Just when I thought I couldn’t possibly love these two little feet any more than I already do, I put soft hand-made squishy knit socks on them and lo and behold my heart filled up with even more love than before!  How is that even possible???

It is the second time I’m working with this yarn called Ella Rae Lace Merino.  I used a larger needle size (US4) and it made a ton of difference.  I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this project.  The pattern was so simple, I thought I would be board, but this yarn had a really nice stretchy quality and with the little color variations it was so delightful.  And portable too, no pattern, the project bag fits in my purse, so I can pull it out whenever a moment arrises that I will have a few minutes to burn.  Loved it all around, I’m hooked now.  I need a vanilla sock on the needles at all times!

April Fools is just around the corner.  Do you celebrate it by playing tricks on family and co-workers?  I typically don’t, but this year I just might serve up some mashed potatoes and peas & carrots and see what kind of reaction I get 🙂

 

It never officially felt like winter in the Bay Area this year until last week.   At which point the knitting bug hit me pretty hard and my little “sweet sweet”, as I like to call her, needed something warm and snugly to cover her ears and ward off the bite in the air.

It’s a good thing I happened to pick up the Malabrigo Rios yarn at Stitches West for this very purpose!  This was my first time working with this yarn and I really loved it.  It is super wash, the colors are just stunning! 

I improvised a pattern similar to the Bright Beret that Read One Knit Too raves about and added a little i-cord tale and pom-pom for some whimsy.  It’s not as slouchy as the original pattern, but I’m just happy it fits!  It knit up so quickly, and she doesn’t immediately take it off when I put it on, so I consider this a super successful project 🙂

There have been a few projects where I had to cast on hundreds of stitches. Inevitably I would get down to the last five stitches and run out of the long tail and have to rip out the entire thing and start over. Well, not anymore! With this great set of tips about the long tail cast on from Rox I learned that I could just use the center yarn as my working yarn and the outside yarn as the tail yarn. No need to worry about running out of tail yarn again!!

Rox gives a ton of other very useful tips in her video. She is also featured in the Ask A Knitter column in the This Week in Ravelry newsletters and is a master knitter. I’ll definitely be referencing many of her tips that I find particularly useful in the future.

Do you have any cast on tips or tricks? I’d love to hear what works for you!

Picture via luvinthemommyhood.com

This persistent little voice in my head has been nagging me to adventure into the land of sewing. It all started with this box pouch tutorial that is adorable and looks doable. I’ve managed to ignore this sewing tickle for the most part, because I don’t even have enough time and money to get through all of the knitting and spinning that I want to do… but nevertheless this sewing urge is there like an itch in the back of my mind and I must scratch it! I caved in last week when Marisa from Quilt Otaku agreed to teach me how to quilt! I’m so excited!! I have a list of all of tools I need and have been window shopping online at superbuzzy.comfor some fun robot themed fabric. I even entered a giveaway last week from the luvinthemommyhood.comblog for a book called Making it Sew Modern and I WON! I was so surprised!! Now I HAVE to start sewing. Let’s see how long my tiny Hello Kitty sewing machine holds up 🙂