What have I been working on?

I've been frantically knitting my fingers to the bone with hats...all shapes, sizes, and colors:

Univeristy of Colorado

University of Oregon - specifically designed for a friend

Univerity of Oregon

Purple & Gold stockinette & garter stitch beanie

Green Bay Packers

University of Arkansas



University of Washington

Third UW Ear Flap Hat

It's Crunch Time!

I am getting down to the wire with the upcoming Pre-Black Friday Holiday Bazaar that I'm participating in again this year. I found out last weekend that they have extended the event to two days! Oh, I'm so not ready.  I've been working hard on orders from my Etsy Shop, that I haven't had any time to work on product for the craft bazaar!

I will be knitting every night until the day of the bazaar. Which by the way, will be held, November 19th and 20th, at the Kent Station Shopping Center in Kent. We will be located in the shop next door to Kay Jewelers. I'm very excited to be a part of this event again. I did fairly well last year with orders. Last year, due to our location we were hard to find, but this year we are in a better venue with a lot more exposure. The Kent Station Shopping Center has a lot of foot traffic and with the holidays coming there will be even more!

We are in a bigger space as well so there will be even more vendors this year!  Some of those vendors include: Andre Art (African-American artwork), Pearl Blossom (hair accessories), Handmade Jewelry by Amber Miller, Addie's Gifts (home decor), Scentsy (candles), Thirty-One (purses), Soap Society (handmade soaps & lotions), Miche Bags (purses), Mary Kay (make-up & skin care), Tupperware (cooking supplies, food storage, etc.), Dancing Light (crochet items), Pure Romance (adult items, lotions, creams, etc), Four Footed Fiber (hand-spun yarn and hand knitted items), Stella & Dot (jewelry), Cookie Lee (jewelry), Discovery Toys (educational toys, books, & games), Taylor Made Pantry (cake pops), Soul Boutique (vintage items: purses, jewelry, scraves, etc.), Hair Designs by Tracey (hair accessories), Dinner Pies by Carol (dinner pies), Usborne Books (children's books), Skarlet's Intimates (women's lingerie), and much more!

I hope I will see some of you there!  And now I need to get back to my knitting otherwise my booth will be very empty!  Happy knitting!

P.S. Anyone who places an order from my Etsy Shop between now and November 18th will receive FREE SHIPPING (to domestic destination only), use the following coupon code when placing your order: KMFREESHIP.  Thank you!

The Countdown Begins...Only 11 Weeks Until Christmas

OMG, I cannot believe we are already in October.  I was in Big Lots two weeks ago and the Christmas decorations are already out! There wasn't a lot, but the fact that they were out in September blew my mind!

My goodness I'm so behind on my holiday knitting. I got started on these colorwork team spirit hats just to try my hand at designing and knitting in more than one color and I've gotten so many friends asking me if I could make them a hat.

What am I going to do? I love that my knitting has improved to the point that I'm actually getting requests to create or design knitted items, but I always do this to myself every year, I get bogged down with special request items that I fall behind on my gift giving projects because well there are a lot of people who want to give handmade knitted gifts to their friends and family too and either don't have the skill or just don't have the time to make it themselves.

Also, I've been trying to get items done so that I can post them to my Etsy Shop for purchase and everytime I complete a new project, I get a request to make one for a friend and I end up not getting it into my shop. Which is wonderful and exciting but my online shop really suffers because it isn't getting the exposure I'd like to get because I'm not posting new product at least weekly. But on the other-hand I'm not complaining because with the requests from my friends and co-workers comes more orders from their friends.

I'm hoping at some point, probably after the holidays, I will have some time to write down the pattern for the ear flap hat that am using to create my custom team/school spirit hats so others can make it too!

Happy holiday knitting to you all, and I hope you have gotten started on your gift knitting or if you haven't you are planning to soon - Christmas will be here before you know it!

Just in time for Christmas

I've been having so much fun designing the team hats and showing them off through Twitter and Facebook that I have been getting custom requests. So now you can place an order for your favorite team or school custom colorwork designed earflap or beanie style hat at my Etsy Shop!

Here are a few of the requests I've gotten so far:

University of Colorado Buffaloes

NY Jets

 I have modified the earflap hat so that it is more like the style of the old football helmets worn in the early 1900's. The brim is 1x1 ribbing, the earflaps are knitted double-stranded for additional warmth over the ears, the i-cord ties are double-stranded as well and the hat is embellished in an accent color using the reverse single crochet stitch, below is an example using the University of Oregon school colors, that I finished a few days ago:

Baby Apple Bottom Pants

Last night I finished a pair of my own version of apple-bottom pants. These were made for my good friend, Jodi who wanted something special for her friend who had a baby girl over the summer.

I made a little yellow dress back in August and set it aside wanting to think about what to make to go along with it. Since Jodi didn't need the gift until October, I figured I had plenty of time to think up something.

Well I on Friday, I thought that a pair of pants would be great to go with the dress, since the weather is getting cooler. Since the dress had apple buttons, I thought I could make apple-bottom pants! And I've been doing a lot of colorwork these past few weeks and I've been wanting to learn how to add color to small areas without having to do Intarsia or stranded knitting - a friend from my Wednesday Knit-night mentioned the duplicate stitch.

I looked it up on Youtube and found a really great video on how to use this technique and below you can see what I learned.

The really great part about the dress I chose is that it can be worn first as a dress, then as a tunic, and then eventually as a shirt. It's made out of cotton and will stretch as baby grows.

Little Sisters's Dress (Rav link)
by Tora Froseth Design (Rav link)

Added apple buttons on the side closure

Baby Bell Bottoms (Rav link) by Alison Hansel (Rav link)

Used duplicate stitch (Youtube tutorial) to add little
apples to the bottom of the pants - my version
of the apple-bottom pants for baby.