perfect fit

What happens when an avid knitter discovers an inspirational home decor solution that involves knitting?

She blogs about it! (And in theory, actually makes the item in question.) When new passions meet old in a perfect marriage of craftiness, the knitted lamp shade is born.

This DIY tutorial posted today over on designsponge has me thinking cozy knitted lamp shades in lovely colors everywhere. I mean what lamp doesn't want a sweater?

progress is paint

Today we picked up new night stands at a garage sale for $10! I just need to decide what color to paint them and change out the hardware and they'll be great. They're not even that bad as is. We also painted the bedroom today and it is sooo much better. I love, love, love it. Who knew so much happiness could be purchased with $35 and 6 hours of work?

Bedroom with fresh paint and the furniture moved around. We still need to add some art work and curtains, but it is sooo much better already. The color is Olympic "Going Grey"

Bedroom before. The wall color was vomit, ak.a. Sherwin Williams "Baguette," there is still al gallon left in the basement in case we want to change back to vomit.

rental remodeling

I haven't been doing a whole lot of knitting lately, but with cooler weather bound to roll in one of these days I have lots of projects I hope to get to. I'm having some ladies over to the new house this week to kick off fall knitting and I'm psyched, because 1) I now have space in my home to have regular knit nights and 2) one of these days I will finish the trellis and vine pullover.

The three seasons porch after all of our (mostly Matthew's) hard work. I wish we had taken before pictures. It was moldy and mildewy with rotting carpet and peeling wainscoting on the bottom. Now it's just lovely (well, except the landlord needs to put in a new floor, but our lovely rug is good enough for now)

So, if I haven't been knitting, what have I been doing? As I alluded to above, we have moved to a more spacious abode and that has taken up a crap ton of my precious time. On top of all the moving, we've had to do some serious updating to this place because our new landlord way over sold what he was going to do to make it livable. For starters the place was filthy. It's pretty clean now and we've tackled two of the biggest projects we agreed to do (one of them because of previously mentioned over promising landlord's inability to do as he promised). I'm pretty proud of our handy work and it reassures me that once we get this place tip top, it will be awesome.

Powder room before. The wallpaper on the right was peeling, which made it easy to remove, of course it only revealed the really stubborn wallpaper underneath.

Powder room after. I was going to paint it a lovely shade of gray, but after the stupid landlord made a stink about paying for paint while we were doing all the work I decided to paint it with the leftover white from the porch. It is a rental afterall and it's still a hundred times better. Now, it just needs curtains.

The next project was going to be to paint the living room (light french gray - a lovely bluish gray), but I think curtains, a rug and some lamps will fix that up okay for now, the real need is in our bedroom, which has walls the color of disgusting bodily fluids. We're thinking a soft gray. There's really nothing wrong with the paint, except for the color, so we can't hold this one against the landlord, well except for the fact that he has bad taste. Anyways, I'll keep you updated as we beautify the new place. Here are some comparison photos:

Our new place (see the need for curtains and rug, also I hate that plant there, but it needs the light)

Old place. This is actually the old arrangement, I don't seem to have picture of it after we moved the little shelf thingy)

Should I even mention the state of our new kitchen? No, I'll just be happy with all my extra space - for now.

Cuteness

I so want to knit this, but am short on newborns to knit for at present. It's Susan B. Anderson's Buga Baby Bunting in Spud and Chloe Outer. I think it's the adorableness of this photo that makes me crave knitting it, and to be honest, it sort of makes me crave the baby to put in it too. Good thing my husband doesn't read this blog anymore!

Baby Sophisticate in Spud & Chloe

My good friend had her second child this past January and I just couldn't decide what to make him. The friend is a knitter, very, very crafty, and generous with her awesome crafty gifts, so I wanted to make something a bit more special for her new little guy. When I saw the baby sophisticate sweater by Linden Hefler, I knew it was perfect. I also knew that I must knit it in Spud & Chloe. The knitting was really easy, the yarn was fabulous, and I found the perfect buttons. Then it took me like two weeks to weave in ends, another week to sew on buttons, and almost two weeks to put it in the mail, but I sent it off last week and it has hopefully found its way to its new little owner and fingers crossed it fits. I read that it runs a bit small, but I added a little length all over and my gauge was spot on, so fingers double crossed.

I knit these cute bunny hats for babies

I'm guessing no one is reading this anymore, since I have all but abandoned it, but I'll just throw this out into the ether and see what happens. After over a solid year of friends having new babies every month in what seemed a steady deluge of adorableness the monsoon has finally slowed to barely a trickle and I can turn my knitting away from all things baby, but I've sort of grown to love making these tiny, fun, cute, and often quick little baby items. Oh well, I am sure there will be no shortage of opportunities to knit more.
I made two of these cute little hats. Both of Matt and my very oldest and dearest childhood friends recently welcomed their first babies, both little boys, and so I knit the same thing for each. One went off to little Graham in Oklahoma and the other to little Noah in Geneva, Switzerland (I think that kid has three passports already and he's only like a week old).

Pattern: Bunny Tail by Susan B. Anderson from Itty-Bitty Hats

Yarn: Knitpicks Andean Treasurer (leftover from my mom's Francis)

Needles: Size 5 Addi Clicks

Olympic knitting

First, Joannie Rochette, the definition of poise, grace and strength who won bronze in figure skating after the sudden death of her mother just days before is not only Quebecois (love the francophones), lovely and talented, she is a KNITTTER!!!! Woot! She said so in this interview. Love her.

Second, did you see the awesome big chunky sweater jackets that the medal presenter helpers wore?  I kept drooling over them all the time, they were so lovely. Well thanks to a little bit a of research over on ravelry, I found photos on the designer's website! Check them out. So lovely. It is called the Heritage Sweater. If only I could figure out what yarn/roving that is, it would probably not be that difficult to figure out how to knit my own. The accent colors are all woven in after the coat is finished so any superbulky roving style yarn in gray should work. They are offering a ready to wear version, but it is not nearly the same. The one above is the original with the giant custom needles used to knit it.

Finally, I did not finish my trellis and vine pullover in Oscar yarn in time for ravelympics. I keep running into problems and am starting to hate it very much, but true knitting athlete that I am I will persevere and finish this race. Hopefully, I will finish in time to wear it this weekend.

Francis Revisited Revisited

I made my mom her own Francis for Christmas. 

Details:

Yarn: Knitpicks Andean Silk 8 skeins

Color: Bluebell (discontinued)

Needles: Size 9 - addi clicks

Pattern: Duh

Notes: I knit it in Medium, but my gauge was 14 sts over 4 inches so it was a bit more snug than the standard medium. I also added four stitches to the underarms to avoid holes (a trick I’ve learned since making the original FR) I then picked up 3 each side, and added an extra decrease to take care of it.
I also knit the sleeves with a bit less flare. I knit to the 7.25" increase round, knit two rounds (3Xs) then knit even for 5 rounds (so 7 rounds total after first increase). Then I knit the seed stitch.

That was too much brown

So I think the new look of the blog was actually making me ill and making it impossible for me to post anything, so now it's all fresh and clean. We'll see if it sticks.

Also: I've got knitting news. Finished Haven. Finishing my trellis and vine pullover (i.e. Oscar) for the ravelympics. Stay tuned.

Do you call it a Dlog?

My dad has a blog! I think you call that a Dlog or maybe a Flog or a Plog, anyways, check out what dad has to say here.