Cowtown Knits

Paris

May 17, 20186 Comments

It’s now time to introduce you to Paris, the next pattern from Travel Knits for the Family.

It’s a beautiful sweater with a simple but attractive all-over texture as well as garter stripe edgings. Knit from the top-down with a Raglan construction, it is sized to fit from babies all the way up to teenagers.

This sweater, like the Oslo mittens, can be adjusted for different members of the family. The instructions are written with pullover or cardigan options, and are easy to follow throughout.

The samples were knit with beautiful Brooklyn Tweed Arbor. The yarn is so soft and lovely for kids-wear and shows off the textured pattern so nicely. You can use 1 skein each of the contrast colours and you should have enough to do at least two sweaters.

We visited Paris a handful of times during our time in London. Whenever we had visitors come from Canada we liked to take a weekend to hop on the Eurostar and show them Paris as well. We visited at Christmas time with my parents and enjoyed hot chocolate and roasted chestnuts in the Christmas market along the Champs Elysees. When my mother-in-law and sister-in-law came last spring we ventured to the top of the Eiffel Tower (well, some of us anyway). And when some of my very best friends came to visit we had a ladies’ weekend where we saw the sights, but mostly enjoyed fantastic food and wine. One of my favourite things about Paris is that there’s always something more to see and do.

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For more information about Travel Knits for the Family, get all the details here.

Copenhagen

May 14, 2018Leave a comment

It’s time to introduce Copenhagen, the third pattern from Travel Knits for the Family.

There were a few times in our travels when our accommodations were a bit on the chilly side – usually in little old British country cottages. We started to bring slippers along on those trips and they were always much appreciated. These little foot warmers are nice and compact to fit into your suitcase without taking up too much space (more room for knitting projects!)

These slippers are almost as much fun to knit as they are to wear. They are worked in 4 sections, seamlessly, using a variety of techniques to achieve a great fit and a great look.

Our trip to Copenhagen was quick and lovely. We checked out lots of Copenhagen, but didn’t take a lot of photos because it was pretty cold. We took a boat tour of the harbour, which was a great way to see lots of the city. We ate lots of open-faced sandwiches. And we met friends who lived there and visited the National Museum of Denmark together.

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For more information about Travel Knits for the Family, get all the details here.

Oslo

May 11, 2018Leave a comment

The next pattern in Travel Knits for the Family is named after the beautiful city of Oslo, Norway.

The pattern is for some very versatile mittens. They feature the same cable and rib pattern as the Bergen hat, but in mitten form. And for those who are more adventurous and need some extra warmth, the pattern has optional thrums worked into the centre of the cables. If this is your first time working thrums, there is a handy photo tutorial at the back of the book to walk you through it.

The magic of the pattern is that it comes with lots of variations. Make them fingerless, full mittens, or flip-top. And you also have the choice to make them with thrums or not. For my family we ended up with two pairs of thrummed mittens – one flip-top and one full mitten – and two pairs without thrums – one fingerless and one full mitten.

We visited Oslo in the Fall of 2017. We spent a day and a half in the city, exploring the abundant museums, the opera house, and the harbour area. The highlight of the trip though was the train ride from Oslo to Bergen. It’s actually billed as one of the top train journeys in the world, with good reason. It leaves from Oslo and winds its way through forests, lakes, and fields up to snow-capped mountains and rushing streams, and then back down through beautiful fjords on the way to Bergen. I tried to take lots of photos through the train windows, but in the end I decided to just enjoy the view.

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For more information about Travel Knits for the Family, get all the details here.

Bergen

May 9, 2018May 10, 2018Leave a comment

Bergen is a beautiful city in Norway, and it’s also the first pattern in Travel Knits for the Family.

The pattern is for a toque/beanie/knit hat/cap/toboggan (choose the name applicable for your region of the world), designed to fit from babies to adults. It features a simple cable pattern that creates a beautiful lattice effect, as well as a ribbed brim that can be knit to your desired length for folding over or not.

The hat can be worked in just about any worsted or aran weight yarn, but I have to tell you how much I enjoyed working with the Gytha Worsted from Third Vault Yarns. The colours are gorgeous and it is so soft and squishy to work with. I chose semi-solid colours to work with here – Inara, and Blue Steel – but I think the hat would also look nice in a variegated colourway.

We visited Bergen in the Fall of 2017, and what a lovely city it was! The weather was dreary, wet, and cool, but that just added to the atmosphere of the fjords. We enjoyed visiting all the little shops in the old wooden buildings of Bryggen, and walking along the harbour and sampling different sea foods at the fish market.

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And of course, there are loads of yarn shops in Bergen. Norway has the most fantastic knitting culture, which seems to be embraced by the entire population. The majority of the tourist shops had racks and racks of hand knit sweaters, mitts, and hats, as well as other woolly goods. I wanted to buy everything, but settled for 3 gorgeous skeins of Rauma Prydvevgarn and a gorgeous wool blanket.

For more information about Travel Knits for the Family, get all the details here.

Travel Knits When You Least Expect Them

April 5, 2018April 5, 2018Leave a comment

As some of you know, it’s getting to close to the publish date for my upcoming book: Travel Knits for the Family. I feel like I’ve talked about it a lot on other platforms, but haven’t discussed it on the website much at all. So now I will!

The book contains patterns for all those things I think you need to throw into your suitcase when you’re heading somewhere cold (there will eventually be a second book for when you’re heading somewhere warm). There are sweaters for everyone in the family, hats, mittens, slippers, and a travel knitting project.

We just got back from another family trip, this time to Grand Canyon and Death Valley (with a brief stop in Las Vegas). Now, you may be thinking that Arizona, Nevada, and California in the spring wouldn’t be considered traveling somewhere cold, but we packed our hats, mitts, and slippers anyway. And I’m glad we had them!

Because, while there were lots of days like this…

There were also days in the Grand Canyon where it was really quite chilly. Even though most of Arizona is quite warm and even hot this time of year, the Grand Canyon is carved through a plateau at an elevation over 7000 ft, where it was dipping down below freezing overnight. So we started our day exploring the Grand Canyon wearing our hats to keep warm.

Once we got to Las Vegas and then Death Valley it was well into hot summer temperatures, and the hats and mitts stayed tucked away in our suitcase. We enjoyed exploring the desert and swimming in the pool, and avoiding the winter back home.

But although we hoped spring would have finally sprung by the time we returned from our break, it was still very cold in snowy when we arrived back in Calgary. So we changed from our flip flops and shorts to shoes, jeans, and jackets. And we dug out the hats and mitts again.

The moral of the story is – you never know when you might need those Travel Knits!