Category: knitting
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Baby Blanket Knitting Tips
Your friend announces that she’s pregnant and you’re a knitter: you know you want to make her something for the baby, but what? There are lots of options – a layette, booties, hats, bibs, mitts, and more. My go-to is a baby blanket. Blankets are useful and have a long life; they aren’t knit in…
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Lace Knitting and Mistakes
Last year, I got two cakes of Wolle’s Yarn at Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival (SVFF). I had seen friends knit beautiful, color-changing shawls out of this yarn but didn’t have a plan of my own. More often than not, this is how I buy yarn: I fall in love and bring home a skein or…
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Alhambra
Way back in 2010ish my friend Alana was making Anne Hanson’s Alhambra, I think after a trip to Spain to see the castle itself. At the time, I was focused on other things, like learning how to spin, and then roller derby came along and I nearly stopped crafting 2011-2015, when I retired. But I…
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My Latest Sweater
This is the story of a sweater, but it starts with the story of another sweater … and then two more: All The Sweaters! Almost three years ago now, I stumbled on a picture of a beautiful sweater on Instagram – the Turka Bluesky from Natela Astakhova. I love the colors she chose and the…
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Coopworth Batwing
I knit a batwing in an attempt to knit a shawl using handspun Coopworth yarn. See? This is another project that I made from spinning the yarn all the way to FO, only I don’t have pictures of the fiber or the spinning process. I’m not even sure when I spun the yarn; I know…
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Peasant Cap: From Spinning Fiber to Finished Object
I spun the yarn for my latest hat during Tour de Fleece 2018 and Spinzilla 2017 (the only Spinzilla I’ve done). Both started out life as 2 ply fractal spun yarns, but I ended up cable plying them both, which essentially means I made the 2 ply yarns into center pull balls and plied the…
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My First Sweater Made With Hand Spun Yarn
You would think I carefully planned my first hand spun (and first steeked) sweater but, dear reader, I did not. I just got lucky. I bought a brown merino x fleece at a local farm when my knitting group visited it in spring 2010. I had just started spinning the previous summer and this fleece…
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New Domain, New Design, Seachange Sweater
Well, the new domain is all set up – this is the first new post from littlegoldennotebook.com. All my old blog posts are here and I have plenty of room for more pages and more design control, so I’m quite happy with the whole thing at the moment. I just hope my followers followed me…
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Time Flies!
February went by in the blink of an eye and it feels like the Ides of March & St. Patrick’s Day 2018 will quickly be a thing of the past while I carry on privately writing, knitting, and doing other crafty things. I suppose I’m starting to come out of some kind of hibernation now…
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Calcifer Plush
A few years ago, I started introducing one of my best friends, Suzi, to Miyazaki movies. She had seen Kiki’s Delivery Service, but only that one movie. We started with Howl’s Moving Castle and she fell in love with Calcifer, the fire demon who keeps the castle moving, among other things. As we worked our…
Little Golden Notebook 