Working the Crown on the Lace Beanie

I really love the lace beanie I started working on last weekend although the crown of the beanie has been bugging me all week.  There's just something about it I wish was different.  Friday I started knitting a beanie with some multicoloured brown yarn and kept thinking about how else I could knit the crown.

I know I didn't want the crown to look like my slouchy hat with distinct lines of decreases but wasn't sure how else I could knit it.  Saturday morning I was up at the crack of dawn and decided to do some knitting instead of just lazing around in bed.  I decided to try something and it has turned out beautifully.  You can see below the new crown of the lace beanie and I just love it.

Brown multicolour lace beanie.

I ended up knitting 2 more beanies over the weekend and absolutely love the way the crown looks.

Rose and multicoloured lace beanie.

I have bought some lovely yarn to knit more of them; it should be arriving this week.  I can't wait for it to come.  Just looking forward to knitting more lace beanies and adding them to the shop.

Lace Beanies

I have been working on these lace beanies lately.  I had to unravel and rework it because it was starting to look more like a slouchy hat than a beanie.  After a few tries I finally got the right amount of stitches and number of rows for the beanie look I wanted.

Isn't the finished one just cute?

Grape and red lace beanie

New Colours for the Lace Scarf

I have been knitting new colours for the lace scarf.  Below is the tangerine colour, so lovely and silky looking which you can't quite see in the photo.

Tangerine lace scarf in progress

I have already added in my Etsy shop the lace scarf in red and off-white.  The red is a really beautiful shade of dark red, no hint of Santa Claus red at all!

Red Lace Scarf

Off-White Lace Scarf

I have more yarn in my stash to knit a few more lace scarves and I am looking forward to knitting these colours, especially the emerald green!  It is such a beautiful green.  The lace stitch is such a simple one ( it's only 4 rows ) I can easily knit it on the métro going to work.

Emerald green, rose and celery green yarn.

The Knitting Pattern Shop is Open!

I have had so many requests for the patterns to my creations, especially the cozies, that I have opened up a knitting pattern shop.  It is called Knits By Nat Designs and right now there's only one pattern in it.  It's the pattern for the Sweet Violets Coffee Cup Cozy.

Sweet Violets Coffee Cup Cozy

Writing patterns is a lot more difficult than I imagined.  I keep wondering if I forgot something or if I'm putting in too much information.  I also intend to have the patterns available in French as well.  Now, I just need to post in my French blog.

This week I have renewed with an oldie but goodie lace creation I knit for my shop a few years back.  It's knit with a Little Arrowhead Lace but I find it makes such a lovely spring scarf.  They should be available in my shop soon.

Little Arrowhead Lace Scarf in the works

Productive Saturday Morning

Yesterday after work a co-worker was asking me if I at least sleep in on weekends and I replied that I don't really.  I love waking up early, knitting in bed for a few hours and then getting up for breakfast.  I usually get up when I start getting really hungry.

This morning I finished knitting two hats; one of them was on hold while I knit the second.  I often do this when I realize I don't have enough rows to knit while going to work; I'll just start something new to knit.  These are multi-coloured versions of  the Lace Striped Slouchy Hat.

Multi-coloured lace striped slouchy vegan hats

I also started working on a new headband, simple garter stitch that will be adorned with vintage or cute buttons. The first one I knit I found a bit too wide, ended up ripping it and now I love the new width.  With all the buttons I have I'm going to need to go button shopping for the navy headband.  I haven't found any in my stash that I find look great on it.

Vegan headbands

I should be taking pictures of the hats and headbands to add them to my shop as quickly as possible.  This is one part of the business that I find more of a chore.  I wish I had an assistant who loves taking pictures and writing listings while I spend my time knitting.

Why Blame it on the Vegans?

There's an article that appeared in the Guardian a few weeks back about quinoa.  The title of it is : Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa?

Why vegans?  I doubt very much there are enough of us to create the high demand for quinoa.  I personally haven't eaten any in a while although I did just buy a big bag last week.  I know a few co-workers who actually eat quinoa more than I do.  And they aren't anywhere near being vegan.

There are also a few misconceptions in the article.  One of them being the mistake everyone does about soy.  The majority of it is used to feed animals, not to make tofu or soymilk.  (It was corrected the next day in a footnote.)

Another misconception is about depending on food coming from other countries  :

 "rummage through the shopping baskets of vegetarians and vegans swiftly clocks up the food miles, a consequence of their higher dependency on products imported from faraway places. From tofu and tamari to carob and chickpeas, the axis of the vegetarian shopping list is heavily skewed to global."

Has the author even spoken to vegans or vegetarians? Or even done her research?  Most of my shopping list is not for food coming from around the globe.  A lot of it is produced and transformed here in Canada.  According to Pulse Canada :

Canada has emerged to become the world's largest exporter of lentil and pea, and a top five bean exporter.

I understand there are issues with food consumption but this article just added to the confusion instead of helping to understand the issues. 

Actually, there are issues with a lot of what Westerners consume since they are usually made in Third World countries by people who are paid a pittance and work grueling hours.  Will the author stomach the unpalatable truth about her computer?

Organizing My Coffee Cup Cozies

I may have finished this One Cup Cozy a Day project last September but I now have a bunch of cozies that were just bundled haphazardly in big plastic bins.  They weren't colour-coordinated at all which made it very hard for me to find the cozy when I sold one.

The article in Ladies' Home Journal's February 2013 issue means I have been getting more sales and looking for the correct cozy has been a pain.  Looking through my stuff I found these shoe-sized plastic bins and seperated them by colour.

Red, Blue and Multicoloured Coffee Cup Cozies

The multicoloured red one in the middle bin is one of the cozies featured in the article.

Pinks, Blue, Lilac and Purple Coffee Cup Cozies

I had to seperate the blues because they didn't all fit in one plastic bin.

Green, Yellow, Orange and Brown Coffee Cup Cozies

This one is a bigger plastic bin since I ran out of the smaller ones and probably would have needed at least 2 more. 

Now, it's certainly going to be a whole lot easier for me to find the cozies when I sell them in my shop.