Wendy Knits

A festive dinner last night because I get to sleep late today:

Today is a holiday so I’ll not be venturing out to work. No siree! (Doncha love my new margarita glass?)

My Gift Faerie and Deity have been very very good to me.

On Friday I received this:

A beautiful magnet clip that will be very useful for my disorganized self! The photo doesn’t show the color well — it’s really a beautiful purple.

This gift is from Melissa, whose blog Loose Ends is another of my must-reads. By the way, if you haven’t seen her post about the bunny puppets from a week or so ago, run don’t walk over there and look at them. They are exquisite.

Melissa, thank you for the beautiful and useful gift!

And Saturday brought this:

And this:

More wonderful yummy Valrhona chocolate and beautiful glitzy Opal Royal sock yarn, from Katherine, also a January birthday girl, of Wabi Sabi.

How delighted I was with the chocolate goes without saying, and the sock yarn . . . well, I’d heard of Opal Royal but had yet to see it “in person.” I love it! Disco socks, here I come! Thanks so much Katherine!

And then on Sunday . . .

Homemade fudge, courtesy of Carolyn, Kate’s sister! Wow! I was so touched and delighted to get this. And it’s as yummy as it looks — we can testify to that. Thanks Carolyn!

Gasp!

Sock Yarn Question

Friday night my mom called me to ask me to remind her of the washing instructions for the socks I gave my Dad for Christmas. Apparently he has worn them for two days straight because of the cold snap. Mom says his feet have been warmer in those socks than any others he owns. She managed to talk him into letting her wash them, finally.

So I’m thinking I need to knit him more socks. I made those out of sportweight Regia — my Dad wears a size 13 shoe so I wanted to use something larger than sock yarn so I’d finish them in my lifetime.

The question is — what other larger gauge sock yarns do you recommend? I need wool or wool blend and machine washable. Thanks!

Virgin Sweater

In between stuffing my face with chocolate and fudge, I finished the body of the virgin sweater. The pattern tells you to decrease at the neckline and work back and forth. I employed a neck steek instead:

I did a steek for the back neck too.

Here’s the completed body, all mushed up with the neck steeks.

I’ve started a sleeve, so there’ll be a progress pic of that tomorrow. I won’t be at my computer all day because it’s a holiday, but I’ll be checking in from time to time. Happy Monday all!

I repeat, wow!

Twas a good day in Gift Faerie-land!

Here’s what I found yesterday morning:

This is a darling little sachet bag from Theresa of Still Point – another of my favorite daily reads. She knitted it from her own handspun, and inside is a fragrant bar of Crabtree & Evelyn lavender soap. Theresa said it’s to put with my stash to keep it sweet-smelling, but I think I need to keep it where I can see it all day for at least one more day because it’s so beautiful. Thank you so much Theresa! I emailed you yesterday — hope you got it.

And then yesterday afternoon the Gift Faerie flitted in to my office with another surprise! (My Gift Faerie is out of the office today so this is apparently today’s surprise a day early. She’s so well-organized, my Gift Faerie!)

This!

From the wonderful Kateri, of Gifted Hands — a devoted reader of my blog. These are beautiful birch needles with cute little ceramic tops. Aren’t they great? They are fully functional as knitting needles, but I think I will stand them up in a mug in my knitting area so I can enjoy looking at them when they are not in use. And thank you, Kateri!

Again, wow.

New SIP

Started a new sock on the train yesterday — this is from the Lang Jawoll sockyarn that was my surprise gift from Sabine in Berlin. Sabine, you are right — this is wonderful sock yarn. And the colorway is perfect for brightening up a dreary winter day!

Virgin Sweater

The virgins are back!

I have finished all the virgins now, and am in the boring, repetitive upper part of the body. It’s a repeating flower pattern and I realize that I find that far less interesting than the intriguing lower part where every row is different.

The sleeves are done totally in this borring pattern (insert ominous music here) with a single larger motif that goes up the sleeve. Yawn.

Izzy sez “meow!”

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.