Hat and scarf for my Grand daughter.

She arrived for a visit over the  weekend (sleepover) and the hat and scarf I knit for her last year looked very small so 'we' decided I would do her a new set.  This is what we ended up with.

She has started knitting - and has done 2 dishcloths and is working on a scarf - amazing.

ANOTHER KNIT ALONG SWEATER! LOVE IT!

Here is another finished pullover from our LETS DESIGN A COAT OF MANYCOLORS which
we made on a wonderful knitting and crochet group - Knitting Paradise.  

We are going to do another knit along in the NEWYear and there is lots of interest.  These sweaters don't follow a pattern - we use number of stitches to the inch,measurements and ideas!  I am so pleased with the way they are turning out.  There should be 5 or 6 more finished in the NEW Year as well as a lot of new members starting.

We are also going to do a Knit along with a top down pattern (see my bomber jackets).   so much fun.

Shirley

Another sweater from my Knit along group.

Look at the wonderful job Dana Kay did -- especially the yoke.  She also put a hood on her sweater. some of the work coming out of  the Knitting Paradise forum for this Knit along is absolutely wonderful.  I am going to do another one in the NEw Year.

REMEMBERANCE DAY 2011

Today is Remembrance Day here in Canada and other Commonwealth countries, I believe.

Please take special time to remember our fallen heroes and the families and loved ones who
are carrying on without them.

Shirley

I am a proud Canadian and....

-next week is the Canadian Remembrance day -- 

 Lest we Forget 

  It is funny

 how it took someone in England to put it into words......

 Salute to a brave and modest nation - Kevin Myers , 'The Sunday

 Telegraph'LONDON :

 Until the deaths of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan , probably

 almost no one outside their home country had been aware that

 Canadian troops

 are deployed in the region.

 And as always, Canada will bury its dead, just as the rest of

 the world, as

 always will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly

 everything Canada ever does.. It seems that Canada 's historic

 mission is to

 come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete

 strangers, and

 then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored.

 Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of

 the hall,

waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire

 breaks out, she

 suffers serious

 injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes,

 there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those she once helped

 glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.

That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North American

continent with the United States , and for being a selfless friend of Britain

 in two global conflicts.

 For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions one foot in 

the old world and an address in the new one,

 and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the

 gratitude it deserved.

 Yet it's purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom

 in two world

 wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10% of

 Canada 's entire population of seven million people served in the armed

 forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied

 victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers

 in the entire British order of battle.

 Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright

 neglect, it's unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular

 memory as somehow or other the work of the 'British.'

 The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began

 the war with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the

 Atlanticagainst U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships

 participated in the

 Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went

 ashore on D-Day alone.

 Canada finished the war with the third-largest navy and the

 fourth largest air force in the world. The world thanked Canada with the same sublime

 indifference as it had the previous time.

 Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only

 if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign in

 which the United States had clearly not participated - a touching scrupulousness

 which, of course, Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a

 separateCanadian identity.

 So it is a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in

 Hollywood keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are

 Canadian. Thus Mary

 Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox,

 William Shatner,

 Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg, Alex Trebek, Art Linkletter,

 Mike Weir and

 Dan Aykroyd Michael Buble, Justin Bieber have in the popular perception become American, and

 ChristopherPlummer, British.

 It is as if, in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian

 ceases to be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakably

 Canadian as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable

 to find any takers.

> Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the

 achievements of

 its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely

 unaware ofthem. The Canadians proudly say of themselves - and are unheard by

 anyone else - that 1% of the world's population has provided 10% of the

 world'speacekeeping forces.

 Canadian soldiers in the past half century have been the greatest

peacekeepers on Earth - in 39 missions on UN mandates, and six

 on non-UN peacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.

 Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the popular non-

 Canadianimagination was the sorry affair in Somalia , in which

 out-of-control paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment

 was then disbanded in disgrace - a uniquely Canadian act of self-

 abasement for which,

 naturally, the Canadians received no international credit.

 So who today in the United States knows about the stoic and selfless

 friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan?

 Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac , Canada repeatedly does honourable things

 for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it

 remainssomething of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for

 which Canadians

 should be proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost. This past

 year more

 grieving Canadian families knew that cost all too tragically well.

  Lest we forget

Christmas presents

I have my Christmas presents nearly finished -- and have enjoyed every moment !   It has been interesting to  do knitting again after many years of fabric work.  I hope to get back to my fabric landscapes and thread painting after Christmas.    

We are both (my husband and I) doing very very well and I am so thankful that he has come through
serious surgery and is back to being himself again.     I am swimming at least  3 mornings a week (water exercises) and after swimming a group of us have coffee in the condo clubhouse.  Our kids live nearby and our 8 year old grand daughter is only  l5 minutes away.  Life is good.   Shirley

Scarf Shawl.

I used a size  15 mm (l9 US) needle and a size  7mm needle  and did  the 'condo' stitch for this shawl.

I then crochet a fancy border along the bottom two sides.  It can also  be worn as a shoulder shawl.

Lots of fun!

new slippers -

I just finished these -- easy to make and nice and warm.  I will wear them over my knitted worsted socks this winter as our floors always seem cold to me.   I made the pair this afternoon.  Pattern is a bit confusing but once you figure it out it  works out quickly.  lots of fun

here is some more of my fabric and thread painting work

I got very interested in thread painting and also decided to fool around with photo shop and the first picture is a result.  All these are l2" square pieces done on heavy web (timtex)  Such fun!

I will be going back to doing these after Christmas once my knitting projects are finished.

Shirley

Some of my art quilts

I have spent the last l5 years doing Fabric Art quilts and just this past year have taken a break and am now working on some of my own knitting designs.  I am going to post a few of my quilts  in the next while and I hope you enjoy them.   Shirley-

Another " coat of many colors"

Here is another finished sweater from my workshop on " Knitting Paradise"-  We each figured out
our stitch numbers for our sizesl- and away we go!   I am really happy with the way these are turning out.   If you want to check out the forum  the link is attached.  I am having fun knitting for now but will likely return to art quilts sometime soon.   I have some projects for Christmas to finish first.

If any of you are knitters you should join Knitting Paradise -- it is a great place and all problems are solved! (ask me how I know!)

Class I am teaching - first completed sweater!

drawings for a sweater I am teaching on Knitting Paradise

 

ONE OF A KIND FIBER ARTS

http://www.knittingtipsonline.com/home.html

KNITTING LINKS

ONE OF A KIND FIBER ARTS: Finished my red sweater

ONE OF A KIND FIBER ARTS: Finished my red sweater

Finished my red sweater

and am quite happy with it. I used variegated yarn for the bottom portion this time -- so much easier than the intarsia method. I also just found a poncho I made last year. I designed 2 rectangles and put it together. then I crochet the neck. very warm.

My work over the past 5 years --

First of all - I am thinking of all of you on the Eastern Seaboard and hope you made it through the hurricane safely.

I am still knitting and have been fortunate enough to find a wonderful on line group KNITTING PARADISE - I have posted my blog address on this site and some of them are visiting and are interested in my previous work .

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN MY OTHER WORK -- just scroll to the bottom of this page and click on

" older work" - go way back and you will see pretty well everything I have done for the past 5 years. I just checked out the posts and find it hard to believe myself the journey I have taken.

Some of the things I had forgotten. Thanks to my new readers for their interest and to my old

artquilt friends -- I hope to get going again soon but right now have Christmas Knitting projects I want to finish. Shirley

I finished another

Underwater coral scene -- It is the first time I have worked on my wall hangings for sometime and it was fun to do this one. I had started it last year so it is nice to get it finished.

It is rough edged applique and thread painting, with some hand dyed fabric.

I hope you enjoy it!

My original designed sweaters. -2011

I am still doing a lot of knitting -- I just finished a turquoise and brown short sweater for a friend of mine which achieved the 'western' effect (she is a rancher near Cochrane (near Calgary) and teaches riding - It looked great on her.

I also finished the cream sweater on the right for a friend who lives in my condo building. she is very tiny and it looks good on her.

Here is a pullover I just designed and knitted for myself -- our winters are very cold and I think I will get lots of use out of it.

I can't believe how 'grey' I have gotten over the past two years -- they have been difficult to say the least and it sure does show! Things are going well now though.

I seem to be into the 'sweater' mode and have yarn for a light weight

pullover which I will start once I finish a rose colored sweater like the western one above. It is for a dear friend who

has had a major trauma in her life recently.

We are finally having a nice summer -- it is hard to believe it is August lst already. We had a very bitterly cold winter, a rainy not pleasant spring and this past week has been much better.

I am trying to swim at least 3 times a week and feel more fit than I have for awhile. I lost some weight and am trying to keep it off --

A COAT FOR ME

I love making these colored sweaters and decided I would make myself a long coat sweater.

I found a lovely soft olive green yarn for the yoke - so here it is. I am going to have to stop making these! grin.

I love being able to add colors when I feel like it and will have to figure out a different concept now that I have make 3 or 4 of these - mind you only two of them are here in town. I really like this one -- I am wider at the hips than top and finally figured out a way to work that in a drop sleeve coat -- and I added a collar as well as a Rice Stitch pattern on the yokes and sleeves.

When I am designing it sometimes takes me awhile to get it all figured out.

I incorporate crochet in all of these for the bands and if I need to adjust the width of the

pieces. I also always do a single crochet for the borders and collar - and then knit from that row. I then decide whether to crochet or knit my border. I am finding that a single crochet front border (both sides) is a bit stiffer and works best for this type of cardigan -- I also crochet the bottom border -

I am enjoying creating these knitted garments - I have been doing wall hangings for ll years and hope to get back at them but this is lots of fun for now.

We took a drive last week up to Olds Alberta and dropped in to one of the retreats I always

go to - This year, after all we have been through I felt I didn't want to leave my husband so he came with me and it was great to see my friends from Western Canada who I usually see each year.

I lost a lot of weight this past two years and am trying to keep it off (easier said than done) - so I have been walking a lot - here in the condo and just started walking with friends. My husband is doing exceptionally well and we are very thankful. It is nice to finally start getting back to normal.

I hope you like my knitted coats and sweaters! Shirley

Another one

Here is another of the same design I did for a special person in my life -- her birthday is coming

up and I wanted to do one for her. I used a

grey mottled chunky for the yoke and sleeves. I hope

she likes it - it - she likes my hats so will do a hat in the grey I think.

I'm still knitting

I just finished a cardigan in my 'coat of many colors' (my own design) -- for my sister

who lives on a beautiful lake in Ontario. I do hope she likes it. I love doing these

style sweaters as it is fun to play with the colors.

She is originally from the west and fell in love

with the Ontario autumn colors so I used a lot

of reds, oranges, browns etc. with a green yoke and lighter green border . I am thinking of doing a hat to go with it.

June lst! (hard to believe it)

As you might know from previous posts on my blog -- I belong to a wonderful group

of ladies from all over the world -- that decided we wanted to set up a Challenge group

so that we could 'reach' and learn some new techniques. The latest challenge was

a self portrait -- and what great entries we got today. I went for a straightforward

self portrait using thread painting -- check out Challenging Ourselves to see what

the girls have done. This was fun for me as it is the first time I have opened my

sewing maching since last June - so it is nice to want to work on my quilting again!

I also finished another 'coat of many colors' for a relative's birthday only this time

I knit the yoke rather than do it in crochet.

the pattern is my own design and it is greatfor

using up my worsted yarn that has been lying around for awhile.

I am making leg warmers to go with it for next winter wear.

I love designing my own sweaters and it is so

satisfying when one of my designs works out well.

More sweaters

I just finished a multi colored heavy cardigan for the evenings which can get quite chilly here

I am really happy with it . I crochet the yoke and the borders and knitted the colored intarsia pattern -- it is in knitting worsted and I think I will get quite a lot of use out of it.

I also made myself a pretty 3/4 sleeve cotton sweater with a cable down the front.

Hi everyone!

Sorry I haven't been around much lately. We have had further visits to the hospital but things are under control and looking very good for us.

I haven't been able to get my sewing machine out as I had hoped - maybe this next week.

I have plans and hopes to join in the next challenge for our Challenging ourselves group.

We are to do a self portrait - I have started it and have decided what I hope to do and

hopefully will get it done in time. Life has been one long upset this past two years so

I am hoping we will have some 'down time ' now.

I have been knitting as you all know and during the past time since Pat was sick again and in the hospital and since, I have knit two cotton summer sweaters for myself. I design my own and

am reasonably happy with them. I have the front done on another one which I will post shortly.

-----

I watched the Royal wedding yesterday - she certainly is a classy lady - I quite enjoyed it.

-------

My heart goes out to all of you who were affected by the terrible tornadoes in the south.

I complain about the cold weather here and we have had a bad winter but it makes me

realize how lucky we are. I pray for all who have been made homeless and for the families of

those who lost their lives.

Challenging ourselves

I was unable to join in the challenge in the Challenging ourselves group due to my husband's

illness but what a great job the ladies in the group have done for the 4th Challenge.

We have some new members and I do hope you will all go and checkout the blog showing the challenges.

This is a group we organized from members of the Learningfa group who wanted to

expand their abilities and to challenge themselves to try new things. I am so impressed with the different challenges and different results. The picture shown is done by my friend Margaret

Shipley from Saskatchewan who just joined the group. She is a very talented lady and I love her challenge! The subject was "Orange, purple and blue' check out the other finished pieces!

We take turns picking out a theme so check out the archives for the different challenges.

------

Speaking of my husband -- he is doing very well, slowly getting back to normal after major heart surgery and then having to go back the next day for repair to the first surgery. He is

doing better every day little steps at a time -- and both of us are very optimistic.

It is so good to have him home after 45 days in the hospital - (most of these BEFORE the surgery due to complications -- I have so much to be thankful for.

I am still knitting but got my sewing machine out yesterday and hope to make a basket as soon as a summer sweater in cotton yarn for me, is completed.

We had a HUGE dump of snow on Sunday - and what a mess! It is finally melting but they are expecting flooding as so much snow and quick melting today. I will be so glad to have spring arrive at last. We have our first robins and they are really shivering. Shirley

Isn't she sweet?

She loves the clothes I make for her -- She

liked the ruffles and especially liked the

sweater with the hat. Both fit her perfectly and

she is 'going to wear them to school'.

It is a fairly nice day here in Alberta- although

a bit cloudy. We have had a terrible March and

hopefully April will be better and we will see

some spring.

I am a bit tired as my husband is having a lot of difficulty sleeping after his heart surgery. It is hard to believe that it is 6 weeks since he

had the surgery - but it is a slow improvement. It appears that sleep deprivation is quite common after major valve surgery so I am hoping he will be able to sleep much better in the next months. He is doing well aside from that. I am just thankful he is home with me.