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It might be almost Autumn here in Australia, but it’s so warm that we’re starting seeds and propagating like the gardeners in the Northern Hemisphere, so I’ve let myself be swept away by the spring mood. On today’s podcast I have an outrageously cute selection of spring and Easter themed dream projects to share with you. I might not be able to resist a few new cast-ons myself.
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The Handmade Sock Society 4
The Handmade Sock Society 4 has begun; the first two patterns, The Curling Mist Socks and The Picnic Blanket Socks, are available now with 4 more mystery sock patterns to follow each month until July!
The Handmade Sock Society 4 on Ravelry
The Handmade Sock Society 4 on Gumroad
#thehandmadesocksociety on Instagram
#thss4 on Instagram
#thehandmadesocksociety4 on Instagram
The Curling Mist Socks FO Thread
The Picnic Blanket Socks FO Thread
Free Curious Handmade Workshops
Simply Curious Socks: Free Beginner Sock Knitting Pattern & Workshop
The Spindrift Shawl: Free Beginner Shawl Knitting Pattern & Workshop
Knit 20 for 2021
Knit20for2021 Challenge Details
March #knit20for2021 FO Thread
#knit20for2021 on Instagram
Cute Spring Patterns for Knitters
Mini-Sock Yarn Bunny by Susan B. Anderson on Ravelry
Bunny Love & Extras by Susan B. Anderson on Ravelry
Bunny Odile by by Cinthia Vallet
From Cinthia on Instagram
#sadiesouris on Instagram
Bunny Cubes by Heather Sebastian on Ravelry
Tiny Chickens Free Pattern by Anna of Mochimochi Land
Adorn Gift Bags by Curious Handmade on Ravelry
Plus a Cute Spring Pattern for Sewists
Liberty + Linen Bunny Pattern by The Strawberry Thief
The Strawberry Thief on Instagram
Curious Handmade Knitting Pattern for any season
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Show transcript:
Welcome to the Curious Handmade podcast. You’re listening to Episode 330. This podcast is all about crafting a life of happiness and creativity. I’m your host, Helen, and you can find me on Ravelry as HellsBells, and on social media as Curious Handmade. You can also find full show notes and transcript on my website at curioushandmade.com. I’d like to say a big thank you to my sponsor, A Yarn Story.
Hello, and welcome to the show. Today, I have lots of knitting chat, knitting and crafty chatter, and I have a cheerful episode full of some of the cutest crafty projects I could find. I am thinking about Easter coming up. We have a three week holiday here and there are lots of spring festivals, Passover, and the Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere is tomorrow, March 20th, Ostara. And in the Southern Hemisphere, of course, it’s the Autumn Equinox. So we can start getting very excited about knitting season starting down here. And I had a look at what other festivals happen around the world at this time of year. And one of the ones that stood out to me was the Holi festival in India, which is the Festival of Colours and it also marks the arrival of spring. It’s predominantly a Hindu festival, but it’s also celebrated by many religions.
When I was reading about the Spring Equinox, it said, “It’s a good time of year to start your seedlings and celebrate the balance of light and dark as the sun begins to tip the scales and the return of new growth is near.” I’m going along with that, even though it’s coming into autumn for us, because it’s so warm here all around the year. It’s also a good time to plant seedlings here in Queensland. So I have been working on that with Lexi. She loves gardening and also propagating some of my house plants as well. I think I’m going to have another go at getting some tomato plants going. I had a crazy cherry tomato plant that took over our front garden last year and it was so prolific that I couldn’t keep up with how many cherry tomatoes were coming on. So I’m going to definitely give that another go.
In crafting news, I’ve been mentioning it in the past few episodes without really explaining what I’m working on, I started looking at my many, many scrap yarns and I have an awful lot of especially fingering white leftovers from many samples and projects over the years, as well as some full skeins that I probably won’t use. And so I thought I would make some baskets of minis. So I’ve been having lots of fun over the last few weeks making lots and lots of little mini skeins and mini balls from my scraps mostly. And then I decided that they needed baskets. So I’ve been working on making some fabric basket for the minis. So you have little nests of eggs. That’s the way I look at them anyway. And I’m not sure how many I will have. I have a few at the moment and they’re really time consuming to make.
I’ve been having a lot of fun with it, but I’m not sure if I will have enough for a tiny little update perhaps on Instagram and the next week or so. I’m thinking I’ll give some as gifts to my knitting friends. So if I have enough to do a little mini update, I will probably do that on Instagram and just do it very low key, because I won’t have very many. But I’d quite like to share them and have other people being able to use the minis because I have so much that I can’t use it all. Well I’ve done some in 20 gram sets. So what I’m thinking is that I’ll have them as sets of 24 , kinda of advent calendar size, so that they could be used for something like a Habitation Throw or other advent-sized project. And then I have little baskets of five gram-ish weight of minis. So they’re quite tiny.
And I’m thinking what I’ll do with those is have 20 minis in a basket so that it comes up to about 100 grams, maybe 22 or something just to make it up to 100 grams so that with ends and things, if you’re doing a magic knot or something, you could make a shawlette or something like that with a little basket of minis. And so yes. So that’s what I’ve been working on. It’s been so much fun and the whole family has been getting into it, winding minis with me. The girls haven’t been super productive with it, but they’ve definitely shown an interest. And mum and another friend have been helping me as well. It’s been quite a fun communal project to work on over the last few weeks and it’s been super satisfying to use my scraps and put them into a form where they could be used and appreciated.
And I’ve been very much enjoying having the memories of past projects as I go through my big boxes of minis. And this got me thinking about other cute little projects. And so I’ve just had a little bit of a look on Ravelry for some inspiration and I searched for bunny projects to start with. And of course, Susan B. Anderson, who is the master of cute things and cute toys, has various bunny patterns. I was looking at the Mini-Sock Yarn Bunny by Susan B. Anderson and also Bunny Love & Extras, which is another cute bunny with a little cardi and some little carrots, which I think is super adorable. They’re both cute, but I particularly like Bunny Love & Extras. I think you can get Bunny Love as a pattern by itself where the extras just has a few extra accessories.
And one of the top patterns that came up is Bunny Odile by Cinthia Vallet. And if you’ve listened to past episodes, you will have heard me talking about the Sadie Souris Mouse pattern and kit that I have and have very high in my queue of things to make. And Bunny Odile is from the same designer and family and similar level of cuteness. She just is adorable. So I’m not sure if I can justify making a Bunny Odile before I make my Sadie Souris from my kit that I have. But I’m quite tempted to celebrate spring and Easter. Also, I saw a cute pattern, which is a really easy pattern I think, it looks quite easy, called Bunny Cubes by Heather Sebastian. And I’m wondering if this might be something that Lexi could knit. She is always wanting to knit things and she’s learning the skills still so she’s not much beyond knitting purl stitches. She recently learnt to purl. So I think this pattern calls for both knitting and purling. But they’re really, really cute little bunnies, bunny cubes.
And I also looked up chickens and there are heaps of cute chicken patterns as well. And the one that I really liked is Tiny Chickens by Anna of Mochimochi Land. And this is a free pattern on her website and yeah, it’s just called Tiny Chickens. They’re teeny, teeny, teeny little things. So I might have a go at knitting them. They’re just so cute. I don’t know if I can do something so fiddly, but I’m sure I can. I have new reading glasses so I can probably attempt something fine like that now. Apparently my prescription was a little bit… Well quite a bit too weak, so no wonder I was struggling with reading and sewing.
As I was looking on Ravelry, it occurred to me that I’d mentioned my own pattern, the Adorn Gift Bags, just a super cute little pattern for gift knitting. So if you’re thinking about maybe you could have a little Adorn Gift Bag of little eggs would be quite cute to give to somebody, or you could pop a lavender sachet in there and that would be a lovely gift for someone. And they call for about 15 grams of yarn. So a 20 gram mini would be plenty to knit a little gift bag. I saw recently on Instagram, The Strawberry Thief, where I get my Hexie subscription from for my hexagon English paper piecing quilt that I’m working on very, very slowly, published a pattern called Liberty & Linen Bunny Pattern. And I just saw them, they’re so cute. And what’s not to love about bunnies made out of liberty fabric and linen? They’re just a very endearing, simple style. So that’s one for the sewists. I think they’re probably small enough that you could make them by hand if you wanted to. Of course, on the machine it would be faster. And that pattern is five Australian dollars. The Strawberry Thief is based in Perth, I think, in Western Australia. And they have a lot of lovely things. So I’m constantly drooling over their Instagram feed. Just the description of them is quite cute actually. They say, “Our Liberty & Linen Bunnies make the perfect gift for little loved ones and are also a fun and simple project to get them involved in sewing.” So that maybe something I could do with Lexi as well. This project is fantastic for scrap busting. You can have a whole fluffle of Liberty bunnies stitched in an afternoon. Yes, a fluffle is the real word for a group of wild rabbits. How adorable is that? I think pretty adorable.
So there you go. So that’s my little roundup of cute things for you this week, cute spring things. And if you’re participating in Knit 20 for 2021, perhaps gives you some inspiration for the toy prompt and perhaps gift prompt as well, and maybe even scrappy project. So yeah, some ideas for your Knit 20 for 2021 for March, although March is passing us by very quickly. Perhaps, April. Easter’s in April this year. So maybe April is a nice time to make some little bunnies or chickens. Also, just a little announcement, in the next few weeks, we will be launching The Shawl Society for this year. It’s the fifth season. And if you would like to be the first to hear about what’s happening with The Shawl Society, please do sign up to my newsletter. You can do that by my website.
And if you would like to get in the shawl knitting mood and haven’t tried one of my shawl designs yet, you can get a free shawl pattern if you sign up for the Spindrift Workshop, the Spindrift Shawl workshop, and then you will get a free shawl pattern for the Spindrift Shawl, which is a great little shawlette one skein project, as well as some emails with shawl knitting tips. And if you sign up for either my sock or shawl workshop, you will also be included in my general newsletter to stay up to date with everything that’s happening. And of course, you’re welcome to sign up for either workshop, either or both workshops, and then unsubscribe if you don’t want to hear from me after that. That’s absolutely fine. But when you’re signing up for those workshops, you do get included initially to hear all the latest news.
We’ve been having such a lovely time with the Handmade Sock Society this year. So far, two of the sock patterns have been published, the Curling Mist Socks and the Picnic Blanket Socks. And I’ve been loving seeing all your projects popping up around the place and gorgeous, gorgeous photos. Thank you so much for sharing. And so I’m really looking forward to starting The Shawl Society. And I hope that lots of shawl knitters will have their turn. That’s all the news I have for you this week. Just before I sign off, I would like to thank my sponsor, Meadow Yarn.
Thanks for joining me today for a chat. I hope you have a wonderful week. Happy Equinox tomorrow, whether you’re in the Northern Hemisphere and starting spring or down under with me and going into autumn. Both seasons are equally exciting. And yeah, happy knitting. I’ll talk to you again soon.
