Alla Hale

Learn to knit 🧶 with me this summer! Head to the link in my bio to sign up.

Ugh- this didn’t upload as a gif

Gif of purple bird flying against grey background of a tablet woven band.

Playing with double faced tablet weaving.

#bandweaving 🧶

Thank you! That’s cool!

This is lovely. How are you accomplishing the colorwork with the contiguous sleeve? Is it a new piece of yarn for each row? Intarsia in the round? Is this a cardigan knit flat?

Close-up of a sculpture of a grey lizard type of creature, showing the upper half facing slight right

Japanese paper artist Chie Hitotsuyama creates sculptures of animals using a technique involving rolled strips of wet newspaper #womensart

Pattern: modified #entrechat designed by @frogginette
Yarn: Leftover #Mokosh by @hey_mama_wolf_co

Conversation with my son, 9yo:
Son: Is that one of those Bolognese sweaters?
Me: A bolero?
Som: Yes, the kind you wear while eating Bolognese sauce!

This is a little cropped bolero I knit for C (7yo) since she has almost grown out of the one I knit her when she was 18 months old.
🧶

Colorwork mittens in teal, grey, and white. The left mitten is palm up showing the small patterns, the right one is palm down showing the Selbu roses.

Colorwork mittens in teal, grey, and white. One of the mittens is held up displaying the white picot edge across the bottom of the mitten and the full lining in white.

Colorwork mittens in teal, grey, and white. The left mitten is palm up showing the small patterns, the right one is palm down showing the Selbu roses.

The mittens ended! 🧶

I didn’t quite make the March to the Finish deadline, but they were blocking on 3/31, and all ends were snipped on 4/1.

Everyone got through the binding, and will quilt them at home.

Hand pieced coaster with two floral fabrics sewn on an off center diagonal.

I’ve been teaching outreach classes for the Textile Center, and yesterday we made sweet hand pieced quilted coasters at Nokomis library.

I think it stems from how you were raised.

Or maybe it’s birth order 🤷🏻‍♀️

I got you! These were actually out of a Latvian pattern book, but I don’t know whose hands they were intended for or what gauge they were supposed to be. Because on my 00 needles, at a gauge of 12 st/inch, I still had to cut off 1/3 of the pattern to fit my hands.

And yet they live… I have been so tempted to put this entire project in the trash can so many times. But I like the yarn too much.

Okay, last post on this: I am considering lining the mittens with a second layer inside. 🧶 Knitter logic, I guess.

Oh, and this is all on size 00 needles. I forgot the part at the beginning where I started on size 1s, and the mitten came out fit for a giant.

7/7
This leads me to now. All I have left are the cuffs. Which I will do in corrugated rib. Because that’s what knitters do.

6/ Mitten surgery ensues. This is ugly. Unpicking 3 rows of mitten hand, knitting two rows of mitten hand on the thumb, grafting, edges a mess. I almost died. But it worked out. 💪🏻

5/
Now, to attack the offending thin thumb on mitten 1: plan was to widen the opening and then pick up stitches for a new thumb. But of course, the thin thumb is one pattern repeat too low compared to the second mitten.

4/
Then I noticed the finger decreases were different on the two mittens. Ugh.😤 I ripped and redid the finger decreases on the first mitten. Three times! I finally had matching tops with decreases beginning on the same row.

3/
I took them out of timeout and started the second mitten, hoping to make some tweaks to the thumb. Finished knitting everything but the cuffs on the second mitten. Happy!

2/
I finished the finger decreases on the first mitten, and knit a thumb that was big enough for only my pinky! Threw these offending mittens in timeout for months!

1/
First, I hated the way I was catching my floats. I wanted them to be neater on the back, so I frogged and restarted the first mitten after I had made space for the thumb.

Colorwork mittens still on double pointed needles resembling toothpicks with a cable between them.

The mittens that will never end. 🧶

Saga in thread.

Come learn some new arts and even crafts with me. I have a ton of classes listed, and am working on some free options in the near future!

That’s Marzena, not Marlena!

Woman stands next to a plant wearing burgundy tights, a blue, red jewel-toned dress, and white lace hand knit vest.

Some days I feel cute. Wearing a handknit lace vest designed by Marlena Kolaczek, and knit in a silk single. 🧶

Mathematicians and knitters: nerds who like to count. 🧶

I am Marching to the Finish for everything I didn’t finish in February.

Bright red handspun wool on a woven cotton placemat.

One of my very first spins in the books! 🧶