Recent Knitting

A couple projects from off the needles recently...


Sweater for my grandson. I'm really enjoying sweater knitting. I could never have imagined I'd be able to make sweaters! They seemed to me like they were something that only the most skilled of craftspersons could create. Here it turns out that even someone like me, with enough knitting know-how to be dangerous, can create a reasonable sweater. It's just like my dad told my mom when they first got married: if you can read, you can cook. Well, if you can read a pattern, you can knit a sweater! In this case, if you can read a pattern and switch sizes on the fly, you can knit a sweater that will not look like your grandson is wearing a dress. Because I was not in the mood to start completely over, this sweater was knit width-wise in one size and length-wise in the next size smaller, with some parts falling somewhere in between. But it fits him perfectly and hopefully will last him through the winter. (And doesn't he look stylish modeling it for me over top of his shorts and tank top?)

Next, the felted cottage tea cozy. I'm not so into tea cozies (or any cozies, for that matter), but when I saw the pattern for this in Knitter's Stash, I had to make it because my friends, Will and Becky, lived in Ireland a couple years ago, and the cottage they lived in looked remarkably like this one (only it was not made of wool and the roof was actually not thatched, though it could have been at one time because the cottage was several hundred years old). Anyway, I decided it would make a great birthday gift for Becky, thus I commenced knitting and felting and knitted up the roof, doors and shutters. Then the darned thing sat for a couple of months because doing all of those embroidered silk ribbon flowers? Not a fun time. It was really hard to pull the needle and ribbon through the felted fabric, so I could only work on it in very short amounts of time lest my finger tips feel like they were going to fall off. (I probably should have felted the fabric a little less than I did, but I'm still a felting novice, so I'm still learning these things.) But I got it done in time to give to her at the end of August, so all was well. I have no idea if it actually fits her tea pot, but honestly? I don't care. It's their Irish cottage, in wool, and as far as I'm concerned it is as much a piece of artwork as it is functional, so...whatever. LOL

Here's a close-up of some of the details...