Designs by KN blog

As described in my last post, spring fever has begun. I’ve been working with fine thread and pretty spring colors over the past week, and challenged myself to see if I could handle size 20 thread on a tiny steel crochet hook to create this doily (Doily #24) designed by Fujiko Takagi in a vintage issue of Decorative Crochet magazine (#12, November 1989):

Just as my paternal grandmother created thread doilies, tablecloths, pillows and other items of beauty on fine steel hooks, I was pleased this one turned out well enough to feel a connection to her and the past.

A new DBKN pattern with a bit of a springtime feel to it was released this week:  Twisty Lace Basket Trim.  Don’t ask me what possessed me to dress up some Longaberger baskets with a bit of knitted lace but I was pleased with the effect. This is a quick-knit project that could turn a plain basket into a nice gift, if filled with spring flowers or tea or fruit … or yarn!

I also completed another Peachy-Keen Placemat, a fine-knitting thread project that actually stitches up rhythmically and fairly quickly. This one is in vivid blue:

While checking in on Ravelry yesterday, I happened across a group I hadn’t noticed before and decided to join: For the Children of Pine Ridge.  They collect items for the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where the needs are great. Years ago I donated to Pine Ridge through another venue, but since one of the collection points for this group is just a hop-skip-and-a-jump from where I live, I quickly packed up the following items to donate:  18 dishcloths (for the group’s current kitchen drive), 2 baby blankets, 2 shawls, 2 pair of socks, 4 scarves, 10 hats and 1 cowl:

Other signs of spring?

1. In the early morning darkness today, DH looked up from eating his bowl of Cheerios to realize there was something staring at him through the sliding glass door … and it wasn’t our head-of-household cat Andrew coming back from his daily backyard stroll.  It was a raccoon! I don’t know where the raccoon has been all winter but he was looking for breakfast too.

2.  Lucky DD and her fiance are on their way to Arizona for baseball spring training. We attended last year and had a great time cheering for the Colorado Rockies at their new training facility Salt River Fields at Talking Stick, but won’t be able to get down there this year.

3.  I’ve called a tree pruning and landscaping service in order to get on their list early. The xeriscape yard and trees we put in to transform a bare-dirt suburban plot of land around the house 20 years ago has done quite well over time … so much so that, as my mother describes it, we are being overcome by a forest.

Enjoy the change of seasons!

It must be time for spring fever.  After browsing through wonderful crochet books full of vintage thread designs (and recommending many of them on my Pinterest board), the desire to set aside woolly knitting and switch to pretty cotton threads and steel crochet hooks suddenly took hold early this week. Two days in a row of uninterrupted, relaxing, downtime has been a real treat. Beautiful book photographs and an accumulation of colorful threads provided inspiration.  Awhile ago, I organized my stash into cubbies in my knitting corner, and at that time I separated out all of the crochet cottons that have been languishing in closets and drawers for a very long time. How could I not be inspired by this sight that greets me when I walk in that room?

Not only is there this assortment but I know there is more hiding out in a box in the closet.  I was lucky enough to inherit my grandmother’s steel crochet hooks and a couple of the thread doilies she made long ago. When I look at the miniscule size of the hooks she used, I marvel at how she worked her crochet magic with them!  It was enough of an accomplishment for me to complete the following small projects on a size 5 steel hook (a bit more manageable in comparison to what my grandmother used in her work):

Vintage Wheel Square Table Mat

For this project, I worked four Vintage Wheel Squares with shaded color centers and white borders, adding ch-3 loops on the last round of each for the join-as-you-go method, then finished with a shell border all around.

Old World Bookmark

I made five Old World Scarf squares in cotton thread (shaded blues) and joined them in a strip, adding ribbon streamers to one end.

“Go Pink” Lacy Shells Bag

This is a “Go Green” Lacy Shells Bag but in pink. It’s crocheted with a double-strand of size 10 cotton thread (1 strand each white & pink variegated) on a much larger hook (size G) for speedy stitching.

However, since it’s still officially winter, I did finish a woolly knit project (but in spring colors) …

Knit Hat (that morphed into something else)

This was a stash busting project that started out as just another basic Knit Hat (for anyone!) but it began to morph from the get-go. Instead of ribbing, right after the cast-on I worked one round knit followed by one round purl, did a round of purl to introduce each pink stripe, then with the remaining yarn decreased for the top in random color block stripes.

Yes, it’s definitely time for spring fever. Working with pretty threads and springtime colors has been a refreshing change!

I’ve been pinning a number of favorite knitting & crochet book titles on my “Books I Enjoy” board on Pinterest. For a simple comment about each I’ve used words such as “interesting,” “resource,” “good,” “beautiful,” “vintage” and most of all the word “fun.”  There are so many colorful project- and photo-filled craft titles out there that it’s just plain fun to browse through them for inspiration while dreaming of what to make next.

After a few less-than-enjoyable weeks dealing with things like appliance repairs/replacements, car repairs and sadly, the loss of a family member, I finally got to enjoy a little bit of stitching fun.  On the day of the memorial service, I received a gift bag from a friend which contained some treasures she found at Goodwill:  an assortment of knitting needles and 4 balls of lovely novelty yarns. This simple gift brightened an otherwise gloomy day.

From two of the balls of S. Charles Collezione “Calypso”, I knit this Bunny-soft Capelet:

From one ball of Trendsetter “Luminato” I knit a 15-15 Novelty Scarf and turned it into a moebius cowl by adding a half-twist and joining the ends with 3-needle bind off:

The remaining ball of S. Charles Collezione “Calypso” will go into the stash pile for a future project.  And since what goes around comes around, I’m gifting the finished projects back to my friend as a way of thanking her for her thoughtfulness.

Some of the book titles I’ve pinned on Pinterest are interesting vintage-themed books, which I could spend hours poring over.  I’m a fan of vintage needlework, especially crochet designs such as those my grandmother crocheted in her day.  I am in awe of the fine-thread doilies, tablecloths and other items she created with her skillful hands.  So far, I’ve only managed to create a few less-complicated thread designs, like this Chain of Love Bookmark:

Another of the titles pinned on my board on Pinterest is my most-often-used stitch pattern resource “The Ultimate Sourcebook of Knitting & Crochet Stitches.”  I love this book and spend hours leafing through its pages, absorbing the seemingly unlimited variety of stitch patterns available on which to base new designs.

My latest is this Lazy Afternoon Cowl, whose stitch pattern creates interesting and different textures on each side of the piece, thus making it a reversible accessory:

A piece of good news:  Scarves for Special Olympics reported today that Special Olympics Colorado achieved their goal of 800 scarves.   I was grateful for the opportunity to design the Special Olympics Peak-to-Peak Scarf and contribute a number of additional scarves to this worthwhile cause.

Since it’s been a rather hectic and tiring year so far, I feel the need to grab another eye-candy craft title from my bookshelf and enjoy a little pre-bedtime browsing, reading and relaxation.  Sweet dreams!

The Thursday-night-through-Saturday-morning blizzard is over. We received 18″ of snow at our house (the ruler disappeared even further down than the photo shows) which was a whopper of a storm according to the local record books …

Today the sun is shining brightly on the landscape, the snow is melting, and Andrew-cat is very glad he can venture outside again to explore the scene …

The local newscasters were quite busy throughout the entire storm, so we’ve watched a lot of news reports on TV over the past couple days.  What was more noticeable than the snowstorm was that many of the broadcasters were wearing red, in honor of Wear Red Day which took place on Feb. 3, and some of them continued to wear red beyond that date.

Red is also an appropriate color for the month of February, since Valentine’s Day will be here soon.  All of this reminded me of my Log Cabin Heart square design which was selected as one of the 12 winners in a Crochet Today! design contest a few years ago.

The finished afghan appeared in the Jan/Feb ’09 issue of Crochet Today! The free pattern for the entire Contest Favorites Heart Squares Afghan is available on the Coats & Clark website.

Hope you enjoy a love-ly month of February (without blizzards!) knitting and crocheting new projects.

With my heart-felt thanks for your interest and positive response to Designs by KN patterns -

here, enjoy a virtual Tootsie Roll Midgee on me!

Butterscotch Basket

Yesterday yet another major household item decided to “retire” — ever since I retired in November, the appliances have been going “kaput” one by one:  oven, garage door, mixer, microwave, and yesterday the hot water heater. Fortunately we were able to get a repair service to replace it just in time, before the overnight Colorado blizzard arrived:

We haven’t seen rain or snow in awhile, as the weather has been enjoyably warm lately, but winter returned in full force overnight. This storm is expected to last through tomorrow so DH will likely have to use the snowblower and shovel again later on:

This week my finished object was completion of the C’s Birthday Scarf pattern, in honor of my daughter’s birthday early this week.  We celebrated with a family dinner at Cheesecake Factory.  This cable and seed stitch scarf is worked in the oh-so-soft Plymouth Yarns “Baby Alpaca Brush“. It’s like petting a furry critter!

As I posted on the DBKN Facebook page recently, various events such as travel, birthdays, loss of a family member and household appliance repair/replacements have temporarily interrupted production of new designs, but I did manage to finish up this scarf, as well as the new hat pattern Diamond-edge Hat, which appears to have found favor with the crochet audience:

It’s something just a little different, and is adaptable to many color combinations:

Hope you have fun with it, or any of the other 260 Designs by KN patterns available.

Back to digging out from the snowstorm, but wait … it’s snowing even harder now. I think I’ll go grab my knitting needles, crochet hooks & some yarn and enjoy some stitching time instead.  I will probably do a little more pinning of my fave knitting & crochet book titles on my Pinterest board too.

Shoveling the deck can wait awhile …

ETA 2/4/12  Post-blizzard: clearing the deck of 18″ of snow!

And Andrew is happy he can venture outside again …

We’ve just returned from repeating our annual winter road trip to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, one of our favorite travel destinations. DH chooses the last week of January to make the trip, so he can enjoy skiing on the relatively uncrowded slopes of Mt. Werner.  We enjoy breakfasts & dinners at the local eating establishments, and while he spends the day skiing I relax, knit, crochet, design and read:

It seems that challenging driving conditions repeat each and every time we make this trip in winter (maybe we should switch to summer visits!)  Even though this year was an improvement over previous years, we still faced whiteout conditions on the approach to and drive over Rabbit Ears Pass.  Not so much fun …

Regardless of the weather, the trip always affords photo opportunities.  As we left town after our week’s stay, this elk herd had gathered on the Haymaker Golf Course to bid us farewell until next year …

As we drove through blowing snow on Rabbit Ears Pass the sun began to peek through …

Once we made it further along, a break in snowstorms revealed a heavenly sight …

I accomplished a bit of knitting/crocheting, mostly scrap projects from odds & ends of stash yarn.  I wasn’t very inspired to do much designing but relied on some old standby patterns to pass the time.  One was a set for the Christmas-at-Sea charity effort, another Mariners Scarf and Oliver’s Cap:

A couple hats color-blocked from scrap yarn, using my Designs by KN pattern Crochet Hat:

I repeated the ever-enjoyable My Fave Dishcloth three times:

If you’re ever a visitor to Steamboat Springs, you’ll enjoy a variety of outdoor activities, shopping and restaurants in a beautiful setting:

We highly recommend Creekside Cafe & Grill for breakfast …

as well as our other fave places for various meals:  Freshies, Winona’s, Fiesta Jalisco, The Ore House, Mazzola’s and Big House Burgers.

We have repeated this winter ski trip experience for the past several years and hope to continue to do so, but next time we could do without the whiteout conditions on Rabbit Ears Pass …

Although it was a fun-filled week, there really is no place like home. The cats gave us a talking-to on our return!

Friday will be the day that the 20th (and last) idea of charities to knit and crochet for in 2012 will be posted on the Designs by KN Facebook page.  Even though there are many more than twenty charitable causes to craft for (see idea #20 below), the number 20 does seem like a good breaking point to conclude the daily features, as I will soon be taking a break to travel out on another road trip.

The last post ended with idea #12, so here are remaining suggestions to complete the list of 20 ideas:

13.  Prayer Shawl Ministry

14. Knit-a-Square Charity

15.  Handmade Especially for You

16.  Binky Patrol

17.  Knit for Kids

18.   Hats 4 the Homeless

19.  Halos of Hope

20.  Lion Brand Yarn charity connection page

Since being invited to design a special scarf (Peak-to-Peak Scarf) for the 2012 Special Olympics USA Scarf Project, I have been interested in following their 2012 Special Olympics Scarf Project Facebook page.  There you can read updates from participating states, their deadlines and the scarf collection goals that have been met, as well as information about states that still need help.  There is still time to make scarves for states whose deadlines are not yet past, such as Colorado (Feb. 24).  This week I packed up and sent off these six scarves to their office:

In addition, I crocheted one more All-American Scarf at the last minute when I learned that Texas was short of their goal and could use extra scarves by their fast-approaching deadline of Jan. 30:

I hope you’ve enjoyed these suggestions of charitable ways to contribute through knitting, crocheting and sewing for others.  I will definitely be packing a bag full of yarn for the road trip ahead in order to work on more projects to donate to some of the organizations in this list.

Until later then … stitch on!

The list of ideas for charitable causes to knit and crochet for in 2012 continued this week.  On the Designs by KN Facebook page, I have been featuring a different charity each day to start off the new year. We are now up to suggestion #12. The first five charities were listed in a previous post, so #6-#12 are listed here:

6.  Snug Hugs for Kids

7.  Project Linus

8.  Mother Bear Project

9.  The Ships Project

10.  Hats Off for Cancer

11.  Newborns in Need

12.  Naphtali

Any of these long-standing organizations would appreciate receiving our handiwork. Just choose one that fits your interest and follow their guidelines for contributions of hand-knit or crocheted items.

The former post included information and links to the 2012 Special Olympics USA Scarf Project. This week I completed 3 more scarves which will be sent to the Special Olympics Colorado office to help reach their goal of 800 scarves by Feb. 24.  I have a lot of yarn still to be worked up into scarves but these are the FOs this week:

1. Another Special Olympics Peak-to-Peak Scarf

2. Ripple-Band Scarf (Note: for this version, ch 26 to start & alternate 2 rows each color throughout)

3. Color Combo Scarf

As I was setting up my new page on Pinterest (follow me there if you’d like), I did some work on various photo pages where all of my published designs are displayed (Flickr, Ravelry, etc.) Just by accident, I discovered that a design created for the Knit.1 Winter 2007 issue is now available as a free pattern download on the Vogue Knitting site:

#2 Cloche

© Knit.1, Winter 2007, photo by Paul Amato

When this first came out it was so exciting to see that the hat was modeled by America’s Next Top Model Cycle 7 winner CariDee English! Love the styling which was part of the “Stitches in Time” story line in that issue. This photo represented the ’30s era.

The National Western Stock Show is going on up in Denver, the Broncos are in a playoff game tomorrow, and we have a road trip to Steamboat Springs coming up. I’m glad the Special Olympics Colorado deadline isn’t until mid-February so I can continue working my way through this …

Stitch on!

Just a quick post today, since we had a quick shot of snow overnight along the Front Range of Colorado.  This morning presented a glorious landscape of fresh white powder to view, and it provided the perfect backdrop for this just-finished Special Olympics Peak-to-Peak Scarf:

The story about this scarf design was recently published in Love of Knitting Magazine, Winter 2011 issue. The pattern is available as a web bonus free download from their site.

In line with various charitable-cause knitting & crocheting ideas being featured this month on the Designs by KN Facebook page, I decided to work on more scarves for the 2012 Special Olympics USA Scarf Project. After a buried-treasure discovery at Michaels on Friday of a stash of the designated Red Heart Super Saver colors (Soft Navy & Cherry Red) …

I am spending some time stitching up scarves specifically for Special Olympics Colorado, to assist in reaching their goal of 800 scarves by the deadline of Feb. 24 (each participating state has different goals and deadlines; some have just passed but others are still in need of scarves. See States list & deadlines and the Scarves for Special Olympics Facebook page for the latest updates.)

Busy day ahead, so for now I’ll leave you with these images of a snowy, cold (18 degree) spectacular Colorado morning …

Back to working on another Peak-to-Peak Scarf on the needles right now …

It will be a good project for NFL playoff-football-watching-on-TV this afternoon!

In taking down the old 2011 calendar in my bedroom, my eye drifted to the cross-stitch sampler hanging nearby. Although DD has taken over the cross-stitching love in our family, I did stitch a lot throughout the ’80s and early ’90s (actually had the pleasure of working part-time in a needlework shop in the early ’80s when cross-stitch was all the rage.)  The phrase in this particular piece (completed in 1993) has always been one of my favorites:  “Think of others first and you will never be last.”

So to start the new year I have been suggesting various charitable causes to knit and crochet for in 2012.  Each day a different charity effort has been featured in a post on the Designs by KN Facebook page.  These are long-standing organizations that accept hand-knit and crocheted items. The list began with these five and will continue throughout the month (at least, until I have to venture forth on another road trip! — see previous post):

1. Christmas At Sea

2. Care Wear Volunteers

3. Snuggles Project/Hugs for Homeless Animals

4. Warm Up America!

5. Special Olympics USA Scarf Project

“First FO of 2012″ was the title of a thread on Ravelry today.   I can count two so far …

1. The second sock of a new pair of C.O.O.S. (finished Jan. 2.)  The yarn is Plymouth Yarns “Sockotta“, a cotton-blend that has been tucked away in stash since 2005:

2. A version of “Go Green! Lacy Shells Bag” (finished Jan. 4).   I call it the “Ray(on) of Sunshine” Bag.  It was crocheted on a size F hook in a single strand of soft rayon cone yarn, also tucked away in stash. Finished size is 11″ high by 8″ wide unstretched:

Hope your new year is full of anticipation about new knit and crochet projects you’ll be making in 2012.  I received the new Lion Brand Yarn catalog in the mail this week and enjoyed the eye candy and inspiration from its colorful pages.

2012 will see more new designs added to the over 250 ideas already available in the DBKN pattern database.  So whether you enjoy cross-stitching, knitting, crocheting or other forms of needlework, stitch on … not only for yourself but as the sampler above suggests, for others as well.

Until next time …