Christmas 2010 Presents Post

I made all of the Christmas presents I gave this year. Because of that I decided to make one massive post with all of the Christmas gifts I gave out this year. Below are pictures and descriptions of each project and who it was given to.

Starting with my family, I made my sister a Noro scarf. These scarves are made by many many people and there are a lot of different styles and shapes. I picked a brown Noro that is very neutral colors and then I chose a skein that is full of all of the rainbow colors. The actually knitting is also simple as it is starting with an odd number of stitches, then every row you knit 2 then purl 2 across. Because of the odd number of stitches it creates the nice zigzag look of the scarf. Here a few photos to see what it looks like:

Click the picture for a picture of my sister wearing the scarf

For my brother I knit a hat. I was very inspired by the rather new 60 Quick Knits book. I was so inspired that about 6 of the winter projects I created were from the 60 Quick Knits book. This particular hat is called the Tweed Watch Cap. I chose Cascade 220 yarn in the following colors: #9458 - Bainbrige Island Heather (brown), #2424 - Heather Summer Night (blue), and #2452 - Turtle (green). Here is a picture of my brother wearing his Christmas present as well as a few close-ups of the hat:

Click the picture for a picture of my brother wearing his hat

My sister-in-law was gifted some beautiful mittens. These mittens are the Tweed mittens from the 60 Quick Knits book. The colors I used for her mittens are the following: #2419 - Heather Aster (purplish-pink) and #9921 - Caribbean Blue.


I made my adorable niece a soft sweater for Christmas. I used a pattern from Lion Brand called the Little Princess Cardi. I used Plymouth Yarn Dreambaby DK in a purple, blue, and green. Here is a picture of my niece's sweater.

Click the picture to see my niece wearing her sweater

My mom received a pair of mittens from the 60 Quick Knits called Checkered Mittens. I don't know the exact Cascade 220 colors I used for her mittens as I have no documentation for them at this particular moment. However, I do know I used a light blue for the cuff while I used a dark blue and magenta variegated yarn for the checkers. They were finished already over the summer and my mom finally received them on Christmas Eve. She really liked them and said her hands will probably stay very warm. Here is a picture of them:


My dad was the final family member I made something for. He also had a gift made from the 60 Quick Knits book. His gift was the slip-stitched hat. I made it in a burgundy and gold color. The specific colorways are Cascade 220: #4008 - Heather Ruby and #2415 - Sunflower. Here is a picture of the finished product:


Hope you enjoyed, Comments and Critiques are of course welcome!

First Knitted Sweater = Complete

I know it has been a while since my last update. I have so many projects to share with all of you. For tonight, I'm only going to let you all know that a few days ago I finished my first knitted sweater. My roommate from college, Em, convinced me to make it back in October. I doubted that I would be able to knit it as I have only been knitting a little over a year now. It is amazing that I have now completed it less than a year later. I would post pictures, as I am very proud of the results (even though I am sure I made lots of mistakes), but they must wait. You see, my mom borrowed my camera for her vacation back in May. Her and my dad went on a vacation to Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, and back to Wisconsin while I stayed here student teaching. Anyways, when I finally got my camera back the batteries were completely dead on it :(... so I cannot take pictures currently. Hopefully next week I will fix that and you can all see the finished product.

Edit: 29 Dec 2010 - Below is a picture of the completed project:

Summer is Coming!

It has been a very long time since I last updated this blog. I feel kind of bad about that, but time flies by. It is crazy, the older you get the faster the years go. I'm currently student teaching nearby and I find myself thinking about myself at their ages. There are parts of that time in my life I would love to have back. Being able to just have fun. Sure, you have chores to do around the house and life seems so tough at 10 years old, but you don't have to go look for a job. I miss the capability to think outside of the box completely. As we all get older it is harder and harder to use our imaginations. We are so surrounded by reality and the stresses of bills, how could we ever think of unicorns, magic, and castles. It was in elementary school that I was first inspired to pursue a career in music education. I can only hope to inspire even one of the students I have to see music in a new light...

Anyways to talk about my knitting which I haven't been able to work on much, since I have been teaching. I finished my first pair of socks yesterday. I'm really excited about that and I started working on my sweater once again. Once the summer hits I will hopefully have a lot more updates about my different projects. I can hardly wait to get my hands on another skein of yarn!

Baby Ear Flap Hat

It has been a long time since I last posted. I have worked on a lot of projects and have completed a lot of projects. I'll try to update more this week, but for now I would like to share with all of you the ear flap hat I made for my niece, Taylor. (The picture quality isn't very good, but I'll update the pictures when I take pictures with my actual camera.) I crocheted this hat by freehand. I originally had a pattern, but I knew it would not be big enough for my niece. Instead I kind of just made up the pattern myself and I hope it fits her.