A co-worker of TJ’s is expecting a little one any time soon. And of course, what better to knit then my favourite hat?

Pattern: Umbilical Cord Hat
Yarn: Berroco Comfort

I just love these little hats. They are so easy to make, but they really look cute on wee one’s.

I made a card to go with this one too:

Ah, sheep. I hope she likes it!

A while back I was gifted a skein of Natasha’s wonderful sport weight merino, in my favourite colourway she has ever produced: Robin’s Egg. I needed a one skein project, and decided to make a pretty little cowl for this fall.

Pattern: Burnished Leaves Cowl
Yarn: Unplanned Peacock Sport, about 0.7 balls.

This yarn is soft but durable, and feels wonderful around my neck.

I think it has just the right texture for showing off the lacey leaf pattern.

I have some fingering weight in the stash as well, and I am thinking of making some gloves to match. I think they will go well with my white winter coat.

As usual, when the photo shoot involves my sweetie behind the camera, laughter ensues. I am looking forward to cooler temps so I can try it out without sweating.

I seem to be into the fall colours at the moment. Maybe I am just trying to match my completely dried out front lawn. Maybe I am dreaming of cooler weather. Really though, when it comes to this sweater, I was trying to branch out of my normal comfort zone of purple, pinks, greys.

Pattern: Ariosa Wrap Cardi (Rav Link)
Yarn: Cascade Eco Wool
Needles: US 9

This is a great little pattern that works up so quickly in the bulky yarn. While I have a bunch of Eco Wool in my stash, I had never used it before. Definitely loving on the Eco. It is soft without being too soft, and not fluffy or splitty at all. I can see why it is the most popular yarn at the shop.

I generally do not knit a lot of large gauge projects, because I think sometimes they can make my feel a little “teddy bear-esque”. But the difference with this pattern is the lace repeats. It makes it look pretty and feminine, and keeps it cooler. I love the little teeny cap sleeves too.

The bow is just a fun accent, but it could be easily worn with a shawl pin too. I think I will get lots of use out of this in the early fall. Right now it is displayed at the shop if anyone would like to have a look.

A while back I bought the Schoolhouse Tunic pattern, and I finally dug it out and made myself one of the longer versions.

I used some Moda Freebird fabric from the shop that has a pretty brown and black pattern on it. It was a super easy and really quick pattern to make, but I love the little details it has.

The pleats both in the front and the back give it a playful and moveable look.

I am wearing it here with some capris, but I am looking forward to wearing it in the fall with some of my skinnier jeans. You could wear it without bottoms, but for myself I would need to add a few inches of length.

I will definitely make this one again. I think the next one will be the shorter length though, and maybe with the gathered sleeves.

A while ago Whitney and I created a quilt for the beginner quilting class that she teaches at the shop. Using a lot of Moda’s Simple Abundance fabric, this is what we came up with:

Pinwheels, 4 in 9, saw tooth star, HST’s and borders. That is a lot of knowledge learned in one set of quilting classes. When we were finished making this one, I had a lot of bits and pieces left over. I decided to make another quilt to use up what was left, while trying not to cut any new fabric.

This is what I managed to come up with, and I only had to cut additional fabric for the borders. I really like the strong diagonals made by the 4 in 9 blocks.

For the back I used up the strips I had left from the 4 in 9′s to make some more interesting diagonals.

One of my favourite things about this quilt though is the little brown strip between the border and the blocks. It is a folded over piece, so it is actually only attached one side. Sort of like a little flap (there is probably a proper name for this, but I don’t know what it is).

Because of this little flap I could not do edge to edge quilting on Laura’s Statler, so I did separate borders and individual blocks.

I did a different quilting for each block. Some daisy blocks, some leaves – generally florally. You can see more of the quilting if you click on the picture of the back of the quilt above.

I was really happy to be able to use up so many of the pieces that were leftover from the first quilt. My first foray into somewhat scrappy quilting.