2-day-scarf
Originally uploaded by Sultry

This is The Harlot's One-Row Scarf in old stash yarn. The ball band said "Cantata" and had a loopy logo, but nothing on the web now matched the wool, nylon and poly fiber content.

I'm quite proud because I presented it in a gift exchange tonight and only started it two days ago. Yaay! And stayed on my "stash diet."

I wanna be knitting! I had a great couple of hours this evening restraining myself from drooling over the new Knitter's Magazine and the debut issue of Debbie Bliss' Knitting Magazine.

Ravelry might be a more appropriate place to post these, but aren't they wonderful?

Must zoom through my wip's to do these!

Little Red Hen on the Town

Entry #8 Little Red Hen on the Town
Originally uploaded by shayneknitter

MasonDixon had a contest in honor of Project Runway to design knitted designs for critters that were not bears. Go to Flickr
http://www.masondixonknitting.com/archives/2008_02.html#002338 to see all the entries, and then to Mason Dixon to vote for your favorite.http://www.masondixonknitting.com/

Cardi Porn?

This was part of a fashion layout in last weeks New York Times. Something about surfing in the Hamptons. As if.

Anyway, even though this is a lovely cotten and linen sweater, what do you think is a reasonable price?

Are you sure?

OK. Now check out the price, circled in red.

What did I learn?

That if there's a market, it'll be sold.

If there isn't a market, it'll be on sale.

And sometimes, I'm unwilling to pay the asking price.

Knitting and Armed Combat

I've just ended a six week fling. My son introduced me to the guy. Fell in love with Jack Reacher-- The hero in the thrillers by Lee Child.
(The author looks pretty good, too, don't you think?)

Within the hour, I've finished reading ALL of the Jack Reacher books. I only started reading them about a month ago. (There are 11). They are addictive and have easily won my attention away from laundry, filing, and gardening. (Well, it rained part of the time.)

At least one has been optioned by Paramount. But the lead's not been cast.

In Without Fail, there are a couple paragraphs with knitting ... a woman he cares about is being
pursued by bad guys and doesn't know where to begin to look for them. (There are really, REALLY bad guys in all of these books)

"Maybe one of them is an old lady who knits sweaters. Are you going to walk up to her and say, oh my God, what's with you? I can't believe you actually have the temerity to know how to knit sweaters."
"You're equating armed combat with knitting
sweaters?"
"I'm saying we're all good at something. And that's what I'm good at. Maybe it's the only thing I'm good at. I'm not proud of it, and I'm not ashamed of it either. It's just here. I can't help it. I'm genetically programmed to win, is all. Several consecutive generations."

This is his newest hardback, but I'm glad that once I was "hooked" (by Hard Way) I went back and read them in the order they were published.










I'm getting back into the knitting. Please be patient!

Trolling for compliments

Here are two gnome/trolls that DD felted from a kit.
If I can find a source for boucle "hair" I'll probably make more as gifts!
I'm sure they only do good deeds.

A Joy-Fulled Pair

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I was knitting bowls and boxes? Well, I finally ran them through the wash. (There was a shocking pink tweed hat in there... but I forgot to take a photo of it. Perhaps the recipient will forward me one!

Anyway, here is an eggplant "bowl." It is actually rectangular. And the toy polar bear doesn't much help with scale! It has some paperclips and glitter stars in it which gives more of a clue. It is about 3 x 4 inches.

I free-form knitted a "box" I may need to do something different about the "lid" because obviously it doesn't cope with the bulging sides very well.

Just the same, I was happy with the I-cord loop and "button."



I made several bowls in Christmasy colors and filled them with candy. They sold well for my PEO fundraiser. Do you think it was the chocolate or the bowls?

If I have time, I'm going to make some stitch markers with wire/beading supplies I got during the summer.

Graft and Seduction!

I've now grafted TWICE on the Circumnavigated Cardigan! On purpose! At one point I was using three circular needles.

The second grafting was at the bottom edge of the sweater.... so that the pocket would actually have a bottom rather than be a two sided hole. It is deep enough for my fingers and a kleenex or ID or housekeys.



First was at the top of the pocket... from which I am knitting onward and upward toward the arm hole.





I think the bottom "edging" will be 4 or 5 ridges of garter stitch... so I'll have more of a jacket than sweater. I certainly don't need ribbing or snuggness anywhere in the middle!


I am really liking how the offset-eyelet pattern, pocket, grafting, faux side seam and pocket edging are coming together. You can click on the images to see them bigger.






I apologize for the variety of colors in the pictures. Invariably I do my finishing up and photography in the wee hours of the morning... I debate whether I should use the flash... which washes everything out, or not, which requires vigorous use of photoshop tools. It would probably help if yarns came with Pantone numbers! Even with just brightening or lightening the images, the colors vary a lot. On my monitor this one is truest.

Off the beaten Path

A woman in London knitted a Ferrari as part of her art degree.

Thanks to K. Olbermann and Countdown for having the story... and to DIY for having some searchable photos.

Cookies, Chocolate, Civics or..... KNITTING

Which will you pick?
These are all listed as part of the 2007 USPS commemorative stamp project.

Knitting Content!!

Progress (if not perfection)! I got past a significant transition in the Circumnavigated Cardigan tonight. I fused the front pouch pockets. The outcome isn't perfect, but then, I've fiddled with this pattern so much, I didn't expect it. I know I'll make this sweater another time... and I have some ideas about how I would cope with the challenge of the pattern's assumptions of stockinette stitch, when in fact, I was doing a 4 row repeated pattern. Nevertheless i find the results quite adequate.

What are you creating?

I had just been thinking about how the quantity of my knitting and posting are mostly un-related.

When I know what I'm doing, I do a lot of it. So I have almost deep-enough pockets on the circumnatigating cardigan-- and nothing interesting to say about it. It is K2 K2tog YO over and over!

On the other hand, I was also inspired by Mason Dixon to knit some "boxes". A friend tried it and warned me that she didn't care for the texture of the felted garter stitch, so I was already mentally prepared to fiddle with the pattern. Um, make that "ignore the pattern"!


So I've been knitting and crocheting and free-form knitting with the skeins of Cascade I got last month. I probably should have felted a sample sooner, but look at all the possibilities I've created.

Some boxes and some bowls. I'm thinking they'll make nice cachepots for earrings or rings ... which I may make, too. Or purchase. You know... extra gifts for the increasing number of people who seem to "have everything."

Then this quote came via a weekly quote subscription.

Life isn't about finding yourself.
Life is about creating yourself.
George Bernard Shaw

That's the thing about knitting. You don't go FIND it. You create it. The process of doing it makes it made clear.

• Imagine and reflect.
• Inform yourself.
• Take a risk or two or twenty.
• Repeat

I would love to hear about what YOU are creating.

Starting. Finishing. Middling.

So you've set up a goal.
And it is SMART.

specific

measurable

achievable

reasonable

time-limited

Do you know where you stumble?

I committed to the Circumnavigated Cardigan. I even committed to what yarn to use (with the urgent and optimistic comments from DD: "Just buy it, Mooms." )
And I swatched.
And swatched and swatched. Because, of course, I'm not doing my sweater in plain stockinette. O No! I'm going to add staggered eyelets. A ventilated sweater is a good thing when you are prone to having hot flashes.

In my swatch I even figured out how to knit the pattern backwards from the wrong side.

Then I figured out how to stagger the pattern depending on whether I was knitting on the right or wrong side within the same row. (Trust me, the pattern is just as weird and magical as it sounds.)
So I measured my circumference (Equatorial in measurements), multiplied by gauge, multiplied by inches, and cast on.

PROVISIONALLY. (Which I hadn't done before.) Cool. I learned three ways to do it, too.





And it's coming along. Slowly. But that's to be expected with projects do that have a couple of hundred stitches per row.

In the meantime a new knitter that I coach brought a bag full of not-quite-finished projects to me "for advice."
She'd done the knitting. Her kittens had tried to make holes in a couple of scarves, but I showed her how you could rearrange the yarn and get back to the original tension. (Rather like blocking, but without water!)

She mused that she seemed to have a fear of finishing. I told her she's not the only one!

What keeps you from finishing?

There are two things (among others) that slow me down in the completion phase:

1. Fear that I don't know how to do the finish work. (The kitchener stitch is "new" every time I run into it.... still.)
2. Realization that how to finish the piece is totally up to me. Fringe? Tassels? Buttons? Hooks? Frogs? Zipper? And sometimes how I'd like to finish it involves another case of not knowing how to do it.
   

This kind of fear is just not helpful. There is nothing life-threatening about finishing a scarf, pot holder or sweater. Like DD says, "Just do it." And if you don't like it, you can frog it and do something else. Or you can do a different one and jettison the first one. It's not life or death! It's life! It's knitting!

Oh, and it doesn't hurt to have a few cheerleaders nearby, no matter what.

Knitting Lessons

48 Meme

Today, I'm answering questions that are going around.
1. FIRST NAME? Dana

2. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? I think I was named after a whole country: Denmark

3. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY? Last Tuesday after a doctor’s appointment. I’ve come to an age where it feels like it's just patch, patch, patch..

4. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? Yes. I used to teach calligraphy and it still shows.

5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCHMEAT? Chicken or pastrami.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Sure. I'm caring but funny.

7. DO YOU HAVE A JOURNAL? Yes, I do. And I write in it!

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Are you kidding? No way.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? GoLean Crunch

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Depends on how tight they were tied and whether my toes are tired.

12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? More so every day.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR? Starbucks Java Chocolate

14. SHOE SIZE? 8 ½ or 9

15. RED OR PINK? Red

16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? My tendency to whine too long instead of taking action.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? Friends from a coffee group. I stopped going to their church and feel I don't have enough in common with them.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? Post it on your blog, leave me a comment. Or just email me. :-D

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS, SHIRT AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? Purple heathered sweats, mauve sweater with red (!) socks. No shoes.

20. LAST THING YOU ATE? Peanut M&M’s

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? Dallas Stars vs Phoenix alternating with the Cardinals/Tigers World Series game.

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Blue green.

23. FAVORITE SMELL? Fresh brewed hazelnut coffee. Pine trees.

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? My sister-in-law in Missouri.

25. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO? Shoulders. Eyes. Smile.

26. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON you got this from? Very much: My daughter.

27. FAVORITE DRINK? Rusty Nail, Coffee, Diet Coke, Water

28. FAVORITE SPORT? Hockey. Making puns.

29. EYE COLOR? Blue.

30. HAT SIZE? Plus sized.

31. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? Yes. And reading glasses.

32. FAVORITE FOOD? Mostly anything I didn’t have to cook. I make really good banana bread, though.

33. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? Depends. I like to think about the characters.

35. SUMMER OR WINTER? Fall.

36. HUGS OR KISSES? Hugs.

37. FAVORITE DESSERT? Key Lime Pie or Paradise Pie (from Chili’s)

40. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING? Social Intelligence (Coleman), and Robert B Parker’s Spenser mysteries.

41. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE? Enlarged water droplets.

42. WHAT DID YOU WATCH LAST NIGHT ON TV? Hockey. Countdown.

43. FAVORITE SOUNDS? Wind chimes. Marching bands. Harp.

44. ROLLING STONE OR BEATLES? Beatles

45. THE FURTHEST YOU'VE BEEN FROM HOME? Ireland or Scotland. Ireland was definitely a longer flight.

46. WHAT'S YOUR SPECIAL TALENT? Using metaphors to help people understand themselves or family members.

<>47. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? Pasadena, CA

48. WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? I took it from my daughter’s blog.

On the road again

I am embarrassed to realize that I wrote TWO entries about quitting. Isn't it odd that in our world, it is OK to start things, but less OK to stop them. How do you suppose we learned that it was OK to start a war, but not stop one, or OK to roll out a new flavor of COKE, but less OK to recall it.

Don't get me wrong, I Know I'm not a quitter by nature and I stand by what I wrote as paraphrased:

When things aren't going the way you want, and nothing helps, STOP. Do "nothing" and let the nothingness be helpful.

Apparently, I did nothing (at least as far as knitting goes) for long enough, because yesterday I investigated yarn, PURCHASED yarn, and have begun SWATCHING for the Dallas Handknitters Guild year long project: The Circumnavigated Cardigan. You can see several versions on the Ample Knitter's page. There's a diagram, too.

This version on the Joslyn's Fiber Farm site
is gorgeous in blue! The pattern itself allows for a Jacket collar, a V-neck and several shoulder/sleeve combinations.

I figured out what I needed in order to start up again from that "Nothing helps" place. Guess what the missing pieces were?
Yeah... The same ones as always. Preparation and Support.





With most any action (and definitely with any change) there are 7 steps:

1. Precontemplation -- What, It's summer still, why would I even think about making a sweater?
2. Contemplation -- Hmm. The guild's doing a neat sweater. I might enjoy that.
3. Preparation -- What are my measurements? (gasp) What kind of sweater do I want? What color? What's the budget? Does it have to be washable? Who will be supportive? The darling visiting daughter!!
4. Action --START KNITTING. The DVD is investigating double knitting in Encore, So I have companionship while I knit. Wheeeeeeee!!!.
5. Maintenance -- KEEP KNITTING
6. Relapse -- Maybe take a break for making gifts..... Or not!
7. Completion or Normalizing. FINISH THE SWEATER.

I'm making it out of Superwash Nashua. (Thanks to the Romanian sheep) It is a lovely aqua color. I may get another needle a size up to see if I want the fabric to be looser with more drape. The DK on 7's is rather form in texture.

Oh... and I didn't win the haiku sock yarn contest. But be sure to go here to read the winners!! It'll improve your health because I don't think you can read them without LAUGHING!

Cease, then!

I was getting 'bad' side effects from a 'good' medicine. I complained to someone with the knowledge and experience who gave me permission to stop taking it for a while. If your knitting stops working (or anything else) Stop. It may be that you can start up with better results later. Or, you may discover that something just isn't you. For some it is lace, or socks or angora. It is OK to be your real self in all aspects of life and craft.

Here is some weaving I saw at a local art fare. Don't you love the colors?

When nothing helps, Do nothing.

I'm away from home trying to be supportive of my husband as well as his immediate family while is mother recuperates from a fall and hip surgery.
I thought I was going to be able to knit.
I checked an ENTIRE second bag with the airline that ONLY had knitting in it. DK in a terrific aqua for a new lace shawl pattern.Socks to finish.Scratchy, tangly yarn (in a small quantity) for a scarf.Ribbon yarn (see WAY below) to finish a sweater for self.
Knitting isn't the right thing to do. I should have brought log cabin squares... or maybe a baby blanket. THOSE projects would have been simple, repetitive and soothing enough to work on. The WIP's aren't any of them like that.
So, instead, I am reading Spenser novels by Robert J. Parker and drinking coffee or Diet Coke and being as fully present as I can to what takes priority.
Family. Common Ground. Understanding.
Sometimes knitting lets you know what your priorities really are... even when it isn't the knitting.

What tempts you?

A contest and the possibility of "free stuff" (sock yarn! whoo hooo!!)

January One tempted hundreds of us knitters with sock yarn.

This is my entry. Go read the "rules." Contest closes Saturday the 23rd.

Sheep feet freeze in Fall.
Lacking opposable thumbs
knit wool gift socks rock!

You are the only one

who can be creative in YOUR way.

Knitters sometimes don't think they are creative because they follow patterns, fiber recommendations and always knit to gauge.

I say that if you didn't have anything before, and now you HAVE something, creativity has been in the room.

Other knitters think that if they didn't follow the pattern, used something completely different than was called for and switched needle sizes that they were "stubborn," "wrong," or "careless," rather than creative.

I have an email friend, Elin, who does a painting a day. They are usually landscapes, usually in California, and often with horses in them. Sometimes she ventures as far north as Big Sur, or south to San Diego. Everyday I wonder what she will have sent me by subscription.

And then she sent this a piece she did as a demonstration in a class. As she noted, it is completely different from what she usually does. And as much as I like the taste of California, this is the one I most regretted not being able to purchase.

It goes to show. There are the things you usually do. And they have value, and people come to expect them of you. Then there are the things you do rarely. Perhaps even accidentally. And THEY have value, too.

Love your creativity, your experiments, your effort.
(What creativity IS will be the topic for another day.)

What kind of knitting needles are you?

You are interchangeable.Fun, free, and into everything, you've got every eventuality covered and every opportunity just has to be taken. Every fiber is wonderful, and every day is a new beginning. You are good at so many things, it's amazing, but you can easily lose your place and forget to show up. They have row counters for people like you!
Take this quiz!








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