Blogaversery # 3

It's that time of year again and as the year comes to a close, I am left scratching my head, where has the year gone? 2011 has been a productive year for me professionally, personally and for craft. I have finished some UFO's, created more to finish next year and tackled a few new craft projects. This year I learnt how to spin, tried my hand at Fair Isle knitting, attended the Bendigo Wool Show and the Craft Fair, sent 10 beanies to the Alice Springs Beanie Festival and made 6 bambinos.
Here are six of my favourite projects for 2011.
Craft: Knitting:And patchwork: I hope that your 2011 was a productive craft year too. Thank-you for reading my blog this year. Wishing you all a safe and happy new year. Happy crafting in 2012!

Completed Christmas Banner

This afternoon in between some gardening and cleaning, I stitched on the last of the binding and sewed on the star buttons to complete the Christmas banner from the Sew Happy Me Christmas sew along (SAL).
I have hung the banner up on our fire place and I am very happy with the results. This was a great sew along to participate in.

Green and Rainbow Knitting

Recently I completed some baby knitting with some of the most beautiful yarn I have worked with yet. I knitted 3 baby items, a jacket, booties and a beanie from some Maple coloured, Luxury 8 ply DK Pure Wool by Jo Sharp. I had this in my stash and it was originally destined for a top for me. But after starting the top 4 or 5 years ago I decided that it was no longer to my taste and pulled it out. I think that the yarn came up well as baby knits. The hat and jacket are patterns from the book 'Baby Knits for Beginners' by Debbie Bliss and the booties pattern is a Pattons' one.
The other yarn I have recently had the pleasure of working with is this lovely rainbow I purchased from Kathy's Fibres at the Bendigo Wool and Sheep Show. I loved working with this, it was exciting seeing how the rainbow colours came together as I knitted this beanie. I now need to decided what to knit with the rest of this yarn. The pattern for this hat is the same as for the green above with a curl instead of a pom pom. After using these beautiful yarns and loving the results, I think that I need to make an effort to work only with quality yarn and to avoid being seduced by the price of lesser quality yarn.

Wrist Warmers and Fair Isle Knitting

Over winter this year I made several pairs of wrist warmers.
A pair for a friend of mine.
Some for my mum. And a pair for me from some beautiful hand spun alpaca yarn I got at last years Alice Springs beanie festival. This winter I also experimented with some fair isle knitting. I love this yellow beanie, but I need to make it again. It is too small for my head because I didn't follow the pattern. I did not change the needle size during the fair isle stage. I will defiantly make it again, but follow the pattern properly next time.
The other fair isle knitting I did was this heart beanie and wrist warmers. I made up set to enter the spotlight knitting competition. I must write up the pattern properly so I can make another one.