I finished my fingerless gloves a few weeks ago. I had a big issue with the sewn bind off because I thought it looked sloppy. I got really picky about the finishing techniques on the gloves since they’d be under such scrutiny. It wasn’t like a cowl or scarf where I’d only see it in the mirror.

I am relatively happy with them, but still wish I had better finishing techniques.

The photos are by Jason Vanderhill (who did the photographs for the yarn bombing article I wrote). I was wearing the gloves during yarn bombing and Jason took photos of us working, inadvertently getting nice photos of my fingerless gloves.

Literally.

Today was the day — the official yarnbombing of Joy Kogawa’s cherry tree. I contributed about 100 blossoms and arrived this afternoon to help install the yarn blossoms (and bark!) on the tree.

The executive director of the Historic Joy Kogawa House Society managed to get a fire engine with ladder to help install the blossoms in the higher branches. My dad also dropped off a ladder and I made my way up into the tree (I probably should have signed some sort of liability waver first, eh?).

It was a gorgeous sunny day; the first day of Spring in my mind. And the tree looked absolutely fantastic. There were well over 500 blossoms by my guess, and it was amazing to see the literary community collide with the yarn community. Fantastic day.

Photo above of me in the tree taken by my friend, Jason Vanderhill of IllustratedVancouver. Photos below taken by me.

Finishing touches on the cherry tree bark | My “tag” with one of the blossoms I made.

Finished tree full of blossoms. Even started covering the apple tree beside it and the neighbour’s tree!

A couple months ago I saw a tweet from Leanne Prain, one of the authors of the book Yarn Bombing: The Art of Knit and Crochet Graffiti. The tweet linked to the yarn bombing website and said they were organizing a yarn bombing of the Historic Joy Kogawa House’s cherry tree.

This immediately sparked my interest as it merged two of my passions—yarn and books! And I immediately knew the perfect yarn to use (from my stash too) and started crocheting blossoms.

I also had a thought— at my new internship I’ve got the chance to contribute to various magazine websites (I’m in the digital editorial department). So I mentioned the yarn bombing to Granville Magazine‘s editor, Hilary Henegar. She liked the idea and said to go ahead with the article.

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My sister was in Moncton, NB, this summer for the Explore program. She also did some travelling and spotted this tree in Halifax. She emailed it to me and I’m (finally) posting it. Bonnie wrote in the email, “This was just on a random tree in a park across the street from a church and a bank. No big deal. =D”

It looks like there’s a tag hanging off it, but I don’t think she checked. I love how the patchwork on this tag has borders on the top and bottom to unify it. Very awesome!

No, I have no knitting to show. But I do have lovely lovely yarns. Non-yarnies, look away now. Yarn-a-holics, grab a towel, you might drool.

First up, my package from The Loopy Ewe:

I decided to see what all the fuss was about and ordered some Madelinetosh and Sanguine Gryphon. Here are the close-up shots:

The Sanguine Gryphone - Skinny Bugga! Colourway: Blue Stink Bug

Madelinetosh - Tosh Sock. Colourway: Turquoise

Now, for a few weeks I’ve been stalking the updates for Wollmeise. I fell in love with this colourway “Am kalten Polar” which translates (from German) to “in the cold arctic” with colours of teal, blue, and cranberry. Beautiful.

After a few updates, some local knitters (who are also Wollmeise die-hards) suggested I get a blue grab-bag and maybe it would be in there. They said there are so many colourways, that I should just buy something from the “in stock” page and trade it on Ravelry later.

I ended up buying a skein of 100% in the colourway “Petit Poison Nr.5″ which arrived this week. It came with some European gummy bears (which I’ve had in England before) and a glove pattern called Knotty.

Oh, and I also have a “Turquoise” grab bag (1 skein) on the way. I’m curious to see what it is!

Here’s a colour close-up of Petit Poison Nr.5 (dark):

Wollmeise - Twin 100% Superwash. Colourway: Petit Poison Nr. 5 (dark)

Next up, is the yarn from Circle Craft Christmas Market. I will be doing a post dedicated to the goodies I bought at Circle Craft this year, but I decided to group all the yarn together.

I was chatting with Carmen of MelonHead Knitwear and decided to try on a slouchy hat. I had been planning on buying some yarn anyway that Carmen cards, spins, and dyes herself. But LOW AND BEHOLD the hat actually looked good on me. Hats never look good on me. My ears are always sticky-outy and my hair is weird under them since it’s so long. But this looked really good.

I picked up a skein of thick-n-thins in this gorgeous purple-fushia colour. The hat I tried on had been a green sea foam colour, and I mentioned that blue is more “me”. Carmen said she had a skein of blue that she would bring the following day for me and I got her to put the fushia skein aside. The next day we stood chatting over the yarn and she was trying to convince me to take the blue over the fushia… but I couldn’t do it. I had my heart set on both.

I was also hoping to get a skein from Indigo Moon when the other knitters came to Circle Craft on Friday night. She had a sale “Buy 4 get the 5th free” and I was thinking 4 other people might each want to buy one skein together. No such luck… and I wasn’t crazy enough about anything to purchase it alone (especially after my other Circle Craft purchases!)