Red Bird, Blue Bird (Lent Day #13)

One of my favorite things about the new house is the absurdly large number of birds that live in the trees in our yard. I've spotted chickadees, tufted titmice, blue jays, cardinals, hawks, grackles (I think), woodpeckers and more. This morning I spotted my first robin. Quite fitting for the first day of spring (and more fitting than the current snowfall).

For today's outfit I pulled out an old sewing project. I had this skirt in the "to mend" pile, but don't remember what needed mending. It might have been that I wanted to hem it differently. I was pleased to discover I had done a really good job lining and finishing this skirt - despite having made it a long time ago (over 2 years!!), before I had started focusing on finishing.

Blue Blazer: LL Bean Outlet

White Tee: Target

Butterfly Wing Necklace:  D. Cole Jewelers, gift from Mr. Cleaver

Brocade Pencil Skirt: Burdastyle Alexis, made by me.

Shoes: Bass Outlet

In other news, my Krona knitting patterns were featured today on the Quince & Co. Website. Much thanks to Pam for including me!!

It feels like forever since I've put out a pattern, but I've got something very springy currently in testing and it should be out by April 1st. For at least one reader of this blog it will look very familiar...

Oh Christmas Tree!

Because we usually travel every other Christmas, Mr. Cleaver and I look forward to the non-travel years because it means we can get a Christmas tree. Growing up, my family always did cut-your-own, so we try to find a local place to pick our tree. Last Sunday we headed to The Old Farm in Cape Elizabeth and got around to hanging the ornaments last night, so without further adieu, our Christmas Tree adventure:

Introducing: krona

Back in July, when Amy & I met-up at Knit Wit to check out the Quince & Co. Yarns, we both decided that we wanted to design something new with it. In making this project, Quince & Co.'s Chickadee has quickly become one of my new favorite yarns - and it's seemingly endless color range has pushed me into a bit of a colorwork phase.

As soon as I had my colors in my hands I knew I wanted to do some kind of diminishing colorwork pattern with the yellow fading into blue.  The color combination also had me thinking of the Swedish flag, so I did some internet searching for inspiration and came up with the concepts that became krona. Krona means crown in Swedish and a Swedish crown is both the literal  Swedish royal crown as well as a braided hairstyle, both of which I tried to reflect in this pattern.

The braided band on both the tam and mittens is knit flat and seamed, and then the main pattern stitches are picked up from the band edges and knit in the round.  The mittens are identical on the front and back and can be worn on either hand.

Because Chickadee is a sport-weight yarn, I lined the mittens from the braided band up for extra warmth.

The tam sports the same colorwork pattern as the mittens, adapted to the hat shape. The tam is designed for head 20-22 inches in circumference and sits shallowly on the head.

I received a good deal of good-natured ribbing from my knitting friends while working on this pattern, because I tended to unconsciously match my outfit to my knitting (does anyone else do this?), so my outfit in the photos is a tribute to the Portland Knitters on the Town.

You can queue up the tam and mittens on Ravelry.

You can buy the patterns individually Mittens - $5.00 USD; Tam - $4.00 USD; or together for a $2.00 discount