Big old ball of yarn

Such possibilities, what should I make?!

Yarn goodies

A friend of a friend of mine knows I like yarn. (Yes, that's an understatement!) She had a box of yarn goods that she donated to me. Lots of very cool retro yarn, needles, and hooks.

The box also contained some old knitting books and magazines. There were some very large how-to posters, I guess used for teaching students? Here is how to single crochet. I just love getting old yarn goodies, for FREE!

Vintage Blankets

I popped into a thrift store near my house and found these lovely crocheted vintage blankets.

I cruised by the yarn section too. Not bad, but I resisted.

New Shelves

Over the Christmas break, I picked up some new shelves - they're red! And it came with a matching table. They're currently against a wall in our bedroom, mostly empty, but soon they will be filled with yarn, yarn, yarn! Organized, lovely, ready-to-use yarn!

A new project

My friend Amy dropped off this bag o' yarn last week. I'm helping her with a wee project, top secret!

Patons Kroy sock yarn - Shawl project

Now that my beautiful socks are finished, I have cast on with the second colour I received, Turquoise Jacquard.

I just love the blue!

I decided to make this pattern, Boneyard Shawl. It's going MUCH faster than the socks, because the needles aren't so teenie tiny, and it's a lot of stockinette stitch. So I don't have to count and keep track of the pattern, I can just knit and watch TV!

Yarn review: Patons Kroy Socks

My socks are done and I love them because they are so beautiful! And even more exciting: I get to write a review about Paton's Kroy Socks.

The yarn details are as follows:
Weight: 1-Super Fine | Ball Weight: 1.75 oz. / 50 g | Ball Length: 166 yard / 152 m | Content: 75% Wool, 25% Nylon

The pattern I chose was Hermione's Everyday Socks, which you can find here on Ravelry, in the colour "Brown Rose Marl." You can follow my slow, sock-making progress here, here and here.

I have used this yarn in the past, to make fingerless gloves. I decided to make socks because I wanted to see how the stripes turned out. I purposely started the socks at a matching colour point, but they didn't turn out exactly identical in their stripes, which was perfect! I loved how they stripes came out - similar but not exactly the same. I made both socks at the same time on one small, teenie-tiny, circular needle (size US 1 - 2.25 mm). I split the socks when it came time to shape the heel, and finished them separately.

The yarn is lovely to work with: soft and smooth and very, very strong! I remark on its strength because I tugged a lot at the beginning of each round, so there were no spaces in between the stitches. The yarn didn't break once. There were no breakages in yarn in either of the balls, and it came out nice and smooth the whole time, with no catches or fuzzy bits. I am not used to making socks at all, they take so long and I usually give up. One of the reasons these took me so long was because I kept stopping and looking at the self-striping pattern and ooh-ing and aah-ing over the yarn. The colour way really complimented the stitch pattern that's carried all the way up the leg and over the instep. It wears nicely too: a little bit of stretch and oh so soft. I may never wear these socks out, they're just so lovely to look at.

The link to purchase your own balls of Paton's Kroy Socks yarn from Yarn Canada is here.

And now for many, many pictures of my beautiful socks:

I loved making these socks, and I am NOT a sock-making person! They take me too long to knit up but I just loved the way these turned out. I have already cast on with the second colour I chose, Turquoise Jacquard, and will post about that project soon!

Sock progress

I'm still working away on my socks with my Patons Kroy yarn. I was doing them both on circular needles, but now have gotten to the point where I can split them and do the heel, instep, sole and toe separately.

One - done!

Patons so far

I'm making some progress on my yarn testing of Paton's Kroy:

I decided on this pattern, Hermione's Everyday Socks:

The needles are so wee, it's taking me forever! But I love the pattern and texture. So far, the yarn is lovely to work with, I just LOVE how the stripes are coming out!

Stash bust

Spring has come and gone, and I tried to do some spring cleaning, really I did! I started with my yarn stash. Oh boy.

WHO has this much yarn? Well, me. And this isn't even all of it. BUT I cleaned it out and got rid of a lot. In fact, last week, I dropped off two HUGE bags of yarn for Handmade Hugs - it's funny, because I usually pick up yarn from them! But someone else can make use of it, instead of it just sitting shoved in the back of my closet. I also dropped off two finished blankets for them, the green granny and the granny stripe blanket.

I also took the time to organize the yarn that I kept in a nice fashion. I have 2 big clear plastic bins, filled with beautiful yarn. As well as a couple of smaller containers. It's a huge improvement - now I can find like colours and weights. Wheee, yarn!

Patons Yarn test

A few weeks ago, Tiffany from Paton's contacted me about testing out some of their yarn. I hadn't even finished reading her email, and I was like YES! Test out our yarn and write a review, what could be better?

I emailed her my choice of two colours and she sent these along. So yummy!! I plan to make socks with the pink yarn and a shawl with the turquoise yarn. I can't wait, the yarn is already so nice to work with - so soft and I LOVE the colours!

Boxes o' Yarn

Every so often I go on to Craig's List and see if there is yarn for sale. I know I have a lot of yarn, but I want MORE yarn. ALL THE YARN!

Well I found a posting for yarn and fabric. A man had cleaned out his mom's stash and was selling a whole bunch of balls for about 50 cents a piece. The only catch was you had to take the whole box. Um, no problem.

Me and my husband drove out to his place on a rainy, rainy night. We picked up 4 boxes for $80. WHEEEEE!!!

These are only a few shots of the yarn. Mostly acrylics but wow, is there ever a lot of it! 

I'm thinking of starting my own little operation for Handmade Hugs. I discovered them back in 2013 and have been making stuff for them ever since - mostly blankets. I can teach others how to knit and crochet, and we can all make blankets together. I have enough yarn to start me up, now I just need to find the time. 

Cat Cowl

I found this fuzzy, bulky skein of yarn in my stash the other day and whipped it up into a cowl. That's 15 stitches on size 15 needles, just straight garter stitch and sewn together to form a circle.

I think the yarn looks like a nice fuzzy tabby cat!

Quick n easy project and hey, one less skein in my stash :)

Pink Giraffe

My friend Caitlin was moving out of her house, getting rid of some stuff, and she donated a bunch of yarn to me. It's a big, big bag - enough to make a blanket, for sure. As a thank you, I made her daughter a giraffe, using some of the yarn she donated.

I used this pattern from Amigurumi to Go. I love the slight shaping of the head and feet. I free styled different spots though, and left the hair off.

Look at that full tummy, so cute :)

Purple hats

I got another donation from my dear friend Colleen, who gave me some vintage yarn earlier this year. This time she dropped off a bag of stuffing, both polyfill and quilt batting, that I can always find uses for. She asked for a purple hat in return: something warm, to cover her ears, so that she could wear it during an upcoming trip to Toronto. She can't wear wool against her skin, so I found some purple acrylic yarn, and whipped up not one, but TWO hats for her.

I knit her this newsboy hat, that I love to make. I did one extra repeat of the cable pattern, so it's nice and pouffy in the back.

Then I crocheted her a bucket hat, that I had pinned on Pinterest a long time ago. I didn't use this pattern because I had the wrong size hook and yarn. But I love how the button looked, and the shape of the hat overall.

I hope Colleen like them and she stays warm in Toronto!

Yellow brick cowl

I finally finished making something out of this yarn! I just love the colour, it's perfect for sprain.

I used a stitch pattern from a great book I have. I'll hopefully write out the pattern later. It curled a lot right off the needles, but a nice wet blocking got most of the curl out. I love it!

Yellow brick yarn

Here's the yarn I picked up last week when I went to So Much Yarn:

I listened to a podcast while I rolled it up into this:

I'm going to make myself a spring cowl scarf. The label calls this colour "gold," but I bought it because I've had this song stuck in my head for the last few weeks. It's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, done by Sara Bareilles. Man, I love her, and I love her take on this song. Here she is live on PBS American Voices. Amazing. 

Cat Love

I made another project from the yarn Colleen gave me. She had some half-finished projects in there too, including this mystery piece:

It looks like maybe two sleeves or the front and back of a small item. The yarn was a mystery too - no ball band - but it was lovely and soft. Then I looked up some inspiration on my Pinterest Board about what to do with old sweaters.

I decided to rip back the two pieces so they were the same height, then bound off each one. I sewed up the sides, stuffed it, made ears, defined the neck, gave him ears and a face, and finished off with a scarf. Ta - da - a cat!

I called this blog post "Cat Love" because he's a nice shade of red and it's close to Valentines Day.

Hello Ducky

In this post, I blogged about getting some vintage yarn from Colleen. See that bag in the front, with the yellow, blue and orangey-red yarn in it?

Well I made my first finished object, this ducky. I had made another one last fall and liked how he turned out. He's a pretty happy ducky!