The bold….

…and the Beautiful!

As you know, hot on the heels of finishing Paisley’s cardigan, I cast on a hat for her boyfriend. In just a couple evenings, it was finished.

The pattern is Two by Two. A simple ribbed hat. As I said in my last post about it. I was playing yarn chicken… and I think it was a tie. The hat is supposed to have a folded brim. As I was knitting, it was apparent I wasn’t going to have enough to do that, so I started the decreases earlier for a plain beanie style. I can live with that.

It’s a touch large on me (though the ribbing gives it a secure fit) so it should fit Cameron just fine.

I will make the pattern again – it’s a nice, standard man hat. However, I will change the top a bit – this one, as you can see is a bit pointy. It doesn’t matter much when on, but I’d decrease a little differently to get a rounder top.

I used the Cascade 220 Wave that was leftover from Ray’s socks, and you can see the subtle ombre effect the yarn has. I think it gives an otherwise plain hat just the right amount of interest.

Now… January chill has set in, and my feet are cold. Excuse me while I got finish MY socks!

Once they started matching them up, those Leader & Ender blocks went together pretty quick. It wasn’t too long before all 25 were done!

There was nothing left to do but sew them all together. And that didn’t take very long either.

I added a fun plaid border….

And that was that!

I have more of that plaid for binding, and this pretty aqua stripe for the back.

Hopefully I can get it quilted this weekend. It’s a big one (90″ square) so it’s going to be a long quilting day!

Huzzah!!!

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Paisley’s Bogatell hoodie is blocked, ends are sewn in, buttons are on … it’s 100% complete and I couldn’t be happier! I’m not just happy to have it off my plate – other than dealing will all the ends, it was an enjoyable knit!

But, I’m thrilled with how it looks. I love the colours – the mauve and magenta pin stripes add just the right amount of pop. I love the three different shades of grey. I love the little ribbed details, and the hood. I love it all! It’s all Wollmeise Twin so 100% washable.

Other than the size and colour, there are a few small differences from the one I made her sister.

• To save my time and sanity, I didn’t do twisted rib in this one. An unless you are looking VERY closely, you can’t tell.
• You may notice that the mauve and magenta alternate through the stripe sequence. This is actually the way the pattern is written, but I didn’t do it for Rowan’s because my blue stripe didn’t contrast enough with the green main colour. Having it on the outside of the stripe set would make it get lost.
• I added more buttons to Paisley’s. If there’s one thing I’m tempted to do on Rowan’s, it’s rip out the bands, and add more button holes. The pattern only calls for five, but once I got Rowan’s done, I didn’t think it was enough – so Paisley’s got seven.

And speaking of buttons.

Yep. I Hello Kittied Paisley’s too. The colour was right, so I figured why not! If Pee doesn’t like them, I can always change them out for her.

I really want to make one of these for myself… (I have enough HK buttons left too!!!), but maybe not for a little while. I need something new and refreshing!!!

Although I’ve previously said I’m not really fond of mystery quilt-a-longs (or knit ones), and last year’s blockhead journey made me realize I’m not that into sampler quilts.

But, there’s a 28-day Stay at Home order in our province, so it seemed like a good time to join the Stay-At-Home-Round-Robin ChrisKnitsSews shared last week. While the weekly prompts are a mystery, I like the idea that we have full control over what we do with them!

I had this fat quarter pack sitting around, just waiting to become something awesome.

The collection is called Jane Austen at Home, so it seems appropriate for a stay-at-home quilt-along! And there are so many pretty fabrics in here.

So to join in, I needed to make a centre block. While I’m no longer making the Blockhead blocks… a recent one just published seem perfect.

I up-sized it to 16 inches to make a substantial centre and I’m pretty pleased with it.

Burton is too, and we can’t wait for this week’s prompt to add to it!

As I was finishing up Paisley’s cardigan (it’s on the blocking board now), I was thinking about getting all the presents together, and I realized, I forgot one! For Paisley’s boyfriend, Cameron.

He’s a nice young man, who’s been around for about a year now, so I think that’s deserving of a present. So as soon as her cardigan was blocking, I cast on for a hat.

The pattern is Two by Two – I figured it was nice and simple and good for a teen. The yarn is the leftover Cascade 220 Wave from Ray’s socks. You can just see a bit of the colour shift in the picture.

I am playing a bit of yarn chicken here, I’m not sure exactly how much yardage was left after the socks were done. But it looks like enough. Here’s hoping!

My fellow quilters out there will understand this… while it’s not to hard to find nice “boy” fabrics for kids. Finding fabric that are “manly” for the older gents…. is much more difficult. Soooo much quilting fabric is flowers, flowers flowers. And most of the manly stuff out there is all woodsy/lumberjack fabrics.

So when I saw this collection of 2.5 inch strips on sale at MSQ, I snapped them up!

Now, of all the precuts, 2.5 inch strips are probably the hardest to work with. Not in terms of skill, but there’s just only so many things you can do with long, thin strips of fabric. Still, a little searching on the internet, and I came up with this block.

It’s mostly strip piecing, so it doesn’t take too long to put a few together.

I should be able to get 16 more from my strip set. That will give me 20 blocks. And I’m thinking a little dark blue sashing and some borders will bring this one out to a nice lap size quilt. Eventually…

I know it’s Friday Felines, but I just HAD to share this pic of my two favourte hounds that Mom sent me the other day…

Have you ever seen two more pathetic faces. Obviously these are the most starved and unloved dogs EVER!

Ham it up pups! It’s totally working.

If you’ve been around the blog for a while, you’ll know that one animal I love almost as much as cats, are chickens! I had chickens when I was young,

I’ve been wanting to make a chicken quilt for ages, and in November, MSQ offered a sale on the sweetest pack of ten-inch squares.

And I bought a pattern for a chicken block…. but it was only after I bought it that I realized it was for use with Fat Quarters. My 10 inch squares weren’t going to give me enough fabric.

No worries, I bopped around the internet, look at several different chicken blocks, and decided to combine the elements of a few into my own!

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It didn’t turn out too bad, if I do say so myself. And as you can see, Burton agrees! And what do you think of that background fabric? I found it on Connecting Threads!!! And the best part – it’s actually a 108″ wide backing fabric. So I bought enough for my background AND the back of this quilt!

Once I knew my block was going to work, I cut all the pieces to make 15 more. With everything cut, these blocks motor right along. I managed to get two more done before it was time to pack up for the afternoon.

Oh this one is going to be sooooo much fun!

Despite Burton’s best efforts…

I worked on Paisley’s cardigan in every spare minute I had. And as a result…

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The hood is done!!!!!

I still have ridiculous long front bands to do. (Then eleventy billion ends to tidy up), but I think I can confidently say this will be on the blocking board by the weekend.

Look for an FO post on this one next week!