Everything's Coming up Cupcakes!
I've been knitting cupcake hats, cupcake mittens, even a cupcake scarf! It's pretty much all I've knitted for a month or so. Here are some pictures of my work.


I love this color combination. The cream base really offsets the pink. The mitten pattern I made up. I just followed a regular mitten pattern and added the cupcake top!



This little teal hat turned out cute.


This was a special order for a customer. She ordered cupcake hats for her girls, and then wanted something equally cute for her boys. I invented this little snowman hat. I think it turned out pretty well!


This little yellow cupcake hat almost looks good enough to eat!


Kids aren't the only ones who like cupcakes. This set was made for an adult. She wanted convertible mittens, so I had to invent this pattern for convertible cupcake mittens!



This is one of my customer's daughter wearing my cupcake hat.


And this is my daughter modeling the cupcake scarf I made. The color choice was one a customer special ordered. I think it would look really cute in alternating pastel colors.


Here are two cupcake hats I knit. I use acrylic yarn to give the items wash-ability and to make them hypoallergenic. I myself am very sensitive to animal fibers. They make me itch like crazy.

This is a project I've been working on for several months. It is a red cabled sweater for my oldest daughter, who is going to college in a cold place. I'm quite proud of this sweater because I designed it myself. It turned out pretty well. It was shorter than she wanted it, so I added ribbing to both the sleeves and the bottom of the sweater. I even put thumb holes in the sleeves so she could use them like fingerless mitts-which she loves!


This is supposed to show the detail of the cables I did. There is an hourglass shaped motif in the center, with snaky cables on either side of it. On the sleeves are double rows of snaky cables.

Hey, I just wanted to give you all a heads-up. I've been making how to knitting videos on ehow.com. I'm going to be adding to these pretty often, so check back frequently. The videos are under hobbies and games-crafts-knitting. My userid at ehow.com is krndpx. I hope you find them helpful!

We participate in a local Farmers Market, selling our honey and I also sell knitted items and lotion that I make. Anyway, one of the other vendors approached me one day, asking if I could knit a sweater and matching hat in fall colors for a 3-year-old nephew of hers. I agreed to do it, and this is the result. I am not naturally attracted to oranges and greens, so it was a good stretching experience for me. I really like how it turned out, but I must admit to having to knit a few pink and blue small things once in awhile as I did this project just to take a break from the color theme!

The hat

The sweater--knit in the round up to the sleeve openings. Then I knit the front and back separately. It was a little tricky making sure the stripes ended up the same in the front and the back!

I've just recently started a little store at Etsy.com, where I'm selling some things I make. My user name is Kreative Karen Designs. The link is www.kreativekarendesigns.etsy.com Take a look!

I finished these little booties today and had to share the picture! Aren't they just too cute?! They're pretty little, probably a US size 1. I have to try making more of these. They knit up pretty quickly.



The pattern for these adorable little booties can be found here

Our county fair was last month, and I entered several knitted items. Here are pictures of them. I got blue ribbons on everything, and a couple of sweepstakes too!


This is a little blue baby sweater. I created the pattern myself, adapting a standard baby sweater by adding the fancy stitches. I like how it turned out.


This is one of the ear flap hats that sell so well at farmers market. This one has cute corkscrews at the top.


This is the Americana bag seen already on this blog.


This is one of the cell phone cases I designed and knitted. The flower is from Nicky Epstein's book, Knitted Embellishments.


This is my friend's baby's sweater that I knitted around Christmas time last year. I was very pleased to receive a sweepstakes ribbon for it. I was going to enter it in the state fair, but missed the submission deadline. Maybe next year.

Someone inquired about the pattern I used for this little sweater and hat. It can be found here

I haven't updated my blog in a few months. It's been unbelievably busy! I haven't stopped knitting, however, so I'm posting a couple of pictures of baby sweaters (again) that I've knitted for friends with new babies.



This one I knitted in a hurry. I'd just finished the sweater below, and my friend had already had her baby, so I made a vest--no sleeves! It went pretty fast. I used the same stitch pattern as the sweater below, which has a twisted mock cable every few stitches.



Every pregnant woman I know is having a boy...what's with that? Anyway, this sweater is made using a camo print acrylic yarn. I know a lot of people don't like acrylic, but I am so sensitive to animal fibers, I just can't imagine putting something I find that itchy on a baby! On the other hand, acrylic feels nice and soft to me, so that's what I've leaned towards.

Here is another little baby sweater I have made to give away to a new baby. This one is the first time I've installed a zipper in one of my sweaters. It is also the first hood I had to "wing," as I didn't have a matching pattern for it. I used a basic sweater pattern and added a mock cable stitch pattern. I like how it turned out. It could work for a girl or a boy.

After a few very warm, spring-like days, we're having a drizzly, chilly day that reminds me very much of the Oregon coast. It even smelled ocean-like on my walk this morning. Tomorrow the sun will be back, and it will be somewhat warmer. We really do need the moisture, so I ought not to begrudge the weather.

Meanwhile, I've been knitting. I tend to start a lot of projects and switch between them, so that I finish several projects at around the same time too, but it takes awhile.


So, here is my daughter holding up a bag that I knitted. The handle is wrapped around her neck. It is in the pre-felted stage in the picture, so it is HUGE! It's in the washer being felted right now, and getting much smaller. It's another Americana bag, hopefully the yarns will felt more evenly this time. I wasn't completely satisfied with the results of the last one.


And here's another baby sweater that I designed. I used KnitPro to make a pattern out of a photo of a horse and fence. The baby's parents own horses, and they loved the sweater. I only hope there are enough cool days that he can wear it before outgrowing it! I knit it out of Falk yarn.

This is the purse my sister-in-law asked me to knit for her. She designed it and I knitted it. I hope she likes it.

This is the latest of the baby sweaters I've been making. I duplicate-stitched the train onto it after finishing the sweater. It made the sweater a little stiff around the train, but I think it will be fine.


And here is the back of the same sweater. The baby it is intended for was born just yesterday! He's a big baby, over 8 pounds, so he might just get to wear his sweater this year. I really like it that women can get ultrasounds and find out the gender of the baby before it is born. Makes it easier for me to knit sweaters ahead of time! It's knitted from Red Heart worsted weight yarn.


This cardigan was made from Lion Brand Homespun. I like the colorway. The picture here appears a little more blue than it really is. More green in reality.


This is how I spent the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. I love it! It was a little hard to part with it, but I knitted it for my best friend's new little daughter, Sarah. The yarn I used was Red Heart Soft Baby, and the pattern was a freebee that was on the rack by the yarn at WalMart. It was not an easy stitch pattern, but it wasn't all that hard, either.


Here's a close-up so that you can see the details of the stitch pattern. It is a cable alternated with garter stitch and a fountain stitch.


This is my latest ball band discloth creation. Nice, bright colors against a black background. Like it?

Happy New Year! I knitted this cute green purse from a free pattern on Knit Pick's website. I like these handles with this purse.