Santa is Done!!

FINISHED!!!! That's all I have to say right now.

Well, I think we're getting to the home stretch of the Santa. At least it feels that way since I have 4 (!!) days off and I'm hoping to finish it by Wednesday. I'm working on the hat right now and after that it's only embellishment stuff to go.
I signed up for knitty's SP10 and I'm super excited. I've somehow missed out on a tonne of them. I think the last one I was in was SP4 (maybe 5?). I guess I forget about that section of the forum sometimes. Now that there's an increase of places to buy knitting stuff (and other fun things) online it's going to make it a whole lot easier and less stressful trying to think of stuff to send. I've actually already started ordering a few things that I think might be fun.

Temperature: -29C
Sunrise: 12:41
Sunset: 2:43

Christmas Knitting Update!

I finally got around to taking pictures of the two finished stockings. When I dig out my Christmas decorations this year I'll get a better picture of the other ones (if I dig all that stuff out now I might be tempted to decorate and it's still far too early). The light is getting funny and there's a pretty fine line in which I'm going to be able to get decent shots of things. We only have one major window in the house (two smaller ones on an awkward angle and then three small bathroom sort of windows) so that definitely limits where I can take pictures...

Here's the customized detail on each of them:

I used a pattern that had a repeating motif along where the name bands are, took that out and replaced it with the person's name, a little customized picture/motif and the year. I used the Knit Visualizer program and besides having to work everything upside down it was so easy to use. I wouldn't have had the patience if I had to do this all with graph paper. I think my favourite motif is my step dad's I put in an igloo and an inukshuk since he spent time up here in Inuvik and he's the reason we all came up here. I'm quite happy with all the other ones though. Some are modified from 1000 great knitting motifs and others are straight from there.

Last but not least, my Santa progress as of yesterday afternoon. I got his eyes, nose, beard and moustache sewn on last night and he's looking more and more how he should. The arms are done and stuffed but I have to wait until the jacket skirt is on before I can put those on... Then the hat, cuff/boot trimmings and the holly and I'm done! This pattern is great - no errors so far and things are pretty straight forward there's nothing that's vague or confusing (unlike some patterns I've tried to knit before) and so it's great for me to knit at work or just sitting around watching TV. Not a lot of concentration or huge stitch amounts to worry about (I've hit the largest amount so far at 96 across).

Temperature: -26C
Sunrise: 12:15
Sunset: 13:07

Bit of an update

Opps... I'm getting behind in what was supposed to be a regularly updated blog. I can't really pinpoint what's gotten in the way of me doing this. Nothing major has changed in the way of work or at home lounging around. I guess I just never think to type out a few words when I'm sitting here bored (maybe some of it has to do with the fact that I'd always like to include pictures of interesting things or pictures of finished knitted things and of course that isn't always possible).

On the knitting front, I've purchased four Jean Greenhowe knitting books and knitting some of the cute things in those books have been my primary focus as was finished the last two Christmas stockings that were starting to haunt me in my dreams. I can very proudly say that everyone in my immediate family (Glen, Marc, Cristine, Mum and Ted - oh and me too) all have beautiful, custom hand knit Christmas stockings. I only managed 4¾ stockings before Christmas last year so I really had to finish my mum's and Ted's before this season. I was mostly done with my mum's so I couldn't do anything with it saying 2006 on it so just for continuity's sake I knit Ted's with 2006 on it too... It seemed sort of rude if everyone had a 2006 stocking and he was the only one that had one saying 2007 (it would've also meant me redoing patterns and graphs that I'd already printed out). Anyway, I'm extremely proud of them and I'll be taking some pictures of them tomorrow (work has been getting in the way of me having actual time to do things before 11pm).

About the Jean Greenhowe stuff, I've knit four of her "Little Darlings" 3 of them are mostly finished. Now that I'm finished the stockings I'm making her Santa Claus. I'm so excited about this pattern. So far I've knit the legs and have done about 15 rounds after joining them together. It's going along quick and unless I hit some sort of knitting roadblock this should be done in no time. I'd love to get a nativity done too before Christmas. For some reason I don't get the multi-piece dread every time I look at her patterns (like I do with most of the toys in the books I have). I just realised that I haven't taken a picture of the third doll she's not 100% finished yet so when she gets a shirt and some shoe/sock things I'll take a picture.




So to accomplish all of this crazy multi coloured knitting, and fueled by a discontinued colours sale, I have two quite large boxes Peruvian Highland Wool from Elann.com sitting in my living room (to add to the quite large collection I have so far). This is by far my favourite yarn for almost everything so I don't think it'll be to hard to go through all of it. All the stuff on the couch is what I've gotten in the last month and then the stuff in the zippered bag on top is what I had to begin with (it used to be sitting nicely by colour in there but we've been rearranging the house and it's gotten tossed around a bit). Also note Glen in the background pretending to ignore me taking pictures of my yarn.


I think that's about it for now. Definitely trying to take pictures of the stockings tomorrow if I get a chance and if there's some sun.

Sunrise: 11:47am
Sunset: 3:32pm

Adventures and Knitting!

Well the name of the blog says it all. Today I'm actually posting about adventures AND knitting. Monday night my brother and his girlfriend came over for dinner (pretty much our usual Monday routine) and after sitting around for a while being bored my brother decided that we should go on an adventure.

We all piled into his crazy van and went for a ride. First we went down to the river but there was nothing exciting happening so we piled back into the van and let Marc drive us where ever he decided the adventure was going to be. We ended up at one end of the lake where a playground is so we decided to play on the equipment and that was our adventure.

Next comes some more knitting content. I got a few more random things finished. I finished knitting the hat for my brother's girlfriend and I'm SO happy with how it turned out. Even though it's just a simple 2x2 ribbed hat, the thing that made it so neat was the fact that the colours spiraled around the hat. At first since I didn't realise the colours were going to spiral I was a bit disappointed because I thought the colours were pooling. I was SO close to ripping it all out and changing the number of stitches I cast on. I decided to just see how it was going to turn out. The yarn I used was the yarn that Cristine and I dyed together (she picked the colours and the order etc and I told her how to do the dying).

I also finished two ear flap hats (total 4). I didn't put pompoms on the darker one because it's a little more manly and I don't know many guys that are keen on pompoms. And thennnnn I finished a sari-silk scarf. I'm completely thrilled with how it turned out. A shoutout to Suzanne (SuzannaBanana) because without the swift she sent, I wasn't going to touch this yarn. I've had the sari-silk for a few years now and only got a few hanks of it wound (the long painful way) so I've had it sitting in my yarn bag waiting to be used. Having the swift has taken away a lot of the "I don't want to use it and ruin it" fear because now I can just get more sari-silk and wind it up whenever I need to now. Having to wind hanks of yarn (as pretty as they are) without a swift has probably stopped me from using 90% of my stash up until now.

Sunrise: 6:18am
Sunset: 11:34pm
Temperature: 12C (overcast)

Craft-o-rama

The last week and a half has been really hectic. Our annual arts festival was happening and I spent a lot of time there this year (I unfortunately didn't have anything there - I kick myself every year that I don't get some stuff together). We spent almost every afternoon there with work and then I took three workshops. A porcupine quill earring workshop, a fabric basket workshop and a birchbark basket workshop. I think this is one of the first years that I'm actually sad that the festival is over. I had a lot of fun there this year and got to see some old artist friends (the guy that did the painting of my photographs was there) and meet some new ones. I also got some good info that will help my own art along (re: packaging).


The porcupine quill earrings was the first workshop I did. I wasn't sure exactly what I was getting into - ie: style of earring wise. But I thought it sounded cool and I'd never worked with porcupine quills (actually, I'd never even seen them in real life). The girl that put the workshop on was really nice. She's taking some sort of textile arts course at Uni. so we chatted about dyeing things. She dyes her own quills so that was pretty cool. We got to choose between blue, natural or green quills and then pick our beads to match. The whole workshop was a lot of fun and went by really quickly (started at 1:00 and finshed at 2:30)

The next workshop I did was fabric basket making. A lady in town had made and embellished all sorts of fabric baskets and had them in this years festival. They were really neat and I was really excited when I read that she was doing a workshop - I was also really curious on the construction of them. We got to pick our fabric and thread and basically pick the size of our basket (the size is just a matter of how big you make the bottom and how tall the sides are). Getting started was a little tricky - I think you just have to get over your fear that the sewing machine will break from sewing something other than fabric. Basically you wrap strips of fabric around braided cotton (or polypropylene) rope, coil it then zigzag stitch the coils together. After doing all that kool aid dying my gears started turning when I saw the rope came in cotton - you could dye that and sew it instead of using fabric and then I thought that instead of putting sides on the baskets you could just make large discs and use them as rugs. I've already make another basket since the course and I've started on an
experimental piece.


The last workshop I did was the birchbark basket workshop. It was probably the one I was most interested in since I've seen the baskets at festivals (and stores) and they're extremely expensive (so the $40 fee was a steal). Well, I have a whole new appreciation for the time and effort that goes into making them. We started our workshop at 1:00 and didn't finish until 7:30 that night. I think the only flaw in the workshop was the fact that we had TOO much choice. We should've only been able to make one size and then have a choice of say 3 patterns to put on (they're embroidered with porcupine quills). And it probably would've helped if the pieces for all the baskets were cut out beforehand. The only reason I'm mentioning this is because the workshops are supposed to only run from 1-4 (5 for late). I was supposed to be working that day (start at 3) but my boss knew I'd show up after I was done - the residents were at the festival that day watching a movie which was supposed to finish about the time I was. Luckily one of my neighbours took the workshop too so we sat together and chatted. Besides it taking a crazy
amount of time, it was a lot of fun and something I'd do again
now that I'm prepared for how long it takes.


And now for the non-Arts festival related crafting, I finished a knitted hat out of my dyed yarn. The colours in the picture don't really do it justice (it flows a lot better there's a bit more pink it in) but I'm really happy with how it turned out. I'm mostly happy with the fact I didn't get an ugly pooling mess (it started to pool a little bit at the top but it's really only noticeable in the picture). I'm just about done another dyed hat - the one that my brother's girlfriend helped with and I'm SO excited to post about this one. It's turning out so neat. After that I'm hoping to tackle the baby surprise jacket. That's knitting-wise anyway... There's sooooooo many things I want to make (quilts, baskets, quill work, dyeing) and I just don't have enough time. I definitely need to think of a way to be able to craft full time.

Anyway! I think that's all from me for now!

Sunrise: 5:08am
Sunset: 12:47am

Temperature: 11C (overcast)

Kool Aid Fun!

Got some knit picks colour your own in a swap this week and have done some dyeing. I went and bought 20 packages of kool aid at the grocery store and the lady was shocked to find out I wasn't going to drink it haha

The left one is some Gjestal Naturgarn no. 1 and the last three are knit picks. The only one that didn't really photograph true to colour is the right hand one. It has a lot more pink in it. Oh well and the left one has a bit more orange. I'm excited to see how these will knit up. Haven't been doing much knitting. The weather was nice up until a few days ago so we were still spending time outside. Went swimming in the lake on Monday (SO nice!) and on Tuesday I went out fishing with my brother (and basically went swimming again since I had to go rescue his hook from a rock ledge) I ended up catching a 4lb jackfish though - biggest one we've caught all summer. If I wasn't so sick of gutting jackfish I might've kept it to cook for everyone but we just let it go.

That's my update! I have one more skein of Naturgarn left so I might go and dye that. I'm trying to figure out the best way to get really vibrant colours (the colours look extra vibrant in the pictures but they aren't as vibrant as I'd like).


Sunrise - 3:44am
Sunset - 2:06am

Temperature - 11C (overcast)

Some updates today!

First I have a knitting update. I finally took pictures of the stuff I've finished in the last little while (and one of the things I have in progress).

Here are 3 pairs of mittens. The first one is knit using Peace Fleece and the other two are knit using Elann's Highland Wool.

Here's a pair of mittens in progress. I haven't had much knitting time lately so they're taking longer than the should. Knit using Elann's Highland Wool (same pattern as the above mittens but I added a colour).

Here's little miss Dolly no pants. The reason she doesn't have pants is because the pants are frustrating the hell outta me and I just can't bring myself to work on them. Truth be told, I'm not happy with her little shirt either but she's going to stay in it for now. I used a completely different yarn than the pattern called for so she turned out A LOT bigger than she was supposed to (which is fine, I actually like her that big). The only problem now is that the clothes in the book don't fit her (she was supposed to be knit with fingering weight yarn and the clothes in worsted). I haven't done a lot of clothing construction (beyond socks and mittens) so making up my own shirt and pants pattern has been a lot trickier than I thought. You can't see her hair very well in this picture but it turned out REALLY well and I'm really pleased with it.


Now for my other update. A little over a year and a half ago I got braces. We're finally coming to the end stretch. Today the orthodontist took the braces off and then put them back on but in a different position (The orthos switched during the treatment and she wasn't happy with the positioning of the previous guy's brackets. Turns out too that she doesn't think I should've gotten those two bottom teeth out - gahhh!). Anyway, I took my camera today and got a picture of approximately what things will look like.

I look a little crappy because I had to get up at 7:30am to go to the appointment and we were up until close to 2am last night. (You can click it to see it larger if you so desire). My teeth felt soooo smooth and looked HUGE! It was really weird to see them without the braces. So, when the ortho put the braces on, she used a different kind - basically the traditional ones - so I got to pick out colours for the first time - yay!

I wasn't prepared for getting colours but I like my choice. I'm thinking about getting pink and yellow next time or even just all pink. We'll see. I'll probably change my mind a hundred times before my next appointment (August 17th weekend).

Anyway! There's my update for now!

Sunrise/Sunset - N/A
Temperature - 25C

Decided to start a new blog to hopefully keep everything in one place. I haven't done much knitting lately since the weather here has been awesome (totally what you wouldn't expect for the arctic) so we've been spending a lot of time outside - mainly at the lake fishing. Just from being outside this past week I have the darkest tan I've had in years.

Hopefully if I can keep motivated to post on a regular basis I'll to a temperature and sunrise/set thing at the end of each entry and I'll try to get a picture from out the window on a semi-regular basis.

Right now I don't have a lot of knitting content. I have two pairs of socks and a pair of mittens on the needles right now (those are the things I'm actively working on, I have an embarassing amount of things that are half finished sitting all over the place - yikes). I just got an awesome birthday shipment of yarn from my parents. A friend of my mum's is one of the largest wool producers in western Canada so I just got 35 (I think? or 40?) hanks of 100% Canadian grown and spun wool in a bunch of really great colours. I'll get a picture of that soon too.

Anyway! I think that's all for now. I might post some more later on if I get some pictures taken.

Sunrise/Sunset - N/A
Temperature - 25C (feels hotter)