Plain
I'm as surprised as you are. I know what I normally knit socks and accessories, with fairly small fairly soft yarn, using intricate stitch patterns. So imagine my surprise when I found myself clicking away on the plainest pillow in the world, made out of pencil roving (which is neither soft nor small). I'll be doing something interesting with the shape, but pencil roving does not lend itself to fancy stitch patterns, so lots and lots of stockinette it is. Speaking of pencil roving, I'm totally going to run out. Or rather, I'm going to want to make several of [...]
Nap
Kitten Overlords Barry and Levon would like you to relax. They think you very likely need a bit of a rest. To help you in this quest, they will demonstrate a high quality napping strategy. Please pay close attention.
Storage
I confessed that a shocking amount of last week was spent at the dining room table - pins in hand, the smell of wet wool filling the air - while I blocked and blocked and blocked some more. The natural result of this process is a lovely pile of freshly blocked woolies. But, if your house is anything like mine, it doesn't present a huge number of large, flat, cat-free spaces in which to store great swaths of knitting. At the same time, I very much did not want to fold these bits up until they were safely photographed. So [...]
Introductions
I do not generally support alarm clocks. Working from home and for yourself means they are seldom necessary. But this weekend, I made an exception. I set an alarm. And not just any alarm, a 6:30 alarm on a Sunday morning. That's borderline barbaric. But, there was knitting to photograph, a vacant lot in which to do it, and the sun waits for no knitter. So Alethea, The Boy, and I rolled our sleepy selves into the car along with rather a lot of knitting (and the camera, I was quite proud I managed not to forget the camera, that [...]
Prep
This Sunday was a test run for a photo shoot, which meant that more or less every minute of last week leading up to Sunday looked like this. I don't think I've ever blocked so many things (big things) in so short a time. I ran out of tpins (I like these, and have ordered more) and I was pretty much always out of space on my blocking mats (more of these may just be on their way too). The dining room table (aka the only space in the house at all suitable for large blocking) was always in use, [...]
Universally Acknowledged
I feel a crushing need to start this post with a shameless riff on the opening of Pride and Prejudice, but I'm trying to suppress my baser instincts. We'll just leave it that I am most definitely in want of the mate to this sock. That's Pediboo Sport by Frog Tree, and I'm delighted with how it worked up. I'll be writing the pattern for these down before I knit the second one and will likely be calling for testers for it in the next week or two (If you're itching to test, there's information over here on how to [...]
Playing Favorites, Part 2
We talked a little while ago about the sock yarns for the upcoming book, but that book won't all be sock-y goodness. There are lots of other delightful projects too, and that means more yarn. I've just now gotten the last of the yarns in, so that meant it was time to bring them all together for a group shot. I really am rather madly in love with all of these, and I bet there are a few here that will be new to you. Starting up at the top left, the pink one there is Manos Fino in Rosewater [...]
Bounce bounce bounce
I am generally rather orderly. Some might say alarmingly orderly. I'm a huge fan of breaking a large task into smaller ones, putting the pieces in the right order, allocating time for them, and moving through the list. I've written and published five books in the last few years. You sort of have to be orderly to pull that off. At least I do. But right now I'm feeling scattered. It's not the bad sort of scattered, it's the 'oh holy crap muffins I just had the best idea and now I am absolutely itching to implement it please can [...]
Share (yarn giveaway)
We've chatted before about the process of picking yarns for a book. I've explained that it's both tremendously fun and more than a bit nerve-wracking. Imagine it -- you start with a blank slate, and you can pick whatever yarn you want. Now that's exciting, but it also leaves me a bit paralyzed with indecision. But, one of the fun parts that often happens during that process is getting to know delightful yarn companies. The people who work in this industry really are the nicest folks you could imagine. They're always excited about new projects and eager to share their [...]
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