Let it snow

It's snowed quite a bit this week in Paris. Snow is great, especially when I don't have to go out in it much and can admire it from afar. All of this cold weather got me into the mood for some comfort food. Over the past few days, I've made some soup, roasted a chicken and baked a cake. I have to admit, though, the funnest part of it all was watching Simon as he "chased" the snow in the kitchen window.

Happy Birthday Simon

Today this little guy celebrates his first year of life on planet Earth. Most of it has been spent sleeping. 

Happy Halloween!

This was a very fun and quick amigurumi project. I stopped crocheting near the top and added a handle so that it would resemble one of those buckets that children use to collect candy on Halloween night.

You can find the pattern here on the Lion Brand Yarn website. This was my first amigurumi (first crochet project, actually), and I found this tutorial to be very helpful.

I tried to get Simon to pose with the tiny jack-o'-lantern to provide a sense of its size, but I'm afraid he wasn't really in the mood for a photoshoot this afternoon. I thought this next shot was pretty funny.

 

All work and (almost) no play

I'm afraid I've had very little time these past few weeks to do any crafting, baking and, to be completely honest, real cooking (unless you consider reheating cooking...).

I did manage to complete a quilting block for a "Block of the Month" subscription I signed up for via a local quilting store.   

I also wound these balls of yarn. This yarn was not in hanks to begin with, but re-winding it has allowed me to save some space in my craft storage.

While I was at it, I wound up a ball of the remnant of a skein used to make Simon’s blanket, so that he could play around with it… 

…though I promptly had to take it away because he got himself tangled up in the thread almost immediately. I suppose I should have seen this coming. Don’t let this next photo deceive you – it got much worse.

Kitty blanket

This is the first knitting project I’ve ever actually finished. I first picked up a set of knitting needles when I was in high school, well before the knitting revival took off. In fact, at the time, I believe it was a decidedly unhip thing to do. I taught myself to cast on some stitches and that’s about as far as I got. Frustrated by trying to learn to knit from a book, I stowed the needles + instruction booklet away and promptly forgot about them. One high school diploma, a university education and a few months of work experience later and, during a trip back home for a visit, I stumbled upon them and decided to give knitting another shot. My second foray didn’t last much longer than the first and, in a move that was very uncharacteristic of me, I pitched the whole lot into the garbage.

Part 3 of my adventures in knitting came in February 2007 when I found a free online pattern for a ruffled shawl that I decided I wanted to make and would actually wear (I suspect that my unsuccessful attempts at knitting were undoubtedly linked to the fact that I was just trying to learn the technique and never really had a project in mind to serve as motivation). This time I downloaded a guide to knitting and ended up casting it aside in frustration. But this time I didn’t give up completely. I went to my local Loisirs et Création store and picked up a book on knitting, complete with color pictures, beginner projects and all. And it is thanks to this book that I finally learned how to knit and purl. Alas, as you already know, my first completed knitting project was a blanket for a kitten and not a shawl. The shawl is still sitting on a pair of circular knitting needles in a bag somewhere.

At the beginning of summer we moved into a new apartment and, a month or so later, decided we’d fill some of our new space with a new kitten. I was reorganizing all of my sewing materials one day when I came upon part of another knitting project I had begun. I have no idea whether I was trying to make something or just practicing, but I had completed quite a few rows already. I decided it was the perfect length for a small blanket for Simon – all I had to do was find a similar yarn in a couple of colors to make it a little more interesting.

When I went to the Phildar store and provided the yarn’s references, I was informed that they’d stopped making it years ago (I think they were exaggerating a bit, but it nonetheless reminded me of my serial fickleness with knitting). I ended up, as they say in French, “finding my happiness” in another art supply store where I picked up brown and orange skeins of cotton yarn that were virtually identical to the yarn already on the needles.

I really enjoyed this project, especially when I got to change colors to make the stripes. It took me longer to complete than anticipated, and I probably should have suspected that Simon would change by the time I finished. He is still a kitten but has already outgrown this blanket, which has since been reincarnated as lining for the bottom of his carrier bag. In fact, Simon never really warmed up to the blanket (imagine that, a furry cat not wanting to cuddle up on a blanket in the middle of summer!). He’d much rather sit on the laptop keyboard. Oh well, at least I have the satisfaction of saying one of my WIPs has become an FO!