friends | Laura Chau

the end of 2016

December 29, 2016

It’s been a weird year, hasn’t it? Nearly done, and me not writing here for months! I’m sure I can’t remember half the things that happened, but here’s my attempt at catching up.

After our wedding we had to move house, as the landlord of the apartment I’d lived in for 5 years kicked us out in order to renovate. It sucked, but we managed to (eventually) find a new little house that’s pretty darn awesome. Three bedrooms (so we each get an office with a door!), gas stove, dishwasher, washer/dryer, sunroom, backyard, kitchen with actual counter space and outlets – it’s great! We moved less than a month after the wedding, so that was crazy. Of course, there’s still loads to do in terms of getting settled in, but it’s always a work in progress. At least with a trip to Ikea last week we finally have all the window coverings up!

Our new place is on the other side of town from where we used to live, so I left my fabric store job after three months. It was a pretty short stint, but overall an interesting learning experience. I met some pretty awesome people and picked up just a little bit of fabric. I don’t miss the job, but it was probably a good kick in the butt to take stock of what I actually want to do with my working life.

In early December I went on a little trip to the east coast to visit our Megan in New Brunswick. It was cold, but clear, and we knit, ate, and gabbed as much as we possibly could in a weekend. We even dyed some yarn!

For Christmas, we got a tiny live tree in a pot, and I made so much candy and cookies. And a yule log! We actually spent Christmas together for the first time (we’d been going up to our parents’ separately), and had dinner at my parents’ house on Christmas Day and at the farm after Boxing Day.

On the designing front, I didn’t self-publish as much this year as I would have liked, but I did get out quite a few patterns with other publishers. (See and buy them all on my Ravelry designer page.)

SIX new patterns from Swans Island:

Four from Harrisville Designs:

Three from I Like Knitting magazine:

Plus a few more here and there, including this one newly released from Diamond Yarn in their yummy Regal Alpaca, Waving Ribs Cardigan.

It was a busy year for me! I have lots of design and editing work lined up and a nice new studio to organize, and I definitely want to get back to blogging more regularly. I would also love to do some personal crafting, knitting or otherwise.

2016 had some huge ups (getting married!) and downs, and here at the end of it I’m pretty worried about the state of the world, especially for my American friends. But I’m still excited to leave 2016 behind and see what happens in 2017. All we can do is move forward, right?

Hug your friends and loved ones, and have a strong, safe, and happy new year!

A Quilt for Jess

August 23, 2016

My friend Jess lives in Brooklyn with her two adorable kids, and we’ve been online friends for years! She was lamenting that she had all these beautiful fabrics that she’d brought back from a trip to India, but never enough time to do something with them.

I’ve really been enjoying hand quilting the last few years, so I volunteered to make her fabrics up into a quilt! It seemed like a nice opportunity to put a quilt together without having buy all the materials (which can be a lot) and sometimes I like the act of making even more than the finished product.

She packed up all the fabrics and batting and mailed them up to me, with the understanding that it might take me awhile to get the quilt done. I was aiming for a year, but it took a little longer – about 17 months. Of course I didn’t work on it intensively, there were times when I would put it down for weeks. The top went pretty quickly because I did it on the machine – this strip piecing tutorial came in very handy. Each block is about 4.5″ square, finished.

I actually make the top a little too big the first time, so I just took a couple of strips off the side and bottom. I used one pieced strip down the middle of the back, and the others to make the striped binding.

The back is made up of width-of-fabric strips that I didn’t use for the top, with blues/greens on one side of the centre strip and pinks/yellows on the other. Once everything was pieced, I made my quilt sandwich and thread basted it together really well before I started hand quilting.

A Quilt for Jess
Time: March 2015-August 2016
Materials: Printed cotton fabrics from India, cotton batting
Techniques: Machine pieced, hand quilted, hand bound
Size: 80″ square

It’s not perfect, but I know it’ll be cherished for years to come!

new skeins

July 27, 2016

I forgot to share my purchases from Verb in Oakland! One of the “reasons” I “had” to buy stuff was to pay Denny for her excellent sample knitting.

She got some fancy yarn…

And some fancy fabric! Khadi cotton and cotton grown by Sally Fox! I’m pretty sure Denny’s already knit and sewn up all this stuff by now ;)

I got just a yard of this wide naturally-dyed linen – I think it’ll be enough for a longish sleeveless top. And a little yarn, of course! I also picked up Sonya Phillips’ Dress No 3 pattern, since she had picked us up from the hotel to go to Verb it seemed like the right thing to do.

More new skeins, a few that I spun up in July. It’s a good thing I wasn’t reeeeally doing the Tour de Fleece because this is all I managed.

Top: Polwarth in Flintstoner from Indigodragonfly
Middle: BFL-silk in a colour way I can’t remember, also from Indigodragonfly
Bottom: Polwarth/silk in Reverberate (OOAK) from Pigeonroof Studios

For all of these, I split the top lengthwise down the middle and spun each half onto a separate bobbin, because mine don’t quite hold a full 4oz. Then once all the singles were done, I used the jumbo plying head on my Lendrum to chain-ply them, joining the two bobbins’ worth and hopefully keeping the colours nicely intact.

I’m planning to put up some handspun for sale soon so keep an eye out if you’re interested!