The Knitting on Top of the World Knit-a-thon

We Got Winners! Fresh Winners Right Here!!!

First of all...

CONGRATULATIONS To our August KOTOTW and Yarny Goodness Giveaway Winners!

An autographed copy of Knitting On Top of the World by our own Nicky Epstein goes TO...

Rebecca! 

(YAAAYYYY!!!)

And our August yarny goodness giveaway, to make a pair of Black Forest Mitts (or whatever you wish, actually) goes TO...

Cynthia Talbot!

YAAAYAAY!!!

If both of you would be so kind as to send me your mailing addresses to maryp55124 'at' yahoo 'dot' com, I will get your goodies in the mail to you!

Progress (Well, a Little)...

I have the back, fronts, and collar of La Belle Cardigan done:

And I'm working on the first sleeve - they have long, lacy cuffs just like the bottom of the cardigan, and then have pouffy bits separated by ribbing, to which ribbons will be attached eventually.  But I didn't get too much done this week, as I had company!

Unfortunately, my sister's visit was such a whirlwind, it appears that I:

a)  Neglected to take pictures of our trip to visit the Mill Ruins Park and the Guthrie Theater (darnit);

b) Neglected to take pictures of my nephew modelling the latest in KOTOTW creations (although, honestly, I don't know that I could have fitted his massive shoulders into most of those sweaters...)... and

c)  Neglected to take any pictures, period!

Suffice it to say, their visit seemed to go in a flash; my plans of taking half of Thursday off fizzled, and I managed to take Friday off only by working all day on Saturday.  Sigh.  When you work as a lawyer, though, them's the breaks -- you have to take the work when it comes, to make up for the weeks when you are sloooowwww. 

Mostly we ate really wonderful summer foods; BLT's with Nueske's bacon and fresh tomatoes, sweet corn right from the farmer's market, and my sister-in-law Mary's barbecued pulled pork, mmmm.  Mary also made this blueberry cobbler (apparently a Mark Bittman recipe) that will live in my dreams.   Her cherry pie is already on my death row dinner menu, but I told her she will need to make me some blueberry cobbler, too!  (Remind me to arrange to be executed when both cherries and blueberries are in season...)

My nephew Eric is halfway through college already, which shocks me almost as much as realizing my own son, Nathan, starts high school next Tuesday.  We go to orientation this Wednesday evening, which I am hoping will answer many of his questions and help reduce the pre-school jitters.  (Mine, not his.  He is fine, I'm freaking out... NOT helpful.)

So, How Did We Learn to Knit?

Our informal survey, gleaned from the comments to my last post, seem to indicate that the great majority of us learned knitting from our moms; just one of the many reasons we probably love her so (!)  Other sources for learning knitting skills were: pamphlets, books, school teachers, neighbors, Grandma, and the Internet!  It was wonderful to read your stories about how and when you learned.  As someone who picked up certain aspects of knitting from sources as diverse as my Mom, books in the public library, magazines in England, fellow students on trips abroad in Germany, and a neighbor lady, I identified with so many of your experiences.  And today, I am still learning, frequently from watching great YouTube videos to refresh my memory of how, exactly, you do a knitted-on I-cord edging, or a Moebius cast on, etc.  What a wonderful technological advance for teaching knitting!  I still marvel that nowadays you can just go online and actually watch a teacher's hands in motion, instead of trying to interpret those motionless drawings and guess where the yarn or the needle tips or your fingers are supposed to be...  

It is heartening to know that, while some of us were lucky enough to learn to knit as kids, others enjoy the thrill of discovering knitting much later in life; still others of us re-engaged with knitting after a brief trial run in childhood.  I also found it so reassuring to read that some of you find knitting an engrossing and comforting a part of your lives; knitting has saved me from despair many a time, and has given me a sense of self-esteem, as well as something fun and interesting to do when I'm blue, as well as a means to create something soft, useful, colorful and pleasing. Thank you so much for sharing your stories, too. 

Other Responses to Posts:

Typo:  Yes, it is indeed the Fall 2011 Vogue Knitting that has the story about the KOTOTW journey to date, and not Fall 2001 - thanks, Lori Elle!

Minnesota State Fair:  Tifanne asked if I entered any of my knits in this year's Minnesota State Fair; but as a matter of fact, my heart just wasn't in it.  I will confess, dear readers, that I felt kinda sad about the overall experience last year, and didn't want to repeat it.  It isn't that I was expecting to carry away blue ribbons or anything, but I was disheartened when I received comments on my garments about design choices that I had made which assumed that I had either been careless or made a mistake, when in fact my choices were the result of careful deliberation. 

For instance, on the Londonderry Rose Coat:

. . . I made a conscious, intentional choice to backstitch the shoulder seams, as I wanted this seam to have the reinforced strength of the backstitching (just as you would sew in a strip of seam tape in a tailored jacket), to help keep the shoulder seam from stretching out from the weight of the heavy, bulky long sleeve.  But I apparently missed points for this; my reviewer said that I should have used a 3 needle bindoff to reduce the bulk of this seam.  But if I had done so, that unreinforced, loose seam would have stretched out way of shape each time I wore the coat, ruining the stability of it and making the sleeves too long.  Besides, I am not bothered by the bulk of a seam sitting along the top of my shoulder... sigh.

 
Finally, the sweater was displayed at the Fair in such a way that the collar was hanging down the back of the mannequin, so it looked ill-fitting and you couldn't even see the roses!  And I know it doesn't readjust itself like this automatically because it is hanging in my closet just fine.  (And why it is OK to hang this hand-knitted coat on a padded hanger??? Well, because the knitter decided to carefully reinforce the shoulder seams . . . )

Then, in reviewing this Evening Gala Aran:

 
. . .  the reviewers had three surprisingly negative comments.  I was marked downfor the following:

1) It was too heavy from all the pearls (!) (so I guess I should have used cheaper plastic hollow ones???)

2) I should have used cream thread rather than blue to sew on the pearls; however, I made a conscious, intentional choice to use the same blue as the background, as the little "legs" on either side of the pearl would otherwise be visible like little white dashes against the sweater's background color.  The reviewer didn't like the visible blue lines on the bottom sides of each pearl.  This, I guess, is a matter of taste, but I decided they were less noticeable than the bright cream thread would have been against the relatively dark background color.

3) Finally, they deemed the neckline too large.  However, this is in fact meant to be an off-the-shoulder sweater.  Ahem...). 

I also was surprised that this sweater was mostly hidden under a stack of other sweaters, less than a quarter of it visible.  Double sigh.

The other item that I entered was the Princess Bride Mittens:

I looked on a couple of visits, and so did friends of mine, but couldn't find them anywhere in the display cases.  A friend eventually located them in an obscure spot.  The negative comment on these was that I left floats behind the stitches that the reviewers deemed too long and likely to catch on fingers, although none of the floats went over more than 3 stitches, and the gauge was so fine that even my pinky isn't small enough to get caught... oh well.  Triple sigh.

So, there you have it.  I fear I will regret sharing this with you, and that you will think I'm a big, whiny baby.  It took me a year just to tell you about these comments, after all, which might help convey my mixed feelings about the whole experience. I know I'm overly sensitive to criticism; this is definitely NOT a trait of which I'm proud.  And I am also well aware that I can always learn and improve my knitting technique and skills.

However, I just didn't find the reviewers' comments helpful or illuminating, and didn't find the overall  experience positive enough to repeat. (Or, maybe it is just because I'm a lawyer, and it annoyed me that I didn't get to argue my case before judgment was rendered, so to speak...)  

The learning that I took away from this experience, was to remind myself of the fact that I don't knit for competitive purposes; I knit for my own personal reasons, for the pleasure I have in making things with my hands, and for the comfort of wearing something that I "grew" from some yarn and two needles.  Sometimes, the only true validation has to come from within.  

On the Bummer Newsfront...

I have had to cancel my September trip to NYC; unfortunately a major project blew in today, that involves doing all of the due diligence (background research) on a client's acquisition of over 500 separate parcels of real estate, with the closing to occur by the end of the month.  There just isn't any way to complete this additional workload, on top of other pending projects with tight deadlines, if I take that much time away from the office.  I should have known better than to schedule something so close to school starting, as well; I could tell that my son was relieved to hear I wasn't going to go out of town this month. 

I'll see if Nicky maybe has some time next spring for a little visit instead.  Several of you out there in the NYC area were kind enough to ask if Nicky and I could schedule an event while I'm out there, perhaps at Brand Studio again.  I'll work with Nicky to see if we can get an event together; it would be lovely to meet with you all again!

Enjoy the first cool days of fall, my FAVORITE of all the seasons.  I love crunchy leaves, and cooler evenings, and best of all, the chance to wear my handknits again!

XOXOXO,Mary.

 

 

 

Halfway Around the World!!!

Thank you, VK!

I was SO excited to open my copy of the Fall 2001 Vogue Knitting, and come across THIS!

(And thank you also, twinsetellen and Barb, for your lovely comments when you found this in your copies of VK!)  Back in June, I had spoken briefly with Cheryl Krementz, contributing editor for Yarn Market News and Vogue Knitting, but it had completely skipped my mind.  I can’t tell you how tickled I am to have this blog and the KOTOTW Knitathon mentioned in Vogue Knitting, considering that I’ve been reading VK since forever (both in the earlier incarnation, where I found it at my local library in hardbound copies when I was a young girl, as well as in the newer version which started up again in 1982; I think I’ve been a subscriber ever since then!)  I hope this article brings more people here to the blog for a visit, and that they might be inspired to pick up Nicky’s wonderful books and check out the wealth of fantastic and fun-to-knit designs she creates.

Time for a Giveaway!

In honor of this event, and as a treat for those of you new to the blog who might be checking it out because of this article, I’m going to give away another copy of Nicky Epstein’s Knitting On Top of the World, autographed by Nicky herself!

Just comment on this blog post and tell me you are interested in receiving a copy of the book!  I would also appreciate your answer to the following questions:

“How old were you when you first started knitting, and how did you learn?”

Always interesting, to hear how the art of knitting spreads among us.  If for some reason you have trouble commenting, or if you would rather just send email, my address is “maryp55124 *at* yahoo *dot* com”. 

Project 24 – Black Forest Mitts

Here are the completed Black Forest Mitts – a surprisingly quick project, although you wouldn’t know it, based on how long it took me to finish!  (Work seems to be getting a bit less crazed, so I’m hoping I can find more time to make progress on the Knitathon this fall.)

 The multicolored bobbles on the cuffs took a bit of time to complete; to knit them, you are supposed to choose from among the four bobble colors at random, which for some reason is difficult for me.  So, I drew a little graph showing X bobbles for Y rows, and then used the random number generator at random.org to choose random numbers between 1 and 4 as I filled in each row of my graph.  Then I assigned a color to each number.  (Ridiculous, I know.)  I also edited the results a bit where it the resulting pattern (or non-pattern… is “random” a pattern?) didn’t seem quite random enough, and just got cracking. 

To weave in the thread ends, since each bobble had 2, I thought it would be too difficult to weave all them all into the back of the main color stitches, and might make them look bumpy and uneven.  I was also concerned about the light celery green showing through to the front when the gloves were worn, as they are stretchy.  So instead, I wove the bobble yarn-ends up through the back of the stitches of each bobble itself, and then back down, and then trimmed them, so from the back, the cuffs look like this:

I also tried to at first to do all of the embroidered leaves, and then the flowers along the arms of the gloves with just one continuous strand, carrying it through the back of the knitting stitches between motifs, but as I expected, the strand showed through to the front using this method, so I ended up trying to secure the ends by knotting them and then weaving them back and forth underneath each tiny motif.  I’m concerned that they may eventually work themselves loose, however; this yarn is very string-like, not very fuzzy or felty at all, and the threads don’t tend to have that nice stick-to-each other tendency of wool that greatly reduces their tendency to wiggle themselves loose as the garment flexes and twists.  So, I’m keeping some extra of each color handy, just in case I need to re-do the embroidery.  Another option might be to let the yarn strand used for embroidery float loosely between the motifs, and then “couch” it down using little wrapping stitches of sewing thread matching the red color of the main yarn.  Anyway, we’ll give it a go this way and see how they do when worn.

But luckily, I ended up buying lots of extra yarn for these, and ended up having enough extra for…

A Yarny Goodness Giveaway!

I have 3 extra balls of the exact yarn called for in the pattern, Knit One Crochet Too’s Ambrosia, a 70% baby alpaca/20% silk/10% cashmere blend, in a shade called “garnet,” as well as plenty of each of the four accent colors (French blue, celery, chocolate, and jet) to make an entire set of Black Forest Mitts of your very own!

If you would like to give this pattern a go, just either respond to this blog post, or send me an email at “maryp55124 *at* yahoo *dot* com”, letting me know you are entering to win the yarn!  (By the way, you can enter to win BOTH the KOTOTW book listed above, as well as the yarn; just let me know if you are interested in both, or one or the other!  And don’t forget to mention when you learned to knit, and how!)

Some Really Nice Needles

Here’s an unsolicited plug; I read about ChiaoGoo stainless steel red circulars in an article by the owner of Morehouse Farms Yarn on their website, and decided to try them for these gloves, and I just LOVE them.  (ChaioGoo evidently translates as “crafty lady”!)  The needle tips seem to be just exactly the right sharpness, and would be perfect for lace knitting, the cable has just the right amount of flexibility, and the cable joins are truly just seamless – no sticking, or catching, or bending.  If I were a feeling a bit more flush, I think I would buy a pair of these in every single size and length -- that is how much I liked them!  A great deal of the pleasure in crafts lies in using the right tools, which can make any task a pleasure instead of a chore.  Think about the difference between cooking with a nice set of knifes, and a blunt, cruddy set; or remember the last time you tried to cut fabric with a poor pair of scissors, and you’ll recognize just what I’m getting at…)

I do need to do some needle upgrading, I think; quite often lately I find myself knitting with my trusty but ancient Susan Bates circulars, but the stiff cables are really getting to me (I’m spoiled, I guess, by the ChiaoGoo experience.)  I have an abundance of different types of needles, including Addi’s and some of the Knit Picks adjustable sets, but for some reason I just don’t have needles I like in every size and cable length. 

My collection is also shockingly uneven; somehow I’ve accumulated over 10 sets of size 6 circulars, but have hardly any 8’s, or 5’s; loads of 3’s, not enough 2’s; I think a lot of my existing needles must be hiding in my stash, with half-finished, pre-KOTOTW Knitathon projects still stuck on them.  Someday, I will treat myself to a set of ChaiGoos, or Addi Clicks, or even better, those wondrous and legendary needles from Signature Needle Arts; but for now, I must set my sights on more important upcoming purchases, such as a new car (mine is 11 years old, and my son will need a car to drive soon), anew furnace, new AC..  and, oh yeah, and there is that little item called college fast approaching as well…)

And, just in case you missed the headline of this post, I have finished Project No. 24, and since there are a total of 48 projects in Knitting On Top of the World, that means we are officially… halfway around the KOTOTW world!

WOO HOOOO!!!!

So, what am I going to do to celebrate?

I’m going to go to NYC to visit Nicky in September!   (YAAAAYYY!!!)   I’m going to spend a long weekend with Ms. Nicky Epstein herself, and can’t wait to see her in person; it will be lovely to visit New York in the fall, and to see what Nicky has been up to, maybe get a sneak peak at how her upcoming book is coming along…  WHEEE!!!  I’ll be sure to take lots of photos and tell you all about it in an upcoming post!

Feeling like a very lucky woman indeed, at the moment.  This world-travelling on my knitting needles has certainly led to some unexpected and wonderful adventures!

Project No. 25 – La Belle Cardigan

After a bit of a hiccup at the start (I realized I knitted the whole ruffle on the back in the wrong guage… rookie mistake, I know), I have now finished the back and one front of La Belle Cardigan:

This one is an interesting knit; the ruffles, and parts of the sleeves, are knitted using only Rowan Kidsilk Aura, a blend of silk and mohair, quite heavenly soft but with those long mohair-y fuzzes that make unraveling such a challenge; and then the body of the sweater, the ribbing bits, and the upper parts of the sleeves are knitting with the Kidsilk Aura and Rowan Pure New Wool knitted together, so they are denser, more solid feeling.

The Pure New Wool and Kidsilk Aura are not an exact color match, but they are close, and I think they look just lovely together (sort of a dark, smoky gray-blue shade).  I am also thinking of making the rosette on the collar in a natural white shade, rather than the same shade as the body of the sweater, but didn’t realize that part of the rosette is knitted using Pure New Wool and Kidsilk Aura held together as well, so I have to see if I have something I can use as a Pure New Wool substitute (as the natural white wouldn’t be hard to match, so there is likely something right in the stash that will do just fine.)

Since I am so long-waisted, I lengthened this one significantly; I wanted to ruffle to fall a bit lower on my body than where it falls on the model.  And did I order enough yarn to lengthen it as much as I wanted to?  No, as usual, I did not!  (When will I ever, ever learn…) 

Thank goodness, therefore, for Ravelry’s “Search in Stashes” function!  Some wonderful people are so thorough in listing their stashes, they even include color AND dye lot number.  I sent out some messages wondering if anyone would be willing to part with their identical balls of Rowan Kidsilk Aura, and a wonderful Raveler named “burgybug” came through for me and was willing to sell me 5 extra balls of the Kidsilk Aura, so I should now be set (THANKS, Burgybug!).  Another wonderful Raveler, “yarnsnob,” had plans for her yarn and didn’t want to sell it, but she was so thoughtful, she even went on an internet hunt for me, and found a link to an Oregon yarn store that has the right color and lot number, too!  (Websters, in Ashland, Oregon – a wonderful yarn store, and one that I was lucky to visit several times in the past when visiting the Oregon Shakespeare Festival).  So now I think I’m going to have plenty to get me through. 

I have company coming this week; my sister from San Francisco, her honey, Paul, and her son, Eric, are coming for a brief pitstop as they drive Eric’s new car from SF to Massachusetts, where he will attend his third year at Holy Cross.  You might remember that Eric was generous enough to model some of the KOTOTW creations the last time he was here; I’ll see if he can be cajoled to model some of the additional projects I’ve completed since then for us all, since they are par-TIC-ularly fetching on a man who measures 6’ 8 ½”! 

Catching Up from August Knitting Night

I've had a computer malfunction, and had to buy a new drive to download pictures from my camera, but we finally have it figured out again, and I wanted to share a few photos from our last First Thursday Knitting Night.

This is Kim, our lovely hostess, who liked the pattern for Nicky's "Fascinating Belle Epoque Shrug" that she has now completed two!

Our knitting night was on a hot summer's day, but Kim is imagining that these will come in quite handy this fall and winter when she is up at the cabin and needs to ward off the snowy chill!  (Doesn't Kim look like a teenager?  Which is amazing, when you consider that she is now officially a grandmother; her daughter Leslie and her beautiful baby boy, Quinn, were also in attendance that night.)

And here is a photo of two more of my favorite women in the world:

This is Renay, my beautiful and much-beloved friend, and our lovely newest First Thursday member, Adeline; you might recall her wonderful guest blog post this spring.  Adeline has magically transformed to a toddler, and was quite entranced with the drumming possibilities for this particular footstool.  So beautiful.  I know Kristin, her mom, enjoyed bringing her along, but she is also looking forward to our next knitting night when she will leave Adeline at home, so she can catch her breath and maybe knit a few rows!

-   -  -  -  -  -

Well, since my sis is coming in a few days, I really ought to go get the house cleaned up.  Enjoy these remaining few days of summer; and for those of you with kids returning to school, enjoy the few remaining days of not having to remind them about homework or waking them in time to catch the bus!

XOXOXO, Mar.

 

 

Winners! And the Lake Elmo Shepherd's Harvest Sheep and Wool Festival

Hi, guys.  Welcome to yet another post of the Knitting on Top of the World Knitathon!

CALLING ALL KNITTAH WINNAHS!

I just want to say, thanks for all the lovely comments!  This blog seems to get a steady average of about 100 hits a day, and it is lovely to hear from some of you.

I collected all the responses on the blog and on my email, and the following three responders won their own Nicky Epstein Striking Staggered Mitts Kits, generously provided to readers of my bloggy by none other than the Divine Ms Nick herself!

 - Linda Chan

 - Tami

 and

 - MinditheMagnificent!

Congratulations!  YAYYY!!! you!

All you each need to do is to send me an email (to Maryp55124 at yahoo dot com) with your address, and I will get your kits in the mail to you!

It was a rainy morning here in Minneapolis, but now the sun has come out.  I think that means I need to go do battle with the dandelions for a few hours, although it is too wet to mow the jungle-like lawn.  But before I do, I thought I would provide you with an update on the status of the Edwardian Lace Coat, and some images and info about the wonderful Lake Elmo Shepherd's Harvest Festival!

Edwardian Lace Coat - THAT CLOSE to being done!!!

Some stray thunderbolts got the dog girls up and barking at 6 this AM, so I decided to just sit down, catch up on my Stephen Colberts, and finish the second half of the Edwardian Lace Coat:

 

The piece on the right is all soggy, and the one on the left is dry, so it sprung back a bit (in case you are wondering why it looks smaller -- unless my gauge decided to change abruptly in the past two weeks, which I sincerely hope is not the case.)

All that remains to do is the underarm seams, and to knit on the collar; this piece is open along the back.  Oh, and to buy a dress to wear underneath, although that can likely wait awhile as we are heading into summer here in the Midwest.  Minnesota has extreeeeeme weather changes; it is either arctically cold, or swampy hot, with only the rarest of days in the 70's and either spring- or fall-like.  Not that I'm complaining - where else can you wear woolen sweaters 8 months of the year?  Except maybe San Francisco, where my sister lives, and where it is rarely every really really hot.

So I'm hoping next week I can model the finished project - that will mean 18 down!  (and if you count the next three small sweaters as one project, then I'll have only 30 to go!)

Shepherd's Harvest

I really enjoy the annual Shepherd's Harvest Sheep and Wool festival held in Lake Elmo, MN.  It always falls around mother's day, and since my birthday is May 10, I have twice as many excuses to spend a relaxing day revelling with friends in some of the most beautiful hand-dyed yarn in the world (as well as twice the usual excuses to spend too much money on yarn I don't really need, can't really afford, but certainly can't resist!)

I met with Renay and Polly again; here Renay takes a picture of me and Polly, after we had sort of unintentionally both picked up skeins of yarn closely resembling the colors we had worn that day:

A shop called Briar Rose had some lovely samples on display, and great patterns to buy from designers such as Anne Hanson of Knitspot.

And my most favorite of all, Ewetopia Fiber Shop, had both beautiful samples and breathtaking yarns; I had remembered them from last year, and did a little shopping at their booth (see below).

In addition to yarn, there were also amazing items made from yarn to be seen and admired.  You might recall some little felted bunnies that Renay had made, a few posts ago, although she hadn't yet added their faces or other details:

Well, not only did we come across the original bunnies from the Wooly Bunnies pattern itself:

 

(Look at those faces, and paws!  They are just so cute!)  We also met the designer, Marie Mayhew, from "That's Woolly Something, www.woollysomething.com!

Here she is giving her creations a little face time.

I fell in love with this happy statue, from the Barbara Koppang of www.OddestGoddess.com - her expression of blissed out joy and abundance matched exactly how I felt, wandering around the festival and viewing all the wonderful yarns and creations.

Barbara has also added some wonderful little alpacas to her collection as well.

 

This giraffe just took my breath away - the details, down to the little gleams of light in the eye - I hadn't realized you could make felted creations at this scale before.

And here is the (shy) fiber artist herself, Linda Martin, wearing her giraffe as a rather unusual hat.

This, believe it or not, is an Angora bunny; underneath all that fur is a tiny little rabbit.  They apparently look much different after their hair gets trimmed.

And here are some of the additions to my stash (which I was, um, trying to shrink... at least the quality of my newest stash items is exquisite.) 

Some sock yarn from Ewetopia Fiber Shop in a range of lilacs and periwinkles:

Three skeins of a blend of  bamboo and wool, called Panda sock (I love the color, like the iridescence on a soap bubble).

Some warm red-rust alpaca lace for a lovely shawl, maybe with a stitch pattern that looks like leaves...

And some rich sky blue/aqua for something lacy and fine.

 

There was a new dyer there I hadn't seen before, MacKintosh Yarns; this company is run by a young woman just out of Iowa State with an exquisite sense of color, and some really beautiful, radiant yarn bases.

 

This gorgeous blue yarn is from a dyer called "All For the Love of Yarn," and her colors just took my breath away as well.

    

And this lovely shaded blue Honeyberries yarn is from the IlLOOMinated yarns shop on Etsy - I just got lost in admiration of these more variegated shades.

I think I will pair one of the MacKintosh yarns I bought with some grey-lilac Three Irish Girls yarn to make this lovely square-shaped lace Samovar Shawl, from a pattern available on the Three Irish Girls website.

And I found this bright orange variegated Madelinetosh yarn just irresistable, probably because it looks like the opposite of snow.  The two skeins don't match exactly, but I think they will be perfect to make the matching Snapdragon tam and Flip-top gloves/mittens from Ysolda McTeague's Second Whimsical Little Knits book.

Well, I better go get to that yard work, so that I can save some knitting time for this evening - I have lots of knitting lining up after my KOTOTW journey is complete!

XOXOXO,

Mar

Knitting, Textile Arts, and Friends - and a Yarny Goodness Giveaway From Nicky!

... And now (two weekends later!) it is time for my last post about Nicky’s amazing whirlwind visit to MN, and what we did on her last day here, Monday, May 2.

But first of all, a YARNY GOODNESS GIVEAWAY!

Nicky gave me 3 kits to share with you, for the Striking Staggered Holster Mitts, based on the same stitch pattern used in the Siena Rooftop Sweater in Nicky Epstein Knitting In Tuscany:

If you would like to win one of these kits, just either reply to this post, or email me at maryp55124 at yahoo dot com, before MIDNIGHT CENTRAL TIME, Friday, May 20!  I will post the winners next weekend!

_ _ _ _

NOW, back to the last day of Nicky's visit:

First of all, Nicky and I got up bright and early, and headed to downtown Minneapolis to pick up my friend, Tiffanie, and one of her best buddies, Sam, who flew in all the way from Colorado just to take a class with Nicky!  Unfortunately, the air travel went less than smoothly, so they weren’t able to attend the Fantastic Fiber Fest party at Steven Be on Sunday night; but they did end up having an amazing Monday, nonetheless!

While I got us all temporarily lost on the way to Maple Grove, MN, Nicky, Sam and Tiffanie had a chance to get acquainted, chatting about knitting, iPads, and our plans for the day.  And then, around 9:30, we arrived at one of my favorite LYS’s in the Twin Cities, Amazing Threads.

 

The owner, Bobbi (shown here with Nicky) is just an amazing woman, who has created a lovely yarn store with friendly, knowledgeable staff, great yarns in every color, and incredible turnover.  It is one place I can go where I know I will always find the latest books and magazines, and the perfect yarn to make that sweater, shawl, pair of socks, bag, etc. that has been haunting my dreams.  When I was going through my stash deciding what I could bear to part with, I realized that many projects I had purchased at Amazing Threads were in the “out of bounds, can’t part with it” pile… which tells you just how much I value this store!

We headed upstairs to the spacious classroom; Bobbi had provided lots of fruit and breakfast pastries, which was a great blessing as we hadn’t managed to eat or caffeinate before we arrived.  The class was filled with many of Bobbi’s favorite customers.   First, Nicky gave a talk about her latest book, Knitting Block By Block Block, and had class students come up to model some of the garments.

Here is Tiffanie, looking elegant in the Tres Chic Pullover:

And here is Sam, who was thrilled to model one of her favorite pieces from the book, the Fairy Leaves Shrug Duo:

Then the students worked on their block projects that they’d brought along to make; some people made animals from the book!

After class, Bobbi’s wonderful staff helped us to pack up the samples Nicky had brought from Knitting Block By Block, as well as Knitting on Top of the World, Nicky Epstein Knitting in Tuscany, and Knitting a Kiss in Every Stitch, and then we hit the road for our next adventure.

Another famous knitting designer, Annie Modesitt, the author of Romantic Hand Knits (one of my favorites; I’ve made the Casablanca sweater twice now, so I could keep one and give one to my sis!), had contacted Nicky the day before to see if she might have time for a visit; and I had wanted to bring Nicky to the Textile Center, a wonderful gallery/workshop space/museum of textile arts.  So we arranged to meet Annie there!  Tiffanie and Sam were excited about this turn of events; they didn’t come out expecting to meet two knitting designers in a single day! 

First, we toured the Textile Center.  My best friend Renay is working part-time as an interim director there, and happened to be on-site that afternoon.  She showed us the galleries, and the dying room:

You can actually rent this room (as long as a member of your group is an experienced dyer) and have a fabric or yarn dying party!  (This is definitely on my to-do list!)

And then we toured the gallery and shop (I noted that Annie has a new book out called Knitted Millinery that is definitely on my must-buy list!).

Here are Annie, Renay and Nicky:
 

For me, the most exciting part was when Renay mentioned that Margaret Miller, the Executive Director of the Textile Center, would like Nicky to come back to town when I’m finished knitting my way through Knitting on Top of the World, as she’d like to do a formal exhibition of all the pieces!    I would be SO honored to see my knitted pieces displayed in a gallery, and I think it would be really cool for knitters interested in Nicky’s designs to see the entire book of designs on display, and to have a chance to meet Nicky herself and have her autograph their own copy of Knitting On Top of the World!  OH, so exciting!  (And talk about a new impetus to get knitting and get the book finished!)

Then we had coffee and a snack, and Annie and Nicky had a chance to share their recent experiences in designing knits, working with publishers, teaching classes, and the blogosphere.   I was lucky enough to see Annie give a presentation at the Textile Center on her Romantic Knits book a few years ago, and really enjoy her sense of humor.  She is this red-haired, energetic, incredibly prolific designer and force of nature.  I wish I could get to know her better; she is just feisty and a role model for strength.  She was brave enough to suggest a couple of years back that knitting designers form a union in order to establish base pay rates for patterns and teaching, as the only people who don’t appear to be making much money from the incredible boom in knitting caused by the internet and the Ravelry revolution are the designers.    This was a ballsy, risky move; the book and magazine industries are powerful, and have a “divide and conquer” attitude toward knitting designers.   As a result, the amount of money designers make when selling their patterns to magazines hasn’t increased in over 30 years, and yarn companies don’t feel any obligation to share revenues with designers who use their yarns.

It feels like the market is evolving into a different model, where designers can sell their patterns directly to the public through Ravelry, through e-zines like Twist Collective, Patternfish, or from their own websites, like Anne Hanson of Knitspot, Joan McGowan-Michael of White Lies Designs, Angela Hahn of Knititude, or Ysolda Teague, of Ysolda.com.  This is good for the designer, and good for the environment, as it alleviates the loss of trees, use of chemical dyes, and shipping exhaust expended in printing and producing books and shipping them around the globe.   I also like the fact that I can go onto these websites and buy just the patterns that really wow me, and know they are safely stored away on my computer, instead of buying a book in which I only really envision making one or two of the patterns, and then having it sit on my shelf, gathering dust, and increasing the “weight” of the stuff I have in my house to schlep around with me as my life changes in future.

[end of digression…]  Anyway, Annie and Nicky gave us lots of food for thought, about how the industries supported by our hobbies are evolving. 

Then I whisked Nicky, Tiffanie and Sam away for our last stop – an evening at Pardon My French in Eagan, MN, where I’d asked the members of my (multiple!) knitting groups to come join us for dinner and a knitalong with Nicky.  I seem to have been too pooped by then to remember to take many photos (waah!), but we had a lovely evening, filled with good food, laughter, and my friends had a chance to meet Nicky, get their books signed, and she even gave a demonstration of the many things you can do with i-cord in creating flowers and other embellishments, and making frog closures, etc.

To say thanks for ferrying them about all day, Tiffanie had made me a lovely Mason-Dixon dishcloth:

and I also received this wonderful little artwork!

... all of which made me feel very spoiled indeed!  The little sheep photo now has pride of place resting on my laptop at work, where it never fails to make me smile (and remind me of the fun we had that day...)

We dropped Tiffanie and Sam back at their hotel in the city, and went back to my house, pooped but happy, for a quick snooze before we had to take Nicky to the airport for a 7 AM(!) flight.   

Before we turned in, Nicky showed me some tiny little rabbits that Victoria had knitted for her, about the size of cotton balls - so cute!:

So cute!

Honstly, I don’t know how Nicky does it; travelling, teaching, hardly getting a chance to sit down or eat—being a knitting designer is MORE than a full time job!  In the spare moments between classes or travelling to the next location, Nicky was sketching and planning designs for her next book, and on the phone with her assistant regarding her website, and her lines of buttons and closures; she is a true multi-tasker.  She was going home to a house full of company for Easter, too… Needless to say, she is one strong, busy, energetic and efficient whirlwind.   I went to work in a daze, and spent that week sort of digging out, and grateful that at least what I do for a living doesn’t require travelling so much.  

Nicky says she had a stupendous time out here in Minnesota, and that she’d love to come back! 

KOTOTW Status Update – Project 18, Edwardian Lace Coat

This morning, I blocked the left side of the Edwardian Lace Coat:

 

Isn’t it pretty?  I’m more than halfway up the front of the right side, and hope to finish it today and start of the back.  But first, it is time for the first annual mowing of the lawn – it grew so high during our rainy, warm week that the dachshunds are getting lost in the grass!

Have a lovely spring day, wherever you are.  Next week, I’ll tell you about Shepherd’s Harvest Sheep and Wool Festival.

XOXOXO, Mar

 

Gifts of Hats, Gifts for Cats, and Lots of Silly Knits!

Hi, folks!  Sorry for the radio silence -- work has been so busy, I almost feel like I'm a brand new lawyer just starting out again.  I have averaged more than 10 billed hours per workday so far this month, and there doesn't appear to be much of a lull in sight.  I could REALLY have used not to work this weekend, considering my sister Susan is coming for a visit, but real estate closings wait for no man.  Or woman.  Or knitter, for that matter...

However, there have been some moments to knit here and there, while taking the bus back and forth.  So I have lots of stuff to show you!

First of all - ta daaaaahhh!!

KOTOTW PROJECT NO. 17 - Faux Fair Isle Fairy Socks!

These were a really fun and fast knit, surprisingly enough.  Maybe they just seemed that way, but after knitting several yards of cream fabric to make the Celtic Hooded Coat, it was so much fun to pick up tiny needles and a project that weighed next to nothing!

(Note to self; I love making socks.  And mittens.  When the KOTOTW journey comes to an end, I think I'm going to have to institute my own sock of the month club, just like my sister, who actually started her own private sock of the month club out of her stash last year even BEFORE the Yarn Harlot had the same brain wave!)

Of course, considering that I have size 10 feet, they aren't quite as dainty (ahem) as the ones in the book.

A note about the double ruffle:  Although the book instructions have you knit the inner ruffle, cast off, and then make another one and continue with the sock, and sew the inner ruffle in at the end, Nicky says that in fact, she didn't make her socks this way; she actually knitted the inner ruffle, and then knitted it together with a row on the actual sock (brilliant!)  I realized that my socks wouldn't be very comfortable as my castoff on the inner ruffle was too tight, so I put the inner ruffle back on the needles and tacked each stitch to the purl bump of a corresponding row in the inside of the sock, and didn't pull the stitches tightly, so that now I have a comfy, stretchy cuff as well.

YARNY GOODNESS GIVEAWAY ALERT..... YARNY GOODNESS GIVEAWAY ALERT...  YARNY GOODNESS!

For those of you interested in trying this pattern out, I happen to have right here a brand spanking new COMPLETE ball of the contrast yarn, Knit One Crochet Too Soxx Appeal in Chocolate Cherry, the exact yarn used in the book!  If you want to knit these socks, all you would have to do is find a ball of the fawn color!

Hmmmm... If you would like to try your hand at these, just either comment below and let me know, or send me an email by midnight central time on Friday, April 15, and I'll use a random number generator website to pick the winner!

Lynnine checked in to send me a picture of her own FFIFS!  Note how cute they look in dainty little footsies!   (She needed 25 less rows to reach her toes - I counted!)

 

Celtic Coat - Ribbon Facings

Hiya, Barb!  Thanks for all of your lovely comments, by the way.  You make doing this blog worthwhile.  I feel really guilty when I miss a week, and sad because I won't hear from you! 

In response to Barb's request, here are some photos of the ribbon facing on the inside edges of the Celtic Coat.  When I went to New York to visit Ms. Nicky herself, she brought me to MJ Trimming, and I picked out this pretty ribbon.  It is so nice to have purchased some of the buttons and trims for the KOTOTW projects during my visit.  It means my memories of those days are literally being stitched intoe projects as I knit through the book.  Every time I see that ribbon, I will remember how much fun I had during that whirlwind trip.  (Nicky's life is a lot more glamorous and exciting than mine - dancing, dinners at lovely restaurants, a whole city literally on her doorstep; remind me to move to New York some day!)

The photo doesn't really capture the color well; it is more plummy and teal, than red and green.

I sewed it in with tiny stitches in plum yarn, tacking through the backs of stitches so it wouldn't show on the front.

I also had to bend the ribbon a bit and do sort of a miter where the edge of the coat meets the edge of the collar, to get the ribbon to lie smoothly:

And the Next Project Is...

The Edwardian Lace Coat, the exquisite pattern that graces the cover of KOTOTW.

This coat is knit in Kashmir Yarn from Trendsetter yarns, which is a blend of cashmere (gasp!) and silk (sigh...)  This is not the kind of yarn I usually buy, considering that it costs $25 per ball.  I think I have one ball of cashmere wool in my stash, enough for a cowl.  But enough cashmere for an entire coat!  Be still my heart...

When I was yarn shopping and going through the book in 2009, I figured I would make this coat out of a merino and silk blend.  But Nicky surprised me by getting me the actual Kashmir yarn as a Christmas present, and even in my favorite color, periwinkle!

I can't even begin to describe how soft, silky, and luxurious this yarn feels.  Knitting with it is just... well, indescribable. 

The Edwardian Coat is on large needles, 9's and 10's, and the lace patterns are really fast!  (Plus, it is un-put-downable; you just have to finish the panel you are knitting, so you can try the next lace pattern!  It is kind of addictive.  Suddenly last night, it was 1 AM this morning, and the dachshunds were starting to get grumpy...)

Here's where I am so far:

To say that I can't wait to wear this is an understatement, to be sure!

Gifts for Cats!

Both Renay and Eva have cats, Phyllis and Angel; and both of their kitties are ailing.  So, when I saw this cute pattern on the Lion Brand website, I decided to take a break from my knitting and crochet some cat gifts:

Sardines!  Stuffed with catnip, and in their own little case!  (Note the little embroidered "X" for eyes, like in a cartoon!)

I am allergic to cats, so I haven't seen the effect catnip has on them, but I understand that both kitties have been playing with their new toys and really enjoying them. 

Here is Angel with one of her sardines; it is hiding under her paw:

I didn't realize that my present was perfectly coordinated with her fur! 

April Knitting Night!

For this month's knitting night, we gathered at Bella Lana, a "beautiful yarn" (and well-named!) store just across the river from downtown Minneapolis.   (If I were ever to own a yarn store, I would picture it very much like this store; a beautiful old building on a side street, nice big windows, white shelves and light to show the yarn at its best.)  The owners of Bella Lana have exquisite taste in yarn; only the best and loveliest yarns, in the most beautiful shades.  I sigh with longing (but NO!  I MUST NOT BUY YARN!  More on that later.) 

However, my knitting buddies were under no such restrictions and did a little shopping.  It turns out that Bella Lana has a weekly Thursday knitting night (so glad to know this!  I don't have my son on Thursday nights, so when I'm not working and am lonely, now I know where to go!)  The group of knitters who were there were young, cool and glamorous, and I was very interested to see what they were up to.

Kristin brought Adeline for a visit, which was such a treat; I was able to hold her for a little while, but she was definitely more comfortable in her mom's arms.  She did indulge me, however, by trying on her two new hats!

First - the ladybug!

Oh those kissable cheeks!  It is a bit too big (I wanted it to fit next winter); when it fits more snugly, the feelers (which have pipecleaners inside) will stand up better.  (I know this because my son had a ladybug hat at one point, although at 14 he doesn't actually wear it much anymore...)

This hat definitely cracked Kristen up!  (Note the beautiful shelves and display cases of Bella Lana in the background...)

And here is Adeline modelling her new cupcake hat (also sized big enough to fit next winter):

Note the little cherry on top!

I tried this one on Madeline, who isn't quite as adorable in it:

(Well, to me she is adorable.)  She was so funny -- I tried it on her and she sighed with satisfaction and literally fell right to sleep!  Now I know what she wants for Christmas, I guess...)

I had to get this picture of Kristin modelling her first-ever project - her beautiful blue scarf that matches her eyes.  (Can I just say that I don't recall ever looking this dashing and elegant, let alone during the first year of my baby's existence!)  I greatly admire Kristin, who manages somehow to make it all look so easy.  And I also greatly admire Adeline, who is the most patient of babies when it comes to trying on silly presents that her Pseudo-Aunt Mary knits!

Regina enjoyed the luxurious yarns at Bella Lana, and bought some yarn for a dropped stitch scarf, although apparently the yarn is a bit slick and slippery.  Here is her first attempt at a fingerless glove for our friend Keith (in camo colors, appropriately, as he is a hunter.  Come to think of it, so is Regina.  People actually have hunting dogs, and guns, and know how to hunt here in Minnesota, for birds, like geese and pheasants.  Being an indoorsy type, this is hard for me to imagine, as this activity not ONLY involves being outdoors in the wild for hours at a time, it apparently also occurs in the wee hours of the morning-- the HORROR!)

And here is my beautiful friend Eva - she has one of the best smiles of anyone I know.  And she is justifiably proud of her first finished sweater!  (I helped a bit with the finishing work, as it is a bit tricky to seam together seed stitch.  I sewed the back collar seam with the selvages facing outwards instead of toward her neck so that they wouldn't rub, but the collar was riding high enough to show the seams, so I gently tacked it down in back with sewing thread to make it smooth:

Isn't it lovely?  Now Eva and Renay have both made this lovely jacket.  It is from one of the Sublime books.  (And now I kinda want one.. :D)

Renay has been knitting some really fun Easter things, including this egg, which is just starting to crack...

and when you turn it inside out, it becomes a chick!  Note the wonderful feet!

And she has also made a passel of really cute little felted bunnies.  They don't have embroidered faces yet, but I kind of like them this way:

What a great knitting night.  I didn't manage somehow to get a photo of a lovely pillow Renay made from a knitting book with cat-related patterns I found for her, but I'll see if she will mail me a photo for the next post!

Yarn Sale!

As part of my effort to pare down my belongings, simplify, and repair my sadly woebegone finances, I'm thinking of selling some of my stash on eBay. 

In fact, I've been meaning to do so for awhile now.  But it occurs to me that maybe I should first see if any of my readers want anything! 

So, if you are in a shopping mood, go check out my projects page on Ravelry (I'm MTaylorknitter).  Scroll down past all of the finished stuff, and you will see that I have far, far too many knitting projects lined up for any one person to knit! 

There are some things that I don't think I'm willing to part with just yet; some Sundara yarn, for instance, and a few Louisa Harding things I've stored up to make.  (And I couldn't bear to sell any of my KOTOTW projects or other Nicky knits!)  But if you see something you would like, email me at maryp55124 at yahoo dot com.

I think I'm likely to be too busy for the rest of the month to even begin an eBay sale process, so you have plenty of time to do a little private shopping.  And I'll be SO grateful not to have to go to the effort of getting listings set up, tracking them, etc.

Enjoy the baby leaves and grass out there - Minnesota is finally turning green again!

Winter (to be continued.. indefinitely!?)

Here in Minnesota, this is the part of the annual cycle of seasons that is the hardest to bear, especially as we’ve had snow on the ground since mid-October.  It apparently snowed 29 out of 31 days this January, which has given us WAY more snow than we know what to do with.  City plowers are having trouble not so much with keeping the streets plowed, as in finding adequate “temporary storage” for the mountains of snow that keep falling, and falling, and falling…  Traditionally, March is the snowiest month, so we haven't even finished yet! There seems to be some sort of inverse relationship between temperature and snowfall.  When it gets really, really, cold -- below-zero kind of cold -- it doesn’t seem to snow as much.   But when the weather starts to warm almost imperceptibly, as we head toward spring, the snow starts falling even harder. 

All in all, the months of unending cold and the lack of color and life outside can leave you feeling as depressed and deflated as... well, the Metrodome (a picture from the conference room of one of the law firms nearby):

However, compared to other places in the US, here the snow is just, “business as usual.”   I feel sorry for the other parts of the country that are buried in snow; they haven’t had years of practice, and can’t just take it in stride.  I would dearly love to be able to afford a week somewhere sunny, and warm… (sigh.)  But I do enjoy picking out a different hand-made sweater, scarf or shawl to wear every day, and the lovely sensation of going around in something soft, warm, and cozy.

In addition, I can't deny that Minnesota currently has perfect knitting weather!  I finally finished the Highland Fling Cardigan, have started the Celtic Hooded Coat, and have been knitting Special Olympics Scarves on my way to and from work every day…  there’s a whole lotta knitting going on, that’s for sure.

Knitting at Work

My work knitting group has been busy all month working on knitting and crocheting special Olympics scarves.  The Minnesota mailing deadline is next Friday; I’ll take a picture for you of the completed scarves before we mail them.  I think the final tally will be quite impressive!  I ran into Jenny on the bus one morning this week, and she was working on one of hers:

I had just finished one, and was working on my chevron scarf from Morehouse Farms:

I have already made the matching beret, and bought enough yarn to make a pair of matching mittens.  I don’t know if I’ll get them all done this winter, though.  All the Xmas knitting, and then the scarf project, has put me perilously close to getting behind on my KOTOTW one-project-per-month deadline!

Our lunchtime knitting group had our first “field trip,” and went to visit a lovely yarn store just across the Mississippi River from downtown Minneapolis, called Bella Lana.  The shop is located in two combined shopfronts.  One of the owners, Cornelia, who had worked as an architect in San Francisco for 34 years, was kind enough to show us around.  For some of my work knitting friends, who are more familiar with the yarns on sale at JoAnn’s or Michael’s, it was quite an experience seeing the beautiful yarns at Bella Lana, including hand-dyed yarns from Madelinetosh, beaded and sequinned yarns from Tilly Thomas, Debbie Bliss yarns, etc. 

Cornelia had made some beautiful window displays in honor of Valentine’s Day – the traditional gifts of roses and chocolate, done up in yarny goodness!

She also had an adorable little doggy at the store, a miniature Doberman pinscher named Enzo.  I wish I had taken a picture – he looked kind of like a dachshund, but on stilts! 

Cornelia had heard of the KOTOTW Knitathon (!)  (I guess word gets around the knitting world!), and I explained that I am on a “yarn diet” this year.  Luckily, my work knitting buddies outdid themselves and went on a shopping spree, finding lots of yarn from which to make really lovely scarves, cowls, and hats.  I think some of them are working up the courage to make an actual sweater (yay!)

First Thursday Monthly Knit Night

My First Thursday knitting group has been busy making Special Olympics scarves too – here is a picture of us either draped in or knitting on some of our scarves in progress:

Kim was on a bit of a break from the weather in Arizona, but sent in a picture of her finished scarf:

And FINALLY – TA DAAHHH! 

Renay took a picture of me in my completed Highland Fling Cardigan – BOY that one took a lot more time than I had predicted, for a stockinette stitch pattern.  I have learned not to underestimate the time it takes to knit with mohair yarn, or to do a sweater with extensive embellishment.   So far, this is the longest it has taken me to finish a KOTOTW project – I started on 11/26 and finished on 1/30.  (However, I guess I need to factor in the Xmas knitting I did – hmmmm...)

Instead of doing a knitted-on or sewn-on I-cord edging, I opted for a reverse-stockinette stitch edging.  I had trouble getting the tension just right with the knitted-on I-cord, and the fuzzy yarn in the dark color made it really hard to see where the stitch columns lined up when trying to sew on a separate I-cord.  Since the bottom edge is garter stitch, the reverse stockinette looks consistent and worked just fine. 

Although my friends really liked it, I have to confess, I am not crazy about the way this sweater looks on me.  I think it is because it is so highly patterned.  I am self-conscious about my height – I’m well over 6’ when I put on my boots.  Because I don't want to stick out, I generally wear muted or dark colors; I have had the experience in crowded places of people actually backing right up to me, as if I were an architectural detail like a column that they could lean upon, only to discover that in fact I am living and breathing (hee!).  So maybe I over-do it a bit and tend toward the wallflower-side.   But still, my self-consciousness about my size means that I rarely risk wearing highly patterned fabrics.  My feeling, when I first put the Highland Fling Cardigan on, was that I must look like a circus tent! 

Oh well; not everybody in this world can be petite, I guess.  And considering my appetite (it must be the cold, but in the winter it seems like I am always craving chocolate…), I guess it is REALLY lucky for me that I am tall enough that I don’t double in size every time I gain 5 pounds.  But still – for me, this outfit makes me feel like the focal point, rather than the quiet background scenery.   It was also freeeezing on the day I wore this – below zero when I was waiting for the bus – its comfy cozy warmth was highly welcome.  Also, amazingly, even though I didn’t have a turtleneck to match, I didn’t find the mohair at all scratchy against my neck, as I was expecting. 

I used all but a few yards of the dark brown yarn (I had to lengthen the pattern, which I did by adding 2 rows to each cream stripe), but ended up having enough cream-colored La Gran mohair left to make this adorable polar bear!

 

(One of the many, many uses for Ravelry, that gift from the knitting gods, is that you can plug in the name of a yarn in your stash and figure out ideas for what you can make with it!) 

Kim and I both finished baby gifts for little Luke, a baby born to Dan, one of the real estate lawyers that I work with (Kim’s husband, John, is the co-chair of our department.)   Luke was the recipient of one of the recent wave of teddy bear hats:

So cute!  I’m kinda glad it is big enough that it will fit next year, too!  And Kim made him this lovely sweater:

Dan promises a photo of him wearing it soon – he will look like a tennis-playing baby!

Finally, Kim and John are expecting a grandson in February; her daughter is decorating the nursery in a jungle-Africa theme.  I realized I had enough yarn left over to make another Georgina Giraffe from the pattern on the Lion Brand website:

So cute!  I just love this pattern.  I know that sooner or later, I’m going to make one and keep it for myself.

Donna Lee sent in some photos of Vinnie the rescue dog in his lovely new sweater – he is a bit camera-shy, but really loves his new sweater.  I just finished Rowdy’s smaller version, and can’t wait to deliver it and take some photos of him as well.

Here are the very first rows of the Celtic Hooded Coat – this one is going to be a really fun knit!  I love doing twisty cables.  There is enough twisting and turning going on in this pattern, that I am sure I won’t get bored.  I don’t even think I’m going to be able to memorize the repeat, as it is 40 rows!  It is knitted in two long rectangles, which are seamed together along the center back seam, sort of like a big ruana.  Then sleeves are knitted on, the side seams are attached, and a hood is sewn to the top.  Nicky tells me that this piece started life as an afghan, but morphed into a coat!  I’m so glad – This was one of my most-desired knits from the first time I flipped through KOTOTW, because it looks so roomy, comfy, and yet elegant, and perfect for my Minnesota climate.  I am debating whether to make the two panels mirror-images of each other, or just leave them identical as in the coat in the pattern.

Although there is lot of cabling action going on in the knitting, it is made with Lion Brand Wool-Ease Chunky on size 10 needles, so I think that it will go pretty quickly (once I get my last 2 Special Olympics scarves done, that is…)  I hope to have quite a bit of progress to show you next week!

Here’s hoping that wherever you live, you are surviving your version of winter, and looking forward to the approaching spring (it MUST be getting closer, day by day, even if it doesn’t look like it outside my window at the moment.)

 

XOXOXO, Mary

Thanksgiving, Socks, Russians, Parades -- WHEEE!!!!

Gobble, Gobble,Gobble…

Happy belated Thanksgiving!   Among everything I have to be thankful for this year, I have all of you to thank as well; writing this blog and working on the KOTOTW knitathon project have been such a huge part of my year, and the source of much happiness.  I thank you all for keeping me company and being so kind and friendly.

Speaking of Thanks, and giving, I finished my adult-sized turkey hat for Uncle Jack in the nick of time Tuesday night:

Fetching, huh!

Nathan and I brought it to my Uncle Jack on Wednesday afternoon, and helped with the Thanksgiving Meals on Wheels program at Cretin –Derham High in St. Paul, MN; Nate made and stacked boxes, and I peeled (countless) potatoes.  All together this year, 15,200 meals were made and delivered(!)  I was proud of Nathan for jumping right in and helping independently  while I peeled in the kitchen (Note to Self:  Buy a dozen new peelers as a gift to the charity; the ones they were using were circa 1970 and about as sharp as a butter knife.)  My Uncle has been doing this for over 20 years now; they won’t let him retire.  I wish I had gotten a better photo of him in his turkey hat:

Especially because Jack took it off when it got too hot and left it by his coat,  but when went to pick it up in the wee hours on Thursday when it was finally time to go home, he realized it had been stolen!  (Who steals hand-knit turkey hats, anyway?)  But, actually, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, he was very thankful that I wouldn’t ever ask him to put it on for a photo again, and when I asked him if I should make him another one, he blurted out, “Oh, NO!”  So we both decided that someone must have really, really liked it, and hope that that person will wear it and find delight in it.  (And not eat it by mistake.) 

My family celebrated Thanksgiving on Friday, instead of Thursday, because we all work and it is too hard to get the house cleaned and the cooking done and have a relaxing day without a day for prep, and also because we don’t stand on ceremony for those things.  (And to let Uncle Jack have a chance to sleep after his all-nighter!)  My much-beloved new sister-in-law Mary outdid herself, cooking not only a perfect turkey, but also a blueberry cranberry pie, complete with lattice top, that will live in memory forever.  She also made stuffing, and cranberry sauce, which was really good.  (Mine came out dreadful, although I loved making it; I love the popping of the cranberries as they begin to boil!  It had orange juice and grated orange peel in it, and I guess I just don’t like orange flavor that much.) 

Lest you think I was a lady of leisure letting her do all the cooking, I did clean the house, make pumpkin pie (Nathan’s favorite) and sweet potato casserole, and peeled the potatoes (my brother Geoff did the mashing).  I used up all my Gladware containers setting up leftover packages for everyone to take home.  I didn’t feel like any more turkey at that moment, but regretted not keeping enough for at least one turkey and coleslaw sandwich the next day.  We all decided we are going to do an extra Thanksgiving meal in late March, because we all enjoy it so much and turkey once a year just doesn’t seem like enough.

Yarny Goodness Giveaway – Update

So far I have several of the yarny goodness packages whizzing their way to recipients; Still need to get an email from Cai and Tiffane with address and yarn preference info.

AND, a concern:  I didn’t receive an email from one recipient, although I did get her first entry email; so now I’m worried that maybe it came into my spam folder, and that I might have erased it!  (I confess that I do erase my spam folder periodically without checking, as I really don’t need to increase the length of my  . . . well, anything, really…)  SO, two new rules for contests:  I’ll make sure to give prizes for actual blog comments, instead of emails, in case I miss any.  AND, I will do a better job of weeding through my spam folder to make sure I don’t miss anybody, too! 

Also, my apologies to Marion, who I accidentally called Miriam (where did that come from?) 

Project 14 – Hunter’s Argyle Socks – DONE!

YAAAY!  Another project completed!

Here are the finished socks.  I am really happy with how these came out, and the color combination as well. 

My friend, Renay, finished sock No. 1:

Isn’t it cool to see how entirely different they look in another colorway? 

As promised, here is a tiny tutorial on the art of Intarsia:

To knit Intarsia, instead of carrying two colors of yarn all the way across, hiding one behind the other as you knit along, you actually knit each area of color with its own separate ball of yarn, twisting the two yarns around each other where they meet each time the colors change in a row, to sort of link them together and avoid making a hole. 

However, you can make that joining place a bit smoother, if you anticipate where you will need the dropped yarn to be, when you are knitting back along the next row!  This is especially true if you are knitting along on the next row, and that other color you need to pick up is still 3 or 4 stitches away when you get to the point where you need it; if you just yank the yarn over, this “jog” can cause some lumpiness, because the yarn sort of pulls across the intervening stitches, and the first stitch in the changed color just doesn’t want to stand up straight, which means that the edge of your motif might be a bit bulgy or bumply.

Therefore, when you are knitting the edge of each diamond in these socks, when you are at each edge that slants upwards and to your left, each stitch of the diamond shape will be one stitch further to the left on the following row.  So, you need to check the graph you are following when you do intarsia knitting, and when you drop Yarn A and start Yarn B, you need to anticipate where you want the end of Yarn A to turn up in the next row, in order to knit the first Yarn A stitch you encounter.  Ideally, you want that Yarn A end to be ready and waiting, right below the next Yarn A stitch you will need to knit!

I twist the yarns together where the two yarns meet, picking the new yarn up from below the one I’m going to drop; this avoids the hole where the two colors join.  (If you knitted along with 2 balls of yarn, and didn't twist them at the place where the colors meet, you'd just end up with two different pieces of knitting on your needle in two different colors!). 

But then, I also do an extra twist of Yarn A and Yarn B, after knitting 1 Yarn B stitch, so that when I’m purling back along on the next row, and need to pick that dropped Yarn B up again at the edge of the diamond, it is waiting for me directly below the stitch I’m about to knit, ready to come straight up, instead of pulling across the back of the next stitch.

So, here I am, knitting along on the front side, and the diamond yarn (A) is pale teal, and the background yarn (B) is dark spruce.  I knit the first stitch of the B yarn, and in the next (purl) row, the stitch directly above this stitch will need to be yarn (A), pale teal.

So, I wrap the pale teal yarn over the dark teal yarn, to "trap" it in the float between those two dark teal stitches.  And when I purl back, it will be waiting for me right below where I need to pick it up!

When you are working a purl row and the slant is from lower right to upper left, the same process applies, although here you are trapping the pale teal yarn on the purl side so it will be ready to go on the next knit row.

This is what it looks like on the purl side, as I'm approaching the edge of a diamond.  On the last row, I twisted the spruce and rust yarns so that the rust yarn would be right under the first rust stitch (you can see how it is caught between the first and second spruce stitches, waiting to be purled).

And there it is, purled.  You can see the yarn carried straight up from the row below, not slanted; so there won't be any of that sideways pressure to skew the fabric or alter the way the stitch looks on the front.

  This is a picture of the seaming process; The needle has one of the "ladders" between the edge of the first and second stitches caught, and laces back and forth between these ladders on each side.  You can see how this creates a pretty invisible seam.  Also note that, although I'm seaming with the dark spruce yarn, it doesn't show on the front, so I can stitch the whole seam with one color and not have to switch as I go along to match the colors of the diamonds.

I don’t know if this makes much sense; just let me know if you’d like me to try to show you more clearly.  This is such a helpful thing; now that I've figured this out, I no longer dread intarsia projects, or end up with the edge stitches being unusually large (I used to tighten up the entire area of intarsia, pulling up the excess yarn stitch by stitch; life is just too short for such endeavors.)

Also, sometimes the "jog" between colors is a lot more than just one stitch wide; for instance, when I was knitting Nicky’s Skull Hat from Knitting A Kiss in Every Stitch,sometimes the white yarn used for the skull image had to be a dozen or more stitches to the left of the last white stitch on the row below; so you really had to anticipate where the first skull stitch would appear on the following row, and carry it behind to that point by wrapping it with the black yarn every 3 stitches or so, or you would have to have this long, unwrapped floating piece of yarn sitting behind your knitting.  This might get stuck in fingers, and might pull the knitted image out of shape, etc.  Not pretty. 

A Visit From a Russian!

Nathan has chosen to study Russia in his Global Studies course this year.  And, as luck would have it, my friend Karen (a former co-worker and one of my First Thursday Knitting Night buddies) has a Russian exchange student visiting this school year!  Anastasia, a beautiful 16-year-old, was willing to come and be interviewed by Nathan a few weeks ago.  We love Karen, and her beautiful daughter Lettie, and it was great fun to meet this new temporary member of their family.   Here is Anastasia with Karen:

 

Nathan and I really took a shine to her, as did Madeline the dachshund.

 She is fluent in English (and is also learning Chinese and Spanish), and hopes to be a translator some day.  She is also just relaxed and poised, and really fun to hang around with. 

Anastasia gave Nathan this great powerpoint presentation on Russia (it is part of her exchange student assignment to give this presentation to as many people as possible), and Nathan’s teacher thought it would be great if she could come to Nathan’s class and share it with the other students.  So we went to fetch her for a Monday-night sleepover.  We had dinner at Ruby Tuesday (yum – fresh salads and mango iced tea with chopped up mangoes in it!), made chocolate cupcakes for Anastasia to take to school and share with friends for Thanksgiving, and then Nathan showed her that iconic movie of American culture (ahem), “Undercover Brother”.  (I wanted to show her “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but was out-voted.)

Nathan, looking full of consternation.

Me and my new girlie-pal.

Then, Anastasia went to Nathan’s class on Tuesday, did her presentation, and answered questions for an hour and a half!  (There were lots of questions; it isn’t every day that you get to talk to someone from half-way across the world!)  Needless to say, it was just fascinating to hear what was is like to grow up in Chelyabinsk, a city south of St. Petersburg and East of Moscow almost on the border with Kazakhstan, and to hear a bit about her parents’ lives and her grandparents’ experiences living in the USSR and under the KGB, etc.  I’m going to bring Anastasia back to Nathan’s school some time in February when all the 8^th-graders do a formal unit on Russia, so that the other students can see her presentation and have a chance to chat. 

By the way, while at the school I saw these great sculptures on display - I think the assignment must have been to make gargoyles:

Anyway, Anastasia is missing Russian food, and wants to try my borscht; she also brought a bunch of Russian recipes over which she’d like to teach me how to make, including the Russian version of apple pie, and some soups.  Anastasia is a huge fan the Harry Potter books, and of the Twilight movies and books; we discovered we were both “Team Edward,” and were chattering on like a pair of tweens at dinner, while Nathan was smacking his forehead in dismay.  So I think I need to have Karen, Lettie and Anastasia over for a movie night when Nathan is at his dad’s house, as he is not a fan of vampires or borscht, so that we can paint our toes and make popcorn and swoon over Edward without driving Nathan nuts.

Project 15 – Highland Fling Jacket  Lessons Learned (Again, and Again, and Again…)

There is an old maxim, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.”  And another one that goes something like, “Act in haste, repent at leisure.” 

I should have both of these tattooed on my hand where I can see them at all times. 

I was feeling behind on the KOTOTW projects; work has been so busy I actually had to pull an all-nighter last week, and there are some things I’m knitting for Xmas gifts as well.  I was knitting at such a furious pace, I was sure I’d be done with project 18 by New Years, and now I’m only on 15!   So, I dashed right into knitting the Highland Fling Jacket on Friday night.  And into a rash of mistakes.

First of all, I knitted the fair-isle band along the bottom edge of the back in the wrong color.  The graph in the book says to knit the background in Barley, but it should be in Pebble.  I simple glance at the photo would have made this immediately clear, but I just kept knitting along, rushing to get the 9 rows done, ignoring that little voice saying, doesn't this look wrong?  Why, there isn't a very noticeable contrast between these two colors... I don't remember that from the photo..., but did I stop knitting?  No. 

So, on Saturday morning I unraveled the edge and started again, whizzing right along, watching the latest episode of Boardwalk Paradise on Tivo.  And somehow as I blithely knitted along, on the first cream stripe, I dropped not one, but TWO stitches, and didn’t even notice until I was almost through the first band of colored stripes, and counted stitches along a row as I knit, realizing that I had only 89 stitches, instead of 91! 

I haven’t knitted in mohair in awhile; I need to be extra-vigilant because this yarn (Classic Elite La Gran Mohair - YUM!  Lush and fabulous.  There is a reason that classic yarns stay around for so long), is so fuzzy, it is harder to “read” the strands as they wrap around the needle into stitches.  Sometimes the fuzzy halo is thick enough to look like a whole stitch, which means you can accidentally add a stitch; or sometimes, what you think is just a fuzzy bit between stitches is, in fact, an actual stitch.  Dropping one stitch is one thing; but TWO???  In just one row??? And when your gauge is only 15 stitches for 4 inches, 2 stitches is a lot, people!!!  More than half an inch! 

I set it aside; I had to get ready to go to a concert with my friends, Laurie and Christie (more on that later), and thought I would sleep on it and see if I would just mend and fudge it, or rip it down and re-do it.

Here is what it looked like this AM:

 

Lo and behold:  when I took a more thorough look in the cold, hard light of day, two additional problems came to light!

First, even though I faithfully do a gauge swatch, it is important to note that a small inaccuracy on a 4” gauge swatch can really multiply across the 24” over the back of a sweater.  Although I was pretty sure that I was getting 15 stitches to 4 inches on my tiny swatch, the full sweater (even BEFORE I droped two stitches) measured only 23” across!  I want my final sweater to be 24” wide, so that there is an actual “peplum” effect, so the loss of 2” around just wouldn’t work. 

Then, I looked at the garter-stitch edge.  When I do garter stitch, it comes out wider than stockinette stitch over the same number of stitches.  I should know this by now, by heart, having only learned by making, oh, about 100 sweaters with garter stitch edges.  If my garter-stitch edge isn’t tighter, or firmer, than the stockinette stitch body of the sweater above it, it will roll right up (you can see it doing this at the left side of the photo). 

I know that being a perfectionist isn’t always healthy.  In fact, I generally make myself so miserable by setting high standards that I can’t possibly meet,  I have decided to adopt as my new mantra:

“Not perfect, but better.” 

So every time I need to get a memorandum out to a client by 5 PM, and by 4 PM realize I can’t revise it a 3^rd time to refine it yet more; or when my family is about to arrive and I haven't finished vacuuming (which always gets left to the very last because I hate vaccuuming, even though I bought one of those stupid schmancy vaccuums from the guy with the British accent but now wish I'd waited because his next design is so much better and maneuverable and wouldn't hurt as much when I accidentally bang it into my foot); or when I’m 5 minutes late to a meeting instead of early -- instead of beating myself up for the rest of the day for being a failing loser-pants, I try to take a deep breath, and remind myself that:

 - the memorandum isn’t perfect, but that the information in it will put the client in a far better position, than if they were totally unaware of its contents; and

 - that my family loves me just as much, even if there is a dust bunny or two in the hallway; and

 - that 5 minutes isn’t really significant in the scheme of things, especially when the meeting went so well. 

As long as I can make things better than they were before, my efforts haven't been wasted, and I can allow myself to take some satisfaction and pride in that.  Even if I can't make everything perfect, every time.

HOWEVER:  I also want this sweater to be right, so I ripped it. (Today's score:  Perfectionism - 1; Mary - 0.) :D

I’m going to re-do the garter band in a smaller-gauge needle, and use one needle larger to do the body so that it comes out to 24” in width instead of just 23”.  And I’m going to check my stitch count periodically so that I don’t suddenly realize that I’ve either missed or added stitches in the fuzzy cloud of mohair that surrounds each row. 

Holidazzle and Concert

Minneapolis has a custom that might seem strange to those who don’t live on the frozen tundra.  Every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we have a parade down Marquette Avenue called “Holidazzle”, with lighted floats, marching bands, all lit up like the night parades at Disney World.  Of course, the weather between Thanksgiving and Christmas isn’t exactly ideal for parades, either marching or viewing.  But we are apparently hardy enough to take whatever the winter dishes out, laugh in the face of icy winds, and bring our tiny children out into the howling gale to witness this parade.  Minnesota – we love it here.  Because if we don’t, who will?

My friends Laurie and Christie have had a subscription to the Minnesota Orchestra for years now, and have graciously invited me to join them this season; so we went out to Lotus A Go-Go, a favorite Vietnamese restaurant that serves lots of vegetarian food for Laurie, watched the Holidazzle parade, and then enjoyed the an “Inside the Classics” presentation of Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copeland.  (Inside the Classics is a great program where Sarah Hicks and Sam Bergman have a discussion and share insights about the piece in the first half of the concert, playing excerpts and other works to illustrate their point and to put the music into a historical and music-theory context, and then they play the full piece uninterrupted in the second half.  Sounds geeky but it is actually funny, fun and fascinating).  We had a grand time, and I’m really looking forward to the next concert!

I leave you with some pretttty Holidazzle parade photos:

 

 

Stay warm, everybody!

XOXOXO, Mar

You're All Winners!

CONTEST WINNAHHHHSSSSS!!!

Hi, guys!  I bet you are all wondering who won the latest Yarny Goodness Giveaway! 

Well, there were 10 entrants, and rather than pick just 3, I decided that you are ALL winners! 

YAAAYYYYY!  (Throw confetti here and insert audio of entire stadium cheering...)

I will need you to email me your snail mail address to maryp55124 at yahoo dot com, and I will send you all some deeeeelicious yarny goodness to make something nice!

So, here is a little photo album, so to speak, of some our intrepid blog-reader-contest-entrants, and a little info about each one!

Our first entrant, Lise (Knitlise on Ravelry), sent an interesting set of before, during and after photos, showing her having her lovely hair shaved off for LEUCAN, an organization that benefits children with cancer and leukemia.  

Here is before (her hair is so lovely - sigh.  This is a very courageous sacrifice!)

And here is the "during" shot -- WOW!  (Note the slightly crazy, "mad scientist" look on the face of the young man doing the shaving here...)

That is much shorter than Steven Colbert's haircut when he visited Iraq!  Lise says that next year her son will participate, and that his hair is past his shoulders; she's thrilled at the prospect of seeing him with short(er?) hair for the first time in a decade!

And finally, here is Lise with her sweet grand-daughter who appears to be enjoying some chocolate at the moment.  Lise says that she owns a family business and has 40-hour-plus workweeks, and then spends Saturday with this little peanut, so that cuts into her knitting time.

Lise says that LEUCAN has been shaving heads for 10 years now, and that they make wigs out of hair that is 10" long or more.  This year, hair shorter than that was sent to help collect oil from the oil spill off the coast of Louisiana!

 Our next entrant is Steph ("Crookedknits" on Ravelry), a frequent commenter who I was lucky enough to meet in person during my New Year's trip to NYC this year.  She is simultaneously working on her Sanquhar Bonny Socks and having a kitty cuddle with her brother's new kitten, Dino.  Apparently Dino "helps" with the knitting by chewing on her yarn and nibbling the ends of her needles.  (More than a fair trade for the cuddles, I bet!  I wish dachshunds made that purring noise...) 

Steph has her own blog at The Crooked Knitter (subtitled, "because nothing in this life ever winds up going straight" -- ain't it the truth, sistah!)

Here are some photos of Alex, who lives in Maine.  She told me that she doesn't comment much but when she notes I have a new post, she settles in with her breakfast/coffee/lunch/snack for a nice read.  Which is a good thing, since I seem to be incapable of doing a short post.  I just have trouble getting my act together (lately, especially!) and then I have so much to share!

That is Alex on the right, below, freezing with some friends at potato harvest time:

And here is Alex with her hubbo, Josh.  I think they both look far too young to be married, but then again, anyone under 30 is beginning to look like a teenager to me...

The next entrant is my friend Jenny; she is one of the knitters I know from work.  We try to get together most Mondays in the law firm's main lunchroom, and I teach anyone who wants to learn, help fix knitting boo-boos, and generally enjoy the company of other knitters, as they are my kinda people.  Jenny has these amazing beautiful big eyes, and is married and has two sweet big dogs, and is a very intrepid knitter.  Her very first project was this pair of mittens (WHO starts knitting on 5 needles, in the ROUND, for heaven's sake!?!)  She got distracted by many other projects in the meantime, but is finally getting around to finishing these mitties, which is good, because winter is here big-time, AND she just found a pattern for a jacket-bolero thingy that she wants to wear to our firm's Xmas party -- which is on December 5!!!!

Next comes a beautiful photo from Katebee, who has been commenting from the early days of this blog (she says she didn't send a picture of herself while knitting, "because somehow I always look deranged"!)  There is also a Ravelry member called "Katebee" (who has an amazingly accomplished set of FO's (finished objects) and a Katebee blogger at "Making it up as I go" on Blogspot.  Which has the following very informative profile statement:   "Kate.  United States.  I knit things."  And also the wonderful sub-title, "I am the Indiana Jones of knitting.  Only not as hot.  Or Manly."  Katebee, is this your blog?

Next on our list is Miriam, who reminisced about childhood candies with me in an earlier post and even sent me something called a "Big Hunk," which I was hoping was maybe going to be Hugh Jackman (sigh...) but in fact was a really delicious candy bar!

Here is Miriam with her adorable grand-daughter, Arielle:

(look at those tiny feetsies!)

And here is Arielle in a hat Marian made for her;  I especially like the hoo-hoos at the top:

(ahh, babies... how I love babies!  More babies to come in this post!)

Next we have Tiffane, who also sent some photos of recent creations.  This is a shot of her beautiful new hairstyle.  (If I'm not mistaken, those are green eyes, my favorite; I have a friend at work, Nell, who has eyes the color of wheatfields when they are still green, with flecks of gold.  I can only listen to half of what she says because I'm lost in admiration of her beautiful eyes.):

Some recent projects of Tiffane's:  a really sweet top for a three-year-old, and a felted purse (Nicky, look!  She's bedecked these with your leaves and roses!!!)

 
And here is Tiffane's cat, Spencer, who is that rare feline who enjoys playing dress-up, ready to greet Halloweeners (although he might take offense, should he meet my own "Hallo-wieners!").  Apparently Spencer has an extensive holiday-appropriate wardrobe, so I think we will need more photos to post of his other outfits as the year goes by.

And this entrant is Jackie, who is working on the February Lady sweater.  She looks really young to be such an accomplished knitter! 

If I had a daughter, Jackie is exactly what I would want.  A cutie-pie who can knit!  I love that warm golden yarn, too, and am requesting a photo of Jackie modeling the finished sweater for us.

And last but not least, another responder who has been commenting since the early days of the KOTOTW blog, Cai, who is knitting on-the-go here in front of a spectacular tree in Woodward Park, where she was cheering a cousin on in cross-country division finals (Woo Hoo!  Way to multi-task!):

Cai says she often knits at the Little Leaf tea shop, where George, the proprietor, suggests appropriate teas based on whatever she happens to be knitting.   Cai also likes the extra-long posts as they give her an excuse to come here and sip tea and knit.  (Can I just say that I am filled with longing to go knit with Cai there in PERSON, rather than in blog form???)  I love her smile here.  Knitting is such a pleasure, but knitting at a lovely tea shop with friends is what I would picture heaven being like, if I had any say in the matter.)

Finally, a picture of Cai's stash, neatly stored in a classy barrister's bookcase (a MUCH more fitting use than legal tomes, IMHO).

Her friends see this and think she should open a yarn store.  Ahem.  Cai, you need to send your friends the picture of my stash, below, so that they can see the truly scary results of one woman's insane passion for knitting...

So, there you have it!  10 KOTOTW buddies!  I want to thank all the brave souls above for sending in photos; don't forget to send me your snail mail address, and  a color or weight preference for what you like to knit (I would hate to send bulky yarn to a sock or lace knitter, or vice versa).

For the rest of you folks who occasionally read this blog; if you would like to introduce yourself to the gang, please email me your photo, and maybe a picture of what you are working on lately, and I'd be happy to post a little bit about you, too! 

November Knitting Night

We had a very special First Thursday knitting night this November, as Kristin brought a tiny guest to introduce to us all – her beautiful new baby, Adeline! 

 




As you can see, we all took turns holding her while she snoozed like a tiny sleepy angel-baby, so that Kristin could eat her pizza (Punch Pizza in Nordeast – YUM!) 

I love these photos; we are all just radiating joy and Kristin looks so beautiful and justifiably proud.  As for me, I can’t tell you what a treat it was to hold a sleeping baby again; it has been SUCH a long time.  Even though my son Nathan is 14 now (and 6’ 3”!), the experience of holding a tiny little one brings back those early memories so easily.  Sigh; nothing like a baby to fill your heart to overflowing.

We did adjourn to a nearby Panera for at least a little knitting, but it was a worknight so we couldn’t stay long.  And unfortunately, I don't have any photos of the group's WIP's, but will try to do better next time.

Status of KOTOTW Project No. 14 – Hunter’s Argyle Sock

Here is a photo of my argyle sock so far; I knitted both cuffs before I started on the argyle part:

It is going pretty quickly now that I am past the tuck stitch cuffs, which took 88 rows, yet only resulted in 4 inches of knitting!  By contrast, the first wide stretch of argyle (2 diamonds long) is only 65 rows!  I’ll have to ask Renay to send a photo in so we can see how hers are coming along. 

In my next post, I think I’ll share some handy hints for intarsia work.  It isn’t my favorite kind of knitting; you have to be in a patient mood to deal with the twisting yarns hanging from each block of color, as you have to wrap them around each other at the edges to make sure no holes show, resulting in sort of a "tangle party" on the back side of your knitting which needs to be de-tangled every few rows.  I enjoyed making Nicky's Dog Dragon Scarf, as the intarsia areas were small enough that you could just use long strands of yarn and pull them through each other, and also as it was very narrow, so there was less capacity for tangling over an entire row.

However, over the years  I’ve learned some techniques that really do make it easier to make those two pesky stitches where two colors meet “behave” themselves, instead of looking crooked and funny, or ending up either too big or too small.

An Attack of Finish-Itis!

Sometimes I have start-itis, and seem to feel an urge to just start projects all weekend long (this is perhaps why I have found myself occasionally with over 20 projects on the needles at any given moment!)  My recent stash-organizing project has made starting new projects particularly hard to resist. 

Luckily, I also have occasional attacks of finish-itis.  The one that hit recently not only resulted in the organised "Wall-O-Yarn" you see above, but has also helped me finish some gifts and other things that will come in handy now that the weather has turned into this:

 

(Taken outside my friend Eva’s home this Saturday AM – the snow decided to come before Thanksgiving this year!  I know this happens regularly, but even though I've lived here for 14 years, that still just seems so, so wrong!)

First of all, I made Adeline a turkey hat for Thanksgiving.  I wanted to make one of these in an adult size for my uncle who has helped run a thanksgiving meals on wheels charity event for the past 20+ years, and found a great pattern, but for a baby - the "Jive Turkey Hat" from the "GoingCrafty" Blog, subtitled "Weird things I do with my hands."  I especially like the listed keywords for this post, which are "baby, knitting, pattern, and ridiculous" (!) 

Adeline became the unwitting recipient of the baby-sized prototype I needed to make, to figure out how to size the whole dang thing up for my uncle's rather large cranium.  Here she is, modeling it for us:

I think my fellow bus commuters must have been mystified, to see me knitting the turkey legs...  The construction of the bones is particularly inspired; you sort of take tuck stitches to pull the sides together, and then wrap yarn around the middle, to create the two knobby bits at the end of each bone.

(I can't WAIT to give my Uncle Jack his hat; Nathan and I are going to help prepare the Thanksgiving meals next Wednesday afternoon and evening, and I'm bringing his turkey hat to him then so that he can either wear it proudly, or look at me like I am a crazy person.)

I finished yet another Monet shawl, a kit from Morehouse Farms in the “Houses of Parliament” colorway.  It is made out of their splendid hand-dyed merino wool, as airy and floaty as gossamer, but fun and springy to knit with.  I really like things like this for commuting.  Rows and rows of garter stitch are soothing and easy to cope with during bus or train rides.

This is my third Monet shawl; the first was for a friend who lost her new husband unexpectedly, and the second was for donated for a charity auction.  This third one is for the sister of two friends of mine; she is recovering from some very severe injuries.  Anyway, she was on my mind and in my prayers, but I always feel so helpless when bad things happen to really wonderful people, and don’t know what to say or do.  I figure that since I know how to knit, one of the best things I can do is to make something warm and comforting, and to knit all my best wishes into it.  Knitting has given me so much joy; sometimes it just feels right to “use my knitting powers for good” and make something for someone else to express my own thankfulness.

(Let you think I am slipping from my vow to knit only for myself, however, please note that I am also almost half-way done with Monet Shawl #4, which is in fact going to be kept for me! :D)

For blocking something like this, blocking wires come in really handy.  You just lace them along the edges of each side, and then use T-pins to hold the wires in place.  These shawls are much smaller before you block them; they stretch amazingly.  I kept re-counting thinking it wasn't going to be long enough, but when blocked it came out to 72", so I think it came out plenty long.

Another commuting knit project (as "argyling" with 5 different colors per row presents numerous portability issues): I saw this interesting pattern in the latest Lion Brand catalog, for a black felted scarf with crocheted medallions on it, like huge stars or snowflakes, called the Constellation Scarf.  What I really liked about it, was that the crocheted motifs were bent right around the edges of the scarf and sewn down on each side, making it an asymmetrical and double-sided scarf – SOOO clevah!

I wanted mine to be machine-washable and dryable, so I used my favorite old standby, Lion Brand Wool-Ease, and knit a garter stitch scarf the long way, 360 stitches a row, and 4 balls of Wool-Ease on a size 9 needle.  I had to sit through 14 hours of continuing legal education classes in the last 2 weeks, and needed something unobtrusive to work on that I could just knit without looking much, so this project was perfect. 

I decided to make a matching hat as well, so I made an extra crocheted star, and made a simple garter stitch hat with a fold-over brim. 

It was really nice to have new knits to wear this week, considering the snow and cold temps; I felt cozy and like I was taking very good care of myself. 

And finally, the most wonderful accomplishment of all (IMHO); I have finished cataloguing my stash, and my upcoming projects onto Ravelry, where I am “mtaylorknitter”.  WARNING:  Viewing my Projects page could make you faint at the sheer volume... 

I knew I was in trouble when the screen said at one point, “You are entering your 400^th project…”  OK, 40 or so of those are finished already.  But at over 360 projects on hand to make, assuming I knit about 20 a year, that is 18 years of knitting, people!!!! 

Crazycrazycrazy… and here is Exhibit A, submitted as evidence of said craziness:

All those orange-ish post it notes are marked with a letter corresponding to notes on an excel spreadsheet describing each project, the yarn, the pattern, etc., so that I can just word-search the list and quickly find any project I might want to knit.  Someday.  If I live that long.  (I ran out of letters and had to re-start "AA, and got all the way to "GG"...)

I have some bins of one or two skeins of various things leftover from finished projects, and a few more projects that are partially completed to add to the Ravelry list, but the collection and organization project is more or less complete.  I’m really hoping that the next time I get the urge to buy yarn, I can quickly get to a computer with internet access and browse my Ravelry page to remind myself that there is little danger I will run out of lovely knitting projects any time soon.

* * * * * *

So, there you have it; a really nice couple of weeks filled with friends, a baby, knittingknittingknitting, and reveling in the glories of my upcoming projects.  Life is good!

Thanks again to the commenters who sent me their photos!!!!

XOXOXO,

 Mar

 

Happy Hallo-wieners!

Hi, guys!  Madeline and Libby got to dress up in their special costumes last night:

 

(I was merciful and didn't parade them around the neighborhood like this, though.)  We actually had some snow last week (not the sticking kind, but still...), so I was worried about it being too cold to trick or treat.  But the weather was clear, if chilly. 

We had about 40 trick-or-treaters; my son, Nathan, trick-or-treated between his dad's house and mine, dressed up as a zombie hunter.  (He drew a surprisingly realistic scar on his face using my eye and lip liners).  His loot filled an entire soup pot, and I have quite a bit of chocolate left, but I have a feeling it won't go to waste, considering Nathan is now 6' 3" and hungry more or less constantly.

The two baby girls next store were dressed up as Thing 1 and Thing 2 from the Cat in the Hat - I wish I could have seen them with their hair all blue, but that evidently was too messy.  And they were in their winter coats.  However, I think that was about the cutest costume idea I'd heard of for sister toddlers in quite a while.

(For those of you who don't recall Thing 1 and Thing 2...)

I've been knitting, and knitting, and knitting yards and yards of fabric to complete the Cowl Collar Jumper; I actually blocked it last week, and thought I would buzz right through the armholes and cowl collar this weekend (which is why my Hallo-wiener dog photos a a day late - I kept on thinking I would be able to get this post done!  However, that cowl collar took some time to finish - that quite a bit of ribbing!

I just finished it tonight, however (YAAAYYY!)

So, I give you...

Project 13 - The Cowl Collar Jumper!

I didn't make it quite as short as the model in the book (we actually have a dress code at work), and I made it a bit less form-fitting.  But it feels GREAT - I am going to reallly enjoy wearing this jumper all winter long.

After some fits and starts, I've also begun Project 14, the Hunter's Argyle Socks. 

I'm making these in lovely colors of Knit Picks Stroll, solids and heathers.  I picked a really dark, dark teal color as the main background. 

The cuffs are knit in an intersting "tuck" stitch pattern.  After knitting 8 rows of stockinette, on a purl row, you reach down and purl the next 4 stitches together with loops of the 4 stitches which are 7 rows directly below them, purl 4, and so on.  Then 8 rows later you "stagger" the 4 stitches you connect, so there is sort of an alternating pattern of little wavy tucks:

Here is what it looks like from the back:

It is kind of hard to do this on size 2 needles, and in such dark yarn, especially when I get home at night and my eyes are pooped.  I also got about 2 inches in the first time, and realized I was using size 1 needles! (duh)  So not only was it too hard to see the rows, the sock would have come out waaay to small.

It is hard to figure out which stitches are exactly 7 rows below; and when you pick up the first of the 4 stitches, it tends to distort the fabric and make it really hard to figure out which stitch to pick up next.  So, I figured out a solution:

When it is time to do the "tuck stitch" row, I pick up all the loops I will need to knit into onto a separate needle (it is easier to do this if you pick a needle in a smaller gauge).

Then, I have two choices; I can either purl 4, and then pick up the stitches from the lower needle one at a time as I purl the next 4 stitches together with these lower picked-up stitches; or, I can just slide them all onto the needle, first 4 stitches, and then the next stitch, the next lower-needle stitch (alternating 4x), and then the next 4 stitches, so that I have them all lined up on a single needle, and can purl 2 stitches together 4 times when I get to the tucked stitch part.

I like to do this sometimes; I find it easier than controlling 3 needle-tips.  I use this technique a lot when doing a "3-needle bindoff," just slipping the stitches from the two needles alternately onto a single needle, and then knitting them together 2 at a time and casting them off. 

So, now that I have a game plan, the cuffs should come together relatively easily.  The argyle part shouldn't be too tough. especially because I'm going to do the thin line of contrast stitches that bisects each diamond in duplicate stitch.  I hate using bobbins, though, and the squares are pretty big; so I'll be juggling either 3 or 5 balls of yarn at a time.  I'm going to try to re-create this cool system that one of the Texan wonder-knitters was using to knit two socks at a time; if it works I'll show you in pictures next post!

My buddy Renay is actually knitting these along with me (YAY!), in her family's tartan colors; we have a knitting night scheduled this week, so I'll see if I can take a photo of her progress as well.  This should be a really special knitting night - Kristin is bringing baby Adeline to meet us all (yay!), so I'm hoping to have some great photos to show you.  (Babies; sigh.   I love babies.....)

What else is up?  Hmmm.  Work is busy; I had the first annual family fall Sunday supper last weekend (mom's classic meatloaf recipe and mashed potatoes, and my brother's Key Lime Pie, yummm...).  I am still working my way through my endless stash, putting yarns with patterns, and posting them all on my "projects" page on Ravelry (mtaylorknitter).  I hope that the sheer overwhelming abundance of it all will help me curb my yarn purchases somewhat.  (But I'm not known for my self control where yarn is concerned, ahem...)

So, speaking of having too much yarn...

That can only mean... that it is time for another:

YARNY GOODNESS GIVEAWAY!

There are several prizes this time (good thing I've been going through my stash, huh!):

First up:  A skein of Soxx Appeal yarn to make the "Faux Fair Isle Fairy Sox" coming up a few patterns from now, in the color "Chocolate Cherry," just as used with the socks in Knitting On Top of the World!

   Second, a skein of Rio de la Plata 100% merino wool sock yarn, in lovely self-striping fall colors:

 

And third, 5 skeins of Elann Peruvian Pure Alpaca, a lovely soft soft yarn, that I had purchased originally to make the Sanquhar Bonny Socks with (until I found the Alpaca With A Twist Baby Twist in colors that I sort of fell for...)  Each skein is 109 yards; two would be enough for a lovely cowl or soft hat...

 

So, three presents for 3 lucky winners!

All you need to do to enter, is to send me a photo!  (I'm hoping that frequent commenters will participate; I want to know what Barb Outside Boston looks like, and Barb who isn't outside Boston, and Cai, and Marion, and Norma, and Katebee!)  If you want to get really creative, send a photo of yourself and your current knitting project!  If you give me permission I will post your photo here so that other readers can meet you face-to-face as well. 

If you are technologically challenged (I count myself among you - I still can't figure out how to do any of the cool stuff other people do with their blogs at all), ask a friend at work to snap a photo of you with their cell phone, and then email it to you.  Then email it to me, at maryp55124 at yahoo dot com!

You have until midnight Central Standard Time on Sunday, November 14 to enter! 

Miss you guys!  I'm going to try harder to blog shorter but more often; somehow I have it in my head that I shouldn't sit down to write you all unless I have a true opus, but that is probably just silly.  I follow lots of blogs that have less words in them than this paragraph.  And besides, I get such joy out of getting comments, so I have to have more blog posts to inspire more of you to check in!  Your comments on my overwhelming stash just delighted me; I especially enjoyed hearing that Cai and her husband tend to organize their lives on spreadsheets, and that seeing how much yarn I have caused her husband to realize that her stash was really nothing to complain about :D.

XOXOXO, Mary

 

Confessions of a Yarn Junkie

 
Hello, everybody.  I wish I had more exciting stuff to catch you up on, but life has been mostly work-work-work, and not NEARLY enough knitting.  Well, quite a bit of knitting, actually, and obsessing about yarn, and patterns, and Ravelry, etc.

Here is the finished crocheted kitchen rug, made out of cut-up T-shirts; the edges are kinda ruffly, so next time I'm going to try to just do a garter stitch one in rows.   (I guess I could just unravel this one and knit it, come to think of it...)  But Madeline the dachshund really loves it and curls up whenever I'm at the kitchen table.   I couldn't get her to pose for you, though; since the rug is by the kitchen sink, where she gets her bath, she won't let me go near her when she's there!

I also discovered an almost-finished sweater, that only needed its sleeves finished to be wearable, so I finished it, and made a quick little scarf to go with it.  The design is my Miriam Leth-Espensen, the owner of Miriam's Well, and the Santa Fe School of Weaving.  I was on a business trip to Santa Fe, and had Miriam all to myself one morning in her sunny shop, where she helped me find yarn for a man's aran cable sweater, some beautiful Manos del Uraguay purple variegated yarn that I had regretted not buying at Stitches West that year, and two colors of Berroco Ultra Alpaca to make this:

Miriam had a sample knitted up in the shop, and I really loved the drapiness of the sideways garter stitch, and the little sparkly "knitalong" yarn with sequins, that you knit along with just one row in between the rows of eyelets on the scarf.  But what I hadn't remembered, was the simply lush pleasure of the yarn itself.  Oh my goodness, Berroco Ultra Alpaca, yummmmmm!  The folks at the South of the River Ravelers Knitting night all had to hug it to their chests, the smooshy silky softness of it is just so irresistible.

I had bought a matching dyed skirt in Santa Fe, that has been hanging in my closet, unworn, because I didn't want to wear it until the sweater was done.  I think I will be in this outfit quite often this winter, looking dressy but secretly feeling as cozy as if I were wearing a favorite bathrobe.

KOTOTW Knitathon Status – the Cowl Collar Jumper

I’m making some progress on the Cowl Collar Jumper; I decided to knit it in the round, which is handy, as I can thread two long circular needles into the stitches and try it on, to check my project and get the length right!  Here's where I am at the moment:

I just have about 8 or 9 more inches to go to the armholes, and then the big collar, and it will be finished!  I hope to model the finished jumper for you soon; however, this weekend is going be taken up with quite a bit of leaf raking, and other mundane housework-type tasks. 

Sigh – I adore this season.  The colored leaves, the smell in the air, the cool days and cooler nights.  I sort of wish I could press the “pause” button, and delay the inevitable sleet storms of a Minnesota winter.  It would be especially nice to have one of those buttons when the leaves are at their brightest; ours are mostly brown, and falling down by this time in the season.

One of the truest pleasures of fall, for me, is wearing my hand-knitted socks.  I thought I’d throw in a picture of today’s pair, just because:

 

The Stash Organization Project; or, How I Realized that I May Have Lost My Mind.

The other thing that has been keeping me busy of late, even to the extent that I forgot to write a blog post for a couple of weeks, is a massive effort to organize and catalog my out-of-control yarn stash.  How out of control, you ask?  Ahem… it appears that I have enough sock yarn and patterns set aside to make 54 pairs of socks!  That means I have my own personal sock-of-the-month club that will last for 4 and a half years!  I also discovered I have patterns and yarns all set to knit:

-          5 afghans;

-          10 cowls;

-          55 scarves;

-          54 cardigans/jackets;

-          12 pullovers and tops;

-          10 hats;

-          10 baby garments;

-          12 pairs of mittens and gloves;

and, um, did I mention (ahem):

-           67 shawls??? 

 As if that wasn’t mind-boggling enough, I am not quite finished cataloging it all!  By the time every last ball of yarn is accounted for, (Not including project leftovers!!!!), it appears that I will have accumulated over 350 projects to knit, including the remaining Knitting On Top of the World projects.  So, I did the math and realized that, assuming I complete an average of maybe 20 projects a year, I have enough knitting to keep me busy for about 18 years!  Enough to knit until I’m 66, people!!!  Here is what the spreadsheet looks like -- so far:

I also realized the other day that I make numerous silly excuses for buying more yarn, and way too often “Oh, just a little yarn for socks, that won’t even cost $20.”  “But, this yarn is on sale -- such a great price!”  “This yarn is about to be discontinued, and I really need it to make this certain pattern that has been haunting my dreams for years!”  Or, “Knit Picks is going to discontinue this certain color of kettle-dyed yarn, that is just the right shade of orange/gold to make that Hex Shawl on Knitty!”  Or else, I just happen to be in a yarn store and feel  really guilty if I leave without buying anything.  (I wonder what my friend Steven Berg (who owns both The Yarn Garage and Steven B Studio, two of the best yarn stores in the Twin Cities) would think, if I could show him the extent of  my own personal yarn store, downstairs in my garage…)

Anyway, the plan was to put all those patterns I have been saving together with existing yarn in my stash, so as to create “kits”, organize them by type, put them into designated bins and build a spreadsheet showing which project was in what bin.  Then, I plan to carry that spreadsheet around with me like a talisman to protect me from the psychotic urge to buy yet more yarn, and to peruse when I’m feeling particularly avaricious.  For more yarn (“Yarnavaricious?”)

To take this a step further, I intend to put ALL of these projects on Ravelry, so I have a photographic record of their colorful splendor, that I can peruse at weak moments, like King Midas sifting his fingers through his gold coins. 

I am also hoping that this process might help me do some culling of projects that I’m just not completely excited about.  I could maybe sell some of them on eBay, or give them away to knitting buddies, or do more Yarny Goodness Giveaways on this blog, and lighten the load somewhat. 

But it is also just too hard to let go of some of these yarns; For instance, I’ve been carrying this yarn around since the summer of 1992, when I purchased it during a summer in Paris with my then-boyfriend.  In all these years I haven’t found the right pattern to make with it.  Until now, that is; I think it will be perfect for this Wyvern Wrap, by Angela Hahn, a pattern I’ve been admiring for quite some time.

And I purchased this yarn at a now-defunct yarn store in Berkeley, California, during my law school days, probably in 1990.  The store was called “Straw Into Gold,” and it was sort of a front-room operation for Crystal Palace Yarns, which decided eventually to forego the storefront and just sell yarns wholesale.  I was going to make a sweater with a lacy collar, that now looks dated.  And besides, I am just not a ruffle-type person.  However, I matched it up with this Cascade Sport yarn, and I think it will make a really nice version of this diagonal stripes shawl from one of the Vogue On the Go Shawl books:

Or maybe that shawl on the cover of the first Veronik Avery  pamphlet - not quite sure yet.  There are also some exquisite jewels in my yarn collection, that I couldn’t bring myself to let go of at all, ever, such as this gorgeous yarn from Sundara Yarns (sigh – their hand-died yarns make me die with pleasure), which I am saving to make this lovely Arabella shawl by Ilga Leja:

And then, because I am a verifiably crazy person (if you doubt this, remember – over 350 projects!!!), I had to go buy some more yarn, because I want to make some of the projects in Nicky Epstein’s latest book, the Enchanting Collection, and was afraid that they would no longer be available when I get to the end of the Knitathon!!!.  So.  I bought more yarn.  (Don’t tell Nicky; she will be angry with me!)

 
This little organizing project, which I thought would take, at most, part of a weekend to accomplish, has ended up taking much, much longer.  I keep on losing projects, or forgetting to photograph something, or changing my mind about what to do with which yarn; and inputting all of this information onto my Ravelry page will take ages; I’m going to have to do it just bit by bit.. 

And what is my defense? 

-          At least it keeps me from playing in traffic?

-          It is better than being addicted to drugs or alcohol?

-          I don’t spend much money on clothes, drive an 11-year-old car, and haven’t replaced my broken dishwasher for over a year?

Ahem.  It occurs to me that maybe if I spent a little less money on my yarn addiction, that maybe I could, in fact, get a dishwasher.  Or a badly-needed new couch.  Or even, eventually, a new car…

(I wonder if there is a 12-step program for people like me…)

Anyway, when all is complete I promise to take a photograph of my “wall-o-yarn” for you to (variously) ogle, find amazing, find a little crazy, or find completely understandable and quite logical, actually. 

Recent Knitting Nights (or Afternoons)!!

I went to knit with the Hennepin County title examiners the first week of October; here is a picture of my friends Kim and Mary, who are both really good knitters.  Kim only knits in the winter months, and makes elegant shawls to grace her lovely, willowy frame; and Mary is always knitting something for someone’s baby, although she proudly showed me the start of a lace scarf she is making for herself.  I set Matthew up with the extra yarn from my ribbed, striped scarf, so that he can make its twin.  He is also always busy knitting things for other people, and has just started on a felted messenger bag, so I don’t know when he will start knitting it.

Here is another picture of the Simply Smashing Cardigan, as well.  It has already come in handy at work; my office is really cold most mornings.  I think it looks sort of library-ish, so I took a picture by some law books that were color-coordinated:

A couple of Wednesdays ago, I went to knit with the South of the River Ravelers, who gather at Pardon My French in Eagan every Wednesday between 5 and 9.  I just love this group, as they are so welcoming, and are always working on a range of interesting projects.  These mittens were so wonderful, I thought I would share them with you:

Rina is an expert knitter, and was also working on something lacy with black yarn.  (My sister and I have decided that our days of knitting tiny black yarn might be beyond us, as we can no longer see the stitches clearly even in bright light!)  These mittens were unusual, in that once she knit the outsides, she picked up stitches at the end of the cuff, and knitted an entire additional mitten, which then was tucked inside the outer mitten to form a perfect lining!  Lined mittens – how cooooozy does that sound!  (Maybe you have to be from Minnesota to truly appreciate the brilliance, the grandeur, the insane longing I now have to drop everything and make my own pair of lined mittens, before the snow hits!)

My Thursday night knitting group was very small this month; only 3 of us could make it, as others were (variously) at French class; at a play at the Guthrie; working way too hard; or (best of all) at home with a brand new baby!  My friend Kristin (who you might remember from the recent knitting baby shower!) had a beautiful little girl named Adeline.   I need to ask Kristin’s permission before I share a photo, and really hope she isn’t checking email too often!  However, she set a goal of coming to our November knitting night, so maybe I can share photos of them both with you soon!)

Karen cracked me up by telling everyone in advance that day, via email, that she had uncovered evidence of what I was up to during my college years!  Yikes!  Karen works as the director of a law library, so I was wondering what amazing search engines she was using, and what she found all day (embarrassing photos of me from theater performances in college?)  However, the mystery turned out to be this:

Karen thinks that this sweater model looks just like me!  (Actually, I think I may have been a baby when this knitting magazine came out :D )

 

I don’t see the resemblance, myself, except maybe for her stance (my sister Susan always teases me about wrapping my arms together like that), and her look of sheer determination.  (No wonder I scare men away…)

Karen had just finished this lovely baby sweater for little Adeline:

 

It is actually in a marled yarn (different colored strands twisted together) of hot pink, purple and green, and is so, so soft and lovely.  I love the ruffly edging especially.

And Renay had me take a photo of herself with a bag from this great new knitting store she discovered in Stillwater, MN:

Evidently they have some sort of challenge to have customers collect photographs of themselves with a store logo bag in various locations. 

I think the name is brilliant!  Here is a picture of the store’s front:

I haven’t been yet, but my friend, Pam, went last weekend, and just loved it (especially because her husband was content to sit on a comfy couch and let her browse to her heart’s content!)  Renay and I are trying to figure out if we could get the gang out there for a Thursday night knitting session, although Stillwater is quite a distance for some of our members; maybe a Saturday, hmmm….

* * * * *

Well, off to start my Friday evening.  I am so glad to have written this; I’m really missing you guys!  Next post, I promise, we will have a new Yarny Goodness Giveaway! 

I decided I would love to see photos of you, to put a face to your names, so I’m going to issue a challenge to have you send a photo, preferably holding whatever you are knitting right now (and let me know if I have permission to share your photo with the gang) I will find something from that amazing yarn store I seem to have acquired, and offer it in a giveaway, in exchange for a picture of you!

Have a great weekend, everybody.

 

XOXOXOXOoooh baby,  Mar.