Knitting – Page 2 – Thimbleanna

Whoa!

9 Comments / April 16, 2020 April 16, 2020 / Bunnies, Chat, Holidays, Knitting

It was Easter. Then it wasn’t! What the heck happened? I seem to have lost the last few days — well, as you know now, they all seem to run together. I hope you had a nice Easter even though it was so different this year. Ours was quiet and very uneventful. The highlight of our day was to facetime with the kids while the girls opened their little Easter gifts we had dropped off the previous day. They were so cute when we stopped by — they were jumping up and down in the window screaming and laughing — I wish I’d taken a picture!

Anyway, after years of dreaming, I finally knit some of Julie’s Little Cotton Rabbits. They were such a fun project, but boy oh boy, are they ever time consuming!

Or, more likely, I’m just a slow knitter. In either case, Julie is a genius. Her instructions and pictures are so thorough — it’s as if she’s sitting next to you while you knit. I had so much fun deciding on the dress patterns, color combinations, leg styles, etc. I can’t even imagine how Julie has knit so many — it must be a case of practice make perfect. I’m hoping that with these first ones under my belt, the next ones will be a little quicker.

I can’t wait to make more bunnies – not to mention some of the many other patterns she has developed. And I know this sounds like some sort of an ad, but it’s not. I just love these little patterns and I think they’re so cute. I’m not the only one either — I was goofing off the other day on the internet and came across this post of quintuplets who received some Little Cotton Rabbits in their Easter baskets. It made me wonder how many other children around the world received some of Julie’s little animals. We Love You Julie!!!

I had to put the little rabbits on the rocking horse before they went to their new home. Horsey is sooo lonely these days without his girls around. He’s counting the days until the quarantine comes to an end.

Back to Easter – in addition to the bunnies, I gave the girls each a storybook and the traditional Grammy Surprise Boxes. I struggled a little coming up with things to put in the boxes, since shopping was limited to what I could find in the grocery store while grocery shopping. I ordered some little Meri Meri hair clips and decided to make some felt finger puppets. I forgot to take pictures of all the little puppets ;-8. FinallyAGirl received Little Red Riding Hood with her Grammy, the woodsman, the big bad wolf, and a tree (to represent the woods.) FinallyAnotherGirl received Peppa Pig, Mama Pig, Daddy Pig, her brother George, and the sheep.

So, that was Easter. The other highlight of the week has been that FinallyAGirl has learned how to call Grammy from her ipad all by herself. (WooHoo!) The first time it was such a fun surprise! I answered the facetime call to see this:

Then I heard this whispering little voice: “Grammy. We have to be very very quiet. Daddy doesn’t know I’m calling you. I’m in our secret clubhouse. Tell Grandpa that he and Ma (that’s what she calls MeMum) have to be very quiet too!” Ohmygosh. Be still my little heart. The secret clubhouse is under her Daddy’s desk – that’s the underside of the middle drawer behind her head in the picture above. Since that first call, she’s called almost everyday and cheered us up. We’ve done puzzles, read books, had tea parties — all the usual stuff we’d do if we were actually together. How lucky are we to live in the age of facetime? I love our afternoon visits and I know I’ll miss them when life returns to normal and she and SweetiePie are too busy with real life for these calls. I suppose they’ll be replaced with real life visits though, so all phases have their benefits.

Ok, enough chitchat from me. Thank you for all your lovely comments — sorry if I haven’t responded to them — they haven’t been forwarded to my e-mail account. I think the last comment was forwarded though, so I’m hoping the problem has been solved.
Hope you’re having a Good Week!
XOXO,
Anna

Happy Valentine’s Day!

8 Comments / February 14, 2020 February 14, 2020 / Holidays, Knitting

Happy Valentine’s Day Lovelies! Have you had an action packed week? It’s been a quiet week here — I’ve been hunkered down, not doing much really. Cleaning a little here and there — really not sure where the week went. I did make two of the Little Cotton Rabbits mini bears for my little human grandbabies. Here’s a shot of the finished bear heads — no bodies yet.

I love making Julie‘s little animals SO much, although, I’m really slow at it. And I struggle a lot with choosing yarns. Julie is a genius though — her patterns are SO thorough and well thought out. I wanted to put little hearts around the bottom of the dresses, but they’re knit top down, which puts the “v” in the stitch upside down for making little hearts. So, I tried to knit the pattern backwards, bottom up, turning increases into decreases. It was ok, but it just didn’t look right, so I ripped it out and followed her pattern. As it should be. I could have done bigger hearts out of several rows of stitches or done some duplicate stitch magic, but I was running out of time, so I ended up just doing little x’s and o’s. And doh, I did the x’s on one dress and the o’s on the other one. I should have mixed them up! Grammy is slipping in her old age LOL.

These little mini bears are the perfect size for the little boxes I like to make for the girls once in awhile. FinallyAnotherGirl is only 17 mos. old, so it’s still a little hard to find things for her box — I’ll be glad when she’s old enough to not choke on small things and able to eat candy LOL. FinallyAGirl is 3 1/2 now, and she’s into all things crafty. Plus, she can eat candy, so her box is a lot easier to fill.

I hope you have a good day and a wonderful weekend. I must run and get ready for my afternoon at the endodontist — ’cause nothing says Love like a root canal!!! ;-D
XOXO,
Anna

Knitted Cable Hats

10 Comments / February 1, 2020 February 1, 2020 / Knitting

Happy February! January was just a big disappointment around here — if you’ve been around here for a long time, you know that I’m a snow lover and we’ve barely had any of the pretty white stuff. ;-( Oh well, that hasn’t kept me from knitting, and I made some little cabled hats for SweetiePie and our cute little granddaughters. I posted them the other day on Instagram and I wanted to post all the details here, so I’ll have a record, in case I ever need to make any more.

I made 4 different sizes, so I’ll call them Adult, Child, Toddler and Infant. The yarn is Big Bad Wool Pea Weepaca which I purchased at my LYS, Knitting Off Broadway. It’s a fingering weight really soft yarn and it’s fun to knit with. The entire hats are knitted by holding two strands together and, in order to get the variegated look, rather than a hard stripe, the colors are mixed for a few transition rows when the colors change.

The pattern is a set of free patterns that I found on the internet at crazyhands.net. The Adult hat is here, the child hat is here and the baby hat is here. I made the toddler hat first (which is why there isn’t much white yarn at the top, it was a learning experience.) I used the child hat pattern and got the hang of the repeats of the cables, etc. There’s also an option for a folded brim, but I opted for not folding the brim as I was worried that I would run out of yarn. I originally thought that this first hat would be for the child hat, but it turned out to be just a teeny bit short for FinallyAGirl, so I added ear flaps to make it the toddler hat for FinallyAnotherGirl. The Adult and baby patterns are a little different, so, I mainly just used them as a guide for sizing, but reverted to using the child pattern when it came to knitting the repeats on the cables. The child pattern is really nice and detailed — there are some good pictures showing how to do increases and the cables. Anyway, for my notes, here’s how many stitches/cable repeats that I did for each hat:

Adult: Cast on 112 stitches, increasing to 132 after the ribbing; two cable repeats before starting the decrease rounds
Child: Cast on 112 stitches, increasing to 120 after the ribbing; two cable repeats before starting the decrease rounds
Toddler: Cast on 100 stitches, increasing to 120 after the ribbing; one and a half cable repeats before starting the decrease rounds
Baby: Cast on 80 stitches, increasing to 96 after the ribbing; one cable repeat before starting the decrease rounds

I wanted to have fun with the pompoms, so, rather than make them out of yarn, I opted for the little fur pompoms that you see all over now. The Adult pompom is a Big Bad Wool pompom that I purchased at my LYS. Unfortunately, I’ve lost the tags on the children’s pompoms, so I don’t know who makes them, but I purchased them from Blazing Needles. I was going to buy all three pompoms in the same size, but, luckily for the hats, they only had two pompoms in the larger size, but they had that little teeny size. I’m so happy they didn’t have three pompoms in the same size — I love that little infant hat! All of the pompoms have snaps that are so cool — it makes it easy to attach the pompom to the hat AND you can buy pompoms in different colors and then just swap them out in a snap!

Here’s a picture of the two older girls out playing in the snow. This was FinallyAnotherGirl’s first experience to really play in the snow and she loved it! I hope we’ll have a few more snowstorms yet this winter so the girls can have some fun — and get a little more use out of their new hats!

XOXO,
Anna

The Merriment Cardigans

15 Comments / November 8, 2019 November 8, 2019 / Knitting

Oooh, look — I’m going to have two posts this month LOL. Maybe I’ll get crazy and go for even more — who knows what will happen?

I finished the little sweaters that I’ve been working on for the grandbabies. The pattern is the Merriment Cardigan by Melynda Bernardi of French Press Knits. Oh, how I love this sweet little pattern. It has great, easy-to-read instructions.

The yarn is For Better or Worsted by Anzula in worsted weight. The yarn is pretty expensive, but what a dream it was to knit! It’s 80% superwash merino, 10% nylon, and 10% cashmere. {Swoon} (I’d like to knit a sweater for me out of this yarn, but an adult size would be expennnnnsive!) The colors are Storm, Raspberry and Saffron. I had to order the Saffron from a color card, and I’m a little disappointed in the way it turned out — I was hoping for a less-bright yellow — something a little more mustardy. Oh well, as long as there was some pink in there — FinallyAGirl loooooves her some Pink!

I knit these in sizes 12 mos. and 3 because that’s what their measurements told me to do. And coincidentally, that just happens to be their ages. (Well, the baby is 14 months, but I followed the measurement suggestions on the pattern.)

Knitting and sewing for the girls is so tricky for me. I’m never really sure how long it will take me to make something (I thought these would have been done a month ago), and when children are growing so quickly, the size can make a difference. It seems like most things I make for them turn out a little big, so this time I decided to stick with their measurements now, so they could wear these little sweaters this fall.

I lucked out on the size 3 and it’s a perfect fit. But the 12 mos. size is small. The sleeves are really too small and she’ll be lucky if she gets another week’s wear out of it LOL.

Oh well, luckily, we have another little girl on the way. And she’ll be about 9/10 months old next fall, so the smaller sweater should be a perfect fit for her!
On to the next project — Happy Fall!

XOXO,
Anna

A Stripey Sweater

13 Comments / March 11, 2019 November 1, 2019 / Knitting

Boy oh boy — this poor little neglected blog skipped the entire month of February — I can’t believe it’s been so long since I posted. Isn’t it funny — back in the old days of blogging, if I went 4 or 5 days without posting, I thought it was the end. Of something. How things have changed! Maybe I just said everything I had to say. Or, more likely, it’s just been pretty busy and yet boring around here, so nothing too exciting going on. {Sigh}.

I have managed to finish a sweater though. I started this sweater forever-ago — at least several years. I’ve worked a lot on it this winter and now it’s done. Yay!

I walked into my LYS a few years ago and one of the sales ladies was wearing her version of this sweater. I saw those variegated stripes and knew it was a sweater for me. I LOVE the way the colors subtly change — especially the blues as they fade into green {Swoon}

The pattern is Diversey Cardigan by Dawn Slugg. If I’d only seen the pattern, I would have never made it. But seeing it on a real live person did the trick. It’s made by alternating 2 rows of Kauni Effectgarn yarn in color EQ with 2 rows of Kauni Effectgarn yarn in, I think ES (I can’t find the ball band ;-8) The EQ is the variegated ball in colors and the ES is a variegated gray and black yarn.

I used size 5 needles and I lengthened the main body by about 20% — the pattern had the length end just about at the hip bone and I like my tops to be a little longer. I SO wish you could feel the drape on this sweater — it’s so light and, well, drapey LOL. Those little square armholes look a little weird when the sweater is laid out flat, but you don’t really notice them when it’s on ’cause they hit near the underarm.

I’m planning to wear it with a little denim top. Just like the model in the shop — if it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for me! ;-D

Someday I’ll have quilting to show again — winter just makes me want to knit though. Hope you’re surviving the season — hot or cold, wherever you are. Have a great week!

XOXO,
Anna