Projects and More Projects

The end of September! It is getting cooler in most areas of the country, and although that is sort of true for those of us who live in Texas, we wish it was even cooler. High in the upper 80's and low 90's is still not fall for me.  But, I am thankful that the 100's are gone. :)

Where have I been all summer???? Well, not writing on my blog that is for sure. I miss being out here writing and showing my projects and little snippets of my life. So, if I haven't been on the blog, then what have I been doing????

Creating!  :)

The off-white shawl, was made using my Ma Cherie pattern. Then, I made some flowers to stitch onto it. I also took apart a vintage doily, that was in my doily stash, and appliqued some of those pieces on the shawl. This shawl is in my etsy shop.

This purple shawl, was hand knit from several different types of yarns and used several stitch patterns for a variety of interest. I love working on these artsy shawls.

I have written a pattern for this shawl, but it isn't published yet. The name is Butterflies In Flight. A knitting friend saw one of my earlier ones, which has sold, and said it reminded her of a butterfly in flight.  So, the name stuck! This shawl is also listed in my etsy shop.

On Ravelry there is a group called "Free Pattern Testers."  I joined that group, to have some patterns tested, and decided to test one for someone else.  The pattern that I tested was a crochet bag pattern. It had a pretty stitch on the bag, but was a solid bag, with no embellishment on it.  I decided I couldn't live with that, soooo, out came the books of crocheted and knitted flowers and leaves.  After the leaves were finished, I appliqued them onto the bag and then lined it. The plan is to use the bag as the fall temperatures come to north Texas.

The pattern that I decided to have tested in the Free Pattern Testers group on Ravelry was this scarf.  I named it "Holiday." A few years ago Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet made a movie together named "The Holiday." I really like that movie, but also, Kate's character wore some great scarves in that movie and this one was inspired by those.

The pattern testing went well and I have now published this pattern on Ravelry and on etsy. It uses a self-striping yarn and a solid yarn in a simple slip stitch pattern. Knitting this scarf is a great stash buster, because you need only 239 yards of each yarn!

The pink and gray scarf, above, used a sock yarn with shorter color changes. The scarf below used a Noro Kureyon, fingering weight, with the longer color changes.

Last year, sometime in 2012, I don't remember when exactly. :) I purchased the Doris Chan pattern for this top, started it and then stashed it.  So, I took it out of storage and finished it.  I used the Hobby Lobby yarn named "I Love This Cotton."

And wait there is more!  I, also, took out the large and growing basket of doilies and pieced together another poncho.  This one was a bit of a challenge.  I was trying to safety pin the smaller doily pieces together on the mannequin. Gravity, or a doily magnet in the floor, was having fun with me. Hahaha!  Not a successful venture. 

Then my daughter, Rebekah, suggested that I use bobby pins!  Yep, the kind we use in our hair.  What a fabulous idea!!  Those worked great! To fix the gravity problem, I decided to make a pattern piece out of an old sheet. To figure out what the size of the finished rectange should be, I looked at several crochet and knitting patterns from several years ago. They were made by making 2 rectangles and then stitching them together to form a poncho. The patterns had schematics on them, so I was able to see the different dimensions and what each looked like. After that, I decided what look I wanted for this poncho and decided on the dimensions for my rectangles. I cut the sheet into the size of the rectangle, that I needed, and laid it out on a table. Next, I filled in the sheet pattern with doilies, bobby pinned the doilies together and then stitched them together on the sewing machine, removing the bobby pins.  Voila!

Then last, but not least I made this sweater.  I had purchased the yarn for this sweater in February, 2013. Several of my friends had purchased yarn to make this sweater too.  They made their sweaters right away, and that spurred me on to make mine.  The yarn is from Plymouth yarn and named Kudo. The pattern is named "Women's Open Front Cardigan." Here is the link to the pattern on Ravelry: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/womens-open-front-cardigan . The designer liked my finished cardigan so much, that she wrote and asked me permission to use my sweater on the page. :)  I was honored and of course, said yes.  :)

Well, those are some of the projects finished this summer. Hope you enjoyed seeing them and that something inspired you to be creative!!  :)