A wishful sweater for me

I like knitting things for other people.  But this is a sweater I really want to do for me.  The yarn is going to be very expensive, so who knows when I will get to it.

Sweater pattern

Making a pirate lap/quilt for Ethan

I walked into a cute fabric store in town to get some material and found a cute new line of pirates material for quilting.  I didn't buy it right on the spot, because i  wanted to consult my patterns at home and buy the correct yardage for my projects.

http://www.kikiquqilts.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=68_199_309_763

I went back for the pirate fabric on black friday but the store was closed.  Instead, i went to a fabric shop in American Fork.

I am going to do an around the world style.

Hat for Timmy

I've had a hard time coming up with a project for Timmy.  He doesn't want a sweater or socks or anything.  Finally we found a hat he wanted.

I got the pattern and some yarn.  Timmy picked green and yellow, his favorite combination.

Churro Pattern

The yarn came in the mail earlier this week.  Now I just have to find some time to work on it.

Christmas Nativity Embroidered Pillow for a Friend

Desari gave me an embroidery project for my birthday!  It's a Christmas nativity.

 

And They Shall Seek Him Embroidery Project

 I don't know if you can tell, but the people and animals in the pattern are actually buttons.  The floss is hand-dyed specialty floss.  I ran out of one color, though (the color for the words).  Luckily Heindselman's in Provo had it in stock.  I picked it up today.  The project is coming along quickly.

I bought some fabric today, and I'm going to turn it into a pillow and give it to a friend for Christmas.  I don't really like getting custom frames for cross-stitches.  It's a pain; time-consuming and expensive.

When she gave me the project, Desari also gave me this scissors and needles magnet that you're supposed to pin to your shirt.  I look kind of silly wearing it but it's very useful.

I did a lot of embroidery growing up and in college.  The first few months I was in bed with back pain, I did a whole lot of embroidery.  I put it away and haven't done much in a long time.  Working on this gift from Desari has reminded me how much I enjoy embroidery.  I have a dimensions gold Christmas stocking I started for Timmy (Ethan's is done) that I really ought to finish.

Washcloths for Jen

I started doing washcloths for Jen a while back, then I got started on Ethan's sweater and Jen's project was put away.  She recently renovated her kitchen in aqua and peacock blue and gray taupe, so I got some yarn to match.  I got it at the sport weight, so they are thinner than worsted weight washcloths.

I need to mail the ones I have done to Jen, at least.  When I get to the post office.

Pillows for Stevie's kids for Christmas

I know this isn't strictly knitting, but I thought I'd throw it in.

In my family, we draw names for Christmas.  I got my sister Stevie, who happens to have 5 kids.  I thought I'd make pillows.  My friend, Amanda Wilding, taught Timmy's Sunday school class a couple of years ago, and made a cute embroidered Y pillow for him.  And he loves it!  He carries it around everywhere and actually rubbed off the embroidery and  I had to re-embroider it for him.  So I thought Stevie's kids might like pillows.  I'm making one for Ethan, too.

First, I shopped for fabric.  I found the cutest little quilting store right by my work.

I started by embroidering the squares.  I free-handed the Y's and the kids' names, but I got an iron-on pattern for the girls' butterflies.

Then I added a border to the embroidered squares and completed matching patterns for the backs of the pillows.  Measuring everything exactly (and twice) is really important, as well as ironing, at each stage.

At this point I added batting and some spare cheap fabric and quilted the squares.  I'm not sure if it makes a difference.

For the girls' butterflies I covered some rope with fabric and sewed it together.

Then I squared them up and sewed the backs to the fronts, right sides together, with the ropes in between. I didn't put a rope around Adam's pillow, because the first pillow was hard.  But then I figured out how to change the position of my needle and the ropes got easier.  I left a space to stuff the pillows (I only have 3 of the 6 done to this point). 

Once the pillows were stuffed, I sewed that extra space together.

I've got 3 more to finish up.  And I might fill in Stevie's boys' Y's with some kind of embroidery pattern, but I'm not sure I'll have time with all of the other holiday projects I have going.

I Finished Ethan's Sweater

Ethan's sweater project was my first sweater project since Timmy was born (he's 9).  The others were baby sweaters and didn't turn out so well.

So I guess it should come as no surprise that I had to rip out parts of the sweater 4 times to get it to turn out.  First I was knitting with a twist (I think the abbreviation is Ktbl) and it wasn't sitting right.  Then when I got to the yoke (join of sleeves and main body) and started the main pattern area, it took several rows to get the hang of it.  
So I ripped it back to the beginning of the yoke and started over.  This is what it looked like at the yoke:

Then I tried it on Ethan and it was too short!  To make it longer, I ran out of yarn and had to order some more.  It's a good thing the online yarn shop published their lot numbers and they had some left!
When I had knitted my last row and bound off the last of it, I started weaving in the ends.  Then I had to sew the neck down on the reverse side.  However, it was late at night and I wasn't paying attention, and I sewed the neck down on the outside!  The next morning I went to unpick it before I left for work.  And I clipped the wrong thread.  The sweater ended up with a big gaping hole!  I think I cried right then and there.  So I ripped it back to the start of the hole and worked the last few rows of the pattern and the neckline again.

Finally, I got the thing finished again and sewed together the underarms and the neckline.  It looks so good on Ethan!  The first day it was done, he put it on and wouldn't take it off.  However, when he started playing ping pong with it on he got warm and took it off.  Now he things the sweater is too warm and won't wear it.  I'm going to try to get him to wear it to Thanksgiving dinner, but I don't have high hopes :(