bit longer as per pattern. I used US 11 - 8.0 mm needles for this project. I found for me, I was happy with the length of it with 3 skeins. Had I used up the 4th, it would have been too long for me and it would hang too long down when twisted around my neck. I wanted a cowl that would keep me warm, not have my neck open. Right now this is on display at the shop.

Mack’s Soccer Ball Hat

Just like his brother’s, Mack wanted a soccer ball hat too. These kits were a huge hit at the shop in the fall. They made perfect Christmas gifts. They knit up quite quickly too. I had started this hat back in October, then Mackenzie decided he didn’t want this hat anymore, so I knit him something else and put this hat aside.Then he decided in December that he wanted me to finish the hat, so I did. I added 5 extra rows from the adult small size in the pattern, so it would cover his ears. Even with adding the 5 extra rows, I still had a bit of leftover yarn.