button cookies!

I swear, these are the cutest things I've ever seen.

My friend Romham made these wonderful cookies, each of which looks like a large button. I couldn't taste them (pesky allergies) but my husband says they were "absolutely delicious," and he is certainly a snack aficionado.

Romham was inspired to make these after seeing a similar idea that someone else had made, and I think they did an amazing job.

The only problem with the cookies was how many bears they attracted. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

. . . . .

Have you made cute dessert (or other food) items? Leave me a comment, and I might feature your idea on my blog. While I don't make any food crafts myself, I love seeing what other people are doing.

Music + cookies = one very happy bear.

finished: four scarves

These are from several months ago - they were gifts, so I didn't post them at the time I made them.

All four scarves are crocheted lengthwise using a half double crochet stitch. I love the look of the strip that changing colours every row yields. Depending on the yarn and my gauge at the time, I used hooks of 4.5, 5 and 5.5 mm. After crocheting them, I tied on fringes to match the colours of the stripes.

The black / grey / cream one and the blue / pink / cream one are made from Cascade 220, which is a lovely and reasonably priced wool yarn that I quite enjoy using.

The purple / turquoise / yellow one is made from Elann Peruvian highland wool, which yields reasonably nice results but is not that great to use, having too great a tendency to split.

The blue / navy / brown one is made from some of the Elann wool, with some Patons Clansman wool and some Sirdar Majestic wool; these two yarns appear to be no longer available. Using a variety of yarns that vary somewhat in weight was interesting, because it meant that I needed to adjust hook size on each row. I made guesses and figured it out through trial and error, and it came out pretty well.

This type of scarf is a quick and easy project, and a good option if you have smallish quantities of leftover yarn in a variety of colours.

Indigo Moon bombyx silk

Hello! Life is far too busy lately for me to update very often here, but I will continue to post as I'm able. Thanks to those who do stop by to read this blog and especially to those who send me kind messages.

A few months ago, I bought this gorgeous Indigo Moon bombyx silk yarn from Three Bags Full here in Vancouver. The colour is peridot. At $49.95, it was far more expensive than any yarn I've ever bought, so I was only able to get one skein. There's a lot of yarn in the skein, anyway: weight and length varies slightly with each skein; the one I bought is 105 grams and 674 yards. It's on the heavy side for a lace weight yarn, and is almost into the light fingering weight category.

Using this yarn is a complete luxury, and I'm really enjoying it. It's very soft and smooth, and -- unlike unplied silk which I've used in the past -- isn't prone to getting fuzzy and catching on things while it's being knitted. In fact, it's holding up very well to my usual habit of knitting and unravelling and reknitting, as I change my mind about exactly what to do with it. (I'm making a simple scarf.)

Bombyx silk (also called mulberry or cultivated silk) is said to be completely hypoallergenic and free of odour. Certainly, I find it to be far easier on my hands than any material I've used before.

finished: sweater

Last week, I finally finished the sweater I started working on last summer. Phew! It turned out I had plenty of yarn after all. Why? Seems that I had a ridiculous amount of variation in my gauge ... for example, each sleeve had precisely the same number of stitches and rows, but one came out 5 inches longer than the other. Right-o. I was pretty exasperated with myself, let me tell you.

Anyway, I re-knit some parts, and then did a lot of creative blocking, and it all came out fine. My husband likes it very much, which is the important part. Of course, the season for wearing it is pretty much over .... but there's always next year!

To make sure it was coming out correctly, I did two fittings. The first was a rough one where I stuck the (nearly-finished) parts together with clothespins and got a general idea of the size. At this stage, I realized I had to reshape the front of the neck somewhat, which was easy, if a bit time-consuming. The next fitting was when I was nearly done; for this, I basted the whole thing together quickly (with bright red yarn, so I could see just what I was doing) and made sure it was fitting exactly right. Everything looked fine, so I picked up stitches around the neck and did the collar in ribbing; then I sewed all the pieces together.

I chose a drop-shoulder because it's easy to design this type of sweater; in retrospect, I wouldn't necessarily choose this for a sweater in this weight with cables, because it adds a bit to the bulk of it. I'm still pleased with it anyway.

spring

It's feeling much more like spring these days. I love having light in the late afternoon and evening again.

There's this rhododendron growing outside my window, and every year I wait for the pink blossoms to come out, and hope there's no frost or heavy windstorm to kill them. This year it's looking beautiful so far.

Blogger is doing a very bad job of aligning my photographs when I want the first one to the left or right of the text, and the rest of the photos centred below. It's fine if I have a lot of text beside the first photo, but if there's blank space, it overlaps the photos or cuts off part of the image. A bit annoying ... if anyone knows a good way to fix this, please let me know.

I'm back

It's a little later than planned, but I finally have a tiny bit of time to put into posting here ... life continues to be wonderful and busy and stressful and exciting all at once.

Here are a few shots from recent rambles around the city.

sporadic blogging

It's been hard to keep my blog up with any regularity lately, as much as I'd like to do so. I'm very busy getting ready for my wedding which is coming up at the end of the month, and between that and the other things going on in my life, there's little time for writing posts here.

I will stop by in the next few weeks to post some recent projects that haven't gone up yet, once the recipients have seen their gifts.

Otherwise, I expect to return to more regular and frequent posting in mid-February.

Big thanks to those who read and comment here and contact me about the blog. Please come back in a few weeks!

Meanwhile, I leave you with a few photos of the beautiful antique miniatures that my family sets up every Christmas. Aren't they beautiful?

more snow

The amount of snow we've had in recent weeks has been unbelievable. I've seen nothing like it since moving to this city in 1990. It was a very white Christmas indeed!

big snake

FIRST: I made a skinny snake for my niece Maggie a couple months ago, but when I asked her what she might like for Christmas, she said, "another snake!" so I decided to make a big one this time.

I knitted the body of the snake on 3.25 mm double-pointed needles, and when I reached the head I switched to crochet and made the rest of it using a 3.5 mm hook. The eyes are embroidered using the same yarn, and the tongue is just a folded length of chained (crochet) stitches. The snake is 185 cm (73") long with a circumference of about 17 cm (6.5"). Made from acrylic worsted weight yarn, it's stuffed with polyester fibrefill, so it's washable.

NEXT: My posts are a little sporadic these days, because I'm doing some gift knitting and don't want to spoil the surprises. Here in Vancouver I continue to be snowed in, and am taking the opportunity to knit and crochet even more than usual. I hope you're all keeping cozy and warm, wherever you are.

AND NOW: Here are some more views of the snake. She's a wonderfully twisty creature who likes to get into a pretzel shape. I hope Maggie has fun with her.

snow!

We don't usually get a whole lot of snow here in Vancouver, but right now we have plenty! This is definitely a time to stay inside and work on crafts.

Here's the view from my front door.