Fleece, Felt and Pashmina

Hi Knitters, 

When Prince William married Kate Middleton she was spotted at the grocery store wearing a large triangle shawl with a ruffle. Click here to see some of the Kate shawls. I wanted to make one just like Kate's and patterns popped up everywhere to copy the famous shawl. I even bought three gorgeous hanks of Madelinetosh Pashmina in the Forestry colorway with a Kate shawl in mind. (I bought the yarn here.) However, I have been so busy that I never got to it. 

The color is showing truer in the photo above. Yesterday I wound one of the hanks of Pashmina into a cake and started designing a semi-circle shawl. It's going to be a very simple shawl with some fun details. The yarn is absolutely delicious to work with. I love the subtle variations of the color of the Madelinetosh yarns. 

The yarn seems huge, in a good way, after the lace weight of the Citron. I am working on US size 7. Pashmina is a sport weight yarn so I am getting 5 stitches per inch. I am loving the shawl so far and it is going quite fast. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Now for a little TC crafting update. For Christmas TC got an American Girl Felt Box craft kit. Click here to see the kit. She had so much fun with this simple kit. TC whipped these up in a very short time, maybe an hour or so. You have to sew the flowers together at the center which was the most difficult part of the kit. The felt came with a sticker backing and only required some trimming. The only other thing was gluing the felt balls to the flowers and gluing the sparkles to the trim. 

She loved this easy kit and the boxes are adorable. TC has them displayed in my studio for now. She recommends the kit for other kids.

It's so good to see TC up to her crafting antics. Over the past few years TC has made many of those fleece blankets that are tied around the edges. She has given most of her blanket creations as gifts. When you make the fringe blankets you cut a square out of each corner of the fleece. She has been saving the squares in a bucket. Since we have a little time over the vacation I asked if she wanted to sew a quilt with her squares.

We placed the squares in a quilt order on the floor making sure the color arrangement was good. I keep telling her it is going to be a lot smaller after the sewing. We got ten columns with nine squares each. 

I dusted off my sewing machine which I haven't used for a little over a year. I miss it so much. I was relieved that it still worked fine. TC went to town sewing her squares together on the machine. All of those stacks with labels are completed columns. She is now done with nine of the ten columns. Maybe we'll finish it up later today. It is fun to see her so excited about something. She was definitely surprised how much smaller the quilt is going to be compared to the spread out version on the floor. It will be a baby blanket size. I think we'll put some sort of backing on it.

She has also been knitting away on her Noro scarf. She bought the yarn in Door County last summer. I'll share a photo of that later. It is so pretty.

Into the weekend we go! Life is good and the new year feels fresh and relaxed. I hope you are all doing well. I'd love to hear about what you are crafting on this winter.

best, susie