2020 Goodbye!

 

Stitch In Time Blanket 2 is finished!!

 

This knit has been fun but it has also been a bit of a struggle to find all the colours and the right amount of it. But now the spare bed has it's blanket that my husband ordered for it. He sleeps here during the days when he's working nights and also visitors uses it.

Yarn used: Fingering weight
Needle: 2.25 mm
Started: 18th of June 2020
Finished: 29th of December 2020
Pattern: Stitch In Time
Designer: Kay F Jones

Advent Calendar Cowl Finished and Blocked.

 

It has been lots of fun knitting this one and I will knit another one. I have learned lots of new patterns by making this one and that's always fun. 

Yarn used: Drops Baby Merino
Needle: 3.25 mm circular 40cm
Started: 4th of December 2020
Finished: 23rd of December 2020
Pattern: n/a
Designer: Kay F Jones

The Advent Calendar Cowl Finished!

 It's finally finished and now on the blocking mat after a good soak. I still think that I should have done it in all blues first from dark to light and then from light pink to the darkest. I just have to make another one because I have enough yarn left.

Famous for a Day

Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday to me! My article was published in this Christmas issue of the Bakery Bears magazine Knitability.

If you are looking for a really good Knitting podcast that has also lots of other things in the show like, History, Baking, and Cooking, Tutorials, Games, Visiting beautiful places to sit down to knit, and lots more, then this Podcast is for you. Find them on YouTube The Bakery Bears Podcast, or on their website.

Bakery Bears Advent Calendar KAL 2020

 So it has started and I have been working on it very hard so now the Stitch In Time Blanket has to wait till this is done and it will be by the 24th of December (hopefully). So this is how far I have come and I did what the designer Kay Jones is doing, and that is starting with the darkest of the two shades of colours (shade 1 = Blue, Shade 2 = Pink), and my two colours are blues and pinks. 

So Starting with the darkest pink and alternating every section with the blues from the lightest and ending with the darkest. Meaning that both lightest will meet in the middle and both darkest will be at the end. I thought that could be really nice, but after a few sections, I realized that I should have gone with my first thought and that was to start with the darkest pink to the lightest and then from the lightest blue to the darkest. Why? because my colours are not as subtle as the designer's choice so it will be hard contrasts between them all and not the soft overlapping that I was first hoping for. So I guess I have to make another one and do what I first thought of.

The nice thing with this pattern is that every section is inspired from different christmas books/stories and she reads that part from the books that inspired into the pattern for each section.

I'm looking forward to see it done and it's a cowl. I have learned some new pattern and that's always fun. section 4 (Happy Christmas Harry (Potter)) was really fun to knit and also section 6 (Flaming Pudding).

Stay Saf!

Jorids Vantar (Mittens)

 

One lady in my Facebook group showed me some lovely pair of mittens that I fell in love with, mainly because of the Bullfinches, so I wanted to make these myself and ordered the yarn. I have no idea when it will happen because Christmas is soon here and it's colourwork and I have the Stitch In Time Blanket that I want to finish first. But I did order the yarn for them so at least I have that when I'm ready.

Stitch In Time 2 cont.....

 The end is near and it's time to start working out where all the blocks should go. Starting with the backbone that is the Rainbow.

And then the rest....... I did lots of rearranging here I can tell you.

The first layout but was changed so many times before I was pleased with it and started to mark them up.

Now after marking them out I can start framing them and make sure the frame is right on them. The edges are wider than the rest so all the edge blocks are getting marked as well.

Time to start knitting.

Stitch In Time 2 cont...

 I'm working hard on this blanket because I want it done before the end of this year. Here's they Rainbow layout I started with (backbone) and then I need to fell out with the rest of the blocks.

The Bakery Bears Podcast will have a Advent Calendar KAL so I have ordered the yarn for it. All I know at the moment is that I need 10 balls of yarn in soft gradient colours and not to dark and we will be only using 20gr per colour, so I have ordered 50 gr balls so that will be enough to make another one if I so want to.

Here they are!

Stay Safe!

/Diana

Diamond Painting Bullfinches

 I have finally started to work on this one and I'm really looking forward to see it finished. I love bullfinches, they are my favourute bird of the small birds.

I also ordered some sock blockers that arrived and I'm looking forward to test them out and see how good they are or not. Time will tell.

/Diana

Little House Hat

 My favourite Podcast duo from The Bakery Bears, Dan and Kay Jones have the most brilliant Podcast ever in my book and they always comes up with new interesting things from History to Knitting and some baking and cooking thrown in and lots of other things and when Kay came up with a colourway Hat I thought I should give it a try but I am so bad at it but need to practise it, so I jumped on it. And As I thought, it didn't turn out the way I was hoping, but I'll keep on tying and will make another one. Here it is.

The white is to tight so it puckle up and I need to get better at this.

Stitch In Time part 2

 After my husband saw my first Stitch In Time blanket he said that he wanted that on the spare bed, but the blanket is just a lap blanket and not big enough for a single bed. So it was time to measure up the bed and get started on a new one and I have to admit that it has been a struggle to get all the colours for it and I had to beg for scraps in my Facebook group instead of ordering a whole skein for just about 15 grams of yarn, so it took some time to get this one knitted just because of that. I worked out that the blanket should be 7x4 blocks and because of the 7 blocks long I thought "Rainbow". So that was the hardest part of the blanket to get sorted out because some colours are the colours that I do not buy much of, like yellow, brown, grey. And those few yellows and browns and so on that I do have are not enough to use for the whole block because I don't want to use the same yarn more than once in the same block unless there's a way of changing the run of the colourway if it is very variegated with long runs of the colours in it and I have done that a few times. So here are the last blocks in the making that I am really fighting with to finishing off.

But I know I will finish it before the end of this year. If I have to order some skeins to do it then I will.

Diamond Paintings

 This is a hobby that's new to me and when I saw it the first time I really wanted to try it out. There was a woman in my group on Facebook many years ago who did these things so I asked where she bought it and ordered one for myself. Then things happened and other things got in my way and I only managed to start it and that's where it ended for some time, but I really wanted to finish it, so on the 20th of July this year, I finished it. This one has rhinestones so it's very difficult to photograph it.

After making this I wanted to try another one and I have seen that they now also make them in resin beads, rounded and then later squared one. I looked around and found a group on Facebook and there the majority thought that the square beads were their favourite ones, so I thought that I should test a small painting first to see what I thought of that and ordered this one.

This one was also just lying in storage waiting to be made because I was ordering a big one with David Bowie for my husband as a Christmas present and it did arrive earlier than I was expecting and my husband was supposed to travel to England so I could work on it whilst he was away, but it all got cancelled and I was now panicking to get it ready in time without him seeing it. I did finish it in time and frame it, ready for Christmas. This one was done with rounded beads and I took this photo before I framed it because of the reflections of the glass. I finished it on the 22nd of December 2018 so it was very close to Christmas, 2 days before because here in Sweden we celebrate it on the 24th.

After this one was made I really needed a rest from it because of the stress making this in time for Christmas my back was broken from leaning over the table whilst putting the beads in so that's why the one with the daffodils was still waiting to be made. So In January 2019, I ordered another big painting that I just couldn't resist buying, because I love Bullfinches. This one is also with square beads and I am so looking forward to making this one.

Over a year later another woman on my Facebook group shows a diamond painting she's working on and I just dropped my jaw to the floor. It's a stunning Native American motive that I already have on a long-sleeved t-shirt, so I just had to order it in 60x80cm. I ordered it on the 26th of April 2020 and I knew I had to wait a bit for it.

Finally, the 5th of June was the date I picked it up from the post. I'm very happy!

So the next thing I do is not do anything to this until the 20th of July 2020, when I finally picked up the small one with the daffodils.

The 2nd of August 2020 was the day it was finished. I have seen that some people varnish it over to keep the beads in place, so I will test that on this one later before I frame it. As you can see on this one, it's not so detailed as the David Bowie one, so you really need to make it as big as possible for the best results. This one was just a test one for using square beads so I'm OK with the outcome.

So now the big one with the bullfinches are ready to be made and here it is, on my table in my hobby room upstairs.

Stay Safe!

/Diana

Short and Sweet Socks

 I have for some time now, years actually, wanted to learn to use magic loop and when my favourite pod caster woman Kay Jones of the Bakery Bears Pod-cast started a knitting university series, I jumped on it. I finally could learn this and I made a pair of socks with magic loop. After I had finished this I didn't hate Magic Loop as much as before but still prefer my DPNs.

Yarn used: Mayflower 1 Class
Needle: 2.25 mm
Started: 1st May 2020
Finished: 4th, June 2020
Pattern: n/a
Designer: Kay F Jones

Stitch I Time Blanket Finished!

 

This project has been so much fun to make that I couldn't stop working on it, and my husband really wanted it on his spare bed where he sleeps when he's working nights. Thing is that this one is just a lap blanket, and to fit the bed, I need to make it 4 x 7 blocks. So now I know what to make later on and I think I will try to use up some of my acrylic yarns for that instead of sock yarn.

The blocks on the blanket are;

January: Snow and Ice
February: Valentine
March: Spring
April: Easter
May: Valborg (Swedish Bonfire night) Bonfire and Fireworks
June: Midsummer (Swedish Midsummer celebration)
July: High Summer
August: End of summer
September: Harvest
October: Halloween
November: Stormy weather
December: Christmas

Yarn used: Fingering sock yarn
Needle: 3.00 mm
Started: 1st March, 2020
Finished: 18th May, 2020
Pattern: Stitch In Time
Designer: Kay F Jones

Stitch In Time cont....

Three more blocks are now made on this lovely Stitch In Time blanket by Kay F Jones and I have only three more to make and they seem to be the hardest to find colours fore but I'm waiting for an order to arrive any day now so I really hope that I can finish this one off.

Here are the three last ones just waiting to be finished.

Stitch In Time Blanket

 

At the moment I’m knitting on a blanket and the pattern is called Stitch In Time by Kay F Jones, and you can buy it on Ravelry.

Each block representing a month of the year and it’s harder than you think to find all the colours you need for each block but it’s a fantastic way to get all those leftover yarns from different projects.

I have managed to make 6 blocks and it’s now down to the last 6 but I now need colours I don’t have and it looks like its very hard to find as well, but I have a friend in my Facebook group who will be looking through her stash this weekend and try to help me out with the missing colours.

These are the ones I have made so far.

The Longbourn Shawl

When I saw this shawl for the first time I just fell in love with it on the spot and just had to knit it, it's the Longbourn by Kay F Jones.

Kay also dyed up the three sets of colours for this shawl for her Etsy shop, but they went in seconds, so she dyed up another batch that went just as fast so I had to find my yarn somewhere else.

The three colours where Blue, Pink and purple and I wanted the purple with the silvery grey border. The blue one is pictured above.

These were the colours that I brought for mine

Here they are caked up .

I really wanted a lighter purple but couldn't find any, so I also bought a darker silver/grey.

All I now need to do is to wash it and block it and I'm very pleased with it.

Yarn used: Cauldron of Colours "Betty Blue" & Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light "Moonstone"
Needled: 3.75 mm
Started: 22nd June 2018
Finished: 15 February 2020
Pattern: Longbourn
Designer: Kay F Jones