Flagel Knitting Files

I last left you with some of the pieces of the Gramps baby sweater.  Here it is complete with its green ribbing  and the cowl collar.  (Paul loves this colour combiniation so I think I'll have to find something to make for him using them.  But he's a BIG guy and a sweater might be too much for me.   I'll figure out something appropriate for him though, perhaps socks.)  Mike with my finished Gramps sweater The buttons were the real find in finishing it, at least for me.  I traveled to Dressew on West Hastings in Vancouver.  Over the years it has become my go to place when it comes to all things crafty. Their location is on the fringe of a seedy part of Hastings Street in the infamous east side of Vancouver, but the hours of operation are only during the day so I have never felt uncomfortable walking the streets to get there. This store reminds me of the discount fabric stores found during the ...

Yesterday was a day completely devoted to doing solely what I wanted to do from 10 am to 6:30 pm.  I had been a good little worker all week and this was my reward:  Dressew, lunch at the Water Street Cafe, and Jersey Boys. I've sung the praises of the low-cost craft store, Dressew, in the past.  Tena was not able to find the leather buttons she wanted for one of her sweaters and I knew I'd be visiting Dressew on Saturday.   I offered to check out their buttons for her giving me a mission as I walked into the store.  Here's the two sets of buttons I picked up for her. Tena's Leather-look and Hot Pink Buttons Tena was quite clear she wanted dark coloured leather buttons for one of her Gramps sweater.  So selecting from the multiple options was easy; I just picked the darkest colour I could find.  Although these are leather-look buttons, (Tena said it was fine for this baby sweater to not necessarily be real) the most impressive part is they came ...

The Advent Calendar continues to take up my knitting time and other times as well.  One of the most important acquisitions to complete this project is the white background and green tree and pockets to hold the ornaments. This is the Yarn Harlot´s version so you have a clue what I am talking about. Yarn Harlot´s Advent Calendar; photo credit Stephanie Pearle-McPhee The downtown Vancouver store called Dressew has always been my go to shop for making these types of purchases in the past, but I am in the Twin Cities.  After asking around I found a store called SR Harris , another discount fabric store.  Where Dressew is a department store, SR Harris is a warehouse.  That means it was huge with bolts and bolts of all types of fabric.  It also carries buttons, ribbons, thread and decals, but boy finding just exactly what one needs without help is a challenge.  But within an hour I located the green and white felt I needed, plus all the other accessories...

Today will cover a few things that have been happening here in our home. Last week we had a house guest, Paul's brother, Mark.  A good time exploring the Lower Mainland was had by all, plus we ate out, drank at home and saw some of the wonderful natural sights.  Mark left on Sunday and on Monday afternoon this lovely box of roses showed up at our door.  As I write the air in the living room is filled with the smell of freshly cut long-stemmed roses.  Thank you, Mark. There were even drops of water that looked like dew on the petals!  Another thing that happened is my impatience in waiting to return to Minneapolis to add the closures to Waterfall .  As we knocked around downtown Vancouver last week I found my way to Dressew where I purchased another set of closures.  Here is a look at my Waterfall again with the closures attached.  This has a special someone in mind, but I will let it be a surprise. Now it is complete. Mara has be...

Tena has her first Gramps sweater done.  Have a look: Tena's Gramps This is such a beautiful colour combination.  The main part of the sweater is made with Madelinetosh Superwash Merino wool in a colour called Plaid Blanket.  (It can be hard to tell how wonderful a variegated yarn can be from such a small photo like below) Madelinetosh - Plaid Blanket I believe the accent colour is another Madelinetosh called Baltic. Madelinetosh - Baltic And there are the leather or leather-look buttons  I picked up at Dressew  (Tena believes they are real leather, apparently I'm not yet completely convinced they are.).   Either way they certainly complete the Gramps look. Tena was a bit reluctant to let me take this photo because the sweater wasn't totally finished.  So she got to see first hand how the "sausage is made" with regard to my blog photos.   I often use tricks that the camera will help hide, like tucking all the loose ...

I spent one of my days of this long weekend downtown Vancouver.  More specifically in Gastown.  A car had to be delivered to friends disembarking from a cruise ship and since they had all their belongings in it ready to move into their West End apartment, I simply drove it to them.  They could then go directly to set up house and I'd be able to take the bus home.  But more specifically, I had time to spend downtown! With time to browse, I took in the typical haunt of Dressew and then decided to spend more time in the specialty shop called Button Button .  The store claims to be the only button store west of Toronto devoted to buttons.  This shop sells only buttons and you'd wonder how they can make a go of it, its claim to fame is it carries an exceptional number of buttons. If you believe the New York Times , Button Button carries over 1 million buttons.  In 2007 Marc Weingarten, from the NY   Times, wrote about this rather small ...

It was time to move forward with the fruit project.  Over the last couple of days I created an orange and a pear and am very happy with both.  The orange is very orange in colour and the pear is that Bartlett type that isn´t quite ripe.  BTW, I haven´t given credit to Susie Johns, it is from her book about fruit that I am getting all these patterns.  (Check out my Knitting Books  page for details.) There was a lemon started, in fact, it is all but complete but the colour needs to be lemon yellow and mine is more golden in colour.  Back to the drawing board on that one.    I am also thinking about a bunch of Concord grapes; there is one already knit.  I just have to figure out how to make them detach from the stem.  There is more than likely a visit to Dressew in my future for Velcro dots. Note the tiny bits of stem on each of the fruit The oranges in my frig have that bit of pucker at the top. And the rather long stem on...