Botanist Hat Kit Giveaway!

UPDATE 12.18.15: Congratulations to winner, Stephanie! Stephanie, check your email. -------

Thanks for all the love for my new design, the Botanist Hat!

The wonderful folks over at Mrs. Crosby caught wind of the new design and they've generously offered up a kit to one lucky winner! Answer the below trivia question correctly in the comments section (answer can be found on the Mrs. Crosby blog) and automatically be entered to win. You'll get a digital download of the pattern from me and yarn from Mrs. Crosby to make your very own Botanist Hat!

What is the first name of Mrs. Crosby's beloved husband?

A winner will be chosen at random on Friday, December 18 and posted here on the blog. You have until midnight on Friday EST to answer.

Thanks to our friends over at Mrs. Crosby for being awesome!

Wedding Bells

There's nothing quite like your wedding day! We've all seen stories and Ravelry projects where people make their own wedding dress, but this particular crocheted version made for just $70 in 8 months by 22-year old Abbey Ramirez-Bodley is very sweet. You look beautiful, Abbey! Original article here.

Bride Spends 8 Months Crocheting Her Own $70 Wedding Dress, And It Looks Like A Million Dollars

by Julija Televičiūtė 

When a 22-year-old Abbey Ramirez-Bodley from Arkansas city, U.S. couldn’t find a wedding dress in her budget, she decided to make one herself. Her aunt, who taught her how to crochet when she was 3 years old, kindly agreed to help. On October 17th, after 8 months of hard work, Ramirez-Bodley walked down the aisle in the dress of her dreams which only cost her $70, plus $100 for a green dress underneath.

“Making something with your own hands out of love is very special on the most important day of your life,” Ramirez-Bodley told Mashable. For the brides-to-be out there, she has one piece of advice to give: “Start early and don’t get frustrated. The outcome is worth all the work.”

22-year-old Abbey Ramirez-Bodley was struggling to find a wedding dress in her price range

Image credits: Julie Graham Photography

She was looking for a vintage-style wedding gown but everything she liked was over $1,000

So she bought $70 worth of cotton yarn and decided to make one herself

Her aunt taught her how to crochet when she was only 3 years old

“Making something with your own hands out of love is very special on the most important day of your life”

It took her 8 months to make the dress

“When I put it on, I was, for one, amazed that it looked exactly like what I thought it would look like in my head”

“It was amazing. It was emotional. [Especially] when you put that much time and love into something”

Botanist Hat

UPDATE 12.14.15: Congratulations to winner, Kathy W! Kathy, check your email. ---------------

Close your eyes, hold hands, have a bit of a kumbaya moment, take a deep breath and say it with me now, dear readers... Knitted hat weather.

It's here. I love knitted hat weather. Love it.

Mornings are insane for everyone, no matter what your career is, what your commute is like, if you have children, pets or significant others to wrangle, but I always take a moment to dig through the giant pile of knitted hats in the front closet and choose one that will make my morning a bit brighter, a bit warmer and a bit less crazy. Knitted hats can set the mood for the day. Feeling blah? Grab the gray cabled one. Having a happy day? Go with the bold rainbow stripes. A good rule of thumb is you can never have too many hand knit hats.

With that in mind, I'd like to introduce you to the Botanist Hat. With 2 stunning shades of Mrs. Crosby's Steamer Trunk and a Victorian-inspired ginkgo leaf fair isle design, this hat brings a bit of warm weather delight to your noggin on a chilly winter's day.

Knitting up on US 6 needles, this hat flies off the needles. A 100% superwash merino wool, I love the crisp ply on this yarn, which really made the fair isle stitches stand up on their own and look their best. At 164 yards, you'll need a hank of each color and Mrs. Crosby does not disappoint. I chose one of my favorite color pairings of cranberry and turquoise using Hollywood Cerise and Sunset Regatta, but with so many wonderful color offerings, the choice is yours. One of the best things about fair isle knitting (and I see this time and time again since I teach it so frequently at my LYS) is even though a group is knitting the same exact project, by choosing the colors that suit you or your lucky recipient, you can completely change the look. What about Winter Wheat and Red Kind Radish? Golden Butter and Midnight Aubergine? Try something out of your comfort zone!

Starting with corrugated ribbing then going directly into the fair isle ginkgo design, this slouchy hat comes together quickly at the end with spiral decreases. Designed to be unisex, ginkgo is the only living species in the division Ginkgophyta (all others being extinct) and is recognizably similar to fossils dating back 270 million years! Native to China, the tree is widely cultivated and was introduced early to human history and has various uses in traditional medicine and as a source of food. There's something elegant about the ginkgo leaf and I've been wanting to turn it into a fair isle design for a while.

Hats are the perfect knitted gift because they fit everyone. You don't have to worry about bust size or arm length, everyone has a head and that head can get cold once the cold weather sets in. They're perfect for last-minute knits and always appreciated.

Let's give a copy of this pattern away, shall we? Answer the below trivia question correctly and automatically be entered to win! Contest open to readers worldwide and you'll be contacted by me via email. A winner will be chosen at random on Monday, December 14th.

Where is the largest ginkgo farm in the world?

Download the Botanist Hat here.

A Move & Embroidered Landscapes

Things here on the blog have been a bit quiet, mainly because in between spraining my left wrist and coming down with (another round of) bronchitis, we moved locally over the weekend. The annoying thing about moving is there are simply no short cuts. EVERYTHING you own in the world must be gone through, donated, thrown away or kept, chucked into boxes, moved by a bunch of random strangers and unpacked into an unfamiliar space. You're left with an empty tape gun dispenser, a graveyard of broken-down boxes, sanity frazzled and a general feeling of whiplash. Local moves seem particularly insulting because you're not moving far, but it's really no less work. So we moved. We're in a home that's ours, we're by a lake, I have a real office (instead of a closet) and while my sanity remains slightly frazzled as I try to unpack with a 4-year-old who thinks "helping" is putting stuff back into boxes, we're pretty excited to start this new chapter. We left a place that was 900 square feet with two adults, a child and a dog (not to mention my yarn and fabric stash). It was difficult and we always felt cramped. My dad aptly said "you have elbow room now." Elbow room, indeed.

I have a few new things to share with you over the next week or so, but I just got my computer up and running, my command central set up and while it'll take me a while to fully unpack, this place feels like home. It feels like home in a way no other place we've ever lived (and there have been many) has. My brain has been humming with new ideas and things I want to try out, my hands are dying to get back to my sewing machine and the OCD part of my brain is begging to get my yarn stash organized, but for now, I'd like to share this amazing article I read a few days ago that stopped me in my tracks and made me say "wow" out loud... Original article posted here.

New Embroidered Landscapes That Cascade off the Wall by Ana Teresa Barbozaby Christopher Jobson 

Ana Teresa Barboza (previously) produces embroidered landscapes with wandering streams that break the fourth wall, jumping off their 2D structures and cascading to the floor in waterfalls of blues and greens. The remaining landscape Barboza keeps in black and white, focusing the viewer’s eye on the vibrant colors that compose the rushing water rather than the surrounding mountains and rocks.

Recently the artist has begun to embroider on top of images, collaborating with photographs instead of producing the entire scene. For these particular pieces her yarn remains organized when it trails off the work, each color tightly wound into separate spools that rest above or beside the piece. In this way it seems as if she is neatly categorizing the shades of the ocean, dissecting the hues that comprise the water’s high and lowlights.

With this focus on color it makes sense that the Peruvian artist has an education in painting, she studied the subject at Pontifical Catholic University in her hometown of Lima. The work featured here was originally in her solo exhibition “Volver a Mirar” at Now Contemporary Art in Miami, Florida in late 2014. You can see more of her embroidered land and seascapes on her website here.