Tiny Bear Knitting Tiny Things with Tiny Needles

Hooray! I found my Tiny Bear Embroidery (while I was looking for something else). As you may remember I'm embroidering this Tiny Bear with sewing thread. A slow process and I really could do with more shades than I'm currently using. Anyway, I thought it would be a nice idea to give Tiny Bear 'real' knitting needles and add a real knitting project too. My regular knitting needles were all too big so I decided to try and knit with some satay skewers (we regularly eat Indonesian food so we always have these hiding in the kitchen somewhere). It wasn't easy but I did manage to do a reasonably tidy stockinette stitch with them. Not sure if pink is the right colour though but I do love tiny-ness of it all. :)

Even More Knitting Adventures...

A little while ago I decided to try my hand at knitting again. I saw a Cowl pattern in Knitting Smitten that I really liked but first I needed to learn how to do a Moss Stitch. I watched a few Youtube videos until I found one that 'clicked', one that made total sense to me. Anyway, after a few failed attempts, I got the hang of it! It's really not that hard to master and it gives a lovely textured effect. I only need to make a note after each row to make sure I continue with the right stitch. :)

In the book circular needles are used, but even though I did buy them I ended up using regular needles. This meant that after I had finished I had to sew the ends together, which went ok but I can imagine a seamless cowl is nicer. I used wooden needles, size 9mm and just knitted until I was happy with the fit around my neck.  The yarn, Katia Inca in a green/blue colourway, was lovely to work with. The colours remind me of peacock feathers, and the variegated effect is delightfully random :)  The next project is to knit a scarf for my husband with a ribbed effect. After that I'd love to move away from the cowls and scarfs and try something a little more challenging. I was thinking maybe a very simple cardigan? Suggestions are welcome!

More knitting news. Only a few days ago I found out about a great Kickstarter project from Leah Coccari-Swift and Teresa Gregorio called the Great Northern: Knitting Patterns inspired by Twin Peaks.  If you like Twin Peaks, knitting or both then why not support these creative ladies and their fabulous project!

More Knitting Adventures

Well isn't this a handy tool to measure the size of your knitting needles? After I noticed that two sets of needles I had bought (different brands, different sizes) appeared to be the same size some helpful peeps on Instagram advised me to get a Needle Gauge. Apparently you can get these for free at some places but I bought this one for a few euros (and it also has a thread cutter for some reason). Anyway, it turned out that my 10 mm needles (pictured here, the '1' has been rubbed off due to frantic knitting) were actually 8 mm needles!

I knitted a huge, chunky looking cowl for my oldest daughter Zoe with the 10 mm needles (that actually were 8 mm needles)  and it turned out quite nice! I have now started on a smaller one for Luna and it's almost finished. After that I want to make myself some leg warmers. Because I saw these (note the subtle diamond pattern!)

from Knitting Smitten by Jessica Biscoe

in this book

Kntting Smitten by Jessica Biscoe does not just  feature leg warmers, also egg warmers!

Knitting Smitten is aimed at beginners and has a lot of basic information like how to decipher knitting patterns, how to choose yarn and what needle size to use etc. Jessica Biscoe manages to make things that are a bit intimidating for newbies (like 'knitting in the round and 'increasing' and 'decreasing') a little less scary. I also really like several projects in the book like the leg warmers, mittens, hats, cushions and blanket. I doubt I will ever make a knitted bow-tie for a dog though  ;) Apparently the leg warmers in this book need to be knitted in the round as well, which is something I'm definitely going to try (I even bought the double pointed needles) but not yet. I found another, easier pattern for leg warmers and only need to decide which colour yarn to use: chartreuse (one of my absolute favourite colours) or grey (goes with anything and rhymes with 'hey')?

What do you think?

Surprise in the mail

I received the most wonderful package in the mail today sent by the very lovely Julie.  Julie is a crafty friend (follow her crafty adventures on her blog and she also writes regularly on the &Stitches blog !) and designer of beautiful embroidery and knitting patterns. As I'm terrible at knitting, Julie offered to make Pindsvin a scarf. It suits him so well and multi-coloured scarfs are his most favourite kind of scarf!  As you can tell from the photo I'm still not quite finished with adding Pindsvin's quills to his head but he just had to pose with his new scarf.  Once Pindsvin's quills are done I will write a post about the idea I launched last year. I was a little busy in the past few months but I'm hoping to do more with the plans I had for Pindsvin this Spring/Summer.

These are the other goodies Julie sent me:

Recently we had discussed Nancy Drew books on Twitter because of this awesome redwork piece based on a Nancy Drew illustration. I am not familiar with the Nancy Drew books (although I found out later some of them were released here about 10 years ago) and I was delighted to find a copy  in the package alongside some cute stickers, a pen, card and bookmark. :)

Now to plot a surprise (?) package for Julie, which is almost as much fun as receiving one!