Christmas knitting part 2

So, I am still waiting for photos of these items as modeled by the recipients (ahem, mom and Michelle) but since I know you are all waiting with baited breath here are some photos I took before sending the packages off to their new homes.

Here is the winter set I made for my sister, Michelle. She's a transplant to California so I figured the fingerless mitts and ear-warmer would take the edge off the few cooler days. The scarf pattern is straight from One Skein and I cabled the other two pieces to match. All in all this set took about 1.5 skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca, a yarn I would definitely recommend.


And now, the sweater I knit for my mom (modeled by yours truly ... hopefully the photo will soon be replaced with one of my mom in the sweater). It is my first adult-size sweater and I couldn't be happier with how it came out! It took about 16 balls of Cashmere Luxury Chunky by Knitting Fever (45% Merino, 49% microfiber, 6% Cashmere ... and oh so soft!) I think this yarn may be discontinued as I can no longer find it in the product line on the company website. Good think I hoarded it when I had the chance!

Happy New Year everyone! My Knit-Year's resolution: write a pattern for and create this really cool project I have in my head right now and submit it to knitty! What's the idea? That will have to be a secret for now ... though it just might involve the lovely, golden alpaca silk I bought last week.

What are your Knit-Year's resolutions for 2008? Feel free to share them in the comment section, I'd love to know if anyone actually reads this thing! :)

That's all for this year folks! Peace, health, and happiness to you and your loved ones, today and always.

Merry merry Christmas!

Well dear readers, the presents have been unwrapped, meals eaten, phone calls made, and I am now the proud owner of THREE new knitting books!! I can't wait to dig in to Stitch-n-Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook (the title of that one got a big laugh out of my BF's mom), Knitting for Peace, and Fitted Knits. Pattern gluttony I tell you!

All the hand-knit gifts were a hit. The first one is shown in my previous post, photos of the others are pending. I think the recipients were all delighted and pleased (and my mom's sweater FIT, which was my biggest anxiety).

Happy holidays to all!

Christmas knitting part 1

Shawl for Katie

This was knit with about 2.25 balls of Berger du Nord Charmant (50% wool, 50% silk) that I got at Tuesday Morning of all places. It was great to work with, blocked beautifully, and the colors flow wonderfully. This was my first time working from a chart and, man, am I a believer!

Odd requests

So, right now at work I am participating in a holiday gift wrapping fundraiser. This morning at about 11 my boss comes in to my office and asks me if I can wrap a gift for his girlfriend from his 2 cats, as if the gift were actually wrapped by cats. Odd request indeed. Even more odd is the fact that this did not faze me in the least.

This picture shows what I came up with. You gotta figure cats don't have a lot of access to wrapping materials so I went with the brown craft paper. Plus cats love string, right? And dangly things, hence the funny little pom-poms. Of course cats have a hard time writing and managed to get ink all over their little paws, leaving prints everywhere ... Wow, I've thought about this more than is probably healthy. This is what a fine arts degree in theatre gets ya folks!

Serenity Prayer for Knitters

Grant me the serenity

to vigorously block the things I cannot change;
the courage to rip the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.

This sweater is too big. It may not look so big in the picture but that's a lot of ribbing and, despite my swatch and the contingency deduction in my original cast on, it simply does not fit the way I want it to. I am still working up the nerve to rip it all out ...

I'm on Ravelry!

So, I got in to Ravelry! Which isn't really that special seeing as all I had to do to get in was sign up and wait a week or so for them to "invite" me but it is very exciting. Anyway, for those of you who don't know, Ravelry is a relatively new online knitting/crocheting/etc community where you can post photos, search for and save patterns, connect with other knitters, and so on. They tell ya all about it here. What are you waiting for? Sign up today!

All the Christmas knitting went in the mail yesterday. I hope the recipients will enjoy their hand-knit gifts as much as I enjoyed making them (or at least send me a picture of them pretending to enjoy the gifts before packing them off to the Salvation Army). In any case I can't wait for Christmas to be done so I can post all about my last 2 months of knitting (okay, 8 months in one case).

If I don't talk to you again before next week, Happy Holidays!

The Devil Made Me Do It

I finally figured out the perfect gift to make my friend Josh's newborn son ... the Lil' Devil Hat. The kid was born in September so I have been very remiss in getting this gift done but I wanted it to be just right.

(Clearly my friend's child is not a soccer playing stuffed bear but until the package arrives and Josh sends me an adorable photo of Calvin in his new hat we will all have to settle for this pic.)






And because a picture is worth a thousand words, here is why this hat is so perfect.

Yarn kill!

A few weeks back I took a little trip to Rochester to return some props to a fellow prop master (and fellow knitter!), Mark. We were grabbing a quick bite to eat at Dinosaur BBQ when Mark casually mentioned he'd heard about a yarn store that was going out of business. Before he could even offer to twist my arm we'd jumped in my car and set off for New York Knits. We pulled up to the first stoplight and I was singing a happy little song about yarn when Mark cried out "Yarn! There! In the middle of the road!" I backed up about 10 feet and, sure enough, this sad little skein of unmarked yellow acrylic was lying in the middle of the street. Yarn kill.

At long last we arrived at the yarn store to find that everything was 50 percent off!! It was like some sort of heavenly dream. I emerged the proud owner of 4 skeins of sport weight alpaca, 3 skeins of organic cotton, and 9 balls of Cascade 220 superwash wool. I have no idea what I'm going to do with any of it (other than sneak in to the guest room where I keep my yarn to periodically snuggle with the alpaca) but I'm sure it will be something wonderful.

Coming soon: an original pattern!

Local Yarn Store

Today's big addition: links to the websites of my favorite local yarn stores. Things are really taking off now!

Getting Started

Here it is, my very own knitting blog. Because it's not enough to just KNIT all the time ...

Goal number one is to photo all the Christmas projects I am furiously knitting and post the photos here. After Christmas, of course.