That Jolie Girl

Baby Booties

My good friend welcomed her first baby on February 19th (a very good day for babies!).  I knitted her baby girl this pair of booties.  Yeah, they are very tangerine (not orange) and they are also a bit big.  I didn't want my friend to think I was color blind or that I wished her baby to be huge.  So I decided that I should knit a second pair of booties.

For this pair, I used the same yarn that I used for my niece's glovelettes.  This pair is much smaller. I used the same pattern from this book, but changed to smaller needles and thinner yarn.  I think they are super adorable!

Here you can see how much bigger the tangerine booties are.  I've made these booties a few times for friends.  It's such a great pattern that never fails. 

I got to meet this beautiful baby 3 days after she was born.  She is such a gift and will be endless joy to her lucky parents.

Glovelettes of my own

I was all set to make my own pair of gauntlet glovelettes after Christmas was over and done with.  Fortunately for me, I don't have to now.  My good friend Smartwick made these incredible glovelettes for me for Christmas. 

Let me just tell you that these pictures (it's so hard to take a one handed photo) do not do these beautiful glovelettes justice.  They are amazing!  They fit perfectly and I've been wearing them everywhere.

I love the cabling.  I'm so impressed with Smartwick's talent.  I need to get this pattern so I can try these for myself!  What a wonderful present to receive!

Gauntlet Glovelettes

This was my pièce de résistance of Christmas presents this year.  I was so excited to see this project in my amazing knitting teacher's incredible book.  I just knew I had to make these for my niece.  The pattern itself was very straight forward and easy to read, but there were a few stitches that were new to me.  I am a very visual learner, so sometimes seeing instructions in a book makes my head swim.  In those situations I turned to YouTube.  They have some amazing tutorials and I found great luck with The Knit Witch's videos.   Making a bobble was the tutorial I watched the most.  There was just no way I was going to learn that from any book (even one by my wonderful knitting instructor).  After watching it 3 or 4 times in a row, I was able to make my own.  But even things as basic as doing an SSK helped me by watching someone do it a few times.  The Intarsia was easy since Smartwick and I took a wonderful felted bag intarsia class by Leigh Radford a year or two ago. 

 

The rest of the family opened their hats first.  I could tell my niece was bummed not to get a hat, but her eyes lit up when she saw her glovelettes.  Later that day, she told me that I always give the best gifts.  Wow, my heart totally melted. 

This was a great project that I would recommend to anyone.  I was very nervous at first and told myself that the worst case scenerio would be that I would break down and email Laura for help.  Luckily, I didn't have to do that.  I was able to sucessfully complete these on my own.  Now I will move on to another great project in her book...

Book Signing - Boutique Knits: 20+ Must-Have Accessories

This Saturday, Smartwick and I will be at Laura Irwin's book signing at Close Knit from 5:30-7pm.  I'm so excited to get my hands on this book.  The press has been amazing and it has been the number 1 knitting book on Amazon.  Definitely check out her blog, Precious to see lots of amazing pictures of some of the books projects.  I'm still drooling over the gauntlet gloves.  This would be a great book to have in your library or to give as a Christmas gift.  Come down to Close Knit and get your copy autographed.

New Book - Boutique Knits: 20+ Must-Have Accessories

I'm so excited for this book to come out in October!  Laura Irwin (The best knitting instructor ever!) of Precious is the author.  I'm so excited for her.  I know this book will be a huge seller.  If her written instructions are anything like how she teaches, this will be a great book.  When I took my hat class with her, she was finishing up the last pieces of this book.  I'm so happy for her.  She mentioned that she will have a book signing party when the book is out.  I can't wait to go!

Seriously, how cute are these gloves?

I am a designer

Just look at my beautiful hat!  I love everything about it; probably because I made every decision even down to the little curve underneath the button.  This hat class was one of the best classes I have ever taken.  I can't begin to give it the justice it deserves or recommend it enough.  Being able to design and bring to fruition my own hat was incredible.  My friend designed a completely different hat and her hat is super cool!  I learned lots of new things in the class from cabling to knitting in the round to sewing two knit pieces together.  The crazy thing is I think I could knit a whole new hat outside of class with the skills I learned.

This is a side view of the hat.  I love my one cable that runs perfectly up the side.  I knitted the brim separately and then sewed it to the body of the hat. 

Double pointed needles were not that hard.  It felt a bit awkward having so many needles, but it wasn't tricky to knit with them. 

I've already started dreaming up my next hat.  This class was an inspiration and just the kick I needed.  Knitting has never been this much fun!

Knitted Hat

My first hat class last Tuesday was amazing.  My friend and I are the only two people in the class.  It's really great to have so much one on one time with our instructor.  The class is about designing hats.  After a bit of talk about what our possibilities were, we jumped into figuring out how we want our hat.  Since there are only two of us in the class, I figured this was the perfect time to tackle the ever scary cable knitting.  I've always thought I could live life fully without learning this skill, but ultimately I decided to give it a try.  Since this is new to me and the class is ultimately on making a hat, I decided to just have one cable in my hat.  Once my design was set, I knitted a swatch.  Usually I forgo this important step because I want to dive right into my project.  A swatch was necessary because  based on how many stitches it yielded per inch would determine my pattern for my head.  By using a few provided calculations and the results of my swatch, I had a custom hat patten just for me by the end of the first class .  Yes, math was involved, but it wasn't too complicated.

My homework for the week was to knit the body of the hat.  I only had to knit 4.5 inches since my hat will have a brim that is added later.  Tomorrow we will figure out the math to start decreasing stitches to finish the hat.

Here is my cable.  It really wasn't as scary as I thought it would be.  In fact, I think I see lots of cables in my future. 

Christmas Present - Grand Finale

This is the last of the things I made for Christmas this year.  I saved the best for last.  I set out to make a scarves for the Farmer and his wife.  I used a seed stitch (k1, p1, repeat) for the scarves.  I just love this stitch and couldn't get enough of it, so I kept making scarves.  In all I made 14 scarves.  My husband said that this was a bit nutty and I think he's right.  I started knitting Halloween weekend and I was finished 2 days before Christmas.  I perfected the pattern I came up with and I couldn't stop knitting.  Below are 12 of the scarves.  I made two more after taking this picture.

Jolie's Scarf Pattern

• 1 ball of Lion Brand Thick and Quick yarn.

• Cast on 9 stitches

• Seed stitch (k1, p1, repeat) until you only have about 1 foot or 2 of  yarn left

• Bind off

It's really just that easy.  This was such a fun project.  It keeps my hands busy through many movies.  The scarves are super warm and I've been wearing mine (I couldn't resist, I wanted one too!) everyday. 

Motivated to Knit

I was fortunate enough to attend the Get Motivated seminar yesterday through my work.  It's an 8 hour business seminar with famous speakers complete with singers reworking 80's hits to include motivation in their lyrics and lots of fireworks and confetti .  I was excited to hear Colin Powell and Rudy Giuliani talk. I hadn't heard of the other speakers.  My all knowing sister told me to bring my knitting with me.  Boy was I glad I did!  I got to knit for 8 hours while listening to speeches geared towards God and making lots of money.  I did learn a few things, but mostly the  information contained stuff I had already known (be nice to others) and things that I don't believe in (evolution is false). Knitting totally saved my sanity.  There were times we we had to get up and dance or rub our neighbor's shoulders.  I just kept my head down and knitted through it all.  It turns out my main motivation in life is not to climb the corporate ladder.  I'm much more content being a good worker bee.  Now if I could just get Lee Greenwood out of my head...

A sad side note: I was very disturbed that in our city hailed as liberal and progressive, the talk of how evolution is a myth got a big round of applause.  Just as unnerving is that when mentioned in speeches, Ronald Reagan received more applause than Martin Luther King Jr.   

My Amazing Sister

My sister is an amazing person.  She is proficient in many different crafty arts.  She has introduced me to many of the things I now love to do such as knitting, painting and making jewelry.  15 years ago, she talked me into taking my first jewelry class.  She did the same this year and we ended up in a watercolor class.  She was also my first knitting teacher.  She taught me one weekend that we stayed in a cabin alone together at Mt. Hood.  I owe a lot of my craftiness to her.  She knitted the hat and booties shown here.  I'm so proud of her because she created the hat pattern.  I'm so in awe and proud of her.