Fright Club Hat

 Hi all -

Fall is in the air. It's starting to cool off here and the leaves are starting to turn. It's a beautiful time of year! Here is a picture of the aspen grove on my property right now:

The colors are more beautiful than I could capture on my camera! And to show how beautiful my property is, here's one of the boulders framed by a lone aspen tree:

And the beautiful view from my yard, including a bit of the pond across the street and a couple of the ridges just south of me:

I find it all breathtaking! I just wish the pictures could come close to what it looks like in person!

The main thing I've been working on is the smaller Jimmy Beans Wool (JBW) Fright Club project. Every year, JBW puts together a couple of "advent" calendar projects for Halloween that they call their fright club. There is a larger calendar that has 31 little surprises that you can open up each day in October, and there is a smaller project that has 13 little surprises. I usually get both projects because I think they're a lot of fun. Since I have the larger project to do in October, I decided to do the smaller project in September. The smaller project is the All Treats, No Tricks hat designed by Amy Gunderson. The surprises for this club came in cute little boxes:

Fright Club Boxes

Most of the boxes contained little balls of yarn for knitting the hat, but several fun surprises were also mixed in:

Halloween Tag for Hat on Day 4

Halloween Stitch Marker Necklace on Day 7

Candy and Fake Tattoo on Day 10

Finishing Supplies on Day 13

The project is a hat. I chose the bright colorway:

All Treats, No Tricks

This is a stranded colorwork pattern, which isn't my favorite technique but I'm getting better at it. Here's how my stranding looks on the inside:

 

All Treats, No Tricks Inside

It has a cool double brim that has ribbing on the inside to keep the hat secure.

 

All Treats, No Tricks Inside Ribbing

And I put the tag from day 4 on the brim for some extra jazz. I'll probably get a fun fake-fur pom pom to put on the top. Grocery Girls has a black pom pom with multicolored highlights that I think would look really cute. I just have to get around to ordering it (and hope it's in stock).....

The other knitting project I've been working on is my Comfort Fade Cardi designed by Andrea Mowry. I've got the right sleeve finished and am now working on the left sleeve:

Comfort Fade Cardi

After I finish the sleeve, it'll be on to the collar/front band. That part will take a while since it's got a shawl collar, which will be quite a bit of knitting.

I've also been really into hand embroidery lately. I've had my Birds on Parade bag kit, designed by Sue Spargo, sitting around for a while so I decided t finish it up. I had finished the applique and embroidery called for in the pattern a while ago and had decided to add some extra applique and embroidery on the back of the bag since it seemed like a waste to not decorate that space. I just had a little bit more embroider to do on the back, then I was able to sew the pieces together into a bag. Here's the front of the bag from the pattern:

Birds on Parade Front

And here's what I added to the back. It's so hard to decide when to stop with the hand embroidery!

Birds on Parade Back

And, just to be complete, a peek at the inside:

Birds on Parade Inside

I decided to use some of my own fabric for the lining rather than using the fabric that came in the kit because the supplied fabric was directional, but was cut so that it would be sideways inside the bag and that bothered me. I also changed the way the bag was constructed from the directions in the pattern. The pattern directions would have resulted in raw edges inside the bag and I like a clean lining. It was a pain to construct the bag my way because the outside was designed as a single piece, but I figured it out and really like the result.

The other embroidery I've been working on is a pair of pre-marked pillowcases. I picked these up at Joann's as a little prize for myself on my birthday while I was in Kansas City. I'm still working on the first pillowcase:

Retro Cats Pillowcase

It's been kind of fun working on an old-fashioned project and I think it'll be fun to sleep with these!

Nancy