2010 - The Year Of Adventure

On my other blog I used to write up a reflection of the year, so I thought I would continue that tradition and write it in my new blog :D 

So it looks like I'll be entering 2011 sick :(  It seems like being sick on New Year's Eve is also a tradition of mines - I always feel like I'm always sick on NYE :(  Not a fun way on spending my winter vacation :P

I would call 2010 the Year Of Adventure.

 I got to travel to two very different places in the world - Paris and Peru.  The only thing these places had in common (in my opinion) was that they both photographed very well :)  I enjoyed wandering the streets of Paris with my travel buddies & hubby, and eating macaroons and all the fantastic French cusine - c'est bon!  Peru was amazing - I will never forget the thrill of hiking the Inca Trail and enjoying the weekend park dance party in Lima.  It really made me just love life in the simplist form, and I can't wait to go back to South America for another adventure.

Another adventure was definitely starting up my Etsy store.  I never thought I would be able to make a bit of money on the side by knitting :)  My hobby and obsession has become a self-sustaining one!   

I am looking forward to 2011 - I already have my knitting goals planned out.  I hope to learn how to spin and dye my own yarn - I already bought starter kits for both projects so I'm well on my way! 

Thanks 2010 - but I know 2011 will be better! :D  Happy New Year everyone!

Thrummed Mittens

Happy Holidays everyone!  It's been a while since I blogged!  I've been knitting up a storm the past month - knitting for both my personal gifts and for my Etsy store.  I was really cutting it close!  I think I finished knitting my last x'mas gift on the 23rd :S  I was so frazzled with knitting and planning this blog post on thrummed mittens, I've forgotten to take photos of most of the items I as gifts.  I made cowl neck scarves for my BFF Rita and my sister-in-law using hand dyed yarn I purchased off cowgirlknits on Etsy, a hooded scarf for my sister (I ended up making up my own pattern - I might have to fix it though, the hood might be too small) and 3 pairs for thrummed mitts for my mom, Ed and my close friend Flo.  To make matters more stressful, X'mas dinner was at our house again for the second year and a row, and the pressure was on to cook a tastey turkey (it was delicious last year, so I had something to live up to!).  Thank God I was given Friday off :D


So, lets get to the thrummed mittens!  As I mentioned in my last post, thrummed mittens are the warmest mittens ever!  Pieces of wool roving is knit into the mitts as you make them, and in the end you get mittens with a wool lining in the middle.  They are pretty labour intensive as this involves tearing the roving into little pieces.  If this is your first thrummed mitten project I would suggest you buy a thrummed mitten kit - it usually comes with yarn and the roving.  I personally love the Fleece Artist thrummed mitten kits - I love the yarn/thurm colour combinations, and the pattern is easy to follow.

The roving comes in long piece that you'll have to rip into pieces. 

I normally rip them into 5" long by 0.25" wide pieces.  I usually rip a large piece widthwise across that is 5" long, then rip them into 0.25" pieces.  The first time I made them the lady at the yarn store that sold me the kit told me to the large pieces widthwise with a pair of scissors, then tear into thin strips, but my aunt told me it's better to just rip everything by hand because the roving will mat together better when you wear the mitts, forming a better lining.  I've done it both ways and found my aunt is right :)  Each of these strips must be teased, and elongated - so they are about 7" long.  The better you tease them, the warmer your mitts will be :)  Fold the two ends towards the middle and pinch the middle (your piece will look like a figure 8). 

Most website tell you to rip all the pieces before you begin the knitting process, but if you're anything like me, you're just super excited to get started with the mitts.  What I normally do is just rip some pieces, and when my hands hurt from ripping the roving I switch over to knitting :)

There are different methods to thrumming - ones that make them look like hearts, others that make them look like little balls.  I personally like them looking like little balls :)  Instructions are below:

*Following your thrum mitten pattern* Knit until the pattern calls knitting in the thrumming.

Insert your needle through the hole in the row below located between the previous and the next stitch. 

Take the thrum piece and fold it in half.

Taking the folded piece, fold the thrummed piece over the needle.

Pull the thrummed piece through the hole.  Knit the next stitch.

Pull the thrumming over the knitted stitch.

....like so..... :)

Pull the thrumming from the back (but not too tight!)

 And... volia!  Consider the mitt thrummed!  Continue with your pattern/thrumming.

This is what it should look like when you flip the mitt inside out

Here are a few photos of thummed mitts I made myself.  The first photo is of my very first pair of thrumm mittens I've ever made.  They're big mitts (LoL they look kinda like oven mitts!) but so warm :)  They shrank a little bit when I washed them though..

.... as for my turkey - it was delish! :D

Mentions on Etsy/Blogs

Hello blogging world!  I have been M.I.A for a bit, been knitting up a storm!  I feel like I'm behind on my knitting, although I think it's just me trying to stress myself out to push me to keep knitting!  My hands are starting to hurt!  I've been busily knitting thurmmed mittens lately and tearing the thrumming is hard on the hands :S  What are thrummed mittens you ask?  Only the warmest mittens EVER!  Click here to find out about thrummed mittens!  I will post my thrummed mitts soon. 

So I've also been busy with my Etsy store - sales are going pretty good so far :D  Over the past few days I've been mentioned in a few lovely treasuries and even been blogged about :D  I thought I would share all these wonderful links here:

Farrielle Design and Fashionista - Silver Gray Wrist Warmers featured in Farrielle's fun blog

Button up... baby it's cold outside... - Moss Green Wrist Warmers featured in wendyhammerdesigns' Etsy treasury

Have yourself a very Minty Christmas - Gifts under $25 - Mint Chocolate Cashermino Baby Booties featured in KellysKeepsakes' Etsy treasury

Knitted Gifts to Keep You Warm - Winter Blue Wrist Warmers featured in RainyDayArt's Etsy treasury

My First Dog Sweater

My very good friend, Steph approached me a few months ago to see if I could do her a huge favor.  She asked me knit her dog, Spyro a sweater.  Now those who know me know how I feel about dressing up dogs (I'll just keep those opinons to myself).  But, I agreed to because Steph is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and she was frustrated with finding a sweater that fit her dog (they were either too short or too long).

Now I have never knit a sweater before, and after looking at a few patterns online, I couldn't find a pattern that fit my vision for a dog sweater.  I wanted something that would buton along the back because I am all to familiar on how hard it can be do get a dog to wear something!   I thought it would be easier to put on if the buttons were on the back. 

I took some measurements of Spyro and based on the yarn gauge I calculated how many stitches I needed,  how many rows to knit and where to place the leg holes.  I started knitting at the collar, then increase stitches every few rows (evenly) until I had enough stitches to fit around the body.  At first I thought I would knit the item as two pieces, then stitch them together, but as I was knitting I realized I could knit it as one piece.  I even added button holes along the side. 

And here is the finished knitting result (minus the buttons)

Side profile of the sweater. 

Here's Spryo with his new sweater :)

The only problem is that the sweater might be a tad bit too small for Spryo because of al his hair!  So the seam on the back looks like he's about to burst out of the sweater.  LoL hopefully after washing and blocking it the sweater will fit better!

Is There An End In Sight?

This year I have decided to knit most of my x'mas gifts.  Not only does it add a personal touch, but I thought it would be fun!  So the other day I decided to write out my knitting schedule for all the x'mas gifts + x'mas gift pre-orders I have to knit.  Oh my goodness, I'm going to be knitting every day until mid December!  It's all good!  

I've managed to finish one gift - the shawl.  Knitting my first shawl with lace yarn was eventful!  As I was getting close to finishing the shawl I noticed a mistake 20 rows down.  And I noticed this mistake at 11:00pm on a week day.  I knew I would bug me the whole night and prevent me from sleeping, so I had to perform emergency surgery on it right away.  Instead of taking it apart (which would have been a disaster because it is a lace pattern!) I took out the one stitch row-by-row all the way down until I got to the mistake.  I finally finished it last Saturday - took me a week and 2 days!  I borrowed blocking rods from Ed so I could stretch and block it properly.  Weaving in the blocking rods was almost as frustrating as fixing that mistake! LoL

I contemplated showing photos of my complete work because they are x'mas gifts (although I'm not sure if the recipients of the gifts read my blog...), but I figure.. they don't know which gift they're getting!  So here are some pics of the finished product.  The first picture is the shawl being blocked, the second one is just a close up of the shawl detail :)

My current project - a scarf w/ a hood!  I'm almost done!  It's taking me a bit longer because I'm making up the pattern as I go.  I love those kind of projects!

Shawl It Is

So in my last post, even though I had decided on knitting a shawl, I still wasn't quite sure.  And things were working against me on this one.  First off - I realized I didn't have the right needles (or so I thought!).  So I thought... alright... socks it is!  But then I called Ed and she offered to lend me her needles.

The pair of circulars she gave me was a size... I don't know.. but it was HUGE!  It reminded me of those giant pencils they gave me in first grade to write with.  I really struggled to use them, and I felt like a beginner knitter.  Here I was knitting with such fine yarn with these giant needles.  I was completely the opposite of graceful!  After about 4 rows, Ed and I looked at it, and agreed that these needles were just too big for the type of yarn I was using.  So I downgraded in a major way to a size 7 needle.  Omg - a million times better!

I'm still getting used to knitting with such fine yarn.  It was quite finicky and if you make a mistake, holy crap is it ever hard to fix!  I got this triangular lace shawl pattern from Ed (who got it from Ravelry) that knits from the base of the triangle to the tip.  So every other row I'm adding 4 stitches.  The longer the rows get, the more finicky it gets!  This is what I've done so far, but I have a feeling it's going to take me a while to finish this one! 

Twiddling Thumbs

I'm at a bit of a loss right now and I'm twiddling my thumbs. I shipped off two mitts today (I'm up to 9 sales! Woohoo!) and I'm out of yarn to knit my wrist warmers. Don't worry, I've ordered more! :) I'm just waiting for them to come in! I've already gotten some requests for x'mas gifts for friends, plus a request from my mother-in-law for a pair of arm warmers for her birthday :).

So... now what? I need something to knit! Don't get me wrong, I have stuff to knit! It's just... what? I can knit one of 2 things - socks or a shawl. I've never knit a shawl before, and I had purchased some lace yarn a while back just for that purpose. I'm supposed to head over to Ed's place tonight to hang out and knit :) We were supposed to go to Romni today, but I've been feeling under the weather this week and the thought of taking the subway downtown wasn't sitting right with me.

Hrm... shawl it is.. :D

My Birthday Weekend

Another year, another birthday! I turned 25 again (for the millionth time! haha!).

On my actual birthday Jimmy took me out for a nice dinner on Main St. Markham (not to be confused with Main St. Unionville!) and I spent the remainder of my evening watching the Leafs loose on tv and knitting :)

Yesterday I celebrated my birthday with friends :) Ed came over for our 3rd ever E&K Knitting Club meeting. Yes, we formed a knitting club, and yes we're the only members. But more members are more than welcome to join us! Our meets always goes as follows:

First 30 minutes - talk and catch up on what's been going on in our lives. This is usually when I start boiling some water for tea
Next 30 minutes - knit and drink tea
Next hour - head over to Tonia's for some all-day-breakfast brunch

LoL so half our meetings usually consists of eating :D

So when Ed came over yesterday she presented me with my birthday gift: a hand knit cowl scarf. I love it!!



The colours and cowl are absolutely stunning! Funny thing is, the last time I was over at her place, she was showing me her new additions to her yarn stash, and when she showed me the yarn she used to knit the cowl, I told her how much I loved it. Little did I know it was for me! Thanks Ed! <3

This weekend I finally got around to knitting all the colour offerings for my wrist warmers. Finally! I just finished knitting the "teal" ones (still gotta finish them off). I'm putting teal in quotes because it's actually more teal than green. Hm.. I'm going to have to think of a new name for those ones! Here's a photo of just some of the colours my wrist warmers come in - It's missing the coal black, silver gray and the "teal" ones :D

I *Heart* Autumn!

Actually I should specify and say I *heart* October :D And no, it's not because it's my birthday month (because I tell ya, after I turning 25, I started dreading turning a year older every year!). Autumn here in Toronto is the season I love the most - and I love it for several reasons:

1) You can start wearing your knitted goods without sweating up a storm
2) The air is crisp and clear
3) Perfect hiking weather - not too hot and no bugs!!
4) Oktoberfest (reminders of my days @ U.Waterloo)
5) The beauty of the leaves changing to all sorts of lovely reds, oranges and yellows - makes driving anywhere so much more enjoyable!

These past two weekends I've gone out hiking with my family to take in all this wonderful fall weather/scenery. I have to admit yesterday was quite brutal - my fam and I were at Hockely Valley and we hiked for 5 hours :S My legs are sore today! LoL

I thought I would share just some of my autumn photos I've taken over the past week. Photos were taken at Rouge Valley Conservation Center and Hockley Valley (on the Bruce Trail).


Beautiful fall orange/yellow - Rouge Valley CC


Hiking at Rouge Valley CC.


Abandoned vintage car engine - Hockely Valley - Bruce Trail


Tin cup - Hockely Valley - Bruce Trail


Side trails - Hockley Valley - Bruce Trail

My First Etsy Sale! (+socks!)

I've been on Cloud 9 over the past few days - I finally made a sale in my Etsy store! I made my first sale last Thursday, and I was super excited. I sold a pair of wrist warmers :)

So every morning when I wake up the first thing I check is the status of my Etsy store - it's a bit of an obsession really! But it's become my morning ritual. Thank goodness for Windows 7 starting up so fast! When I checked on Thursday morning, I noticed one of my items were missing. And my first thought was "oh dumb-dumb Kare! You were probably editing the details for that item and forgot to "accept" the changes, so it's not showing up in your store!" But then I looked closely and realized that I made a sale! Yipee!!

And since then I've sold another pair of wrist warmers, and I have a custom order lined up. I'm so excited!

And I have been busily knitting wrist warmers since then!

But what I really want to do is get back to knitting socks. Since it has been getting colder, I finally had the opportunity to wear the socks I made earlier this year. Wearing them made me miss knitting socks. I thought I would post pics of my fancy-shmacy socks, which I knit using the magic loop method. Actually, the yellow pair is the first one I made using the magic loop method. See - I told you I like making things challenging for myself! I took the hardest pattern from Wendy Johnson's book "Socks From The Toe Up".. or what I thought was the hardest pattern to knit. The yellow ones knit up quite well :)





These red ones however, where for some reason, challenging. They were a basic lace sock, but I kept screwing up. At one point, and this was after I knit the heel and everything, I screwed up on one sock and I just couldn't fix it. I got so frustrated so I ended up taking apart the entire sock.

A word of advice: when you get frustrated, don't just go taking things apart. In quoting the movie Anchorman, right after Ron Burgundy jumped into the bear pit he said "I immediately regret this decision". That was exactly what I said (and then I thought of the movie... and I had a laugh! haha). It's better to try to fix your mistake. Taking it apart when you're almost done should be the absolute last resort. Anyway, I made it through knitting this pair and they're my second fav pair (after my lovely yellow ones)

Tale of Two Hats (Paris, France)

The plan after making my first ever pair of wrist warmers was to make a matching slouchy beret. I found a pattern on Ravelry.com that had a bit of a cable knit to it. Because my yarn gauge did not match the one on the pattern (it was a lower gauge yarn than what was recommended in the pattern), I again, attempted to readjust the pattern by casting on more stitches and adjusting the cable pattern and where to increase the stitches. I felt like after adjusting the wrist warmer pattern, I was a pro.

Boy does being overconfident backfire sometimes!

What I had failed to do is to adjust the number of increase stitches - I kept that the same for the pattern. Needless to say, this slouchy beret turned out not so slouchy. Ok... it wasn't slouchy AT ALL :s It was tight, and the top was loose. I looked like Toad from Mario Bros! LoL Oops! Lesson learned indeed!

Before I went on my trip to Paris in Feb, I had looked up some yarn stores that, if Ed and I had time, we would go check out. Based on my research, the yarn stores in Paris are phenomenal, and it was definitely a pity we didn't get to check out any of them. I was slightly disappointed about not going because after buying yarn in San Antonio, I thought it would be fun to buy yarn from places I travel to. And this is where fate comes to play. For some reason unknown (possibly because we were freezing our buns off outside and needed to warm up!), we found ourselves in Printemps, a department store in Paris. We were just about to leave when I spotted my loot - yarn!! And it was so cheap!! I picked up two balls of gray merino wool yarn to make a replacement hat.

I just had enough to finish my hat :D And this one fits much better, and it slouches... sorta! :D



The one on the left is the first one I knit - can you tell it's too small? LoL

Ed's Socks

Since I love knitting socks, Ed asked me to knit her a pair. During our last visit to Romni Wools I had her pick out a sock yarn that she liked. She ended up picking the Lang JaWoll sock yarn. There are several things I like about this yarn:

1) It came in some beautiful colours and fairly inexpensive. We found it in the basement sale area at Romni, but I've seen this yarn at other yarn stores on sale.
2) One ball is all you need for a pair of socks!
3) It came with a spool of 2-ply thread in the same colour as the sock yarn that you can use to reinforce the toe and heel area.

Ed just wanted to a straight knit sock, nothing fancy. That's ok though, the various flecks of colours in the yarn makes for an interesting look if knit as is. Patterns (i.e cables, lace) look good better with solid coloured yarns. I used the magic loop method, meaning I was knitting two socks at a time. With the magic loop method you are first knitting one side (front side) of the sock on both socks, then the other side (back side). I personally prefer this method over knitting one sock at a time because you don't have to keep count of the number of rows you've knit. The only down side to knitting magic loop that I found (and this one is a huge one) is that if you mess up, you're taking out twice the amount of stitches to fix the mistake! When I do make a mistake I generally transfer the good sock onto a pair of DPNs, then fix the bad sock, the reintroduce the good sock again.

I didn't end up reinforcing the toe area - I actually didn't think of it until I finished the socks. Let's hope that Ed doesn't stand around on her toes all day! LoL :D For the heel area, I just basically knit in the 2-ply thread together with the yarn. In the photo below, the top strand is the 2-ply tread, the bottom strand is the sock yarn.

And here's the finished product! Ed tells me they're nice and warm :) I'm so glad she likes them! She makes a lovely sock model doesn't she? hehe!

Buttons, Buttons, Buttons!!

So since I have been knitting some fun baby booties with buttons for my Etsy store, I tried to look for a place in Toronto that sold wholesale buttons. I found going to yarn stores and buying buttons was getting waaaay too expensive. I figure I could definitely get a better deal buying wholesale.

I did a quick Google search on wholesale button stores in Toronto and stumbled upon Capitol Buttons. They're located on Steeles between Dufferin and Keele, but they're moving to a location closer to Yorkdale mall.

The first time I went, it was definitely overwhelming! It was just wall-to-wall shelves with what seemed like a gazillion boxes with various buttons in them. I guess they're in the process of moving because they had button boxes everywhere! I ended up taking Ed there last week because she was in need of some buttons. I'm not sure if we came on a good day or not, but they had this big box of mixed buttons and we were told that we could take a ziplock bag full of buttons out of that box for $5!! Normally you're just supposed to scoop buttons from the box, but Ed and I tried to sort out the really crappy ones. Man it was a lot of buttons! My photo below as just half of the buttons that we got (we went halvsies). We're set for buttons for a long time! :D

Yarn Swift Sale!!

Woohoo!! The yarn swift from KnitPicks is on sale for $50USD again :D Sale ends Nov. 1st!

http://www.knitpicks.com/accessories/Knitting_Yarn_Swift__D80083.html

Colder Weather Means... Wrist Warmer Time!! *Updated*

So I have been thinking about how to diversify my Etsy store. Since it has been getting colder I thought what better item than wrist warmers! I love knitting them :)

The first pair I knit was from a pattern I found off of Ravelry but I had to modify the pattern because my yarn gauge was higher. Here are some shots of my first ever wrist warms... and the first time I ever knit cable!!



I do admit I can be ambitious sometimes. I tend to tackle projects where the difficulty of a new skill is high. But I made a ton of mistakes while making these. I made these at the beginning of this year, and since then I've knit pairs for various friends, each getting a different cable pattern on the back. Once you get the basic wrist warmer pattern, it is fairly easy to come up with your own pattern to personalize it. The hardest part about coming up with your own pattern is centering the cable pattern on the back :D

Yay for Yarn Swifts!

Wow what a busy Labour Day weekend! Jimmy's cousin's were up visiting from NYC - they were here for Jimmy's cousin's wedding - and the all stayed at our place! It was a fun but exhausting weekend!

Since the were coming up from the states I thought I would take advantage of that and ordered a bunch of stuff from KnitPicks. I have been eyeing the yarn swift from KnitPicks for a while now. Twice or three times a year KnitPicks will have a sale on their swifts for $50USD - it's one of the cheapest prices I've seen for a yarn swift. Luckily for me, there was a sale at the beginning of August - perfect timing!!!

I got to try it out today and it sure beat having Jimmy hold a yarn skein while I wound it into a ball :S Not that Jimmy was bad at it or anything! haha!


Here's my yarn swift - in all it's glory. It's holding a skein of lace yarn I bought from KnitPicks.


My set up with my ball winder. I got the ball winder from KnitPicks earlier this year.


Woohoo it's spinning!


My ball of yarn - gotta love the ball winder!!


New additions to my stash :D

Kare Knits on Etsy is Now Open!!

Hi Everyone!

I am pleased to announce the Grand Opening of my Etsy store!

Kare Knits on Etsy

So I Have An Idea....

I found this really fun pattern for baby booties two weeks ago on Ravelry.com (they're adorable!), but I didn't get around to trying the pattern until last Friday morning. And when I say Friday morning, I mean 1am in the morning! I spent the week wining a dining a customer for work, and during dinner I had tea, which was a huge mistake. I couldn't sleep until 5am! So while tossing and turning, I started to toy around with the idea of selling my knitted goods online. I figure, why not make some money off of my hobby? It will help fund my knitting obsession :) And it got me thinking about that baby bootie pattern.

So I trudged downstairs and started to knit. I decided to modify the pattern a bit, so instead of two straps held together by buttons, I made it so it had one connected strap across.

They were pretty fun and easy to knit! It's definitely a lot easier than the other booties I've been knitting. Plus they take less time to knit!

Since I had this idea of selling the booties, I thought it would be good to get a few more colours. I headed over to Mary's Yarns (I'm becoming a regular! haha) and bought a few more fun colours.



Then the knitting madness began. I've made 4 pairs o far, and I've been working on figuring out how to set up a shop in Etsy. We'll see how this works out :)