Category Archives: Knitting

All my knitting adventures

Twisted Project Plans

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Alrighty….let’s talk some wishful knitting! I have had some time to think about my purchases from Twisted in Portland, OR and here is what I’m thinking….at least for now. I reserve the right to change my mind as many times as I want.

Hazel Knits Lively DK in Acquarius, Paisley and Sea of Tranquility

Chubbs & Squeak Tweed DK in Colonel Mustard and Scabbers:

This might be the next shawl on my needles because I literally lay in bed thinking about this beautiful tweed yarn. And how gorgeous it would be with a black or grey tunic top…

Knitted Wit Smarties in assorted colors: I picked these up to add to heels, toes and cuffs stash for my hand knit socks. I tried to get colors I didn’t have in my stash but that matched the color palette of my stash.

Twine. Sock in the Wild Abandon colorway:

Knitted Wit Sock in Unicorn Giggles. I think this will be just a fun pair of blueberry waffle or vanilla toe up socks for me. The rainbow colors just make me happy!

I have dutifully logged all these ideas on Ravelry and in my stash pages lest I forget. Do anyone of you have an patterns to suggest with these beauties? I’m always open to suggestions and falling down the rabbit hole that is Ravelry!

Happy Knitting!!

FO Friday: Four Seasons Hat

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My Four Seasons Hat has finished its bath and is nicely blocked and ready for a head to keep warm. This is a hat I had been keeping in my purse as a carry around project that got finished during recent air travel.

Pattern: 96 stitch slouched stockinette beanie with ribbed brim.

Yarn: KnitCircus RingMaster in a prototype skein called Four Seasons

Needles: US 6 for brim and US 8 for hat

I really just kind of knit this hat on the fly. I knit the ribbing until it was long enough and started the hat when it felt right. I knit until my ball of yarn was looking small-ish and then I worked a series of decreases similar to the sockhead hat decreases. It’s kind of a franken-pattern mash up of different ideas. I was working with a “seconds” kind of yarn that had knots. I pulled out all the knots and Russian joined the breaks. I really can’t see them in the finished fabric.

The crown decreases did come out a little nipple like at the very top. I haven’t decided if it bothers me or not. I can always throw a pom pom on it if I decide that it does. I used up about 155 yards of the 185 yard skein. So just about 85%. I’m guessing I could have eked out a few more rows before the crown decreases but I didn’t want to play yarn chicken. I tucked the leftover in my bin for a scrappy project or future hat repair.

I’m pretty happy with this finished item. I just need to decide if I’m going to keep or gift this one. Happy Knitting!!!

Cast On: Sherwood Forest Wrap

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I might be getting close to the number of time I can mention my birthday trip to Portland before you guys quit this blog so I’m just going to talk about one last thing. I honestly spent more time pre-planning my yarn and travel projects than I did the rest of my suitcase. Which led to some interesting outfit choices during the trip, but I have no regrets!

I was SURE I had settled on casting on a new Sockhead Slouch in some lovely rainbow and grey sock yarn from the Wichita Woolery I got last Winter Woolfest. I had caked it up and pulled the needles and pattern all into a project bag ready to hit the airport. And then literally at the 11th hour I changed my mind. At 10 pm the night before my 4:30 am wake up call I decided to cast on a whole different project, a huge rectangular wrap.

I pulled the skein of Trampoline from KnitCircus in the Sherwood Forest colorway off my shelf where it had been staring at me and I cast on the Pride Wrap by Nicole Tavares. Its a rectangle wrap designed for a 150 gram gradient, which is what my skein was. I literally got the 200 stitches cast on and I worked one row before closing up my suitcase.


I knit on the airplane a little but A LOT just lounging around my friends house. She got me some amazing socks as a birthday present and I thought they paired nicely with my knitting. And I decided to call my wrap the “Sherwood Forest Wrap” after my yarn color instead of the pattern name. I think it has a nice ring to it.

I managed to work the first garter section and start the stockinette section. It takes me awhile to work across a row and back with the large number of stitches so I didn’t make what looks like a big chunk of work. But it was several hours worth for sure!

I was also a little disappointed because the pattern is a paid for pattern (and not an inexpensive amount either) and it has a pretty big booboo in one section of the directions. I am guessing this was not tech edited and I emailed the designer to politely point out my issue. I love this project and I’m not going to give it up. But I’ll see what kind of response I get from the designer before I pass any judgement.

Happy Knitting!!

A Visit To Twisted

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While in Portland my friends graciously offered to help me find a yarn store. And we wandered our way into Twisted and y’all….it was amazing.

They had a well curated shop of lots of amazing mainstream yarn lines and many indie dyers. And with no sales tax in Oregon….I fell down hard and basically handed them all my birthday money. The staff was knowledgeably and helpful but just let me shop and squish yarn in my preferred way. They had Quince & Co and Brooklyn Tweed, neither of which I had seen in person before. I think I lapped the store three times just taking it all in! My friends were so great and helped me shop. They asked some very thoughtful questions and really took an interest in how the whole knitting culture worked.

I came away with quite the haul. There were two skeins of fingering weight, five skeins of DK, five mini skeins and three enamel pins. And I did actually try to thoughtfully purchase so that I didn’t just buy pretty yarn to linger in my stash. I bought yarn in color combinations that went together and with projects in mind.

The tweedy yarn will be a two color shawl, the Hazel Knits in green hues will be some sort of a faded project, the Twine will be combined with existing stash for a shawl and the Knitted Wit will be happy socks for my feet.

I can hear Jellybean rustling in his bed so I need to get moving this morning. I’ll try to get up a separate post where I geek out a little harder over this yarn haul.

Happy knitting!!

A Well Traveled Hat

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My Four Seasons hat was very well traveled during my recent birthday trip to Portland.  This is where my hat started at 6 am at the Kansas City Airport. The terminal was shockingly busy for such an early Saturday morning. But based on overheard conversations, a TON of people were headed to Mexican resorts to escape the impending arctic blast.

I only knit on this hat while on modes of transportation during my trip. And by Monday morning when I boarded my flight it looked like this. (I also treated myself to a Mimosa to cap off a wonderful weekend. It wasn’t the greatest I’ve ever had but it felt decadent to do while traveling without the fam.)

And this last photo is brought to you by the KCI airport bathroom. I literally bound off the top of the hat while we were taxiing to our gate. The gentleman seated next to me complimented me on finishing so quickly. I think I earned some bonus points with him because I had asked him if my knitting would bother him  during the flight. He nicely told me it would not so he earned some good karma points in my book as well.

It’s a good thing this was done. It was 18 degrees with a feels like temperature of 9 degrees. I literally wore this out of the airport and all the way to my car….ends hanging out and all! It was perfection!

I’m going to drop this hat into a nice Eucalan bath and hope to have some non bathroom selfie FO pictures later this week. Happy knitting!!

P.S. My shirt says “I run on Caffiene, Wine and Bad Words”. I got a few chuckles from fellow passengers during my travels.

Filling My Bucket

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I turned 35 this past November and I decided to fill my bucket a little. I have a dear friend from college that lives in Portland Oregon whom I rarely get to see. On kind of a whim I snagged some flight deals from Southwest and set up a birthday trip. Just me…no kids, no husbands, no adulting. Just a weekend with old friends to recharge my batteries a bit.

First up….I spotted the famous PDX carpet that has been highlighted by the likes of the Yarn Harlot and has inspired many an indie dyed yarn colorway. Apparently its an institution and I in true tourist fashion snagged a photo.

Right from the airport we grabbed some Cuban food for brunch and did some shopping in the little neighborhood by her house. I snagged some books from Powels, christmas presents for my kiddos and soaked up all the weird that is the Pacific Northwest. That night my friend threw me a personal birthday party in her gorgeous house. We had homemade fish tacos, wine and chocolate peanut butter cake!

The next morning I was served homemade quiche after I slept for a magnificent 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Did I mention my friend’s husband is a classically trained chef? I was in heaven….

After breakfast we did some more shopping and I picked up a new winter coat for PB and I and then my friend took me to a YARN STORE. The store was awesome and it deserves it’s own special post.

On Sunday night before I had to fly out we went out for ramen and Korean BBQ. I had Bibimbap with pulled porkand it was GLORIOUS. Then we met up with a local friend and went to a stand up comedy event that supported LGTBQ charities. We had wine at the show and laughed so hard we cried.

The morning of my flight the grey Oregon skies parted and sent me off with this glorious sunrise. I’m told that this kind of sunrise is rare this time of year so I felt extra special.

And I flew home to my hubby and babies….and an arctic blast. I did get a lot of knitting done while I was on the airplanes and while lounging around the house chatting with my friend. But I think I’ll share all that on separate posts. I was exhausted from all the coming and going but it was worth it. I may or may not be plotting my next trip already….

Sock Surgery

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Happy Black Friday, I hope you are having fun in the chaos or avoiding it all together, whichever is your bag. I’m in the “avoid it” group so I’m sipping coffee and contemplating a turkey sandwich for breakfast.

But I digress, I need to do some sock surgery. My Accidental Travel Vanilla socks made their way on to my feet and into my boots this week. But I was annoyed all day long and constantly having to unzip my boots to pull up my socks.

After lunch I was beyond frustrated so I took my whole shoe off to diagnose the problem. And I found it….the heel is too small. I knit these pretty early in my afterthought heel career. And I knit it just like a standard wedge toe, knit one round and decrease the next round repeating those until done. Nowadays I knit my heels differently. I add extra knit rounds in between the decreases to add depth to the heel to fit my round heel.

I guess the blessing of this heel is that I can pick up the edge stitches and then rip back the heel to knit a better one. I’ve pulled these socks out of my sock drawer and put them in the mending basket for a rainy day when I need a quick project.

Happy Friday and Happy Knitting!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

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Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends. May your pants be stretchy, your wine glass full and your family be well behaved. I’m helping my dad cook this year while my mom chases the tiny humans. I feel like we both scored a win with this deal. No knitting content today as I’m off to start peeling potatoes and mixing up stuffing ingredients.

chicken close up dish food

Photo by Public Domain Pictures on Pexels.com

I’ll see you guys on the flip side tomorrow….probably with actual knitting content. I have some really cool stuff started!!

Halfway Done Zen

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I feel like I need to do a little pat on my own back. I have powered through a whole metric ton of bulky weight knitting. I have reached the halfway point on my Zen Yarn Garden Chevron Baby Blanket.

I have used up just under half of the blue and grey yarn. And then I added in the middle color block of red. Instead of measuring these rows I simply knit until I ran out of red. This took just over 1.4 skeins of bulky red yarn out of my stash FOREVER….bwahahahaha.

I think the solid middle section in that pop kind of color really add to the color blocking of it all. And makes the blanket less sedate and more fun. It kind of blows out on camera but I adore it in real life.

And smart Rachelle decided to start weaving in my ends. I plugged on some episodes of The Good Place and went to town with my darning needle. I got all the loose ends woven but I’ll wait to trim them until after its washed and blocked. I only have four stripe sections left and this blanket will be done!

Happy Knitting!!

Knitting The Card Game

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Ya’ll….I may have lost my mind when I opened this box. Earlier this summer I back the kickstarter for Knitting the Card game and it FINALLY came!! I’ve been seeing this pop up all over my social media feeds and I’m beyond excited to have my own copy.

I immediately ignored my cluttered office and messy kitchen and started the game. I roped my dad into playing with me. He’s a great sport!

Turns out he is also a sharp tactician. He read the full rules and promptly whipped my butt. He knew all the rules and I was too busy fan girling to bother with rules. I was cruising along and I got 100 first but I didn’t know about the pattern deduct. So lesson learned….read all the words next time! We played a second time and this time I won that round. The game was super easy to pick up and I can’t wait to convince more people to play with me!!

American Thanksgiving is this week…..I will have more family around to rope in…..