Welcome to My Adventures in Crafting

Welcome to my adventures in crafting. This blog is a diary of my different craft projects, primarily knitting and sewing, with a sprinkling of any other craft projects that catch my fancy.

When I was young, I loved crafting. I knitted, made friendship bracelets, gimp bracelets, and I even used to make things with plastic canvas (my favourite item being star Christmas ornaments that still hang on my mom’s tree). There may even be some homemade Christmas ornaments that I made in elementary school.

I didn’t do much crafting through my teens and early twenties. About nine years ago, I had a roommate who decided to take up knitting. Watching her learning to knit, inspired me to pick up my knitting needles and start knitting again. One of my motivations was to be able to kit my own sweaters, something I hadn’t done when I was younger. I love the idea of being able to choose the colour and fibre I want, as well as being able to customize to get a better fit. I am short, so being able to have clothing that isn’t too long in the sleeves and body is great. I also sometimes find it frustrating shopping, because I will have an idea of what I am looking for, but can’t always find it in stores.

So far I have only completely finished two sweaters. Currently, I have two other sweaters that I finished knitting well over a year ago that need to be put together. Seaming is my least favourite part of knitting The second sweater I made, and my most recent completed project, is the Harrison Sweater by Amy Miller. This was my first time knitting a sweater in the round, bottom up. Since I seem to have a problem finishing sweaters that need a lot of seaming, knitting a sweater in the round seems like the best way to go.

Harrison SweaterMy biggest knitting project so far has been the Ombre Alpaca Blanket from the Last-Minute Knitted Gifts book. While this blanket was fairly easy to knit, so far it is one of my favourite knitting projects. I decided to make it larger than the pattern instructions, so that it would cover the top of a double bed. This project took me about two months to knit.

Ombre BlanketCurrently I have the Earl cardigan by Amy Miller in progress. I still need to knit the sleeves. Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the skeins I was using, as two of the natural coloured skeins of yarn I had were discoloured, and those wound up in the sweater. While the bottom of my sweater is a nice bright cream, the top is kind of yellowed and obviously doesn’t match. This sweater is going to need to be dyed, which will be another first for me; though it is fun learning something new with each project.