Hand painted swatch of the acorn and leaf pattern.
I’ve been waiting for just the perfect project. I think that it will be perfect for the GreenMan Shawl. Don’t you?
Happy Knitting
Lynette
Tag: collections
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Free Patterns
Here are a few of my free patterns that I have loaded up onto the site just for you to download as you please. All gathered up onto a single page.
If the downloads do not work – please let me know. I have tested the links but things do happen.
If it is purple I designed the hats for the purple hat campaign. The orange poncho is called Tears for the Children. To commemorate the lost children of the Residential Schools.
The fair-isle hat, Filigree, was me playing with colours – as an exercise. I was so pleased with the results that I wrote it up as a pattern. The teddy bear vests were teaching opportunities. The Salmon Run hat was again playing with a new to me yarn – to see what it could do!
The Hurry Up Hat might be my most popular Ravelry pattern. For starters, it is free! And it is a very fast knit. Perfect for last minute gifts or for knitting hats for the homeless with your scraps. Practically Perfect is the same kind of hat but knit in a colourful worsted weight yarn and really designed for beginning hat knitters!
I hope that you find something you like!
Happy Knitting
Lynette
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A New Year – New Resolve!? Maybe!
I Resolve that:
This is going to be the year of flowers. Floral motifs in my knitting – you bet! Flowers on my walls – always – courtesy of my mum! Flowers in the garden – we will see how green my thumb gets!
And flowers on my shelves!
Pansies and Florals – Oh My! I am a collector – yarn (of course) – vintage knitting books – knitting books – yarn (did I mention yarn) and antiques.
The antiques are mostly the small stuff. Silver things, porcelain posies, china and other small things.
Many know about my small obsessions and every now and then I am asked if I would like some more items for my collection. Mostly my flower collection. It was their mothers or their grandmothers and really they have no use for, need of, or interest in them. And I get it, we all have our hobbies. And I on the other hand love all the things that mothers and grandmothers loved in their day. Especially the floral posies, in all my years of collecting I have not a single double, or repeat of a flower not even ones that are close.
Each pot is different, each flower is different. Certainly they are all the common flowers, roses, peonies, pansies, anemones, tulips or trilliums. But each one is hand made, hand coloured, and just like nature, each flower is totally unique from every other flower. Some flowers come with birds on stems, perching on a nest, or about to take flight. Some flowers come in silver vases – those are perhaps my favourites!
I think that the fact that human hands formed each flower, placed each flower in the pot and a human mind chose the colours of glaze to finish each bloom, is what fascinates me about these china posies. Some of the older posies are true works of art, holding a moment in time as the breeze moves the flowers about.
Posies are delicate, easily chipped along the edges of petal and leaf. Petals and leaves also break in half and are often poorly glued back together, again human hands trying to preserve something that they loved and valued. I find the love of flowers such a human thing, something that many of us share in so many ways.
The posies I collect also go well with the many petit point bouquets that I have on my walls and shelves. All lovingly created by my Mother. She spent hours working on each piece. Somehow many of her floral pieces came my way.
My Mothers work – she even refinished the frame to complement the work. I will most likely have to divest myself of some of the “things” I collect. We all usually have to “downsize” at some point in our lives. Until that time arrives, I will enjoy them, celebrate them and share that love!
So do you collect? Have you got a stash of something special that means a lot to you? I would love to hear about it.
Happy New Year, Happy Collecting, Happy Knitting
Be well,
Lynette
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Every Cloud…
… Has a Silver Lining!
Right now, as we are looking for the light at the end of this Covid tunnel and only finding deeper gloom, we need to hold on to the good things that we know are there! We need to hold on to our own Silver Lining!
I think that the silver lining for most of us might be time. The extra time we have at home while we are not doing the busy things that we usually do.
Time to reconnect to our families from work and home. Our extended families as well. Many of us are getting in touch with those that we have lost contact with.
Time to rediscover our hobbies – those that we maintain or those that we have revisited (my bread baking skills are much improved!) now that home is our remaining haven. And the things that we do in our homes.
My haven is knitting! Always has been! It got me through a bad marriage and a worse divorce, it was my sanity as a single mom going back to university, it helped me deal with the death of my mum and myriad other life experiences. So I knit!
Knitting is helping me deal with Covid – in the most positive way I can. Making things helps occupy my mind so I do not dwell on the things that I cannot change!
Covid Be Damned was my first response. The happiest colours, a rainbow of course, and 10,000 of the most sparkly beads.
And right now the Serenity Wave KAL. Calming colours and a few less beads, and wavy repeating patterns.
And in progress as well are many hats and accessories in 7 Hats More. Lots of quick gift knits, Lots of finishing, lots of satisfaction – again keeping mind and hands busy.
So, on Thursday, I released,
Every Cloud… the third hat in the 7 Hats More collection. It is knit with Milano, a light as air Merino/Cashmere blend fingering weight yarn.
Every Cloud… is a lace patterned hat embellished with silver lined beads and topped with a little bead pom-pom. It is lined with a bright white to make the patterning pop!
Right now I am knitting a pair of gloves for 7 Hats More. I haven’t knit gloves in a couple of years – it is time.
These are the Mendenhall Gloves, very much still under construction. Lace, beads, a slouchy long cuff, they are going to be so elegant. They will have a hat and small shawl to co-ordinate with them, and even though this is a hat book – I feel that these glove are the feature item of the Mendenhall collection, not the hat! Sometimes the accessories are the most fun to knit. They are already my personal favourite item from the collection to date – and I haven’t even finished them!
I love gloves. Yes – they are a little fiddly to knit – but they fit! I have broad hands and short fingers and no commercial glove has ever fit me. I make all gloves to fit my hand. They simply make me feel well dressed.
There is something so elegant about gloves, even the most basic. They look great, keep your fingers warm and in me evoke thoughts of the classic fashion photography of years gone by… When no elegant dresser was seen without a pair of gloves – women or men!
Be Well and Knit Happy!
Lynette
