Yarn Gallery Blog

…and so it is, or hereabouts, anyway.  I think that at “a certain age” we should get to take a birthday hiatus.  I mean, there’s not that much to celebrate about being my age. (Curious?  Just take 2 x the 11th prime number, add Geordie’s age, add my age when I got married the first time, subtract my age when I got divorced for the fourth time, multiply by the hours I’ve spent wondering why I’m such a slow learner, and I have no idea what you’ll come up with.  I got off track.) Don’t get me wrong, I love my life and my age and would change very little about my circumstances.  But must I celebrate?  Seriously, it’s not hard for the average American to get to this age, it’s not a landmark birthday, I’m past the first set of ages for cake and ice cream and balloon animals and have yet to reach the second.  I would be very happy if my birthday went unmarked until – oh, let’s say, I add another 30 years.  Now that would be something to celebrate, especially if I can still knit!

Anyway, I got the nicest gifts this week in the form of a beautiful bounty of completed projects to show you, so let’s go…

First, we’re so proud of Peggy Evans, who has worked really hard at learning to knit, who practiced and practiced on blankets and never thought she could do anything else.  Look at this adorable baby set that she made in Peter Pan DK:

Lori Yatron finished this lovely summer top.  The vibrant blue looks wonderful on her, the fit is perfect and in Hempathy, a cotton and hemp blend, it’s cool and flattering.

Carol Slifka and Lynda Slovitsky both finished their Adult Surprise jackets and brought them in to model.  I love them both and I love how Carol’s looks tailored for her job and Lynda’s looks relaxed (she’s retired, lucky girl), just as they planned.

Two pretty scarves.  The first from Barbara Haag from a free shop pattern in a hand-dyed silk and mohair blend called Nantucket:

and the second by Mary Drehs from a Fiber Trends pattern in a hand-dyed fingering weight wool:

Barbara used a challenging yarn with a fairly straightforward pattern, and Mary used an easy-to-work-with yarn for a challenging pattern.  Both did really good jobs.

Lynne Nagle is an absolutely fierce crocheter who makes the most gorgeous and adventuresome things.  Here is her second pair of socks, in Panda Silk.  Soft, and she says they fit really well:

These gorgeous scarves are too much.  The first (modeled by Karen Wenrich because her top was the perfect color) is in Noro Kureyon Sock yarn from a pattern she found on the internet that translated a knitting design into crochet.  I think this open pattern must be a pain to knit – lots of bindoffs and castons, like 10,000 button holes, but Lynne said it was fun to crochet, and the self-striping yarn was a perfect choice.

And the next scarf is more like sculpture.  I saw the design in Interweave Crochet magazine and loved it, but seeing it in person is stunning.  Lynne again used a sock yarn, this time a rich rusty red semisolid shade of Ranco  to make this amazing design.

And here she is modeling a bolero/vest she made:

I’ve got to talk to this gal about teaching some classes, don’t you think?

I feel very underachieving after all this.  I made this slouchy beret, modeled beautifully by Ol’ Scarface (our rather beatup styrofoam head).  It really wasn’t meant to be so slouchy and I should have used a smaller size needle to get a regular beret.  Luckily, this is much more in style right this minute.  It’s made in Aysen, a kettle-dyed wool/alpaca/silk blend that is really pretty and lovely to knit with:

I finished a pair of socks and started another in a new version of Jawoll Aktion that just arrived.  Great guy colors:

And here is the sock I started in the brown shade – really like the way it’s knitting up.  It’s all shades of brown, unlike the picture which shows some blue-gray.  The photographer apologizes:

So you can see, I’m not exactly keeping up with my customers!

Okay, that’s it!  Come to the “sidewalk” sale Friday, Saturday, Sunday this weekend if you can – we’ll have some sample items for sale as well as good deals on summer yarns.  Then we’ll be setting up for fall after that.  And I hope to have the new class schedule up next week – I’ll e-mail you.  See you soon…

Trish

This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 11:39 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.