I made these both with Willow Ridge Farms yarn CSA yarn, which is about my least favorite yarn ever, but at least I’m slowly getting rid of it, lol. The blue and purple one is basically just improvised pattern, the brown one is the Belladonna nighttime shorts pattern, which has disappointed in the past. I keep thinking it’ll be better if I keep using it, but it’s not.

This is not a craft I ever thought I’d do, that’s for sure!

But I was pleasantly surprised to find that making balloon animals is not altogether difficult. The hardest part is getting the dang balloon tied. Second hardest is not wincing every time you twist, in anticipation of popping the thing!

I had this dress listed on Etsy for a while, with no takers, so it’s sat here in my box of Boulevard Designs items. Too unique to have a good spot in a craft show display, and too small to make a suitable gift for any of my friends’ kids. Then, I had my own girl and now she fits into it. Isn’t it adorable?

It’s coming along nicely. I’m about 3/4 done with one sleeve…. and I’m not going to have enough of either color to finish. I’m so mad. I ordered more than the pattern indicated, and STILL don’t have enough. The main problem is that KnitPicks is out of Caribou (the brown) until May. MAY!!! I certainly hope he doesn’t need a sweater in May.

I hate buying yarn for projects… I hate ending up with all these leftover extra skeins, which is why I didn’t order extra extra skeins for this sweater. Grrr.

Anyone have KnitPicks Wool of the Andes Bulky in Caribou? I also need Oregano, while I’m at it, but I can order that from KnitPicks right now. I just don’t want to have to wait until May to finish. I’ll be all off my groove.

(I found this in drafts - I thought I’d published it a month ago!!)

Done! I sewed the buttons on Christmas morning!

It actually was not hard at all, though I find knitting with bulky yarn to be a bit cumbersome, it did make it go much faster! The yarn was from Park City Yarn Co in Park City - I picked it up while we were on vacation this past summer. The Alpaca Yarn Company. It’s a Park City company, made from area alpaca, but the yarn is manufactured overseas. The yarn I used was Snuggle, which is a bulky weight.

The pattern is from Garnstudio, which means that it contains as few words as possible, lol. Even so, it wasn’t difficult to follow, and I think the sweater turned out lovely. I made the 2T size, so it’s a bit big this year but should fit nice next year.

Here’s the Ravelry project page.

This little sock monkey was actually really easy to make, if a bit tedious. (Though most knitting has its tedious parts!) I had promised Wally several months ago that I’d make him a sock monkey, because I didn’t want to pay the $20 that the store was asking for one. (Of course, I probably spent that much in yarn, but that’s not the point!)

He really does like it, too.

AND - this is my first foray into knitting without any practical purpose.

I used Knitpicks Swish DK yarn.  An awesome pattern by Mummble-Jummble. I went with an oatmeal color for the hands and feet instead of the traditional cream, since, after all, this monkey is going to live a MY house, and is likely to get things spilled on it.

How easy were these butterfly wings? Super easy.

Cut an old cardboard box into butterfly shape. Paint. Cut little slits. Thread elastic through. Elastic goes around the arms. Voila.

The bat was not hard, either. A sweatshirt plus an umbrella. Tutorial here.

This was fun. I had to run to JoAnn’s to buy something quick, and they had their Halloween candy kits on sale, so we bought one. Wally needed help with the details, but he was able to do large parts of this all by himself. We just basically had to melt the candy and put it in the mold, but if we wanted to color certain things different colors, we had to paint it in there. It was harder than you’d think, lol.

But it’s quite yummy, and we’ve been sharing them with friends and family, because we so clearly do not need this much candy!

Hat to match her mittens

Alright, so I made another pair of longies. Actually, I started these when we were on vacation in July, and then hibernated them for a bit while I waited for another skein of yarn - this particular pattern just EATS up yarn. It’s the Itchy Fingers pattern, which I’ve used once before. Both times, even though I follow her directions as far as measuring, etc., the end result is really kind of big. I felted these down a bit, but they’re still really roomy.

The yarn is Philosopher’s Wool. (Well, the brown is just leftover Paton’s Classic Wool.) I love this stuff. It’s got some lanolin left in it, plus it’s just kind of yummy. You can see that it kind of fuzzed up on me when I washed it - I should’ve turned it inside out, but I forgot.

I improvised the design on the legs. I knew my next project to cast on was going to be a hat for Randy in stranded two-color work, which I’ve never done, and I wanted the practice. Happily, the stranding turned out to be much easier than I realized.