La Duchesse Wins!

The winner of our monthly drawing for handspun yarn is La Duchess. Check out her blog at http://bubblycauldron.blogspot.com/. It was her very cool Meez animation that made me want one! Congrats Duchess.

Happy Halloween, everyone. I am not in the mood to dress up for work today, but here is the pic of last years fun.

good beginning

Well, I have the first toe done on my Socks for Ann. After talking with her, I decided that I will not be doing the "brimstone" pattern in the foot section, as it may bother her. So I am off the hook for the moment. Brimstone waves will have to wait for the leg section to be figured out. I think the toe up method will work well for both of us, as I am noticing wear on the sides of my socks where I have done the k2 tog and the ssk. They get stretched and thin and look like they need some TLC, even though they may be less than one year old.
Hopefully tomorrow my book will come from Amazon about knitting toe up with 2 circular needles. I will let you know.
Thanks to everyone who has been posting comments! You all will be in the drawing for the light rust yarn shown below. It is a blend of Merino that was dark rust with spashes of green, gold and red that I carded with some natural alpaca and spun up on the wheel. It is two ply and aprox. 100 yards.
And for the poll, I am glad to see most everyone is in the same boat, with several Holiday gifts still on the needles or perhaps still just in our inspired section of gray matter! For the wonderful person who says that they are nearly done and just need to sew in some loose threads, I applaud you! Please email me with photos and I will have a special prize for you.
For everyone who is affected by the devistating fire in Cali, my heart goes out to you. My Brother in law is safe so far in Carlsbad, but I am anxious to get to work and see if our San Diego division was hit. I wish I could just pack all my yarn and needles in the car and drive over to the stadium and sit and knit with whoever needed to. If any of you in the area there can do this, please, let me send you supplies. email me kcqqltr at comcast dot net. Best to all, KC

Time for another comment drawing!

As last months hand spun yarn drawing was so fun, I am going to offer it again! All you need to do is post a comment, or send me an email, and I will enter your name. I feel that I have two new friends from this experience, LDS Venus and Delighted Hands, aka Vicky and Cindy.

Cindy won the yarn last month and made a lovely pair of wrist warmers. Check out her blog at http://delightedhands.blogspot.com/.

Thanks to everyone who has voted in the poll. It seems many of us are in the same state of Hope/denial. I have to admit that I can't seem to stop knitting for myself long enough to knit up those gifts. I know all of you are not selfish like me and will persevere to the end and be met with cries of delight on Christmas morning.

My latest obsession is toe up socks. I began Brenda Daynes Hellfire and Brimstone socks yesterday. It is here http://www.cast-on.com/?page_id=160 under the title Brother Amos. Be sure to donate and get your copy. Just remember, it is in British pounds which means if you donate 5, you will pay 10 in US dollars.

I am using a red multi colored sock yarn from Pattons that I bought in Pinetop. As I was flogging myself with guilt over starting another project for ME, I realized, "Hey, this yarn was to be socks for ANN. She picked it out. So, for the guilt abatement record these socks will be knit and given to Ann. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

For more suppport in this new endevor, I am going to be joining http://myfirsttoeups.blogspot.com/ that I found thanks to Cindy's profile. Another reason to make friends in this online knitting community! We all have such diverse groups and things we know about, we can continually help each other.

The puppy got the yarn!

This dog got into

my handspun from the other day (see below) and now it is a knarled mess! So that answers the question about wetting it on the niddy noddy. I will have to untangle it some day and re-wash it.

We have been busy this weekend with golf, (Ann) and work (me) and celebrating my birthday! It is actually today, but we went out with Ann's brother and friend for dinner on Saturday to Fletchers and had a great time. Ann got me "Bag Style" and a spa day at Gadabout! And her brother got me an ipod Shuffle! It is soo tiny and it is purple! I used it at work yesterday and just clipped it to my shirt. It was so easy to take off when customers came in. I love it!

Early morning meeting at the main office, so gotta run. Then my co-workers are going to breakfast with me for my B-day. Gave a great day, all. KC

Knitting and Spinning

I have been knitting more every day, now that I am back at work! LOL. Here is the finished pair of Mrs. Beetons, (see link in last entry), as well as some spinning I did with batt from Kathy Wither's ranch here in Tucson. She creates really interesting mixes of her wool and mohair and I am trying to get enough like this spun to make her crocheted shawl pattern. Her company is called Unique designs and her web page is here:http://www.uniquedesignsbykathy.com/.

It is getting nice and cool here in the mornings, though still up in the 90's during the day, which all of us in Tucson are sooo tired of! I am enjoying being back to work and am trying to focus on knitting up my Christmas gifts. It is at this time of year that I wish I had started earlier!

A finished object!

This is my latest finished piece. I was feeling blue one day so I stopped by my LYS, http://www.tucsonyarn.com/ and looked around for "comfort knitting". I don't remember how it all got started, but I tried on this shawl knit out of a mohair and loved how it draped. But the mohair was out of stock so I began looking around for a worthy substitute. I embraced the fluffy Lafayette by Bristol Yarn Gallery, which is a blend of 96% Suri Alpaca and 4% nylon in the lovely soft green, color 1042. But we (the wonderful shop gals and I) agreed that it needed a second yarn to get up to bulky weight called for in the pattern. I decided not to add merino in the same color way, as I thought it would be too pastel for a year round shawl, so Syd suggested Berroco's Softwist. It is a wonderful mix of 41% wool and 59% Rayon in a deeper blue green, color 9416. This yarn has a definite shimmer to it. We were all so excited about the combination, Ava wound both for me, even going the extra mile and winding the two together. I sat down and cast on a swatch with borrowed 13's and determined the fabric was perfect, so ripped out the swatch and began the shawl.

The pattern for the shawl is Oat Couture's English Garden. It starts at one narrow edge rather that the top or bottom. In garter stitch this was a breeze to knit, in fact I finished it in just 6 days. When I went back to the shop to report my progress ( and get more of the Lafayette, I had run just 20 rows short) there were 2 finished shawls and one on the needles from our brainstorming together! I have a request for one in multi colors from a friend and I want to knit several more to have on hand for gifts or "prayer shawls".

I will say though, that all those rows of garter stitch on big needles, had me looking longingly at my lace knitting and socks! I now have gone back to finish the second Mrs. Beeton's ruffled wristwarmer by Brenda Dayne of http://www.cast-on.com/, which is on http://www.knitty.com/issuewinter05/PATTmrsbeeton.html I will have a picture soon. Having begun my first one with beads as the pattern suggests, and then deciding it wasn't what I wanted, I can tell you that the first row With Out Beads is much easier to knit and nearly as charming. Also, before you knit the two ruffles together, make sure that your bottom one is showing as much as you like. that was the problem with my first attempt, so on the second go round I added a few more rows at the top of the underside before knitting the two ruffles together.

Also, on the work front, I am off hiatus and back selling at the master planned community Rancho Sahaurita, south of Tucson. It is lovely there and I am enjoying myself. Take care all, I am off to get my second cup of coffee! KC P.S. the dog in the picture is our Molly:)