Small projects can really make you feel productive

It is a bit of a false economy, I suppose.  You feel like you are making such a big dent when in reality the yarn used for 3 projects probably amounts to less than a full ball.  But it doesn't matter.  I'm getting rid of those odd bits of yarn that I keep just in case and never use.  First up, two dish cloths from the book Yarnplay at Home.  The first one I quite like.  It ended up looking sort of woven.

The second, I like the pattern but I think it is just a little bit large and puffy for a dish cloth.  Hard to imagine using it to wash a glass.  I ran out of white so used up the last of the blue and a bit of pink.  I thought it might look strange but have decided that I like it.  And at the end of the day, it is a dishcloth.  Not exactly something that is going to look pristine beyond 5 minutes.

Next, I made a coffee cozy.  Or a hand cooler, I guess.  My favourite coffee shop no longer automatically puts a sleeve on the coffee so I've been thinking I should whip up one of these for a while now.  I'll throw it in my purse and hope I remember it's there!  This pattern is from Ann Budd's Knitted Gifts.

All nice patterns and very quick (obviously) to knit.

Cupcakes

Despite the cupcake craze sweeping the country, I've never really eaten a lot of cupcakes.  No particular reason although I do find the ones that are commercially available at cupcake bakeries tend to be bigger than what I would eat if I cut myself a piece of cake.  On the weekend we celebrated a birthday in our house and I wanted chocolate cake.  Since I'm trying to behave myself, I didn't really want to eat cake for a week so I made cupcakes.

The cupcake recipe was from Flour and the icing was my standard butter icing ... butter, icing sugar, cocoa, milk and kahlua in this case for flavouring.  Simple and pretty much my favourite.  These were really tasty, perfect for a birthday treat and I stuck the leftovers in the freezer for lunches.

And another finish

I almost frogged this a few times because I saw it becoming quite large.  But the whole time, I thought, I have a big head, it's fine.  And it is.  But it is almost too big for my big head.  And that's a first.  To put it in perspective, pretty much every baseball cap I've ever tried on is too small.  Seriously.  Too bad there isn't a direct correlation between size of noggin and brain power.  

This is A Better Bucket knit with Blue Sky Alpacas Worsted Hand Dyes.  A yarn I absolutely adore.  Again, bought a ton.  Have made a sweater, a snood (which I think is basically another way of saying big cowl) and this hat.  I still have enough left for another small project.  Maybe a pair of mitts but not sure there is enough.    Wrist warmers might work.

Wishful thinking

I was just organizing my next little stash reducing project when I found another skein of Brown Sheep. Ugh.  Then I realized that the booties were Rowan All Seasons Cotton.  Easily confused in my head.  They are almost the exact same shade of blue and the Rowan has the same story.  Bought probably 15 years ago at a really good sale price, made 3 or 4 projects from it and, dare I tempt the knitting fates again by saying, finally finished!

This little kerchief is another stash reducing finished project.  It was made with some Koigu Kersti I bought to make something for someone who was having a baby, started the project, frogged it and likely made something else.  Fast and easy and quite cute.  It will look great with my raincoat, I think.

Still Keeping the Promise

I have managed to continue my goal of not buying anymore yarn and am completing projects.  First up, I finished by Brown Sheep yarn, finally. I think this purchase at some sale 10 years ago has made about 6 different projects.  Nice yarn, but enough already.  These booties are the best.  They are Ruth's "Perfect" Baby Booties and are made without breaking the yarn like most patterns I've used before.  This is very appealing to me.  Two fewer ends to sew in per bootie.  I guess the i-cord tie more than offsets the time savings from sewing in four fewer ends but who said these things had to make sense?

And I finished the Amy Butler quilt.  Stippled on my machine.  Down to the wire as my thank you gift for our camping out at the in-laws during our recent reno.  We could not have lived in the house through that disaster (the rip-out part) and were lucky enough to have a place to crash that was dust free and meant we could live on something other than pizza every night.

A few favourites

I like when blogs writers link to other interesting sites so here are a few of my old and new favourites.

1.  First up, not surprisingly, is Houzz.  I got a lot of inspiration from this site when planning our kitchen.  There are so many details and decisions to make, it was nice to see what things looked like in other kitchens.  And their search engine is fantastic.

2.  This looks fun.  I think we'll go.  Wine and food and recipes to bring home.

3.  The LCBO magazine is one I look forward to quarterly.  There are always lots of great recipes and they are on the website too.

4.  I have been meaning to make natural peanut butter since reading this Squawkfox article.  I just have to remember to find a source for fresh, tasty peanuts rather than the ones that have been hanging out in the store too long.

That's it.  I haven't been doing much surfing lately.  Maybe I'll hop over to Chocolate and Zucchini and see what links she is sending readers to this month.  Of course, I could also work on getting some projects done instead.

One skein down!

Sometimes I forget the satisfaction of working on little projects.  These mitts took about an hour to work up.  I bought Rowan All Seasons Cotton so long ago I can't remember and had two balls in the stash.  A couple of weeks ago I matched them up to this Blue Sky Alpacas pattern for fingerless mitts and after a couple of tries to get the tension right, got going.  Easy, fast and comfortable.  I'm wearing them as I type!

Now I have to find something to do with the second ball.  I'm thinking baby booties might work.  There are two babies coming soon to people at the office so I may have a plan.

Even though it is only one ball of yarn, I feel like I'm on the road to something good ... getting control of my craft room.  Unfortunately, on a couple of different levels, The Stash in Campbellville is going out of business and yarn is 30% off.  I may need to take a trip up there which will reverse my progress. I'm also sad because this is a very nice store and I was looking forward to restocking from there once I made some room.