Dad's Hat

This hat is made from worsted wool. I used Galway. It's a really nice wool to work with. The pattern I used is...

Midnight Sky Men's Hat. 

I love this pattern. It took awhile to knit up, but it turned out great. the decreases are even and I really enjoyed making it.

Side view of Dad's hat. It's a little big for my

mannequin but then again..the mannequin has a 

small head.

Front view of Dad's hat. 

New things I've done since my last post!

I finished another dish cloth for Mom.. Haven't decided if I'm just doing the three or if I'm doing four. Either way she'll love them. I might just do 3 for everyone. It just seems easier with as much as I've been working on..

This is my Mom's scarf to match her hat.

It's basically just k2, kfb, purl over and over. 

You just CO a multiple of 4 stitches. I believe 

I did 18 for this. It seemed to take FOREVER.

Scarves always take me a long time. Hopefully

in January when I switch to knitting continental the

crazy sloow flat knitting will change.
I made this with a chunky cream colored super wash wool, 
and white cotton with a silver strand through it. 

Mike's Hat! I made this hat for my sister's

boyfriend. Was the first beanie I've done.. 

So there are a few mistakes but it turned out

pretty decent. It was the first time I've used 

the long tail cast on. It was a 2x2 rib and the rest

is just knit around. This is made with a worsted orange
superwash wool.

This is another scarf for my sister. It's more of 

a summery kind of thing. Hopefully she likes it.

This was made with flounce yarn. It is some of the

hardest yarn to work with. You basically CO 5

stitches.. I really should post a tutorial for these. 

It's pretty easy as long as you remember to wrap 

the yarn around a book before you start knitting 

with it.

This is Aunt Lisa's cowl. It's got a 1 1/2 inch 2x2 

rib on each end and the rest is knit... This doesn't

even need to be done with magic loop. One 16" 

circular is all you need and you can just knit

round and round. 

Things to do! But some things are done!

So mannny things to do.. but I'm on my way. Those are two Dish cloths I made over the past 3 days.. I'm working on a third to match right now. I think I'm making 4 since I had two balls of the yarn and each one makes 2 cloths. More stuff for Mom :)

This is the scarf I made out of the yarn from hell. Interestingly enough.. I have a similar yarn that I'll be making another scarf from... At least now I know to Wrap it around a book first. :) I also convinced the hubby to try it on so I could get a picture of how pretty it looks on someone :)

Mom's Hat

So I finished Mom's hat. I'm pretty proud of it.. There's a couple places where I made mistakes.. But nothing huge. I'm pretty happy with it. And I'm sure she won't even notice the mistakes. I used cream colored chunky wool, and some worsted white cotton with a thin strand of silver. It has a pompom and some braids.. Fun hat to make. i love this pattern because it doesn't take more than a day to make..and it looks super cute when it's done! :)

New Years Resolutions...early.

So.. I decided to put my new years resolutions on here.. Every day I seem to think of another one. Some are crafty related. Some aren't... but all are things I need to do. So here we go :)

list.. in no particular order..

Learn to knit continental
Lose the weight I want to lose
Spend less(I've already started being as frugal as possible.. but it seems like every time I turn around there's a new reason to spend...So i need to start ignoring these reasons.)



Will edit any time I think of a new thing.. Sick of forgetting :)

Muggy Wuggy Cozies!!!!!!!!

Today I started my Christmas Gifts! First Christmas gift is a mug cozy. Everyone is getting mug cozies this year if they drink anything out of a mug. It's just how it is. I took the second one with the flash on. I think it's a little big. I'll make it smaller next time. It's still totally Giftable tho. The idea is to keep your drink warm right?!?!

This chart,which i found somewhere on the internet, depicts why these mug cozies are important in every day life. :)

Abstract Art Thing!

Abstract? Whhhaat? Yah, it's not a landscape. Y'all should be happy lol.

"Summer Meets Winter"
This was my first abstract painting. And Months later, I look at it and I'm kind of sad it didn't turn out how I originally wanted it. I went into it wanting to do something to show the struggle between Summer and Winter in the "Dresden Files" series by Jim Butcher. I think i'll try again. Because Mab and Titania are likely two of my favorite book characters ever.. And we haven't even met Titania in person yet. Maybe in "Cold Days" But I doubt it.. Because if summer were involved I doubt it would as such.

More Art!!

Here's my newest one. It's kinda hard to tell from the camera what's going on across the river with the grass... but it looks decent when you actually see the painting, because you can see the brush strokes on the dark grass a lot better. This is my favorite so far, because I actually had purple and magenta...So I had about a billion more options than I had with the other two. 

As you can see, I'm still painting landscapes. I feel like I'm getting better with placement of objects. That tree was kind of scary. After I painted the tree I took days and days and days and days walking past the painting, wondering what the hell I was going to do with it. I knew I wanted mountains in the distant background but I had no clue how to paint them. Soooo I took some time. And every time I walked past it, I was pretty stumped, until today when I realized what I wanted. I never really understood it when painters say they spend more time contemplating what they are going to paint than actually painting. YAH, I GET THAT NOW. 

The set I bought came with 3 painting boards... So I'll be moving on to a canvas that I bought. EXCITING.

So here's number 3! 

"Late Summer Sunset"

Painting number 2!

This is my newest painting. Now I just need to frame both the ones I've done and put them on the wall. Woot woot.

Love THIS Hat.

Sooo.. I almost forgot to post about last week's hat. Hay fever and a sinus infection and I still managed something pretty awesome... Here are the pictures!

Art? Really.. ART.

So a few weeks ago Ashley was telling me she paints. and she showed me a painting she did. It was rly cool. I'd never even thought about painting before. So i mulled it over for awhile. Googling.. thinking..

So I found this paint set at Michael's.

I got it on sale. Was about 25 dollars for all that stuff. Bought a couple other paint colors, and some extra brushes. I think the total cost was somewhere around 40 dollars after tax. Silly Tennessee sales tax.

Soo I got home today and tried it out... and this is what I managed.

"The First"
My First painting. I could have called it "Bubbling Brook" or "Stream in the woods" But there's only one thing that really made sense for this one.

I think it turned out pretty good. I definitely didn't go into it trying to do anything like this. Painted the background burnt sienna.. then started painting random greens and blues.. thinking I could just call it some abstract thing.. But eventually, this is what it turned into.

Dish Cloth

My Ohio dish cloth before blocking. I freaking adore these. They make awesome Christmas gifts.

I got the pattern at..

http://www.knittingknonsense.com/index2.html

Love this site because there are a ton of different patterns, and they seem to be similar to a lot of the ones on ravelry. So I want to make sets that are special per the person they are for.

I haven't blocked the one in the picture yet. I was planning to do it when i had a few of them, so I could block them all together.

2 hats, 2 days

My newest project is to do as much knitting as humanly possible. Projects make me happy. I made 2 hats in 2 days.

This pattern is amazing and so easy. Perfect first hat pattern for anyone who isn't super sure what to do.

http://ekatearcher.blogspot.com/2010/12/earflap-hat-pattern.html

And here's a video tutorial on how to make these hat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiiNWE2NRWQ

In the video the girl uses dpn's instead of circulars. I've literally knitted in the round twice.. But in the end you have to switch to dpn's and I can tell you I know for sure I'd rather use circulars and switch instead of using dpn's the entire time.

My Mom text me last week and said she wanted and Ear Flap hat for Christmas. This worried me because I've only knitted dish cloths and scarves.. And these really have only been knitted flat. And the only increase I knew is YO. Sooo.I ended up googling ear flap hats, and found cheshiire's video. Between the video and the pattern I managed to create to hats.