Pompom Monster Tutorial

This is my pompom monster for a project I am doing for a presentation in my son's kindergarten class in April. His teacher does an "enfant vedette" project where one child is highlighted for the week and one of the child's parents comes in for an hour and talks about their job or hobby so I will talk about knitting and my yarn shop and make these pompom monsters with the kids as the activity I will do with them. It's a cute and fun project to do with the kids. This was my trial monster to see how much yarn I need I prepare for each kid in Mackenzie's class. He has 18 classmates.

To make the pompom I used this free printable PDF from Mias Craft Ideas. I chose the size I wanted and I cut out the shape and traced it on cardboard from an empty cereal box (you need to make 2 of them to hold together when wrapping the yarn). Then I used a worsted weight yarn and wrapped the pompom tool. I cut around the edge of the yarn to release the strands & then I took a string and tied the pompom together. To see how that is done, you can watch this youtube video. I did trim a bit of the pieces afterwards (like a haircut) to make the monster even. Then I used my handy glue gun and glued on 2 google eyes & voila! A cute/adorable pompom monster!

 

(Side view of my monster)

Boomslang

I knit up Boomslang (free download on Ravelry) in less than a month. While it’s a mindless knit, there are a LOT of stitches. I casted on 300 stitches instead of the 220 the pattern recommends and I find it just right. Any less amount of stitches and it probably would choke me. I used 1.3 balls of Drops Baby Merino in black (21) and I used 1.5 balls of Drops Baby Merino in red (16). The extra red is because I finished it off with the red as well as started it with red. The pattern is just a simple knit 6 rows, purl 6 rows. I read on Ravelry that some knitters wrapped & turned to knit the purl section, but I don’t mind purling, so I did the purl rows as is. I knit this up on US 4 - 3.5 mm needles. I love how reversible it is, and I loved working with the baby merino yarn. I would definitely knit this pattern again, however the next one would be black and a variegated yarn, instead of 2 solids. I think the black would make a variegated yarn pop.

Owl Strap Covers

I knit up these adorable Owl Strap Covers for my friend’s new baby’s baby bucket car seat (Baby in yesterday’s post). I used up 32g of di.Ve' Torgnon Ombra yarn (approximately 57 yards of yarn). The pattern is: Strap Covers- Owl Keep You Safe by Melissa Schaschwary. It’s a very quick knit and makes a very cute gift. You can see my project on ravelry here. I made bobbles for the first time, you use them to close the strap around the car seat strap! Very neat. I used DMC floss to do the embroider of the owl’s feature (eyes, nose/mouth, feet).

Girlie Twist Hat

I recently knit up Twist Hat by Melissa J. Goodale for a precious baby girl. A good friend of mine had a 28 and a half weeker, who is doing extremely well and should be coming home from the hospital soon. i used .29 of a skein of Katia Candy on 2.75mm needles. The pattern actually changes to a larger needle after the ribbing but because I was making it a preemie size, I kept it to the smaller needles and it worked out perfectly. You can see more details on ravelry here.

Stay Gold!

Stay Gold Team Canada!

The Small Vermonter

This was supposed to be an adult hat, the Vermonter. I followed the instructions exactly with a super-bulky yarn and 8mm needles, however it fits 3 year old Quentin snuggly. Hmm... I wonder what went wrong? The hat without the pompom weighs 48g and the pompom is 22g for a total of 70g. So it turned out to be a small vermonter. Quentin wears it well! It was a really quick knit I did in 1 evening. I’ll try to find some other yarn, and maybe go up to 10mm needles to try to make this an adult version, as it’s a super cute hat.

Flight Tracker

My in-laws just returned from their trip, and we were able to track their flight with this very cool app. It was very neat to be able to track their flight and see where they were at any given point, the kids enjoyed that. It also allowed us to see if they were arriving late or early or on time, to be able to leave at the right time to go to the airport. And I didn’t even need to use the app on my iPhone, I was tracking it right on my computer, so someone who doesn't have an iPhone can track a flight as well with the link. Very cool! (Click on the image to open it up to see it in better detail).

Diagonal Blanket

I started a beautiful blanket for a little girl (hubby’s co-workers baby) and thought I had enough yarn. I was weighing the yarn as I was going, as it started off in the corner and you work your way to the size you want, then you start decreasing once you have reached the half way point. Well… something didn’t calculate right, and I ended up running out of yarn with a 7 rows to finish. I was so upset! And of course, the yarn I was using was stash yarn (not from my yarn shop) that I picked up numerous years ago, at Walmart. It’s Red-Heart Eco-Ways, a recycled blend. It actually knits up nicely. Anyhow, I made a few calls, checked (just in case) at Walmart (and Fabricville) to see as they both carry Red-Heart, but neither of them had Eco-Ways. I called my supplier who carried Coast & Clark, the company who makes Red-Heart, and my contact said that the yarn has been discontinued for at least 2 years and that she even looked to see in their random bin at work, but they didn’t have any of that to send me. Hmmm… next step, was Ravelry. I sent a message to a handful of people who had the yarn in the same colorway in their stash. I heard back from several people and managed to get some extra yarn to finish off the blanket, and make another one.

The pattern was How To Do Corner Start Diagonal Crochet by Sandi Marshall and I used a 5.5 mm (I) crochet hook. The blanket with both colors is about 260g of yarn. I am pleased with the final results, and it would have been finished earlier had I not run out of yarn. The recipient loves the blanket as well.

National Sweater Day

Don’t forget to wear your sweater today!

Cabin Fever

Deb Gemmell, author of Cabin Fever books (Need A Hat? Need a Sock? Need an Accessory? and many more) came into the shop today for a surprise visit. She’s visiting Montreal for the week. I got her to sign my copy of Need a Sock? Thanks Deb!

Legwarmers, Gaptastic & Starving Artist

I have some recent finished projects to share with you today!

 

First I have some cute little legwarmers I made for my new next door neighbor’s 12 month old daughter. For these simple legwarmers I cast on 48 stitches, and I did 2x2 ribbing for 6.75 inches (as per the girl’s leg measurements). I wanted a ribbed legwarmer so they hug her leg and don’t slouch or slide down like stockinette legwamers might. I used a total of 42g of yarn for them – a nice quick knit!

Next, I have the Gaptastic Cowl. I made this for a store sample as we just changed our window display this morning. So you can see this in the shop’s window for the next 6 weeks or so.  I loved knitting this. I used an entire skein of James C. Brett Marble Chunky in MC12 on a US 13 – 9.0 mm knitting needle. I want to make myself one next, in some stash yarn or something.

Lastly, which I just finished last night, I have a Starving Artist hat to show you. This was also knit up as a store sample, for our window display. I knit this hat up also using James C. Brett Marble Chunky (our window is all items knit up with this yarn) on US 10½ - 6.5 mm needles. The hat took 65g of yarn and was a quick knit as well.

 

I liked working with the Marble Chunky yarn. If you’ve made something with it or plan to make something with the yarn – do let me know!

Waiting for the School Bus

Sean discovered a new fun activity this morning and Mackenzie had to join in. This is how we waited for the school bus this morning…

I am glad neither of them were injured!

New Website!

I am very excited to announce my new work website! After a lot of work, it launched yesterday. Let me know what you think!

Craigslist Funnies

I saw this on Craigslist. I hope it’s still listed when you get to read it, if not, I have it saved, so just ask & I’ll share.

A Handy Chart

I just typed this up to keep at work, and in my knitting bag, and I wanted to share it with you guys, my readers. I am not sure where I got this chart from, as I had taken a screen shot of it with my iPad somewhere. So unfortunately I cannot credit the source, but I am not taking any credit for the information above. The chart gives you a list of the minimum amount of stitches you can put on a circular needle (circular needles in the lengths of 16”, 24”, 29” & 36”). At work we sell 16”, 24”, 32”, 40” (and some 47”) needles, which are almost the same as these above. I think 29 & 36” are more popular in the USA, than in Canada, but I am not 100% certain. So you figure out how many stitches per inch your yarn is, and here you have a guide to see what length circular needle you would need to use for your project.

Happy Knitting!

An Overdue IOU

I finally finished my husband’s socks which were an IOU from Christmas 2009. Back then, I wrote an IOU with a picture of a pair of socks and put them under the tree. I finally started them in April 2010, but I think I got “socked-out” for a while, because I didn’t touch them, nor any other pair of socks until I picked these back up recently to finish them. I finished them on December 15th, 2013. Just shy of 4 years after promising them. Oops! They are my own design, a pattern I call “Man Socks”. They are available on Ravelry for 2.99$. He loves them, and I am glad that I finally finished them!

Mom’s Lumio Hats

These Lumio hats are a ridiculously quick knit. After seeing my store sample hat, my mom wanted two for dog walking. One in black, and one in blue. I’ve previously made her a black and a blue cowl, so she wanted one to match each of her cowls. My parents have a Great Dane named Bosco and she wanted these hats for when she dog walks. This yarn has reflective bits in it, so people can see her at night (not that they would miss the dog…)

 

She also requested no pom pom on the hat (it still looks cute without the pom pom) since she sometimes puts her hood on when it’s extremely cold (which kind of defeats the purpose of having a reflective hat, if she’ll put on a hood… but anyhow)!

 

I knit up one on the evening of January 1st, and the other during the evening of January 2nd. I used my 10mm addis (16”) – which I love, and they were way too fast to knit. The blue hat is 81g and the black hat is 87g. I knit them both to the exact same length, so I am not sure why one hat weighs 6g more than the other. That kind of baffles me. Maybe one I weaved in more in length on the ends, or something.

I hope she likes them!

Color Affection

I started my Color Affection Shawl back on July 17th, 2013 with my knitting group. We started this shawl as a knit-a-long. More than half of our group worked on this shawl, and we’re about 13/14 maybe even 15 of us in our group. I got side tracked from it, working on smaller projects between starting it and finishing it, and then buying the wool shop back in September, kind of made my life a tad busier. My goal was to finish this in 2013. I came close to finishing it in 2013. I worked on it like mad for the last few days of the year (after finishing all my teachers gifts, and a few store samples that I had to do). However, I ran out of yarn on New Years Eve with 60 stitches left to cast off (At the end, there was over 425+ stitches in the edging).

I was in luck… I had in my stash, a 10g skein of an orange hand-dyed sock yarn that matched part of the Colinette Jitterbug Ginger Cinnabar that was in my shawl. However, I only found the skein on New Years Day, so I was able to finish casting off, and block my shawl. I thought I had enough to finish the edging. I needed in reality enough to make a 2” edge, as the pattern calls for, but I managed to get in 1 3/4” but… while I was doing my last few rows, I weighed the yarn after each row to see how much I used per row, to make sure I had enough to finish. I guess somehow I miscalculated by 60 stitches. But that’s ok… I managed to save my project with some miscellaneous matching almost to a tea, yarn.

At first, as soon as I cast-off, I hated this shawl. Not because of the color, because the color is stunning. I hated it, because, even though I did the yarn-overs at the beginning of each row as a lot of Ravelers have done, the shawl curled along the edge as it was extremely tight. It wouldn’t lay flat and I wanted to chuck it across the room in frustration. I did not notice this when I was knitting it. I can’t even describe what I mean. I probably should have taken pictures before blocking it.

My only hope was to block it. After blocking it, the shawl has redeemed itself a bit, luckily. It seems to be okay now.It still seems tight along the top edge, but blocking seems to help it lay flat. I wet blocked it on foam mats (first picture in this post) over night. Once it was dry in the morning, I un-pinned it.

Using 4.0mm (US6) needles, and Colinette Jitterbug yarn that I had in my stash since I owned Robyn’s Nest (my online yarn shop from 2007-2010), I used one full skein of the Ginger Cinnabar (orange) colorway, I used 0.85 of a skein of Elephant’s Dream and I used 1.13 skeins of Lobster Pinch (red). I still have 3.87 skeins of the Lobster Pinch and another full skein of Elephant’s Dream (blue) but the only one I had 1 skein of was the Ginger Cinnabar. If I would have realized that I needed more of the 2nd contrasting color, I would have used the Elephant’s Dream as the 2nd contrasting color instead of the Ginger Cinnabar and put the Ginger Cinnabar as the 1st contrasting color.

I don’t think I’ll knit this one again, once was enough.

Top Width: 75”
Bottom Width: 86”
Height: 16”

Lumio

 

We just got in this awesome reflective yarn by Schachenmayr. It’s called Lumio. What a neat idea that it reflects in the dark. This is a good idea for people who dog walk or who walk outside at night. Might need to make a bunch of these for the dog walkers in my life. The blue hat above is a store sample and I didn’t realize but I only knit it to 7” long before decreasing at the crown when the pattern had said to knit until 7 3/4”. I only realized after, but the hat still fits my head well, and it was for a store sample, so I didn’t mind that it was 3/4 of an inch smaller than called for. That hat without pompom is 75g  and the pompom weighs 43g for a total of 118g. The black hat below, is for me, I decided to knit up another one, for those cold mornings waiting for the school bus to come pick up the boys. I went with black because it matches everything. The hat itself without the pompom is 91g (I knit it to the actual length the free pattern on the ball band calls for) and the pompom weighs 37g for a total of 128g.

 

Very quick knit & the yarn is nice to work with. Making the huge pompom was fun too! I had to cut out circles out of cardboard to make this pompom, the pompom maker I had at home was too small for this size!

Katia Ushuaia

 

 

I recently decided to try out this new super bulky yarn that we got into shop, Katia Ushuaia. I decided to knit up the free pattern that Katia put out, the 7-41 Cowl. I knit it up using US 15 - 10.0 mm needles, and it took 1.33 skeins. We got in every color of Katia Ushuaia and I wanted to see how it knitted up. The free pattern is here as PDF.

This is a fun thick & thin yarn to work with. And I just love this color way (color number 603).

You can find my project on Ravelry here.