Yarn Along ~ Lepidoptera

A post of my current read and what is cast on my needles ~ Inspired by Ginny over at {Small Things}

I finally feel like it's that time of year to pick up knitting needles again and found this great lacey sock pattern called Lepidoptera :)

I had bought this soft alpaca yarn earlier this spring thinking it was going to make a great baby sweater for my sister but alas she had a little boy and the pink was definitely not going to do! So into the yarn stash it went until last weekend when I finally found the perfect use for it. A soft pair of socks for my daughter. 

And she is just itching to get her feet into them! We are constantly having little 'try on' sessions and I haven't even got one sock half finished yet LOL. It's a super easy pattern though. Nothing tougher than making a few extra stitches and it has my all time favorite heel to... short rows. Yay!! If I can avoid doing the regular heel flap type sock heel I will and in this pattern she simplifies the short row process even further by taking out all of those yarn overs that you normally find making it faster than ever and there is a video tutorial to go along with it so you can follow along if you happen to get stuck.

For my book I'm reading Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe by Charlotte Gill and it is a must read!!  It's the true story of her life as a tree planter here in BC for 20 years and was absolutely fascinating to read about areas right here in my backyard and get a peak at what their lives are really like as we see them so often around this neck of the woods and I must admit I've always wanted to know more about them. Her writing transports you instantly into the thick of the BC rainforest and leaves you wanting more :)

I'm looking forward to seeing what you all have been knitting and reading this week to!

Happy knitting,

Rosina

Yarn Along ~ Socking it Out

A post of my current read and what is cast on my needles ~ Inspired by Ginny over at {Small Things}

My little stash of socks is growing!
I decided not to stop with one finished pair since I have tons of yarn still to knit with so three down and at least one more to go to make a matched pair *grin*.

They are so stinking adorable that I may just have to make another pair when this one is finished to :) You can find the pattern here. For my book this week I just got a copy of Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of the Continent by Andrew Nikiforuk.

I've been all riled up lately over the Northern Gateway pipeline that Enbridge wants to ram through our province and I shared some videos here last week and I've got another one to share with you today below.

The tar sands are sort of 'out of sight, out of mind' for most Canadians. Even for myself I hadn't given them a heck of a lot of thought in the past but with the pipeline possibly being built through the Great Bear Rainforest, our coastal temperate rainforest, in ecologically sensitive land I wanted to get a bigger picture of what the tar sands and their sticky bitumen means to the rest of our great country!



What does environmental devastation actually look like? In this video above at TEDxVictoria, photographer Garth Lenz shares shocking photos of the Alberta Tar Sands mining project -- and the beautiful (and vital) ecosystems under threat. Please, please take the 17 minutes it takes to watch it and learn a little more about the tar sands. Those pretty commercials they show on television of the environmentally friendly mines with gorgeous forest in the background won't be there for long and is not a true representation of what it truly is.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox... for now *grin*.

Can't wait to see what you all have been knitting this week!!

Hugs,
Rosina

Yarn Along

A post of my current read and what is cast on my needles ~ Inspired by Ginny over at {Small Things}

Oh my goodness, I love this guy!!

I promised I'd share more about my little mouse gobbling snake I made for my little guy and here he is :) I was searching for the perfect gift for the perfect little boy project when I found the Sleepy Snake and Mischievous Mouse pattern. I was smitten with it immediately *grin*. The photo was enough to make me want one and I new he was going to love it to :)

This pattern is super easy!

Everything except for the head is knit in the round on DPN's and is just a simple knit 2, purl 2, ribbed pattern and once you get to the head it switches to straight needles. You do have to drop a few stitches on a spare needle while you work the top of the jaw but you pick them back up again to work the bottom and then they carry right on through to the inside of the snakes head and body.

Through some very creative adding of extra stitches you make a smaller version of the head and another ribbed length of the body that slips right inside the main snakes body. This creates the stomach and a hollow space in the head that allows you to stuff it with a bit of cotton batting for a super cute fluffy head! You've got to love his toupée to *grin*. The hair piece is an additional little knit piece that you make and then I just whip stitched it onto the snakes head, adding his sleepy eyes while I was at it :)

Once he's finished you can feed your snakey mice and his body lumps up all the way down the length just like in the above photo just like it would in real life when a snake eats. There is a pattern included to knit up mice but I decided to wet felt some little colorful mice and they were perfect :)

So much fun is being had eating and spitting out mice *grin*. This is going to keep him entertained for a good long while!

Oh and I'm still reading the The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin *grin*. Not getting very far on the book reading this week :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Yarn Along

A post of my current read and what is cast on my needles ~ Inspired by Ginny over at {Small Things}

I've been eyeing up the gorgeous socks that everyone has been making these last weeks on the yarn along posts and I finally just had to give it a try :)

I came across the ravelry pattern 'Most Basic Kids Socks', picked up this fun rainbow colored finger weight sock wool by Marks & Kattens and set to work trying to figure out just how to use a set of double pointed needles *grin*. Those are some tricky sticks! LOL

The first 13 rows were a basic knit, purl rib stitch and now I'm working on the 52 rows of straight knit which is going nice a quick but I'm finding it hard to steal little moments during the day to work on them so I think they will be my special project when we go and visit the inlaws. I always try to take something to occupy my time while we visit and this will be great! I just hope that I don't run into any problems with the pattern being a knitting newbie *grin*.

I'm still reading the Secret Garden but I also picked up a copy of Don't Make Me Count to Three by Ginger Plowman. I can't wait to have a peak inside of it but that will have to wait until after Christmas is over :)

Hugs,
Rosina