Owlishly

Nostalgia colorways

I think I'm fairly consistent in professing my love for Malabrigo, so I won't go on and on, but I did make the Noble Cowl in Malabrigo Nostalgia. Some of my favorite colors make up this colorways, and I figured that it'd be a good one to use for my first foray into knitting a lace pattern.

I'll probably take even more pictures of it when it's been steamed and blocked- I love these colors so much!

Also, I'm trying a new frame around my pictures, I was getting tired of the rounded edges.  I think I like the way it looks. But I'm not sure. What do you think?

The perfect skin tone?

I'm reblogging a picture because I have a question for you... What yarns do you like to use that are close to accurate skin tones?

This has been an ongoing search for me, and I'd like to post about yarns that have colors similar to skin tones that are useful.  It doesn't matter what brand or fiber content it is, I'd love to hear from you on your favorite skin tone yarn & I'll start- mine is TLC Cotton Plus in tan.

That's the best tan color that I've been able to find.  I'd love to find it in a wool, but for now a cotton/acrylic blend is what I have to use.  I do have others that I like to use as well, and will share those, but it'll be a lot more fun to share what others have found and like to use as well, so please, speak up!

By the way, the top is a knit picks cotton blend, the middle are alpaca, and the bottom 3 are Cascade 220, but I'm seriously on the lookout for the perfect tan!

Practice, practice, practice

And I'm so wishy washy that every couple of days I keep casting on new projects without finishing the ones I've already started. 

The apple green malabrigo worsted weight cowl is finished, it's my sister's "she already knows about it, and has tried it on" Christmas present.

This malabrigo sock yarn cowl is so not done. This one's mine though, the colorway is solis, and I love how soft and squishy it is.

This little hat is my niece's, and it's in Cascade 220 Quatro, I can't remember the color though, the number is 9438.  I just have to finish it up a bit with the weaving in the ends, and I'm going to have to shorten the ties, my sister would prefer them above the baby's waist ;)

This last picture is a practice piece/doll blanket for my little girl's doll crib.  As with everything for her, she wants it in "pink, please!", so it's Lily Sugar'n Cream in Hot Pink.  I started it on our drive up to Lake Arrowhead this afternoon. 

When I was little I had absolutely no problem being in the car while we went up the mountain, but now that I have kids, I'm super nervous, but I'm glad to say that knitting keeps me distracted while not making me naseaous. I know you wanted to know that little gem.

The nice thing is that I haven't bought any new yarn, all of it is yarn that I've had on hand because I was just taken with it, as in the case with the malabrigo, or because I had plans for something else that fell through like the other two.

Iowa WIPs

So we landed here last night and the dang hives were back with a vengeance, I think it may have been due to traveling, leaving our kids to go somewhere far away from where they'd be with my parents, or something along those lines.  I've never been freaked out about traveling before, but we've never really left them behind either.  And we're pretty far away.

Well, today I woke up okay so I got to spend the day visiting and playing cards, drinking yummy hot chocolate and working on WIP's which are going to be cowls for myself and my sister in law.  Mine's the darker green.

Wish me luck, tomorrow I'll be spending the day with my mother in law, whom I am nowhere near like, and get very stressed out near.

I'm going to try to work on some new dolls too.

Fickle

I try really hard to begin something prepared, but sometimes it just happens.  I change my mind. 

That's what happened with the flower baby blanket that I'm making again to write the pattern out.  I started with the darker red color, and while it's a lovely color and I tend to gravitate towards reds (very much like Flor), I didn't like how it was turning out for the blanket pattern photographs.  Nor for the intended recipient. 

So 6 petals into it, I stumbled upon this lovely color.  Actually, I was at Joann's looking for tan size 3 crochet thread, and this was on an end cap beckoning me.  Seriously, I saw it and thought what a great color it'd be for the blanket, but I was already committed to the red.  I walked around to look for other things, but kept coming back to it.  So, there's my willpower for you.  I bought 6 skeins. Sigh.  I even called after we'd gone to my parent's for dinner and asked them to see if there was any more in that dye lot. 

I'm 6 petals in again, I'm confident that this IS going to be the color and there are NOT going to be any additional color waffling.  I AM going to finish the blanket in this yarn so that I can finally make the blanket pattern available.  I am liking the way it's turning out by the way, I think the way I've written it will make it very easy to decrease to make a teeny tiny baby blanket, or to increase to make a humongous adult size blanket- just depends on how much time you want to spend making it!

Toddler purse & flower blanket redux

This is a purse I made yesterday morning for my little girl, one ball of the Creme de la Creme worsted weight yarn in Bowl of Cherries was perfect.  I used the Sidesaddle Shell Stitch (page 156) from the Harmony Guide: Basic Crochet Stitches: 250 Stitches to Crochet book.  I love that book!  Just the aesthetic of it is fantastic, and I was hoping they'd update the Harmony Guides for crochet when I'd seen the knitting ones a while back.  I think you all know how much I like stitch diagrams, they just make the written instructions so much easier to understand for me, and these are definitely a plus.  You know, sort of going off on a tangent (my modus operandi I think) I wish there was software for macs to create stitch diagrams- I think pattern writing would be a lot easier for me if I had something like that!

Anyway, back to the purse, it seriously didn't take very long at all.  I used a 5.0 mm (H) size hook, stitched up a long rectangle, folded it in half then single crocheted down one side to connect the edges, then back up and chained 30 across to make the strap, connected it to the other side and single crocheted down and up again, and finished it up by single crocheting 2 more rows across the strap.  Easy peasy!  I was planning on making a lining out of some muslin I have laying around, but La* is super content with it the way it is.  In fact she was hovering most of the time I was working on it wanting to use it, and she got pretty annoyed at me when I made her hold it as a shoulder bag to measure the length of the chain/strap for her body.  She mainly uses it for duplos & little people anyway, so no biggie on the lining.

Moving right along...I didn't like the edge of the petals from my original design for the flower blanket, so I'm back at it and I've been working on getting them to lay flat without any manipulation.  I think I've finally had enough time away from it, and while I wanted to use a salmon-y type of color for the petals I wasn't able to get the amount that I needed, so obviously the color's a tad different :)  In fact it's kinda hard to get the actual color of it, since in the course of 2 minutes and a variety of photographs in the same spot/lighting, it was a completely different color in each image.

I love the yarn by the way.  It's Cascade Sierra, I don't remember what color exactly, I'd written it down in fact (I think 58) but I'll have to check and report back to be sure.  It's worsted weight again, this time I've modified the petals to not be *so* rounded, I wasn't pleased with it last time, but I was so sick of working on it I didn't want to frog it and mess around with petal design.  So my two favorites to work with are wool and cotton and that's exactly what this is! An excellent blend that should be soft enough and warm enough for a baby/child, or whoever ends up with this blanket. What I am liking about this blanket pattern, is that it's going to be easy to modify, so you could make a tiny one, or you could make a super duper big one once you get the increase/decrease ratio going.

Who knows when it'll get finished though.  I wish I was better at saying I'm going to get something done, and then actually getting it done by the time I plan on it being done.  Right now I have 3 different doll patterns that are wips and then a commissioned doll, maybe dolls for my parent's anniversary in 2 weeks and this. 

I'm really good at having too much on my plate.

*Since obviously I don't really separate my crafting from my family, and writing out little girl/little boy/husband is pretty time consuming I've at least come to the conclusion that I needed shorter name/designations for these people!  In our family of four I'm the only one whose name doesn't begin with the letter S.  I always thought that was pretty cheesy when families would name their kids names that all began with the same letter, but dang it! it ended up that way in my family.  So since the only letters in my little ones names that are different are a "la" and a "t" there's the designation for them that I've come up with. :) My little girl is La and my little boy is T.  Now hopefully I can remember that that's what I did!

Moda Dea Silk'n Wool

I'd bought some Moda Dea Silk'n Wool blend yarn the last time I got a book with the intent of making a scarf/neck/head thingy for me since it's super soft.  I've frogged 4 times since starting this morning!  I like the feel of it, it's nice and springy, and the slubs add nice texture.  One downside, and I don't know if it's due to all the frogging going on, but the slubs of silk start to come out kind of easily. 

I think I need to stick with a basic stitch though since more intricate designs seem to get lost in the tweediness effect of the yarn.  The color I bought was sangria, and the wool is a great rich saturated color with the silk slubs being a sort of cotton candy color.  Here are also the yarn standards if you're interested.
      

I'll definitely post an image of the scarf/neck/head thingy when I've actually decided on what I'm going to do.

ETA- For some reason I'd had this set to post Sunday @ 11:59am as opposed to when it was actually written, Saturday 11:59pm.  Not super interesting to you, but annoying to me.

Patons SWS and baby body parts

So the day after Thanksgiving I bought some Patons SWS in Natural Raisin to make (probably) a scarf for my mom.  She regularly drops hints about how I don't make her anything, and her favorite color is purple so I thought this would be perfect.  Well, after feeling it and rubbing it on my own neck I've been reconsidering.  It's a *beautiful* color, it has a lustre that makes the purple appear to be sort of layered looking, for lack of a better word. 

I want to use it still since it is so pretty, I just don't know if my mom will tolerate it next to her neck.  I've been trying to think of other uses and since my little boy is intent on a little boy dressed up like an octopus I thought I'd try using the SWS for that.  I didn't have much luck.  I don't think it's well suited for tight crocheting. Or maybe just not my tight crocheting.  I think I'm going to have to come up with another use for it, but I can't part with it because it is so lovely.  Dang. I thought a purple octopus would've been kind of neat.
Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.

Since the purple SWS didn't work out as I'd planned I ended up starting another big head baby, this time a little boy.  Usually I like to have the heads done first (which is why I'd started the evening off trying for the octopus), but I had an idea for the legs that I wanted to try so I ended up doing that first.  I have the legs and torso made for the little boy, and I made a beanie for the little girl, but now she looks a tad silly to me.  When pressed for an opinion, my husband said she doesn't look like a baby anymore, she looks more like a geisha. I'm not quite sure he knows what he's talking about, but she does seem to be losing her baby-like quality with that hat.  I don't know.  I'm going to have to come up with something else.

It is getting to be ridiculous- the amount of doll body parts I have in my WIP bag.  I have some arms in a different color than the head I have, then I have another pair of legs and the start of another torso, some ears & a tail.  I'm getting a little too muddled again.  I need to finish one idea before starting another.  I just get excited about something that I've been thinking of for a bit, and then start on it, and I haven't been finishing.  Well, my plan for tomorrow is to at least finish one doll, let's see how that goes.

Flickr's picnik

  P's Celia cat 
  Originally uploaded by *mia*

So I was at flickr right now looking at this image and just noticed the edit this photo option- how nice is that!

I was able to fix the colors without doing it in photoshop or iPhoto, which saves time for me!

Anyway, this is closer to what she looks like in real life, I *really* like the yarn, I bought it when I was visiting my aunt at her LYS and I think I left the label in her car when I was winding it in a ball, so now I have absolutely no idea what yarn it is, except that it's a superwash wool.   

Okay, off to finished up those commissioned dolls!