Brrrr . . . still cold here!

It’s days like these that make me glad of my extensive handknit wardrobe. I’m sure my sweaters are happy too — they don’t get to come out and play very often.

That said, I’m wearing a Liz Claiborne cotton sweater today. But I’m also wearing my shearling coat, which is incredibly warm.

Don’t ask me how many coats I have — I am a Coat Ho.

We’re supposed to have snow today, but nothing here yet. I don’t think it’s supposed to amount to much of anything — but you never know!

Nova Scotia?

Yes . . . Nova Scotia would be a sorta Valentine-themed knit, as Lisa pointed out. Actually, I was leaning toward knitting Norfolk before it, but I may think about moving Nova Scotia up in the line-up. I’ve got the Baby Silk in Cajun Rose and Butter Pecan. Without seeing a swatch which do y’all like better for Nova Scotia?

Cajun Rose:

or Butter Pecan:

Abalone!

Long time no update photo. That’s because there’s not a whole heckuva lot of progress. Not a lot of knitting time this week — lots of other things intruded. But, for what it’s worth, here’s the update.

Hopefully I’ll have more progress to show on Monday.

Another Booga Bag

The observant among you will note that there is another Booga Bag listed as a WIP. This one is for a friend of my mom’s, being knitted in color #95. A photo:

Kitty Bed Gallery

I’ve put a link to the kitty bed gallery in my sidebar. and there’s a new photo there!

January Contest

The January contest will be announced on Monday. You’ll have to be a little creative for this one, and the prize (a nice one!) will be awarded to the entry I think is the best, rather than drawn at random. Stay tuned!

Good weekend, all! Lucy plans on doing some mountain climbing and is practicing:

Cold here. Cold, cold, cold. Yesterday’s commute was a chilly one, but I was prepared! Because on Tuesday night I finished this:

Uh-huh. My cashmere feather and fan scarf. Nice and snuggly warm! Scarf details and the pattern are here.

I bought a lovely black cashmere coat last month, so I am quite the fashion plate.

The photo is lightened to show detail.

And to top it all off, (Get it? Top it off! I slay me!) I wore my Lopi Light Bucket-o-Chic.

You need to know that this is probably the second time in my adult life that I’ve worn a hat when there wasn’t a blizzard. I am a martyr to hathead.

But the hathead with the bucket hat wasn’t too bad. (What hathead I had was probably exacerbated by my overzealous application of Sebastian Molding Mud.) And no static electricity! That was probably thanks to the new anti-static ion hairdryer I got for Christmas.

Leprechaun Blankets!

When L-B sent me the buttons the other day, she included a couple of leprechaun blankets she knitted.

This one is Peruvian Collection Baby Silk, courtesy of Elann.

And this one is Peruvian Collection Baby Cashmere, also courtesy of Elann.

The top one is a swatch for Alice Starmore’s Nova Scotia, from Fisherman Knits. L-B was concerned that the yarn was too soft for this design, but I think the pattern shows up great! I also suggested to her that she could make a larger size and go down a needle size to knit it to a tighter gauge. That would be going down to a US size ONE, btw. Tee-hee. I’m evil.

The bottom swatch is Cape Cod, also from Alice Starmore’s Fisherman Knits. Pretty!

L-B also knit a swatch for Norfolk (same book) from the Baby Silk that didn’t photograph well, but looks great.

Coincidentally, I have a boatload of these yarns. Baby Cashmere in the color “Viola Phlox.”

Baby Silk in “Cajun Rose.”

And in “Butter Pecan.”

And I’ve never knit those designs.

And they’d be light enough to be comfortable to wear indoors, methinks.

Need I say more?

Felted Kitty Bed Gallery!

Someone asked me the other day if I were going to start a gallery of photos of kitty beds knitted from my pattern. A great idea, and I’ve been spurred on to action, courtesy of the first photos I’ve received, from Cat. The new gallery is here.

So if you’ve knitted a kitty bed and would like me to post a photo, please send it to me (email link in the sidebar) along with any info you’d like included (like the type of yarn used, the kitty’s name, and your website URL, if any). Thanks!

Here’s Lucy in one of her new favorite perches.

I think she considers our home a Kitty Day Spa and she’s under the sun lamp.

Once again, I didn’t put in much time on Abalone last night — I got a new toy that I needed to play with for a couple of hours. No, not knitting-related — I switched my mobile phone service and got a new and different phone. So of course I needed to play with that!

Who’s got the button?

The answer to that question is Lindsey-Brooke! Actually L-B did have the button, or buttons in this case. When I mentioned last week that shell buttons for Abalone would be cool she immediately went into “personal shopper” mode and picked up some samples for me to try out and sent them to me. What a great friend, eh? I just have to mention a desire, and it comes true!

Oh my . . . I really really wish I had a new BMW Z4 Roadster.

Cough, cough.

Here is button number one:

Pretty, but too light.

Here is button number two:

Oh my gosh! How cute is that button?! I love it, but I think it’s too busy for Abalone. Sadly. Cuz it’s so durn cute!

Awwww.

Button number three is the winner:

Hard to get a good photo, cuz of the glare of the white card. A close-up:

This button has just enough purple tone in it to work beautifully with Abalone. Thanks, L-B!!

Abalone Colors

I’ve gotten a couple of requests to post the colors I’m using for Abalone here on my blog. Also what yarn I’m using — Jamieson’s or Jamieson & Smith.

Please remember — the yarn I’m using for my current projects is always listed in the sidebar in the descriptions of my current WIPs. I also specifically stated which yarn I’m using in a blog entry last week. I’m using Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift. Jamieson’s is not the same as Jamieson & Smith. shetland. The Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift is, however, the same yarn as the now discontinued Campion. Some of the color names are the same as the old Campion names, some are different.

But anyone of you who wants to knit this design and has the book can easily figger out the colors, with a conversion chart for Spindrift and Campion. You can find conversion charts on the wonderful Knitting Beyond the Hebrides website in their resources section here.

Speaking of Abalone, I only got a little work done on it last night — other stuff got in the way. But for the brief time I worked on it, Lucy enjoyed it.

Supposed to be seriously cold here today! I’m wearing Henry VIII to work today.

In yesterday’s comments, Cat asked:

I’ve loved the pattern of Abalone but the gray colors in the picture just never appealed. Did you you look at shade card and see how different the real sweater would be?

I’ve always loved Abalone, even with the greyish colors in the original. I wanted to give my mom something relatively easy to get me for Christmas, so I figured out the Campion colors in Jamieson’s (without ever looking at a color card) and gave her the list.

Was I ever amazed when the pattern started emerging.

I can’t believe how much more beautiful the Abalone colors are “in person.” The background colors look like the ocean — beautiful deep sea greens. So I just sort of lucked out on this.

And in answer to Julie’s question — I am doing Abalone as a cardi. It briefly crossed my mind to convert it to pullover, but I decided not to. As much of a pain as the two-color garter stitch bands are, I really like the look of them.

GSRP Box

I took the time Monday night to look through the GSRP box in detail. There wasn’t much of anything I wanted in it — not that it isn’t lovely stuff, it’s just stuff that doesn’t appeal to me for one reason or another. Like, the color isn’t right for me, or I like the color and the yarn is cotton.

So I grabbed the skein of Colinette Circe, just because it looked intriguing.

And I put in three skeins of Noro Kureyon, which I figure is probably about right, value-wise.

And the Cable box is going on its way to Christina in Woodbridge, VA this afternoon.

And while we’re talking about the GSRP . . .

A huge thank you to Amy for masterminding this very fun project. After seeing the box and the paperwork inside that Amy diligently included, I can see she put a lot of time into making this run smoothly.

Mouse-a-thon News

Lucy says: “Don’t look at me!” Go see Mr. Geoffrey’s World!

If you want to see some totally adorable kitties available for adoption, check out this site! Mr. Geoffrey fosters kitties for Capital Animal Care, and there are some beauties pictured on his site.

He also has some information about the Mouse-a-thon catnip mice available for sale from Capital Animal Care.

Are you looking for a furry friend or two to share your home? Run, don’t walk, over to Mr. Geoffrey’s! The link to Mr. Geoffrey’s World will remain in my sidebar, so you can check back any time at all.

And it’s back to work for me. Sigh.

Thank you all for your birthday wishes expressed on my blog and emailed to me — I really appreciated them. And thank you very much to those of you who sent me birthday cards too!

I had a good birthday — presents, seafood stir-fry for dinner, and champagne. Can’t get much better than that! Lucy gave me a birthday kiss:

But she quickly grew bored and wandered off.

I had a good weekend. We went to the mall, watched some movies. And I did some knitting on Abalone too:

I keep comparing my work to the photo in the book — this design is more vibrant in real life — in the book, the teals and green appear a lot more grey than they are in person.

I’ve done absolutely nothing on my Feather and Fan scarf for a week. But now that I’m back to commuting, the scarf will be completed quickly, I think. I’m more than halfway done with it, so a few days of riding the train ought to do the trick.

GSRP!

Also this week, I met the fabulous Kristine for the Official Great Stash Redistribution Project Box Hand-off. Kristine was kind enough to offer to bring the Cable GSRP box to me, the next recipient, so we met for coffee over the weekend. We met at a coffeshop in the mall, both whipped out our knitting, and had a nice chat. As you know from reading her blog, Kristine will be opening a LYS in a couple of months, so I wanted to hear all the details she could give me at this point.

I’ll blog about the GSRP box and my contributions to it tomorrow. right now, I gotta think about going to work.

Hope you all have an easy Monday!