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Saturday, June 27, 2009

Summer Bolero Gift

Besides Christmas time, this is the crafting high season for me to cover all the special days in the family: from Mother's Day all the way through a couple of birthdays in the family until mid summer when I can come up for a short breather before I start thinking about fall/winter.

Summer Bolero - Texture
simple garter stitch

I happened to pick up a stash of this great water-colored fringed ribbon yarn (Phentex Yarns Fashion Eight) that I just couldn't resist. But then what to do with it? Surfing Ravelry.com for some yarn/pattern inspirations, I found the "Rave Bolero Jacket" by Barbara Breiter published for Crystal Palace Yarns and immediately was thinking of my sister.

Her birthday was about a month away which should give me plenty of time to knit this cute little summer bolero.

The yarn was close enough to the original although I did change some measurements for my sister. The pieces knit up quickly and I felt in control of my schedule... then came our little road trip to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. What an amazing place in the middle of the continent!
view from the "High Dune": ~650 feet (198 m)


Suddenly, I was only about a week away from my sister's birthday and I still had sew the bolero together, finish and mail it to her. Ohhh, cutting it close!

I happened to have a great color matching yarn in my stash (NaturallyCaron.com Country - Spruce) that I doubled up with the fuzzy yarn for a round of sc with hook size 4.25 mm (US 6/G).

Although it now had some hold to it (it was a bit stretchy before), I experimented with an additional row of the turquoise Country yarn by repeating sc, skip next sc, 3 dc in sc, skip next sc all the way around, and around the sleeve edges. This gave it a nice scalloped finish. But there was still something missing...

Summer Bolero - Brooch
scalloped edge and a quick "Chain Flower"

I had to mail the package today for it to arrive in time and needed to come up with something quick and easy...

A "Chain Flower" brooch with a button as the flower's center would do it. I started with a magic loop into which I repeated: sc, *12 chs, sc* repeat 16 times. Attached it, packaged it, and off to the post office I was.

Yikes, that was a bit too close for comfort but it turned out really nice, I think.

Summer Bolero

Friday, June 19, 2009

Spool Knitting - Great Intro for Kids

Since joining Ravelry at the beginning of the year, I’ve been surprised to see how much time I can find for crafting! A half an hour here, an hour there… It just proves to show that if you really put your mind to it, you can do it. :)

Since then I’ve been constantly busy with one project or another so that my two young boys (4 and 7) started to get curious about it and asked lots of questions.

So I took this opportunity and last week got my 7 year old started with spool knitting on my very own spool that I started with when I was about his age. Now talk about memories flooding back…

I picked a variegated yarn to entice him to stick with it long enough until the next color change… and it really worked! You know how it is when you tell yourself “oh, just one more color, one more pattern, one more repeat,…” Yep, that’s what I took advantage of. :)

And look how well he has been doing! I am so proud of him!

Pot Holder - Spool Knitting

It’ll make a great pot holder that he can see every day hanging in the kitchen. :)

Once he gets used to holding tension on the yarn and handling the needle with ease, I was thinking of introducing him to crocheting and eventually to knitting…

Thursday, June 4, 2009

CPS#118 - Birthday Card

Boy, it has been busy these last few weeks: Mother's Day, School End and my mom's birthday... and coming are Father's Day, my sister's birthday, my nephew's birthday, 4th of July,...

For some inspiration, I checked the CPS sketch of the week and I thought it would work well with some papers I had in my stash.


CPS#118

finished card

Who would have thought that my multi-colored RicRac would be used on a card?!

Materials used:
Card stock: Robin #2 (DieCuts With a View)
Papers: Pastel Yellow (The Paper Company), Giggle Stripes (Sandylion, KellyPanacci), Pink Daisies (Sandylion)
Accessories: mini round rhinestones (Jewelry Designs), Offray ribbon, RicRac
Font: Curlz MT