A Pattern in the Knit Picks April Catalogue, Ellen!

I love receiving the Knit Picks catalogue. Just received the April 2013 in the mail today and to my surprise and delight, my At-Home Dining: Placemat, is featured as one of the downloadable patterns on page 11. Thank you to the Knit Picks! For those of you who don't receive the catalogue or just haven't received it yet, here is the link for the placemat pattern: At-Home Dining: Placemat

Also, I have another pattern designed in the At-Home Dining Series using Knit Picks Dishie yarn. That pattern has been submitted to Knit Picks but is not up on their site yet, due to some technical issues they are currently experiencing. However, I have posted it for sale on Craftsy in the meantime. Here is the link: At-Home Dining: Bread Basket Cloth & Warming Companion

In other news, John and I took a road trip to Deer Lake (West Coast Newfoundland) last weekend. I took a few photos of things I found interesting that hopefully you will also find interesting! When we went out and about on Saturday it was a balmy 17 degrees Celsius! Really warm for us East Coasters.  The wind here in Mount Pearl is still a nippy. Yesterday I wore my hat and gloves when walking and had no inclination to remove them. It's a bit warmer here today though - warm enough to rake the back yard. And, the crocus have bloomed! Spring is definitely near!

I thought this was neat - a strawberry big enough to have it's own trailer!

Deer Lake Power
Here is a link to some interesting info about Deer Lake Power

A photo of Deer 'Lake' with lots of snow in the mountains in the background.
People are still using their snowmobiles in these areas.

Crocus in our back yard.
I love these hardy little flowers!

Watcha Been Up To, Ellen?

Ellen's been hangin' around waiting for me to knit things for her to wear. I did machine knit a spring scarf with buttons that can be worn as a scarf or buttoned and worn as a cowl. The buttons can be popped in anywhere in the lace. This gives a lot of freedom for the wearer. It's machine knit with Knit Picks Organic Cotton and Knit Picks Shimmer using the thread lace mechanism on the knitting machine. The organic cotton makes it like Baby Bear's porridge - not too hot and not too cold!

The other items I've knit, Ellen can't model them because they are too small for her. I went looking for a child mannequin a few weeks ago. We didn't find one locally, but one of the warehouses we went into had a stand with a hanger. The hanger was adult size so I asked John to cut it down to child size, which he did (and did a fine job of it too!). So, while I don't have a mannequin for showing children's knitwear, we have an acceptable stand/hanger.

The dress is machine knit with Knit Picks Organic Cotton. I wanted to design and make a child's dress with this cotton because it is soft and feels nice next to the skin. The child's sweater is hand knit with Paton's Devine using a pattern I found in a Lopi pattern book but had to make a lot of changes to make it smaller than the pattern stated, add a hood with strings, buttons instead of a zipper and so on..... The dress and sweater were knit for my little friend, Katherine. She likes both items!

All the while, we've been having some decent weather. So yesterday we went out and about with the camera. It was super windy so Ellen had to stay home or we'd be fishing her out of the Atlantic! No big waves yesterday despite the high wind although there were a lot of white caps on the ocean. I've heard it said that the big waves happen 2-3 days after the high winds. I might take a trip to the beach tomorrow to see if this is true.

We went to Portugal Cove and then around to Middle Cove Beach.

Portugal Cove

I guess Goat Cove Trail is nearby.

Yes, the name on the boat is "Breaking Wind".

Middle Cove Beach
I had the camera set to "posterized effect" to see how the picture would come out.

Left the camera on "posterized" and snapped this picture.
I guess 'someone' is in training.  :-)