Jaali

Thank you so much for all the Alouette love, I really appreciate everyone’s comments and will be working on writing up the pattern soon.

A while ago, I was asked to test knit a shawl by Shweta of the Yarnside blog.  I hadn’t knit a shawl in ages at that point, but I’m a sucker for lace knitting and  delightedly jumped at the offer.  I knew that I wanted to use my leftover Sundara Sock Yarn from this project for this shawl that Shweta named Jaali. 

Jaali is a quick knit with many options to customize – love that in a pattern!  Due to yarn limitations, I decided that the triangular version of this shawl would be the best way to go for me. 

The mesh lace center is beautifully offset by the border repeats and the shawl is finished off with a nice edge with what most of us shawl knitters have come to know and love, the points! 

Unfortunately, the “points” along the edge of my shawl disappeared even after I redid the cast off.  The other test knitters didn’t seem to have this particular problem and so it must have been something that I was doing wrong:)

The pattern for Jaali can be found here.

Jaali (ravelry link)
Pattern: Jaali by Shweta Shankar Khatri
Yarn: Sundara Sock in “Cobalt Over Mediterranean”
Needles: Size US 10/6 mm

Posted by & filed under Finished Knits, Lace, Shawl, Stashbusting. This post has 6 comments.

Alouette

When I bought this yarn from my LYS a few weeks ago, I knew that I wanted to knit something girly with it.

What better than a little spring cardigan for my 3-year-old daughter, Kirtana.  So, I dug out my Barbara Walker Stitch Dictionary, picked out a stitch pattern I liked and began knitting.  Every time I would pick up this sweater to knit a few rows, Kiki would ask me, “Mama, are you all done?”  That alone was sheer pressure to get this finished and ready for her to wear!

I wet blocked and once, I actually saw her laying on her tummy in front of the sweater touching it every few seconds to see if it was dry! 🙂

My almost 12-year-old son named this sweater “Alouette” because one of our favorite walking paths is along the Alouette River by our house.  I knit this cardi top-down raglan style with the stitch pattern repeated just above the cuffs.

Presenting “Alouette”, a sweet little spring cardigan for the little girl in my life.

Alouette (ravelry link)

Pattern: My own 
Yarn: Tosh DK in “Ms. Taylor” 
Needles: Size US 6 & 7/ 4 & 4.5 mm 



The stitch pattern is fun to knit and gives great texture to this garment.

A bit of sleeve action

Thankfully, Tosh DK is a superwash yarn because this cardigan is going to get lots of wear this spring!

Posted by & filed under Cardigans, Design, Family, Finished Knits, Kids, Yarn. This post has 17 comments.

Spring Things

3 more days till Spring!

I’ve been a busy bee with so many things needing to be done before Spring break arrives next week and much of my time has been spent in the kitchen.  I’m getting ready with my Spring Break Arsenal ….how come kids are extra hungry when they aren’t at school?  I don’t blame them with trees to be climbed, frisbees to be thrown (almost took out our neighbor’s dog… sorry Roxy!) and general goofing off to be done.  We’ll also be going to The Island for a couple days which will be a nice break from the routine.

Let playtime begin!

There has been knitting too.  On the needles, a little Spring cardigan. 

I’ve just got one more sleeve to go and it’s going to look adorable.  My Garter Yoke Cardi is progressing albeit, much slower than the pint-sized spring cardigan.  I can’t really whizz through it since there are a million stitches on each row.  Eventually, I’ll be done 🙂

Have some green fun today everyone, Happy St. Paddy’s Day!

Posted by & filed under Cardigans, Kids, Rambling. This post has 3 comments.

Plan B

This is what we saw on one of our bike rides last week….

What a perfect day to ride horses (or bikes)!  Time to bring out the spring knitting, don’t you think?  I was contemplating what yarn to use, when I looked at these beauties from my recently frogged Dark and Stormy Cardi and thought… Plan B!

Same yarn, different pattern!

I’ve been wanting to knit the Garter Yoke Cardi for a while now and so as always, I went trolling through Ravelry looking at all the lovely GYCs for inspiration.  Wow, this is a popular pattern, no?  Madelinetosh Vintage is such a lovely, squishy yarn and it is just right for this pattern.  Garter stitch is so mindless, enjoyable and perfect and it glows in this colorway of Vintage. 

March means spring break is almsot here, I need me some mindless so we can go outside and play!

Happy March everyone:)

Posted by & filed under Cardigans, Family, Rambling, Yarn. This post has 9 comments.

The Frog Pond

When you look at something over and over and it becomes so very familiar that you miss so many details like, erm…. the huge big mistake that is staring you in the face.  Remember when I showed you my Dark and Stormy Cardi and said that I would get to working on it pretty soon?  Well, I thought things were going swell and that this week I would really get cracking on this sweater.  Yeah, scratch that because my buddy Jocelyn said that she noticed this twisted cable thing going on with my sweater and asked me if that it was a “design feature” I was adding.

Haha, no design feature, just one HUGE big mistake!  See what I mean…

I thought about letting things be and seeing if I could incorporate this “new” cable pattern through the rest of the sweater.  But, nope!  I knew that this mistake would just feel like a big X on my back, perfect for target practice!  Which is when I decided to rip until the offending row in the pattern.  Then I noticed something else looked wonky, rrrrip another few rows.  Oops, one of the mini cables looked weird, rrrrrip again.  The heck with it, I decided that having the few remaining rows that were error-free wasn’t worth it and so to the frog pond went the whole sweater. 

Once I was done ripping, I glanced at the time on my clock.  It read 1 a.m.  I slept very soundly that night!

Posted by & filed under Cardigans. This post has 10 comments.

k2tog YO ssk YO

The knitting language is full of abbreviations… WIP, FO, YO, K2TOG and many, many more.  If you aren’t a knitter, you’d probably think that this was weird and maybe even bordering on rude.  Last week, I kept losing my place in the pattern I was working on and had my 11-year-old son, Prithvi, call out the pattern rows to me.  After some initial stumbling he really got into it and began a rap of sorts.  You see, he thought that all of the YOs (yarn overs) in the pattern were just knitting exclamations! 

k2tog, YO, ssk, YO, YO YO YO!!! 

Lots of knitting happening here, some of which I can’t talk about yet – test knits, surprise gift knitting… stuff like that.  Now, all of that’s done and I can go back to my regular scheduled cardi knitting mania.

I’m done with the body of my Metro cardigan and moved on to Sleeve Island.  The sleeves should go quickly because these are three-quarter length sleeves and the yarn is worsted weight.  Then, I have a little bit of the collar to get done before this sweater has a date with the blocking board.

My Dark and Stormy cardigan hasn’t seen much action lately, but seeing that I’m on roll with Metro, it will just have to wait on the sidelines a teeny bit longer.  This yarn too is worsted weight and so progress should be quite quick.

I really want to finish knitting these sweaters and get some wear out of them before the weather turns warm because I can see life in the garden already.  It seems like the earth is waking up from its long winter nap and we have little green shoots sprouting from the bulbs we planted in the fall.

I can’t wait to welcome spring blooms and if you’ve hung around my blog long enough you’ll know that I’m a sucker for flowers.

PS: Just my rotten luck…. just as I was typing out this blog post and was about to hit “Publish”, it began hailing.  Whaaaat???!!! ^&%%^$$#  Not golf ball type hail but rather cute little mini pebbles.  Still!!!!  I guess I can hold off on the spring knitting wishlist then!

Posted by & filed under Cardigans, Kids, Rambling. This post has 7 comments.

Tiny Tea Leaves

I’d almost forgotten how exciting it is to knit sweaters for the tiny humans.  You cast on, knit for a few days and before you know it you’re casting off — it’s like the sweater knits itself.  Now that’s instant gratification!

When Kiki announced one day that I had to knit her a blue sweater, my heart sang.  I knew immediately that I wanted to knit her a Tiny Tea Leaves since I love my Tea Leaves Cardigan so much.  She is too young to notice that we would be all matchy, matchy and so I picked out some lovely blue Tosh DK from my LYS and just began knitting. 

Ahem…Knitting Police please note that I didn’t swatch before casting on.  So, gauge swatch, smage smwatch!

This is a great cardi pattern for kids and there were just a couple of modifications I did –mostly to do with the button bands.  I went down a needle size for the bands and knit a couple extra rows so that the buttons would sit in the centre instead of tugging at the buttonholes.  I also added two extra stitches at the underarms.

Every little girl should have her own Tiny Tea Leaves, no? 🙂

Deets…

Tiny Tea Leaves (Ravelry link)

Pattern: TINY Tea Leaves Cardi by Melissa LaBarre 
Yarn: Tosh DK in “Windowpane” 
Needles: Size US 6 & 7/ 4 & 4.5 mm

Posted by & filed under Cardigans, Family, Finished Knits, Kids. This post has 14 comments.

Windschief

The Windschief Hat is probably the quickest knit I’ve done in a really long time.  The pattern is so addictive and has the perfect balance of mindless stockinette with some interesting bits thrown in, in the form of twisted rib stitches.  Yarn overs and decreases makes the ribbing twist all the way to the top :: clev-ER.

This is a great pattern by designer Stephen West and definitely gets two thumbs up from me!  The only change I made to this hat was to knit it a tad bit longer than what the pattern called for.  Like I mentioned in my previous post, Vineet picked out the yarn and pattern for this hat and he absolutely loves it.  So, that’s a win!

Windschief (ravelry link)

Pattern: Windschief by Stephen West published in westknits
Yarn: Dream in Color Classy in “Grey Tabby” 
Needles: Size US 6 & 7/ 4 & 4.5 mm

Love the swirly top…

I’m glad my guy likes wearing the stuff I knit for him 🙂  Which brings me to a major guilty confession  – I’m seriously lagging behind on knitting for the kiddos!! Better get crackin’ on that Tiny Tea Leaves asap!

Posted by & filed under Accessories, Family, Finished Knits, Hats. This post has 8 comments.

Eye Candy

Stash!  Every knitter has a bit of yarn or boat loads of it.  Some knitters cram this stash into the deepest recess of their closets while others prefer to proudly display their piles-o-yarn for inspiration or…decor!  My stash is what I call, um…moderate 😉 and I try to keep it stuffed into the two large-ish bins in my closet.  Any overflow and I go into a state of panic.  You know the feeling… “Oh no, I spent all my money on yarn!  Now I won’t have any money left for groceries so we’re all going to starve and die!”  The best way to keep this panic at bay is to keep knitting from these bins of stash.  Twisted logic?

I joined a fantastic group on Ravelry last month called Stashdown.  The focus is to embrace your stash in 2011 and knit projects using what you have instead of hoarding yarn or going crazy with all of the pretty yarn that’s out there for the grabbing.  Some of the members in this group have set incredible challenges for themselves like declaring 2011 a no-buy year for yarn or to cut down their stash by half!  I ain’t pulling off any of those crazy stunts coz I’m weak like that.  That being said, I was determined about stashing down this year until…

Pffft, I fell off that wagon when I cheerfully handed over my credit card to the sweet lady at Three Bags Full last weekend and walked away with these lovelies.

I didn’t stop there, I went to Unwind Yarns because I needed another set of 4.5 mm needles and walked away not only with the needles but also these babies.

The madness doesn’t end because I lost my cable needle and I needed it desperately for almost all the projects I’ve been working on recently and I had to make a trip to my LYS, Black Sheep Yarns, for this when I swear I heard these skeins calling out my name!

Of course, there were yarny presents under the Christmas tree…

I’ve reached a state of major bin overflow and have thought a couple of times about breathing into a brown paper bag.  This is a good thing because driven by this panic I have knit feverishly ever since and I’m happy to report that I’ve completed two projects this year.  Well, they’re smallish, but still woot, woot!

The first project is a test knit that I recently mailed off to the designer.  I can’t talk about it until the pattern is published.  So, that will have to wait.

The next one is a hat that I knit for Vineet seeing that he braved the crowds of “squeeing” knitters at Three Bags Full (it was their Belated Boxing Day Sale!) and picked out the yarn and pattern himself.  This project took me two days from start to finish.  Actually, strike that!  This hat took me the exact time it takes to watch two movies.  The pattern is Windschief by the charming Stephen West and is my first go at a Westknits design.  I loved it and highly recommend this pattern.  FO pictures for this one coming as soon as I block it.  In the meantime, here’s a progress shot when I was half way through.

I am hoping that I make good progress with Stashdown this week because I have two sweaters on the needles that are going quite well and Kiki has been begging me for a blue sweater.  Good thing then that I bought those two skeins of blue Tosh DK from my LYS:)  I may not finish them in January but I can be optimistic!

And before I forget, here’s a modeled picture of the husband’s Mowl.

Have a great week all!

Posted by & filed under Finished Knits, Hats, Rambling, Stashbusting, Yarn. This post has 7 comments.

Next Year Already!

I was talking to a friend about next year a few days ago without realizing that “next year” is already here!  It has been really good to get back to our routine lives after an insanely busy yet wonderful holiday season. 

Vineet and I even managed to take off for a short break this past weekend to celebrate our 13th anniversary.  My mom offered to look after the kids and we jumped at her offer before she changed her mind!  We wanted this break to be different and so we chose this adorable Bed & Breakfast that was close enough to the city core without being smack dab in the middle.

This place was spectacular with amazing views of the North Shore mountains on one side and the downtown core on the other.  But the highlight was the breakfast that was served to us every morning.  Freaking AMAAAAZING!  Three…yes, three courses of delicious, exotic food.  “Brandied fresh strawberries in lace toffee cups”, who eats this stuff and doesn’t feel like they’re in heaven!

Sorry about the crappy pictures, we had only my little point-and-shoot camera with us this weekend.

Sunday was perfect sunshine with not a raindrop in sight and since that’s so rare in Rain-couver, we decided to stroll down Main Street which incidentally isn’t Vancouver’s main street!  I didn’t have a clue that Three Bags Full is on that same street and that they were having their belated Boxing Day Sale.  Ka-ching!  I walked out of that store with a couple of lovely goodies.  However, I didn’t stop there because I made a couple other yarn related stops – I’m bad, I tell ya! That being said, I love everything I bought!  Show and tell next time:)

It was great to getaway but sweeter still to come back home to the kids who didn’t drive my mother crazy (that’s what she tells me!)

I have been knitting quite a lot but I can’t really talk about the project I’ve been primarily working on since this is a test knit.  Details coming as soon as the pattern is published. But, I can show you my Dark and Stormy sweater which I am so in love with…

I’m much farther along on this sweater than when this picture was taken.  Like I said, show and tell next time – yarn, knitting and the hubster’s Mowl.

Posted by & filed under Family, Food, Rambling. This post has 6 comments.