Flower Hat Done!

I finished my "Flowers on a Grave" hat. Here it is before and after felting. I had to wash it about 5 times to get it to felt enough to wear. It was HUGE!! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I ended up using the flower in the pattern. I made a few others, but they did not look right. My hat is made out of yarn from Beaver Slide Dry Goods and the flower is Pastaza from Cascade Yarns.

Second Pillow

I started the second pillow tonight and it's brutal. I don't know whether I could be using better bobbins or some other approach, but keeping 19 yarn sources straight is just unpleasant. It's taken me 2.5 hours to get through the four garter rows and 8 rows of the stripe pattern. Not fun.

Recent Flowers

This is the rose I knit from the Nicky Knits kit.

I then decided to see if it would felt, and here is the result. It does.









This is my Flowers on a Grave. I knit it in Lion Wool "Rose" The flower is from a flower kit I got. I think it was KnitWhits. It was in a Chinese Takeout Carton and came with yarn, needles, and pattern. Very cute. The flowers in the pattern ended up small using wool, and I didn't want to use whatever yarn that was called for. It was Caron something or other. So, I just pinned that flower on the hat. I really like this. It was fun and quick.

Bobbins Wound

Since I can start knitting again tomorrow, I wanted to be all ready to jump back in to the Flower Pillows. I spent time this morning winding bobbins for the great stripes on the back of Pillow 2.
In particular, I'm thrilled with how the blackberry and loden blue are going to look together. They're such rich, vibrant colours.

Here's my standard low-quality photo:

More Flowers

Did you all see this in the new (jan. '06) Creative Knitting. The Felted Rose Bag. It is made with Karaoke (3 skeins). I think it's kind of cute. I like the toses. It is worked in the round, and has tabs that the i cord straps go through. The tabs are worked separately and sewn on.

Flower Power Poncho Done

I finished my poncho today. Here it is...now to start on my next flower power project.

Flower Knitting

I wanted to share this with you Flower Children! A Nicky Knits (Knitting kit by our favorite flower girl, Nicky Epstein) kit, complete with yarn and pattern. The yarn is Alpaca with a little Acrylic thrown in (65/35). It has the pattern for the capelet (which I probably won't knit), the fingerless mittens (which I might knit), and the FLOWERS and LEAVES (which is a GIVEN). This is all the yarn that was included. The whole kit was about $50, but this is the kicker! It was at Hobby Lobby and I had an Internet Coupon for 40% off, so I got all that yarn for $30. Not bad, huh?

In other flower news, they also had books and magazines on sale, and I was able to pick up the back issue of Knit1 with the flowers in it. There are several flower embellished pieces in the magazine. I don't really love the colors that they did the flowers in, and I would prefer to use wool to WoolEase, but it's nice to have another pattern for flowers. They are knit in pieces and then put all together. I'll try to make one and see if ya'll like it.

I'm going to make a Nicky Knits flower now, so I'll post it soon.

Flora

This is Flora, a Knitty pattern that worked up in no time! The neckwarmer itself took me just a couple hours last night. The flower . . . lovely as it my be, it was a wicked thing to knit. It took me longer to knit that than it did the neckwarmer!! If that wasn't enough, I had to attach it, figure out the whole button thing (did I mention that I can't sew a button to save my life!?)--wow: I am glad to be finished. I used yarn from my stash basket: two strands of a cotton wool blend and one strand of Blue Sky Alpaca. With only 3 rows to go on the flower, I ran out of the alpaca (the hazard of using stash stuff) so I added the purple. I think this is a great knit, even though I am still recovering from the flower's power!!!