Knitting and spinning. The fun never stops.

No easy feat, considering that I never shut up.

Yet another visitation from the Gift Fairy!

Yesterday I got a lovely package from Bonne Marie, the ChicKnits diva! Inside:

Wonderful-looking bath salts, which I think will be just perfect to use in my continuing efforts to combat this.

And beautiful buttons that I’ll be using on a project very soon . . . stay tuned for that.

I decided to start a blog after reading Bonne Marie’s ChicKnits, and I bet that’s true of a lot of us. So a huge thank you to our Queen of KnitBlog Inspiration!

Stash Enhancement

Got a coupla cool things in the mail the other day.

Heilo wool to knit Dale of Norway St. Moritz from Bea Ellis Knitwear.

And Opal “crocodile” sock wool from Carodan Farm.

Because I need more wool.

Contest Update

Entries are pouring in. And a lot of you have guessed correctly! There’s still time (till 5:00pm EST tomorrow) so email me your guesses.

Sock alert!

Finished my Opal Southwestern #6 socks. Izzy helped.

Project Monogamy

No update photo of the virgins, as I didn’t work on the sweater last night. I worked on my secret Knitty project. I feel so . . . so . . . naughty! Like I was cheating on the virgin sweater. I don’t know how those of you with multiple WIPs do it. If I did this all the time, I’d be so consumed with guilt I wouldn’t be able to hold my needles!

First off, many of you had problems getting on my blog yesterday. My apologies.

Because I put so many photos in my blog, it eats up bandwidth and when I’ve reached my limit, my provider makes the site unavailable.

In light of this unfortunate situation, I’m going to start putting the photos on my other server and link to them in my blog, so that less bandwidth is used up here when my readers access my site. This should all be fairly transparent to you all, though perhaps the photos will load in a little slower. And there’s a chance I’ll exceed my bandwidth limit on the other server. But if that happens, you’ll still get to my blog — the photos just won’t show.

It’s a bit of a pain to do it this way, but it’s the only way to keep my blog easily accessible to you guys without shelling out big bucks for extra bandwidth. And I don’t mind the extra bother because I love you guys. Kissy kissy kissy.

Is anyone barfing yet?

But on to the regular business at hand.

Another great surprise yesterday morning . . .

This one from Véronique in Switzerland. Look! Look!

A knitting watch! Isn’t it cute? The photo doesn’t do it nearly the justice it deserves. It has a tiny knitting basket under the crystal, with real balls of yarn, tiny knitting needles, and even a miniscule pair of stork scissors! I wore it all day yesterday after receiving it (and am wearing it today) and it makes me smile every time I looked at it. Thank you Véronique! I love it!

And another surprise!

Look what I got in the mail yesterday:

This is the lovely Koigu scarf that Joe knitted for me, after my shameless begging over on his blog. As Teresa said, I am a fiber hussy! The scarf is lovely and I am delighted to have it. My photo is not completely accurate for color, but those of you who voted on which scarf Joe should send me picked well — the colorway is perfect for me. Thanks Joe!

Contest!

Here it is! The long-awaited blog contest.

Pictured below is a pile of yarn. Can you guess what sweater it is destined to become? These are the colors called for in the pattern, I’ve not made any substitutions to try to fool you! If you want to hazard a guess, send me an email by clicking on “Contact Me” under “Links” in the sidebar. In the event of a tie, I’ll draw a name. The prize is Knitter’s Stash, the wonderful book shown in yesterday’s blog entry.

Contest closes 5:00pm EST this Thursday. If no one guesses correctly I’ll give you a hint. Okay, here’s a hint to start with — it’s a fair isle. Duh.

Good luck!

Current WIP

And here is the updated photo of the virgin sweater.

I’ve been having problems photographing this danged sweater because when I crop and save, the picture becomes extremely fuzzy at my normal compression settings. Something about back and red just makes my image editing software uncooperative! So I’ve been saving at a lower compression for a better quality picture. This has, I’m sure, contributed to the bandwidth problems. Sigh. so I’m afraid you all get a small photo today.

Not a visitation from the Gift Fairy, who is undoubtedly exhausted from all the recent activity on my behalf, but a blast from my past!

A friend from long ago, Alice, was searching online for a toe-up sock pattern and found the one on my website. After wading through my site a bit, she realized I was the same girl she knew from a summer job we shared when we were in high school and the summer before college. All those many years ago.

I was . . . wait for it . . . gobsmacked when she posted a message on my tag-board. A few messages, one email, and a phone conversation later, we were back in contact.

So welcome to my online world of knitting insanity, Alice. It’s great to have you back!

You Gots de Questions? I Gots de Answers!

Caroline F. asked what size needles and gauge the Sanquhar Duke glove pattern calls for. It’s fingering or sock wool and suggested needle is 2.25mm. This is for a medium sized hand. The pattern advises you to go up or down in needle size to adjust for gloves for larger or smaller hands.

Theresa asked what the text on the Virgin sweater is. Here’s the photo:

Kinda hard to read while it’s all smooshed up on the needle, eh? “Smooshed up” is a technical term, by the way.

It’s: “fem kloke og fem daarlige jomfruer”

Translated: “five wise and foolish virgins”

And, just to show you how dorky the foolish virgins look, a close-up of one of their dorky faces:

Tell me this chick doesn’t need a nose-job.

(Yikes! When I first wrote that I typed “blow-job” instead of “nose-job.”)

And here is a photo of what the sweater would like like if I was knitting it as a cardi, rather than bastardizing it into a tunic. Link is to Bea Ellis Knitwear, where you can purchase kits for the Norsk Strikkedesign book, and the book itself. You can buy them elsewhere, but I highly recommend Bea. I’ve had nothing but excellent service from her shop over the years.

A Question for You Guys

One of my coworkers is expressing interest in learning how to knit. And I didn’t even have to nag her! Do you guys have a specific sweater pattern you’d like to suggest for a first project after she learns the basics? Something very simple that can be made in a totally yummy yarn. Let me know what you think!

Y’all have a good weekend! See ya Monday!

I Am Gobsmacked. For a Change.

And you can probably guess why. The Gift Fairy paid me another visit!

This time, it was a gift from Caroline F., another faithful visitor to my blog, and knitter of wonderful arans and fair isles.

The book KnitLit!

This book is a little gem. Filled with essays of varying length about knitting and life, its a great read. I took it to Dreamweaver class with me yesterday and read some of it during breaks and lunch. And enjoyed it thoroughly.

Caroline . . . thank you!

Traditional Scottish Knitting — mini-review

For Sabine, who asked so nicely, a mini-review of the little book Lindsey-Brooke gave me yesterday. It’s Traditional Scottish Knitting by Rowan Reid and is subtitled “Sanquhar Pattern Gloves History and Knitting Pattern.” It was published by The Galloway Tryst in Scotland in 1998.

And it’s just what the subtitle says. It’s 20 pages long, the first 11 being a brief history of the Scottish Sanquhar pattern, complete with wonderful old photos. The rest of the book is taken up by the pattern for “The Duke Pattern” — traditional two-color gloves. Upon reading through the pattern, it looks very detailed and easy to follow.

Virgin Sweater

Here, as promised, the update photo:

In this photo, I’m at the point where I’m knitting the text. The pattern gives you the alternative to knit it in Norwegian or English. I’m knitting mine in Norwegian. It comes out pretty clear — Theresa ought to be able to read it (smile).

Sock Update

Here is proof that I’ve got good knitting karma these days: my Opal socks match!

Too bad.

Because gobsmacked I remain.

I really don’t know what I did to deserve all these gifts, but . . . wow!

Yesterday’s surprise . . . a gift bag chock full of goodies from Lindsey-Brooke, who is one of my most loyal blog readers.

Odie claims that this bag just sort of appeared on her desk. The first thing I pulled out was this:

It’s Joslyn’s Fiber Farm 100% wool fingering weight, called “Dancing Feet.” The colorway is called “TreeBark” and it’s beyond gorgeous. And beautifully soft too. Odie begged me to give it to her and she doesn’t even knit! I think she got caught up in the moment.

The next surprise was this:

This is a little book about the Scottish Sanquhar pattern — its history and pattern for a pair of gloves. Now I’d never even heard of this book let alone ever seen a copy so this was a marvelous surprise. Since I’m such a sucker for traditional patterns.

Then there was this intriguing little box:

And inside the box were these:

Adorable kitty post-it notes and three sets of buttons! The buttons are celtic knots, round snowflake/flower pattern, and little cats.

At this point Odie and I were almost hyperventilating with excitement.

All I can say is . . . I’m not worthy! And, a huge, huge thank you to Lindsey-Brooke!

Another Birthday Surprise

I forgot to mention yesterday (and unforgivable of me too!) that when I got to work on Monday, there was a message on my voicemail from my very good friend Geane (the very same Geane who just finished SL 2002 and the very same Geane who gave me a whopping gift certificate to Bea Ellis Knitwear which enabled me to buy the Heilo for St. Moritz in colorway J, thank you very much) in which she serenaded me with “Happy Birthday” done in a clarinet solo. A beautiful clarinet solo, I might add, as Geane is a talented professional musician. Wow!

WIP or Lack Thereof

I was at a Dreamweaver (html editing software) training course yesterday for work, and will be today, too. I got home later than usual with a not-enough-caffeine headache (won’t make that mistake today!) so I didn’t make a lot of progress on the Virgin sweater. So you get this teaser as the progress pic:

I promise a better pic tomorrow.

I am really really loving knitting this! I feel about this pattern the way Teresa feels about Roscalie. I’m in lu-u-uv, baybeeeeee!

QueerJoe’s Scarf

Didja see the results of the voting on the scarf that Joe knitted for me? I’m getting colorway #2. They are both gorgeous, but #2 was my favorite. Thanks, Joe for your generosity!