Destash!

All of these yarns are currently available for sale. Details for each can be found on my Ravelry stash page under the "will trade/sell" header here. If you're interested, have any questions or just want to make me an offer, feel free to send me a Ravelry message or an e-mail! 

I keep almost all of my non-TFA stash yarn in 4 big under-the-bed bins that I store in our "random room". The "random-room" is where we put everything that doesn't have a real home in our house. Stuff like wrapping paper, gift boxes, stray buttons and sewing notions, stray furniture, Chris' chin-up bar... all things that you could find in the "random-room". Full disclosure, we don't actually call it the "random-room" we call it the "blue room" because when we moved in it was painted a bright blue. It has since been painted over a light cream, but it's still the blue room to me. However, I'm very quickly making the transition into calling it "the nursery", because in a few short months it will be baby's room. (squeal!)

This weekend I set myself the task of organizing. I started by taking down the Christmas decorations (so much less fun and more sad than putting them up!) and then I moved on to clearing out the random-room so we can get our bearings and turn that crazy space into a beautiful nursery for our little babe. As of right now the room is completely empty (don't ask me what the guest bedroom looks like... my organizing/cleaning system involved a lot of moving things from one spare room to the other.) I took the opportunity to go through my stash bins and gave everything a very critical once over. The above pictured yarns are all skeins that, though it pains me to part with them, I don't foresee myself using any day soon... funny how I'm not parting with many blue skeins...

There's some really good stuff up there, a bunch of Malabrigo, some Hedgehog Fibres, Dream in Colour. These yarns deserve a good home!

Sophisticated Striped Gramps

First things first... today is Chris' birthday!!! Yay! Happy birthday to the love of my life, TFA wouldn't work without you babe. 

Another baby sweater. I kinda got the baby sweater flu big time back in December and it took 3 fresh baby knits for me to shake it. I'm not fully convinced that I'll ever really get baby knits out of my system, but for now I've gotten to a place where I can at least sleep at night without waking up feeling the need to cast on for something wee and adorable. 

This sweater is a hybrid of the Gramps pattern (for the construction and proportions) but inspired by the Baby Sophisticate pattern (for the garter stitch edgings). Add to that a dash of rainbow stripes and this little cardigan is perfect. Following the instructions for the Gramps I knit a size 6-12 months, but I think that this sweater turned out kinda huge. I know a few 2-3 year olds who it would fit quite well. The sizing doesn't bother me at all though, I mean really, how big is a 6-12 month old anyway? It'll fit the baby eventually, that's all that matters to me. 

I knit this sweater using Green Label Sand as the main colour and leftovers from my Mitered Square Blanket for the stripes. I love it. The stripes turned out exactly how I wanted them to. 

Ravelry project page here. 

End Of May Mitts

I knit these beautiful mittens for my sister Lilia for Christmas this year. I've had this pattern for years and am so glad that I finally got around to knitting it. The results speak for themselves. These mitts are so sweet and Lilia loves them! 

Ravelry project page here. 

I made a few very minor mods to this pattern, first off I didn't sew down the lining as the pattern suggests. I opted to knit my lining in a bright turquoise shade and really liked the way it was rolling in on itself and added a pop of fun colour to the mitt, so I just let it do it's thing. I also opted to use 3 contrasting colours: Midnight, Grape and Plum on a background of Sand. The flower motif on the back of the mitt made it really easy to decide where to switch colours.  

Happy New Year to everyone! 2013 is shaping up to be a big year for my family. I cannot wait. 

Hanspun Hats for mom and baby

The cuteness factor was kicked up a notch this Christmas with the addition of my brother's baby girl Annika! She's 5 1/2 months old and is just the sweetest thing. Annika was spoiled with lots of adorable and fun gifts, including a bunch of knitted items made by me and my mom. 

Part of my contribution was a pair of matching mom and baby Thorpes knit for Annika and her mom Amanda. Remember how I recently mentioned that I needed to find worthy projects for my handspun? Well, this is one of the projects that I came up with. 2 hats, twice the awesomeness. I'm thrilled with how these came out. 

Luckily, mom and baby love them too! 

Ravelry project page with more details here. 

Knitted Gifts

Plenty of knits were gifted for Christmas this year. Clearly I took the accessory approach and knit a bunch of small, manageable projects. Chris got in on the Christmas knitting action too and helped me to knit 3 hats for the men in his family. Some of these knits have yet to be blogged about since they were gifts and I didn't want to spoil the surprise. Today was our last day of Christmas gift exchanging, so all the details will be coming soon!

Link's to Ravelry project pages:

Left column: 

Socks for Luke

Annika 2012 ornament

Socks for Dad

Smooth Sailing Baby Blanket

Center column:

Thorpes for mom and baby

End of November Mitts for Lilia

Abby's Heart Hat

Right Column:

Man Hat for Richie

Man Hat for Milo

Jake's Hat

Elliot's Crazy Hat

Chris' Christmas Turkey

Christmas dinner at our place was a success! We managed to fit 13 people at one very long, improvised table. The food was delicious, the company was terrific, what more could you ask for!? In typical Tanis fashion I took 2 photo's to document the entire night. I had the camera out and ready, intending to make Christmas 2012 the day I change my bad photo-taking habits, and then... nothing. At least I did get this shot of Chris with his beautiful turkey! It wasn't his first turkey, but it was probably his biggest and his best. It was perfect! What a champ.

I just can't stop.

Totally should be wrapping gifts, or cleaning house, or making lists, or doing basically any type of readying for Christmas you can think of. Instead, I'm taking pictures of yarn. I just can't stop. 

Etsy Update: There will be a pretty massive One Of A Kind Etsy shop update on boxing day, December 26th at 12pm EST (noon). I've got LOTS of thrummed mitten kits, Green Label, Blue Label, Yellow Label, Red Label, Purple Label and Orange Label. I should hvae enough stock to last more than 20 minutes. Fingers crossed. Happy boxing day shopping!

Christmas is just a few days away. It's been snowing on and off today (wet snow, but better than nothing!) I've got just about all my pre-holiday work done (I should be finished by the end of today). We're hosting a big Christmas dinner at our place this year, which is a first for us. We'll have 13 friends and family over and I'm officially getting really excited about it! There was a moment of terror when I realized how much planning, prepping, cleaning, cooking, shopping and spending is involved in hosting Christmas dinner, but I've made my lists, we braved Costco this morning, and I now feel confident that we can handle it. I also managed to snag the very first super cute unisex onesie I've seen since I've been pregnant (at Costco, the Pekkle brand) so all in all today is a win. 

I've been knitting like crazy. Small, awesome, instant gratification knits. I finished a baby sweater in less than 24 hours last weekend. I've knit 2 hats this week, have almost finished a sock. So much knitting to share, but it may have to wait until after the holidays. In other exciting colourful, fibery news... the fabrics that I ordered to sew items for the nursery arrived this week. I fee like Christmas came early for me! I may wrap them up and put them under the tree because I love them so much. 

Hoping you are all excited about the next couple of days, getting all your holiday plans in order and are able to sit back and really enjoy this magical time of year!

Boxing week Etsy update!

Chris and I are spending this last week before the holidays working on a massive One Of A Kind Etsy Update that will go up boxing week (I'm not sure what day yet exactly, I'll keep you posted for sure!) The update will include as many Thrummed Mitten Kits as we can possibly make in a week. Yesterday was a BFL roving dyeing day. Today my office is full of roving that is magically going from damp, limp and uninspiring to dry, fluffy and dreamy! Roving drying is one of the weirdest, most awesome things ever.  

Golden Oak Cardigan

This sweater is beautiful. I'm not sure what more I can say about it. Ravelry project page here. Blog post done. 

Joking, there is always so much to say about knits, no matter how wee they are! I hadn't knit a new little something for my bun in the oven since I knit the Coolbreeze Baby Cardigan back in September. Now that most of my Christmas crafting is behind me, I was really excited to start a little something for the baby. Baby sweaters knit in Purple Label Cashmere Sock yarn are almost definitely my favourite. It is just so incredibly soft and snuggly, the thought of cuddling a baby swathed in this material is heavenly. I can't wait! 

The pattern is the Little Oak Cardigan by Alana Dakos, and really, it's a delight. I'll go ahead and repeat what everyone who's ever knit this pattern before me has to say about it: it's just the right amount of simple, bottom up, stockinette stitch. Then, right when you might get bored with it, it's time to work the very complicated cable section for the yoke. Before you can get too sick of the complex cables, you're done! Then all that's left is the button band, and I love button bands. So really, this knit is perfect. 

I really love my Gold colourway for baby knits. It's soft and warm without being too pastel or sweet. I happen to love a lot of colourways for baby knits (Pink Grapefruit, Seabreeze, Dove, Frost...) but Gold is definitely high on that list. As an interesting little coincidence, I ordered the fabric pictured above for my crib bedding while working on this cardigan. Isn't it neat how the two complement each other so well? 

Handspun ideas anyone?

Psst - Tomorrow the price of a Year In Colour Club membership will go up! If you're considering treating yourself to the gift that keeps on giving, now is the time!

I've had a lots of request from people wanting details about my tree skirt, it's my Flowers in the Snow afghan wrapped around the base of the tree! 

This is, more or less, my stash of handspun. I'm extremely in love with just about every skein. So much care and effort goes into every single skein that it becomes very difficult for me to pick a project worthy of my handspun yarns. Baby projects come to mind as a really good use. Typically the yardage I get out of one skein is enough for a baby sweater. Since babies aren't very hard on their clothes there is little risk that the finished knit will get abused or damaged. Baby projects are perfect heirloom knitting for special skeins. I've knit a few baby projects using my handspun already: here, here and here.

These five skeins jump out at me as being particularly baby appropriate. Any recommendations for the perfect baby sweater pattern that would highlight the beauty of handspun? I'm open to a pattern with stripes or colourwork, so I could combine a skein with some of my hand dyed yarn and then have some handspun left over for a hat or something. All ideas are welcome!

Christmas adventures begin!

I had decided that I wasn't going to send out a custom printed Christmas card this year. I figure that next year we'll have an adorable little baby to dress up as an elf and photograph to our hearts content, so this year we could take a break from super cute Christmas cards. But then I started getting cards in the mail, and every single one makes my day. I changed my mind and convinced Chris that we should do a quick photo shoot with our reindeer Stella and print up something quickly to send out to our friends and family for the holidays. 

Epic fail.

These are a few of the highlights from yesterday's Christmas photo shoot attempt. Not exactly inspiring! I have to point out Chris' expression in the photo of him with Stella (top right). He hated the antler hat on her. He was convinced that she was totally humiliated and insisted we take it off. Then there's that super weird one of me and Stella kneeling and gazing into each other's eyes like we're in love (we are in love!) Oh well, we tried. 

I wrapped my first Christmas present of the season with lots of love and attention. That awesome little knit print gift tag is a free download here. I printed a sheet on cardstock and then cut the tags out with craft scissors. The bow I made myself out of a sheet torn from a magazine, the tutorial can be found here. It uses a ton of tape and takes a couple of minutes to make, but I think that it's pretty cool!