We Be Yarn Bombing

Photo Credit

I have been remiss.  I told myself I was waiting for this aerial photo of the airplane to come out. But then I just procrastinated.  And blog post topics (including some sewing!!!) have been piling up behind the log-jam of this procrastinated promised post.  SO HERE IT IS.

Well actually, here's a link to it, because the wonderful ladies over at Yarn Bomb Yukon have chronicalled it far better than I ever could, and it's their baby so they should get the blog post credit (and all sorts of other credit and kudos because they have busted their butts off for the last 6 months over this project).  So please head over to their blog, and check out not only all the photos of the yarn bombed DC-3, but also the progress posts and history of the plane.

For instance, did you know that this DC-3 is the worlds largest weathervane? (I'm sorry, that piddly one in Michigan doesn't come close to ours!)

The installation went really well on Saturday, and it was finished by 2:30 pm!  I admit, I think everyone was motivated by the ominous dark grey clouds starting to peak around the mountains all around us, but it was a monumental effort by everyone involved, and was a heck of a lot of fun!  I helped out by sitting in a lawn chair, live tweeting on my dumb phone and knitting.  :)

ETA: There's now a time-lapse video of the installation!  Go check it out, it's amazing!

Photo Credit

Oh, and see that Canada flag?  I crocheted the maple leaf from an entirely made up pattern. I'm pretty proud of it!  A little wonky, but you can tell it's the Canadian maple leaf! 

Thank you, Yarn Bomb Yukon, Yukon Transportation Museum, Yukon Arts Centre, and everyone involved with this project!

Look At What Happened Today!

Oh heck yeah, we yarn bombed an airplane!  More pictures and details to come later when I get better shots.

Owl Keep Your Cup Cozy

Please allow me to introduce my very first finished knitting project, the owl coffee cup cozy!  (For those not on ravelry, here's a link to the pattern on their blog.)  Okay yeah I know, it's a bit complicated for a first project, but I've also got a cable knit scarf in the works, which taught me most of the stuff I needed for this.  But scarves take forever and I banged this off in an evening, so it beat it out for first place. 

I used some the left over blue wool from this toque (Cascade 220, and I still have some left over!), and some black wool for the eyes.  I didn't like the googly eyes the designer suggested and didn't have any buttons even remotely the right size, so I figured that french knots would be best.


As you might've guessed from yesterdays post, knitting in the round with dpn (double point needles) is hard.  I will admit, it did get easier as I went, but my goodness look at that pointy mess!  There's FIVE NEEDLES in there! 

The only real problem is that the cozy is a bit big.  I'm giving this to my roommate, and I'm pretty sure it'll fit her travel mug just fine, but I'll reduce the number of owls from 5 to 4 in the next cozy.  (This might've been because I used size 5 mm needles instead of 4.5 mm, but other's on ravelry have mentioned the same problem.  Maybe it's also that the wool is too heavy?)

Here's the list of skills learned (and links to the places I learned them from) in this project:

• Cable knitting (already learned from the Yukon Yarn Bomb cable knitting workshop)
• Knitting in the round
• Joining in the round (same link as above)
• Increasing a stitch
• Decreasing a stitch (sort of guessed at this by sticking my needle in two stitches instead of one)
• Binding off circular knits
• French knots

Also, I have started and plan to finish reading every post that TECHknitting has ever posted, because my goodness that woman knows her knitting!

So...think I'm ready to start this sweater yet?

OMG Knitting in the Round

This, right here, might just be the definition of knitting hell. #omg #knittingintheround

Look Mama! I'm Knitting!

Ugly ribbing and pretty cable knitting.

Still knitting, with a bit of crocheting on the side!  This hobby definitely takes up less room and makes less of a mess than sewing! (But I still miss sewing.) 

I took a knitting workshop on Monday night, hosted by Yarn Bomb Yukon.  What was supposed to be a lesson on how to cable stitch basically became a beginners class on knitting.  I think there were 4 or 5 of us who were just starting out out of the 6 or 7 in the class?  Since I'd taught myself the basics the week before, I caught on pretty quickly and helped out a few others who were struggling.  I didn't realize how lucky I am to have learned when I was younger, since by the end of the class, I had learned how to do ribbing and cable knitting, while other's were stuggling to figure out knit and purl (or just knit, in some cases).  Spending over 20 years as a crocheter probably helped, since I understand yarn handling and tension, stuff like that. 

Box stitch. Sort of. I butchered a few sections of it. This was good practice on keeping track of a pattern. 

The class was a lot of fun, and I met some cool people!  Some of the women from Yarn Bomb Yukon are part of a group that gets together once a week at a local pub for a sit and stitch night, and I think I'll join them when they start up again this fall.

Anywho, boring post is boring.  I'll try to post about a finished project (or possibly a book review) next time.  Or maybe more spazzing about someone else's awesome projects!  Heh heh.