Kittens! Sales! Good deeds! What's not to love? There's gonna be a BIG sale tomorrow (you may want to set an alarm), and we're going to help some kittens. Read on for the details! So, if you don't watch my instagram stories or follow me on twitter, you might not know about the kitten interlopers. But yeah, there are kitten interlopers. Just over two weeks ago, I saw what I thought was a funny looking squirrel scampering up the tree in my flower bed. It was not a squirrel. It was a kitten. Or rather, it was several kittens. This [...]

Well then, that worked out rather well. ⁠ Now don't worry, we're not done yet. There are tufts to trim and eyes to add, and I'll show you that here very shortly. But it is now at the point where I figure most folks looking at it will go 'oooooh, owl!!' and that's worth taking a moment to enjoy.

Ahem...now we pause for a moment to knit, well, to knit some tiny fuzzy wings. Because that's legit, nothing weird about that. Nope. Totally normal and reasonable. Carry on.

The next step is to stuff this little buddy nice and full. I've been making a lot of stuffed things lately, and I've come to really like these little plastic pellets.⁠ They're heavy and make the finished thing feel solid in your hand, which I find deeply soothing in some way I can't fully explain. So, they're a good fit for me, and I will continue to use them because I love the way they behave.⁠ But, every time I've shown them, I've had a couple of people getting a bit snarky about 'plastic, the scandal, I'm shocked, how could [...]

I really think you should have duplicate stitch in your bag of tricks. ⁠ It's by far my favorite way to mend thin spots in my knitting. Once you get the hang of it, you can even use it to repair actual holes (I've got an old blog post where I do just that). It'll help you understand how knitted fabric works (and having that level of understanding of how the fabric goes together makes you So Much Better at catching and fixing mistakes in your knitting). ⁠ But just as importantly, it lets you add all sorts of decorations [...]

You don't need these. They serve absolutely no practical purpose. None whatsoever. But, much like real donuts, just because you don't need them doesn't mean you don't want them. Because really they are an awful lot of fun.  The knitting is easy (it's almost all stockinette in the round). You don't need much yarn (a couple dozen yards of your donut-colored yarn, plus a bit of icing-colored yarn if you want iced donuts). They only take a couple of hours of knitting time (yes, even if you're a slow knitter like me). And as far as I can tell, they [...]

Yes, another one. Another tiny bit of fluff and delight. No, I am not sorry. And I will not even have the good grace to pretend to be sorry. Once you see them finished, I think you'll understand!

Last call! The big sock sale is just about over...⁠ I have this thing where I feel like I've said a thing too many times. WAY too many times. Enough times that I'm probably annoying the stuffing out of each and every one of you. But then someone comes along and is sad because they didn't see it and missed out. ⁠ So I'm stuck trying to trying to balance 'shut up stop bothering people' with 'ack someone will be mad they missed it' and that's a somewhat, um, shifting balance point.⁠ But, because Pretty Basket of Socks is Pretty [...]

We did it...we got a pattern back out Every Single Tuesday (yes, yes all five of the blasted things) All Month Long (despite BONUS SURPRISE UNEXPECTED KITTEN INTERLOPERS, about which more soon). These are Louche, and I am alarmingly fond of them.⁠ This pattern is a beautiful example of what you can do with basic ribbing and a few strategically placed increases and decreases. No lace. No cables. No brioche. No colorwork. Just nice mellow ribbing, the occasional increase or decrease to nudge things around, and lovely stretches of stockinette.⁠ Combine it with a yarn with that really shows off [...]