Month: April 2018

52 hats :: 13 – First Try Fair Isle

~ Maggie ~ 4 Comments

In all my years of knitting I never tried Fair Isle before. I guess I found it intimidating. If you look for patterns, it actually is. So I decided to do what I’ve always done: wing it. I made up a little zigzag pattern and hey presto! A fair isle hat.
I know, it’s not perfect. A bit of a tension problem going on in some spots (if I can find some time I’m going to try if blocking it helps). And it’s actually too small for my head. I should have realised it makes the knit less stretchy, so it ended up being a child’s size. But that’s okay.
I mean, I finally did Fair Isle. A whole world of colorful possibilities is opening up for me right now…

Linking up with Frontier Dreams’ Crafting On

That's not a hat

~ Maggie ~ 4 Comments

Nope, it’s not. Isn’t that wild? After three months (14 weeks to be precise) of knitting nothing but hats, I cast on for a sweater.
Why? Well, I was out of hat knitting yarn. That’s one reason.
But I knew this would happen soon and could have popped in to a shop to pick some up a few skeins last week.
I didn’t.
So I guess I wanted to force myself to step aside from the hat knitting and make something else for a change. I am way ahead with my goal of one hat each week (I finished #20 this weekend – I am way behind in taking pictures and blogging about those hats though) so I guess I have some time before I really need to get on with it.

Anyway. A sweater. No real pattern, just a stitch pattern for the ajour (lace? is there a difference?). I’m going to be winging the rest of the design (oh my!).
The yarn is this yarn that was previously this sweater that is way too wide for me now. I hardly ever wore it anymore and I thought that was a waste of that expensive yarn (a birthday gift – I usually buy the cheap stuff). So I frogged it last year and I’ve been thinking about what to knit with it ever since. Started a shawl, realized I never wear shawls (so that would still be a waste of yarn), frogged it again, searched for patterns and finally decided to make up my own.
Here’s hoping that this sweater will work out the way I think it will…

Linking up with Jeannie Gray Knits’ Makers’ Monday

Three on Thursday :: in my garden

~ Maggie ~ 2 Comments

Another thing on my list: the garden. Not really a problem though, I love working in the garden. It relaxes me, so I guess I should aim to do something in the garden everyday to take the edge of everyhing else on my to-do list. It’s definitely one of the things I will miss most when we go back to Curaçao.
If only the weater was a little bit more cooperative…
We’re still in the colder parts of the year here in Holland. Lots of rain and it’s quite cold to be outside (especially if you lived on a tropical island for ten weeks) Trees are still mostly bare and on first sight not much is happening in the garden yet.
But if you look closer, you find that, in fact, things are growing.

Three spring surprises I found in the garden last week:

Linking up with Carole Knits’ Three on Thursday