Ande in Vancouver, B.C., who sent in this gem:

One day Ande was driving her Jeep,
And ran into a flock of loose sheep.
She gave one a pull,
and off came the wool!
Was there ever a sweater so cheap?

This was a tough one! My judge narrowed it down to 20 (I had close to 100 entries) and had one helluva time picking an ultimate winner. I told her to just pick the one that tickled her fancy the most, and she picked Ande’s very cute rhyme. There were so many great entries — I’d love to publish them all, but I’m afraid I don’t have time to spend coding them right now for posting. (See last week’s whining about being extremely busy.)

Thanks Ande, and thanks to everyone else who participated. We had a lot of fun with this!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Guest Kitty

Today’s guest kitty is the lovely Portia, furry companion to Marta, of Martaschmarta.

She’s a beauty, isn’t she?

Izzy sez “I’m cute too!”

Hank 8 News

I finally finished the ribbing and I’m into the body pattern — see?

This is totally addictive knitting. We watched three movies* this weekend, two of them fast-paced. I found myself knitting much faster during the fast-paced movies.

Okay, from now on, only action-adventure or sci-fi thrillers for me!

*About a Boy, The Scorpion King, Minority Report.

Is it possible? I made it to Friday? Woo-hoo!

Of course, I still have to get through the day.

I mentioned a while back that things were insane at work. They are insaner still, and will continue on for a while. Like, until summer.

More Guest Kitties!

From Karen B.:

She says “Here’s a picture of my husband John, and one of our cats, Snickers.
Snickers is _HIS_ boy. His official residence is John’s shop, but we allow
him in the house every day, much to the chagrin of the resident cat (mine)
Spooky.”

Below, Spooky. Thanks for the cute pix, Karen!

I think Izzy is a little jealous . . .

Hank Alert!

Here’s a bit more of the ribbing:

Wanna see the wrong side of the ribbing? Sure you do.

Two-color ribbing always seems to take forever, but I’m just a few rounds from completion at this point.

Contest!

The entries are in, judging will commence today. Thanks everyone for all the fun! I got entries from 76 people! Wow! As I mentioned before, the winner will be notified via email later today, and will be announced in the blog on St. Patrick’s Day.

(music fade in) And every one was an Henry . . . (music fade out)

And I blame it on Lindsey-Brooke and Katherine, and anyone else who was singing the Herman’s Hermit song Henry the Eighth last week on my tag-board. Thanks to you, I can’t get the frigging song out of my head.

I hope you’re happy.

But even so, you get a little teeny tiny progress photo of the start of the ribbing.

Guest Kitty

We have a guest kitty today.

This is Kateri’s dear departed Tofu. Her daughter used to like to dress him up as a princess. Kateri says “I bet Izzy would find him handsome if he weren’t in drag!”

I bet you’re right!

Disco Socks!

They’re coming along!

Contest Update

Don’t forget, your limericks must be received by me by 5pm EST today, so that the judging may take place tomorrow. The winner will be notified via email tomorrow afternoon or evening, and announced on my blog on Monday.

I’ve gotten a whole bunch of totally awesome limericks (dude!) and have had a great time reading them. And the few of you who attempted to suck up to and/or bribe the judge? It didn’t work — the judge is being given the limericks only to judge solely on their merits. All peripheral comments have been removed.

Yeah, I can be a hard-ass when I want.

How can that be?

I wound some of my Henry VIII wool into balls the other night — one ball of each color so I could get started:

As I said, this is Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift, in the following colors:

187 – Sunrise
789 – Marjoram
198 – Peat
231 – Bracken
236 – Rosewood
165 – Dusk
1100 – Autumn Substitute
150 – Atlantic
160 – Midnight
234 – Pine
1190 – Burnt Umber
292 – Pine Forest

You will note that some of the colors have the same name as the original Campion colors, others do not. “Autumn” has been discontinued by Jamieson’s, replaced by “Autumn Substitute.”

And I’ve set up my charts on my big magnetic board:

I photocopied, cut out, and taped the charts together so I’d have everything all on one page. And propped it up on my music stand.

I usually don’t use markers in fair isle work because the patterns are small and repeat many times. On this project, however, I think I will. Use markers, that is. The main body pattern is in several distinct panels and at least at the start it’ll make it easier to have each panel clearly delineated.

I was mulling this all over yesterday and when I got home, these were in the mail:

Thes are little gold metal jewelry rings, sent to me by my friend Geane — to use as markers for Henry VIII! How timely is that?

And I think the gold is befittingly regal for ol’ Hank!

Knitting on Hank commences tonight!

I got quite a few limericks yesterday. Hey, you guys are quite the poets, aren’t you? I’m very impressed with not only the quality, but comic value of your work. Keep ‘em coming!

And to clarify — feel free to enter as many limericks as you like, via email please.

Sock FO

You were probably wondering if I was ever gonna finish these, huh?

These are the socks I knitted from the Joslyn’s Fiber Farm “Dancing Feet” sock yarn in color “Treebark.” Yarn was a gift from Lindsey-Brooke — aren’t they cute? You can check out the details on the Treebark Socks Page.

And I started a new sock project . . .

Disco socks!

Made from Opal Royal yarn, a gift from Katherine. I just barely started these. but already they are so fun!!!

You might notice that I changed my Works In Progress list in the sidebar to include Henry VIII — it’s a lie. I haven’t started it yet. But soon . . .