Knitting Sandwich

oh vanna...

so it appears that lately when i need a washable, user-friendly non-wool yarn i am leaning towards a certain blonde letter-turning lady more often than not...

oh vanna!

really, vanna?!?  who knew?  turns out i've been rocking the acrylic more often than not and you know what?  i'm totally okay with that.  i think the melissa-knitter of 4 or 5 years past would have been rather embarassed by her love of all things vanna.

but today's melissa-knitter stands tall and proud so all can hear, "i love vanna!!"  

so what am i currently knitting during my acrylic, shiny blonde hair fuled knitting frenzy?  a scarf for the red scarf project.

which reminds me, if you've got time the fcs is accepting scarves for this year's drive until december 15th.  

-melissa

ps - "oh vanna...."

a stocking for isaac

continuing with the tradition of making my niece's and nephew's christmas stockings i just finished up the stocking for my newest nephew isaac.

here it is pre-felting:

the pattern is ella's felted christmas stocking by mary kennedy (pattern or rav link) and i modeled my stripes after a project i saw on ravelry by starknits.

and here it is post-felting... i'm quite happy with the results, but the real question is - what does isaac think?  luckily i was in omaha for thanksgiving and was able to give it to him in person so i could gauge his reaction.

he looks pretty happy with it - wouldn't you say?  

-melissa

ps - want a littlepeep at some cute cousin fun?  of course you do.  here they all are in their matchy-match jams:

 

sweet garter stitch for a sweet babe

a dear old friend of mine had her second baby a couple months ago.  

she lives in denver, so i haven't gotten to meet sweet babe yet...

but i hope when she's wearing this sweater little lucy feels warm and snuggly and knows that she's loved.

-melissa

ps - the pattern is camilla baby by carrie bostick hoge (pattern or rav link).

an afternoon at the mia

lily had yesterday off school, so we packed our sketch books and headed up to the cities for a visit to the minneapolis intitute of art.  

-melissa

eco-friendly door prizes

so what's a girl to whip up when she volunteers to make some door prizes for a sustainability-focused conference?

why re-usable market bags and dishcloths of course!

this is the same pattern i used to make lily's soccer bag holder, the five hour market bag by sarah sipe (pattern or rav link).  after making two more i can still say that i really like this pattern!  it's quick and fun to make - what could be better?!?

and you already know my insatiable love for dishcloths.  here we have - from left to right: the all washed up cloth by jill arnuch (rav link), playful plaid by renee m (ravlink), the popcorn washer by spiraling (rav link), and another all washed up.

yay dishcloths!!

-melissa

 

european sandwich - last day in lisbon

for these posts about our amazing european sandwich meetup lindsey and melissa will be making tag-team posts.  lindsey will post in orange and melissa will post in green.

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we spent our last day in portugal soaking up all that makes lisbon such an amazing and glorious city.

more tiles:

More hills:

more stunning cathedrals:

 

And a very cool museum.

we visited the port institute and sampled the different types of port.  my assessment: port is good, but it tastes a bit like drinking raisins.  Apparently I like drinking rasins because I loved every sip.  

then we watched the moonrise, and said a sad farewell to beautiful lisbon.

it was such a marvelous adventure, it was hard to leave.  but it is just the first of many european sandwich meetups

-lindsey & melissa

vintage sparkle

a friend of mine was sorting though her yarn stash and came across some vintage sparkly yarns.  she said she had only one thought when she found them: lily.

lil immediately took this silver sparkle yarn and combined it with some cream yarn from my stash and cast on for a scarf for her doll clara.

a doll never can have too many sparkly scarves, and seeing as how the other yarn was a bit wonky to work with, (think of it as lionbrand homespun's elegant but cranky grande dame of a grandmother) lil gave it to me with the instructions to make clara a scarf as well.

a giant crochet hook and a wee bit of under-the-breath cursing and i had completed a sparkly scarf that met with approval from both clara and lily!  yay!

-melissa

 

project barter

my friend patti is a very talented artist and a month or so ago she had a show at a local gallery where she presented 49 small, original works.  these works were not for sale, they were up for barter.  she said she was open to whatever people wanted to trade.  

needless to say, i was super excited about this project.  not only at the prospect of owning my own piece of patti's art, but about the barter itself!  i love me a good old fashioned barter!  so i set to work spinning up some yarn.  this is what i came up with:

i named it "follow the night fairy" and it's 100% bfl wool spun from fiber from fibers to yarns etsy shop.  then i had to decide what to knit...

enter the devising pattern by jan eaton (rav link).  this was a quick but interesting fingerless glove pattern, i would highly recommend it!

(i was especially amused by how closely the color changes matched up!)

and here's the painting i bartered for:

it just came home a few days ago and is now hanging in my living room.  i couldn't be happier!  like i said, i love a good barter!!

-melissa

 

a cowl for a cause

i wasn't planning on making myself a cowl last week... but when i saw that the fabulous margaux over at tentenknits had designed a beautiful new cowl pattern i thought... "hmmm, i could use a new cowl."  AND when i saw that all i had to do to get my hands on said pattern was make a donation to margaux's walk to defeat ALS page i was sold!  

doing a good deed plus scoring an awesome new pattern!  who wouldn't want to get in on that action!?!?

my cowl turned out much smaller than margaux's, but i was trying to use up the yarn in my stash and this was all i had.  i'm still totally digging this cowl and have been wearing it almost constantly since its completion.

so thank you to margaux for not only designing a completely lovely cowl pattern but for fighting the good fight against ALS (aka lou gherig's disease).  

for information on how to get yourselves a copy of this pattern, head on over to margaux's post.  

-melissa

ps - another thank you to brian and drea for photographing me and my new cowl.

first frost

It was a bit hard to make the transition back to everyday life following the absolute paradise that was our wedding/honeymoon.  Luckily, a few days after our return (from 80 degree sunny weather), we were greeted by Munich's first frost.  To me, first frost always feels like an exciting battlecry to knitters everywhere.  Bring on the cold weather and snuggly new knits! 

I whipped out a simple frost emergency hat between lunch and dinner the first day. I chose the wide rimmed beanie for its speedy knitup in such vital conditions.

And after my head was safely frost-protected, we celebated some more by taking a Sunday afternoon drive for a mini Alpine honeymoon.  Can you believe we live only about an hour and a half away from this?

This is a little village called Alpbach in the Austrian Alps.  And look- we found the first snow!

We had some lunch,

Ran into some funny Alpine characters

And just breathed in this glorious view. 

On the way back, we stopped to take a walk along the German Tegernsee. With the most gorgeous fall colors and perfect autumn crispness, it was such a blissfull way to reacclimate ourselves and bask in the gorgeous beauties of 'home' as well. 

Today being All Saints Day, we had another day of freedom and how lucky for me that my husband was quite happy to squeeze in a knitting photoshoot in the most beautiful of surroundings. 

We took my newly finished mitered crosses blanket up to a hilltop in the Bavarian Alps for a little taste of some mountain air before I mail it off to my nun friend tomorrow.  Last year for Christmas she gave me a bunch of yarn which I think she found in the convent basement and I was happy to use it to make a blanket surprise for her. 

While we were there, I got to show off the donner pass cowl that I made last night with the GLORIOUS handspun yarn Melissa made!  Have you checked out her shop?  She's girlplussheep on etsy and her handspuns are more scrumptious than I can even describe.  What a privielage to carry such wooly bliss around my neck!  Thanks Melissa!

I hope you are all enjoying the beauties of fall and that first breath of frost as well!

-cmvs