Needles and a Pen » Knitting, Sewing, and Nursing School

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  • Welcome to my blog!

    Hi! I'm Traci. I'm a Registered Nurse who loves quilting, knitting, cross stitch, and the great outdoors. In my pre-scrubs life, I owned Real Photography, and you can still see my old wedding and portrait photography site here .

    I've created a map that shows links to our camping/hiking/general family fun review posts that you can find here. It's pretty much the coolest thing on this site. Thanks, Google!

    I great big puffy heart *love* comments, so please let me know you visited! I try to always reply!

Category Archives: knitting

Spring lace: helado hat pattern

Yesterday afternoon was beautiful and it was my recovery day, so Ellie and I spent a goodly part of the early evening on the studio porch finishing my hat and watching the neighbors attempt to bring down a tree branch America’s Funniest Home Videos style. The pattern is Helado by Tanis Gray, and the yarn […]

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Colorwork warmup: bismark hat pattern

I’m going to be embarking on a massing colorwork project soon, so I figured a little warm-up was needed.  I chose the Bismark pattern and some Road to China Light yarn from The Fiber Company from my stash that my parents had bought me last year and was off!  I was undecided about the pompom […]

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The Plucky Obsession

If you knit and haven’t tried plucky yarn, well…actually…keep that up.  It’s like crack.  It’s brilliantly marketed and limited and hoarding becomes inevitable.  Avoid it.  But if you are a knitter and HAVE tried plucky, then you’ll appreciate these lovelies that came in the mail today (camomile, top hat, punchy, and thank you note on […]

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Lace headband

A crazy thing happened today called: I finished another project!  I worked on this one for a year and a half off and on (and started it about 8 times before I had the lace pattern right).  This was my piano lesson project mainly because (a) it took me so long to get the pattern […]

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ashburn shawl

I started this last September intending to have it done for the rest of fall…but predictably finished it now, at the tail end of winter.  Oh well, it’s all ready for next fall now! Details: Ashburn pattern, The Plucky Knitter primo fingering yarn in Rachel, Ross, and Aperitif (which is how it earned its nickname […]

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knitting, a review

A little review of the knitting projects I finished since my post last year.  The biggie of the year was a sweater for Ellie: (Plucky primo aran yarn in plie–took three skeins) I also made two Jul pattern hats this year–I absolutely love the pattern: (Fiber Company Acadia yarn in blueberry and Manos del Uruguay […]

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