What's next?

The Easter holiday was absolutely lovely! My brother and his family came over from Ottawa, my daughter, her boyfriend, as well as my son travelled from Montreal. We had a wonderful few days together, ate wonderful food, laughed a whole lot, enjoyed each other's company and had a very, very good time!!!

Sadly, everybody's gone back home, I'm back to my day to day life and to preparing for summer.

The rain washed away the remaining snow (well almost!), the green grass and the first blooms should follow quickly!

I'm still knitting my modified version of the Peacock Eyes cardigan in a huge amount of Eroica from Steinbach Wolle, I've had in my stash for years. The body and one of the sleeves are finished, so is part of the second sleeve. I should have it blocked, dried and on my back in a few days.
This reminds me that I still need to find buttons...

Here's a sneak peek!

I love that yarn even though it's a wool/nylon mix, it's kitten soft and warm and a joy to work with.

Now, I have to start thinking about what I need to knit next. Should I knit a few light tanks? A summer shawl? A linen t-shirt? I've been going through my summer wardrobe to decide what would be the most useful... I like to wear what I knit!

In the evenings, a shawl would get a lot of use draped over a dress, but I also need cute summer tops to wear with skirts...

Since summer will get here very soon (it better get here soon or else!) I guess the most efficient solution would be to hand knit or crochet a shawl and machine knit the rest. Cotton and linen are so easy to knit by machine, just like butter!

Who knows, I might even machine knit an additional shawl, like this one!

Ready for Easter!

After some trials and errors (mostly due to a week with a big head cold and a debilitating fever), my Penny Candy Tee is finished and it fits!

I gave it a nice long bath in hair conditioner to make it softer. The Fabel sock yarn definitely needed it to bloom, it felt kinda stringy.

Sadly, after soaking and blocking, the Fabel yarn is still scratchy. I'll have to wear a cotton t-shirt underneath. Yes, I should have known it was a bad yarn choice but I liked the colours too much to be sensible... Oh well, live and learn.

I have to admit that I'm a lot like the "Princess and the pea", I can feel everything! If it isn't really soft, I can't wear it next to my skin. Since I value comfort above all else, I have many form fitting  t-shirts I wear under stuff, so it's all good. ;-)

Have a very happy Easter!!!!!!!

Spring is here!!!!!!

Wow!!!!! It's 12 degrees celsius today, that's 53.6 degrees fahrenheit for my American readers. Do you know how long it's been since we had that kind of warm weather? Over 6 months, 6 very long and very cold months!

For the first time, this afternoon I went out without a winter coat. I wore a trench coat and would you believe it, I had to come back home to change, because I was too hot! Wow! When your body gets used to a very cold winter, as soon as it gets warmer it feels like t-shirt weather. LOL. Everyone is outdoors and smiling from ear to ear. Happy days!!!

I spent some time shovelling the old snow from my deck, I can't wait to get out the patio furniture and knit outside! A lot of rain will fall starting tonight so the snow might melt faster than expected, it will get muddy but I don't care, I want it to go away, I want the leaves and grass and flowers to start growing! I want it to get green!!! ;-)

This warm weather motivates me to knit on my Penny Candy Tee. I could have worn it today!

As soon as the hand knit version is finished and blocked, I'll have all the information needed to plan a machine knit version or two, one with long sleeves. I've already chosen the yarn!

Here's a glimpse at the candy cane stripes: 

It looks very uneven now (because it's knitted with sock yarn on 4mm needles) but it's going to look scrumptious after it's washed and blocked. My swatch blocked beautifully! :-)

Frogging isn't a four letter word!

You know how sometimes the best ideas (in theory) don't turn out the way you imagined? Well, that's exactly what happened with my colour choices for the Penny Candy Tee.

The Regia and Fortissima were the colours I had chosen for the striped part of the Tee.

Do you notice something?

The two colours are almost exactly the same! Duh!

The stripes didn't come out subtle, they came out almost indistinguishable and since the Fortissima is quite thinner than the Regia, which I hadn't noticed, it made it look too flimsy!!! I knit those stripes for a while, watching tv and not really looking at what I was doing, before realizing that it really was rubbish. So, this morning I frogged it back to the lace portion and have now started making stripes with the Fabel yarn (at the top of the picture) and the Regia at the left. The stockinette part is so quick and easy that I'm almost back to where I was when I frogged and it looks a whole lot better!!!

P.S: I wen't to another yarn store to buy knitting needles and to see what pretty yarn they might have. This is a sample of what I bought, I also remembered to buy the circular needles I needed. ;-)

 Aren't they pretty?