November - 2006

November 28, 2006

How was everybody's Thanksgiving?  As nice as mine, I hope.  I went to my sister's house near Baltimore, along with other family and friends. It was a fun day, and rare. We all work like crazy and it isn't easy to get together for a day even though we're not that far apart. I hope you all had a chance to see loved ones or at the very least to stuff yourselves silly with great food.

The shop is hopping right now, full of great yarn and gift ideas and full of shoppers looking for the right gift for their favorite knitter or the perfect project to keep them busy over the holidays or the perfect quick gift to make.  Oh yes, there are plenty of people still knitting for the holidays - scarves,  hats, leg warmers, socks, mittens and felted bags are all still going strong. And many people are looking beyond the holidays and signing up for classes that begin in January - there are a couple new ones up this week on the Classes page.  Donna Guthrie is going to teach the Oregon Vest - a really well-designed vest good for men or women, and Jettie Hunt is going to teach a cute crocheted scarf - she worked it in Noro's Kureyon, which is perfect for this ripple stitch.

I'm not knitting much, I'm afraid!  I'm mired in the minutiae of moving, with a hundred little sticky notes all over the place - the store, my purse, the kitchen counter, my car.  If I ever get them in one place and see everything that I think I have to do, well - don't be nearby!  Best if I keep the notes scattered and deal with them a little at a time. I love my new little house and hope to move in sometime in December.  If I seem a little bit distracted, you'll know why.  For the same reason, I'm only working on small projects  - right now I'm in the middle of a pair of socks - really enjoying them - a fun pattern for the cuff from Sensational Knitted Socks, a really great sock book.  If you've just gotten into socks, this book will give you everything you need to knit for anyone, in any weight.

You have to see a couple of great finished projects.  Stephanie Fishkin finished an afghan that is a present for her sister and brother-in-law.  They all came in to choose yarns and colors (teals, aquas, browns and wheat) then Stephanie went off and did a great job of combining textures and colors, and blended them all by carrying a strand of Baby Loop mohair boucle throughout.  Here's the finished product, and I just wish you could feel how soft, cozy and luxurious it feels.

Then Vickie Lykens came in with a great pair of beaded socks - so cute - I hope you can see the effect of the beads on the cuff from this photo. They're done in Schaeffer's Anne, a luscious hand-dyed sock yarn with wool, mohair and nylon. You can see the colors were already quite striking, then Vickie kicked it up a notch with iridescent blue beads. Absolute fun.

I wish I could ramble on a little, but I really must use my days off to accomplish something toward moving, or you'll have to keep hearing about it for the next few years!  Off to locate a sticky note and cross something off!  See you soon!

Trish

November 14, 2006

Mid-November already, and the weather's still great.  Now, if it will just stay this way until I can move!   All the legal/financial stuff for the new house is going well - I'm good at paperwork.  It seems that I'm not so good at the sorting/pitching/packing part of the moving process.  I pride myself on not accumulating things, I'm not a collector - okay yes, yarn - of course yarn, oh yes! - but really not anything else.  But these days I often find myself standing in the middle of a room with my hands on my hips shaking my head and asking myself silently - or the dogs out loud - "How did I get all this stuff?"   That, unfortunately, seems to be as far I get with the packing process.

So! In the spirit of avoidance, I have updated the calendar page

to show the new classes and our Thanksgiving Closing (Thursday and Friday - we'll be open for the weekend.)  And I've added some new pictures to the gallery - check out Jennifer Gensemer and see if you can tell what her favorite color might be.  And Deb Hawk's latest creation!  She was on medical leave, and I didn't count the number of projects she did while she was recuperating, but it was several and all done to perfection.  (Deb's a Type A knitter - A for Aaaghhhh! when she makes a mistake.)  She's happy to be back to work now, but we're going through withdrawal.

Remember the end of November is the end of our chemo cap drive for Head Huggers - don't miss your chance to win a Colinette AbFab Afghan Kit.

I'm getting behind in showing pictures of what's new at the shop, and many of them are such great ideas for gifts that I really have to catch up!

Fran Krieger is being silly and modeling mitts and neckwarmer in 2 colors of Debbie Bliss's Pure Cashmere.  Fun and fast, and the yarn comes in great bright colors, which is a little unusual for cashmere.  The set costs $60 to make, and the pattern is free with purchase of yarn. (You don't HAVE to make them in cashmere, but don't you know someone who deserves something really special?)

Next is a headband made from "Road to China," a yarn that I raved about a couple weeks ago. I already made a lacy cowl from just one skein (free pattern at the shop), but the new Interweave Knits came out with a kind of silly-looking headband (multicolored, pompoms, a little wild for me). When we discovered a few skeins of Road to China had a flaw in the middle of the skein, I decided to try the headband instead of sending them back to the manufacturer.  It turned out great, soft and luxurious, as you can see below.  Took one skein and one (concentrated) evening and was fun and interesting.  The ties are I-cord, the cables are easy and the bobbles, which are hard to see below, add that little something extra.  The yarn is $24 per skein, but the few that have a flaw are being sold for $20.

My latest wonderful gift idea is a scarf/hood combo.  A simple brioche stitch and  a yummy hand-dyed yarn make it pretty, useful, warm and easy to make.  The yarn is "Peru" from Interlacements, but you can use 400 yds of any heavy-worsted weight yarn, size 10.5 needles and go to town.  The pattern free with purchase of yarn.

I could run on, of course, but really, I must go stare at all the stuff that must be packed by someone sometime.

See you soon!

Trish

November 8, 2006

I'm late for updating this so I'll just say what I really need to say, which is that there's another new class up on the Classes page and a picture of the model that Bev Bortner knitted in the Class Gallery.  It's gorgeous - if you have ever wanted to learn Fair Isle knitting, by all means sign up for this class.  This is a great first Fair Isle sweater because it's a yoke-style sweater, which means no steeks.  [Steeks, by the way, are those extra stitches that you add and then CUT through to add sleeves and/or button bands to other styles.  They allow you to knit in the round even when you're doing a cardigan, which keeps your Fair Isle pattern continuous and allows you to knit on the right side at all times. ]  [We'll try a class  on that again soon.]

Bev is doing great, by the way.  She was in the shop last weekend to drop off the sweater and looks happy and healthy, I'm glad to tell you.

Good heavens, it's raining cats and dogs outside!  I'm in the mood to just sit here and run on but I really must get ready to go to work.  Ooh, I have such cute pictures to put up here, but they'll just have to wait!  Check back soon...

Trish