A Little Surprise for My Daughter’s Birthday

My oldest daughter will be seven next week and will be receiving an American Girl doll for her birthday from her grandmother. The gifts that we are giving her happen to be going along with the theme of the doll. Her younger sister went with me to the used book store this week to pick out a couple American Girl books to be her present. We also have a table and chairs set that are American Girl doll sized that a coworker gave my husband.

At first, I planned to make a dress from a pattern I found online, but no matter what I did I could not get anywhere near the gauge called for, so I put it aside. Fortunately, I found a pattern book for three 18 inch doll sweaters that I apparently purchased on clearance at a local craft store some time ago. I decided to make a sweater and asked my nearly seven year old what color sweater she thought her doll would need to go with the cute skirt she received for Christmas. (My daughter already has the doll pictured, which is not an American Girl brand doll, but is the same size.) By the way, I found the skirt in a shop on Etsy called Helen’s Handmades.

This sweater was fairly easy to make, being mostly one stitch, with some ch loops that form the braided look down the front and on the arms. I do not think Springfield (fibrecraft) makes the pattern anymore; I have emailed them for some further information.

This is one more item that helps me use up some of my yarn, since my yarn diet is still going strong.

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Going On A Yarn Diet

No, this is not my yarn.

After discovering that my latest yarn purchase of ten pounds of cotton from Elmore-Pisgah will not fit into my yarn bins, I decided that I must go on a yarn diet. No more yarn (except needed for custom orders) until I can fit that ten pounds into the bins. So far I jammed about half of it in the bins.

bins similar to mine

Today is day two of my pledge. I am going to see how long I can go without buying yarn, just using some of my stash. I currently have twenty bins full of yarn, similar to the bins in the picture above. I have additional yarn that just won’t fit in the bins.

Here are some projects that I plan to work on to do some stash busting:

1. Afghan for youngest daughter — this should use up a bunch of yarn and free up almost a whole bin

2. American Girl doll clothes — oldest daughter is getting Felicity for her birthday next month

3. Several new sports themed beverage cozies for my Etsy shop

4. More Lovely Little Letters to work my way through the alphabet — great projects for using partial skeins and a way for me to work on making more patterns available soon

5. A couple new knitting loom projects, including another Garter Stitch Hat

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A Loom Project in Memory of an Online Friend

Garter Stitch Hat

My family went out of town for over a week for Christmas, so I packed several projects to work on along the way and while there. For some reason I decided to grab a bag of mill ends of some bulky chenille yarn along with the green Knifty Knitter loom. (The loom had a half finished project of my six year old daughter’s on it that she let me finish on the way to Cookin’ Grandma’s house.) With the trip nearly over, I had not touched the loom after taking off my daughter’s project.

I was checking my email on my husband’s laptop when I came across a message from the group I belong to for parents of children with hearing loss. I knew as soon as I saw it titled with a member’s name, Jill, what had happened. I knew she had cancer and had not been active on the list lately. She was a parent who was willing to help out each parent new to hearing loss with lots of information and examples from her own experiences. I know I even have some of her messages saved in a file on my computer to read later on, in case I need help later for my daughter.

I was not sure at first what I wanted to do to honor Jill, but then when I was packing up to come home I saw the yarn and the loom. I decided that a chemo cap made in her honor to help another woman who is going through chemotherapy would be an appropriate project. I picked out a hat pattern and worked my way through about half of the hat on my way home.

Today my father contacted me to ask if I still made chemo caps; he remembered me making one for a fellow teacher before I had kids. Now I know where this hat’s home will be. My elementary school principal’s wife is going through chemotherapy and my father would like to give her a hat.

I finished the hat tonight and hope to mail it tomorrow, in honor of a good friend that I never met in person.

I believe that the yarn and loom made it into my luggage for this reason.

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First Yarn Project for my Almost Four Year Old

My oldest daughter decided that she likes using the Knifty Knitter looms better than the knitting machine, so she gave it to her younger sister who is almost four. Over the last couple of days, Marian and I have been working together on her first project. She decided she wanted leg warmers. She did most of the cranking, while I held the machine still and made sure the yarn did not get stuck. Every once in a while she would get tired and I would take a short turn cranking.

Now we have another yarn user in our household. Maybe that will help me keep my stash down. Then again, maybe it will just grow faster.

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Etsyhooker of the Week —Must Keep Knitting

This week I thought I would share a shop at Etsy that has some supplies that crocheters (and knitters as well) would love. Since I drool over all the fancy hand dyed and spun wools but cannot use them, I was pleased to notice that Must Keep Knitting has cotton yarns as well in her shop.

For those of you not allergic to wool, there are also some great looking wools to be had. This rose could make a lovely scarf or be added along with another yarn to make a larger project. You could also make some of the great flower patterns available to add to another project.

Must Keep Knitting also has some cute stitch markers that can be for knitters, or be modified for crocheters.

You can check out Must Keeping Knitting’s blog as well.

If you head over to Etsy, please also consider checking out Laura’s Left Hook.

ASL Sign for the Post:To sign yarn, check out this clip that suggests the motion of pulling yarn from a skein.

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Learning to knit and purl on a knitting loom

I pulled out my Christmas gift the other day to start a different kind of project. I want to learn more than the basic stitch that came with the knitting loom set, so I checked out Loom Knitting Primer by Isela Phelps from the local library.

I have already made a hat from this book, so now I wanted to try something different. Since our downstairs can get a bit chilly at times and both of my daughters love to wear dresses most of the time, I thought leg warmers might be helpful. So I found a pattern for leg warmers in the book that is all knit and purl, which means I can practice these two stitches over and over until I make my head learn them. I think I know the difference now that I am this far on the first leg, but I still need to keep the book open to flip back and forth between the knit and the purl page to remember which one I am supposed to do. I have seriously considered switching out every other peg for a different color to help me remember whether I am on knit or purl.

I am using Lion Brand Homespun for this project, which was already in my stash. No new money spent for this project and more space cleared up in the yarn bins!

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Some “knifty” hats

For Christmas I received a set of Knifty Knitter round looms. I thought this might be a way to use some of my vast stash of yarn in a new way. So, for the last few days I have been playing around with it. I think I have a tendency to wrap too tightly, but so far, so good. I had some Lion brand Fancy Fur that I had purchased for a dollar a skein which was a pain in the neck to crochet with, so I figured wrapping it on the loom would be much easier. Here is my second attempt at a hat (My daughter has the first one for her doll):

I checked a book out of my local library that has been a great help so far. The little page of instructions that come with the looms is not very helpful and really does not give one any idea of the possibilities with these looms.

Loom Knitting Primer, by Isela Phelps, has been helpful for me so far. Of course, I have not seen any of the other books out there in person yet, so maybe there are others that are better.

Here is the hat I made from the first pattern in the Loom Knitting Primer, with an added crocheted flower:

This hat is made with two strands of worsted weight yarn held together. I happened to have a couple partial balls in my stash, so I am not sure if it is Red Heart or Caron since the skein wraps are long gone. I plan to make a matching scarf for this hat, with some added crocheted flowers at the ends.

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CASTteam Christmas Contest….

UPDATE:
Congrats to the winners:
Hurdler4Eva, Ulixis, DebsRandomArt, and Saire

Here are some details of a contest to win lots of nifty prizes from etsy artists. Check the CASTteam page for contest dates. If you have not registered at etsy.com yet, please let them know “lauraslefthook” sent you.

To enter:

Read through the Christmas Carol “O Holy Night” on the CASTteam site. There will be ten words in CAPS. These 10 words will be hidden in the participating shops. When you find the words, copy the links and submit them to:

Castteam
You go to the Castteam site above and click on contact Castteam.

You will be entered into a drawing to win one of several gift baskets containing beautiful items from the Cast Team shops. One correct entry per person.

Participating shops:

www.meowy.etsy.com
www.knitblitz.etsy.com
www.RubiesNRoses.etsy.com
www.InspiredbyRose.etsy.com
www.SilverRiverJewelry.etsy.com
www.whimsiedots.etsy.com
www.zudagay.etsy.com
www.mitches21.etsy.com
www.eclecticChaosCreated.etsy.com
www.potatoface.etsy.com
www.tiggerbonn.etsy.com
www.DownFromtheMountains.etsy.com
www.MyissaG.etsy.com
www.KelliRene.etsy.com
www.RunAliceRun.etsy.com
www.RoseThistleArtworks.etsy.com
www.Baggavond.etsy.com
www.lauraslefthook.etsy.com
www.BonghiVestiti.etsy.com
www.createdwithjoy1.etsy.com
www.cindyforrester.etsy.com
www.LamplightBoutique.etsy.com
www.debtybeautifulbeads.etsy.com
www.bowbabybow.etsy.com
www.twistedpurl.etsy.com
www.GloryGifts.etsy.com
www.MommyKnowsBest624.etsy.com
www.TheTwistedPurl.etsy.com
www.hiphostage.etsy.com

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Crocheting something for myself

I know I don’t really have the time, since Christmas is coming and I am so far behind on that, but I have started a new sweater ( NOTE: need to be a member for viewing free patterns) for myself anyway. Now that I have made it through one skein of yarn I am worried that I may not have enough yarn and might need to incorporate the five skeins of a different color into the sweater. I made this sweater before in the actual yarn that was required, but found some Lion brand yarn in blueberry and lime blue at Dollar Tree and just had to buy it. Then I discovered that it is a different weight than the first yarn. I can still get the gauge (well as close as I can get gauge — mine are always too tall, so I adjust as I go), so I am trying it out. The first sweater turned out to have an open enough weave that I have to wear a tank top under it, so maybe with a bigger weight yarn I won’t need to do that with this one. It is an experiment. I think I will look at my completed sweater today to get an idea of how far along I am compared to how much yarn I have used before I get too far along.

The verdict is that I will have to use the lime blue along with the blueberry, as you can see from the photo above.  I think I should be fine with yarn if I use a couple blocks of lime blue in the body part.  I will have to decide later if I want to trim the sleeves and bottom edge and turtleneck with the lime blue.  I guess I will see how it looks without first, then add if needed.

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