A sale! An article! A finished object

Let's celebrate summer!  Every year for maybe five years now, I've participated in the Canada KAL (Knit Along) by offering a discount on all my Ravelry patterns!  This year, I'm also offering four free patterns to folks who participate in knit along.  To find out more, check out the Designed in Canada Ravelry group here.

To cut right to the chase, my patterns are all on sale until midnight (ends CT, Canada and the US, on Canada Day, July 1st.  To get 25% off, just use the coupon code:
Cankal2019

Hint: You can use this discount even if you don't want to knit along with anyone else!
In other news...This past week or two has been a bit rocky.  I described some of it in this column I wrote for the Jewish Independent.  It's called Being positive can be hard.

Cause, yes, it has been a bit difficult to be positive.  My car still has two broken windows. We have had more than two weeks of sidewalk and street construction right beside our house.  Last, but not least, before we knew that the construction was happening, we scheduled a renovation job....and had insulation shot into the walls of our house.

On the good side, getting insulation into our 100 year old, empty walls, will be amazing in the winter time now.  Hopefully, when you stand by an outer wall inside our house this winter, it will not feel like the dementors from Harry Potter are sucking out your soul!  On the bad side, there was a lot of drilling, blowing, and other construction sounds to add to the jack hammering on the street.  It was a long few days.  (And we still have more renos happening in July.)  We've been hoping to do this work for a long time, so now I just have to grin and bear it!

I've also been doing a big editing job so haven't had a chance to write up a knitting pattern for a while...or frankly, think much beyond what we would have for dinner.  As a little palette cleanser, I took a ball of Japanese cellulose yarn that my brother-in-law and sister-in-law brought me back from Japan and I turned into this little crocheted pouch.  That wasn't enough though, I had to make a lining and a zipper, too.  It turned out ok, too!  Here it is, blocking, with a plastic bin inside to make it stand upright. Sometimes making something, from start to finish, and ending up with a useful item helps combat the feeling of chaos all around me...

Right as the insulation job was starting, we found out that they would not be able to drill all the holes on the outside of the house.  So, the professor and one of my twins worked all last weekend to move anything fragile or delicate out of the way.  This is what my office looks like right now.  There's just a bit of room on the edge of the futon, between the wheels and the loom bench, for me to sit while working, and if Sadie the dog is careful, she can sleep near me on the futon, or on my foot.  It's cramped.  (And it will all be moved again, after the walls are spackled and repainted.  It might be a while...)  Happy summer projects!

new downloads available!

It's definitely still winter here in Winnipeg.  About -40 with the windchill this AM (that is the same in Fahrenheit and Celsius). It has been a real slog, this season.  I am getting tired of putting little boys into snow suits just to go outside! We've got one of the coldest winters on record...and we have ample opportunity to wear woollies!  This post is to celebrate the launch of a few pattern downloads now available for sale.  All of them are relatively quick knits if you are, like me, still experiencing winter. :)

The first pattern is this Icelandic Winter Cap.   I loved my personal version of this design to death!  It is now felted with snow and hard use and battered and perfect for my boys' basement toy box, but still warm. It knits up quickly with Lopi yarns and is an inexpensive boost to your winter wardrobe...covers your ears, too!

The next photo is of the Sit Upon.  This is my only crochet pattern in print.  Made quickly with an enormous crochet hook and wool roving, these sit upons can warm up a bleacher seat or dress up your dining room.  It all depends on where you need it!  One of my Sit Upons actually works as a placemat underneath my dogs' water bowl.  It is a versatile and useful thing to have, and very fast to make.

The Mary Jane Socks, a pattern featured in an earlier blog post, are an ideal way to use one of a kind hand-dyed sock yarns.  Assuming all the stars align, I hope to feature a brand new version of this pattern in a special new hand-dyed yarn line.  In the meanwhile though, the pattern is now available as a download, too!

The Deep V Sweater is an interesting pattern and I'm surprised I have not seen more versions of it posted online.  Knit with two strands of cotton yarn, it can be knit with either two strands worsted weight or one strand bulky weight yarn.  It's designed to keep the chill away, whether you're at a festival or at home.  I look forward to seeing more versions of this pop up on line now that the pdf is available.

The last pdf from Fiber Gathering that is now available as a separate download is the Unmistakably Warm Cowl.  I am featuring a photo of this one that shows it around the ears, but it is, of course, also good for your neck!  When I knit this out of lighter weight alpaca, I was living in Kentucky and it seemed mighty warm.  I won't lie, this version is not warm enough for Winnipeg winters (but then, very little is!)--if I were to make this for wear here in Winnipeg, I'd make it out of worsted weight or bulky weight alpaca, and I'd make a bigger cowl, too.  The good thing about this pattern is that it is easy to modify and very fast to make. 

I am excited about being able to market these patterns separately!  Several blog readers have either posted comments or mentioned privately that they think this is great too--thank you so much for the moral support.  I am really hoping that making these patterns available individually will offer knitters more options to enjoy knitting these designs.  As one friend explained, she already has my book, but would love to just have the convenience of a single pattern at a time--no scrolling through an ebook--available on her iPad in her knitting bag.  Here it is, friends!  Thanks for your kind words and support!

(More to come soon...I am already slowly posting Knit Green patterns online as I find spare moments.)

snow season

I keep thinking of posting here, I promise!  However, every day ends up like today--only 20 minutes 'til preschool pick up, and there's still shovelling to do and the compost to take out and it takes 5 minutes to put on boots and coat. (but nothing like the 15 it takes to get the boys ready!)  So, I am doing a drive by post.  It won't look perfect, or maybe not even good, but I can say at least I was over here.  :) Hey y'all.

So, The first photo here is that of the boys' wool pants.  At preschool, folks seemed horrified when the boys did not appear in snow pants on the first semi-cold and snowy day.  We have the requisite snow pants--and we just left them in the boys' cubby at school.  Cause, at home, we put them in these: felted wool pants that go right over their overalls.  This year,we found that last year's handmade wool pants still fit (Thanks Didi--my mom, who made them!) but were too short.  Snow could still hit that delicate area above the top of the boot and below the scrunched up overalls beneath.  So, I fashioned some cashmere (yes, these are from thrifted recycled cashmere sweaters) gaiters.  I sewed them on the bottom of the pants, above the ribbing at the bottom of the pants.  Nothing now gets into that cold snowy ankle region! 

Next, I finally finished my new mittens--Due North Mitts, one of my patterns.  What I learned was that a normal person might knit these in a week or two.  It took me forever!  Worse, I found the chart swims in front of you when you try to knit at 10 pm, and you never get to sleep through the night. :)  I was motivated by a definite lack of mitts.  I have to knit more, I wear a double layer mitt in the wintertime, but I will probably be knitting much more plain vanilla mitts in the future.  One of my twins still rarely sleeps through the night (at 2.5 years old, yup) and well, neither do I then.   You'll note here, if you are really awake (which I am not) that these mitts match my Slippy the Cowl pattern--first time in the history of time when I have been so matchy matchy...when I can remember to wear them at the same time...

Last up is a funny picture of the slippers I cooked up for the boys in a hurry.  A week ago now, one of my twins took a header down the basement stairs.  It was scary and he has a big shiner on one of his eyes.  He is fine, but we decided we needed some grippy slippers in a hurry.  It was also -20F outside, so I found some leather scraps, a big crochet hook and held 2 plies of Rowan chenille yarn and one of Paton's Merino Worsted and crocheted like the wind.  One twin (the one with the shiner) loves his slippers.  The other won't wear them.  Figures.  In any event, I made 4 slippers in a weekend while we played in the basement.

(I have no idea how to rotate this photo and am short on time!  Tilt your head?  Pretend they are on a 2 year old, racing past?!)

Finally, I have just about decided that winter is a bad name for a season.  I think this one should be called virus.  Someone or everyone has been sick in this house since October, and it was the same last year from December through May.  I am wondering why the season naming rights have not been snapped up already by someone with the cure for the common cold, cough, or stomach bug.  Just sayin....

Now I'm off to dig out the car and get to school and get the boys into all those layers and home before nap time!