A drumroll please

I used the random.org sequence generator to come up with a table of numbers. Here is the top row:
24 7 58 20 59 8 66 1 60 36

That makes our prize winners:
#24, Anna who is currently working on socks and the Autumn Cardigan. Anna wins Cowlgirls.
#7, Deb, who is knitting baby blankets. Deb wins The Yarn Gallery Aster skein.
#58, Knitwork, who is working on a pullover for her husband. Knitwork will choose one skein of Wollmeise from these three color choices: Saami (variegated primary colors), ein klien wenig verrucht (almost solid deep purple) or Sabrina (almost solid emerald green).

I sure hope one of these three strikes Knitwork’s fancy!

The colors on the Saami and the ein klein wenig verrucht are pretty true (at least on my monitor). The Sabrina is much less of a teal color and more emerald. Both the purple and green skeins have much more depth in person than appears on the monitor.

Winners, please check your email and let me know where to send your prize.

Thanks to everyone for your fantastic support of my fingerless mitts. I will be posting the pattern next week or the week after. I will also send it off to JBW. It won’t be thoroughly test knitted. Sorry about that. I got distracted. You know, shiny things.

I got the prize from JBW in the mail yesterday: 3 skeins of Koigu. Unfortunately, the color chosen for me was P806: brilliant pink and bright purple. Koigu is dyed on a wonderful yarn base that is pleasant to knit with and feels very nice. However, the bilious bubblegum pink and purple in this colorway doesn’t do a thing for me. I was shocked when I opened the package — to my way of thinking, this yarn is nothing but ugly. Butt ugly.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I mean really, I am pleased to have won. JBW sent me yarn. How cool is that? If I was seven years old and into frilly girl things, this color would probably be perfect. It’s just that, well, I’m a little past seven and I’m over my neon pink phase. Totally.

If I would have seen this color to begin with I wouldn’t have even bothered to submit an idea for a design in the JBW contest, and, quite frankly, I’m not sure anyone else would have either. Quite a letdown.

Maybe someone out there will want to trade or buy or use it or . . . any ideas? Or am I just being overly optimistic?

A huge thank you

for all the support everyone has given me through comments and votes on the fingerless mitts. I did indeed win the JBW contest. I’m very excited about that. I will be writing up the pattern and it will be available sometime soon.

I’ve been meaning to hold a blog contest for a while; but, it seems clear that now is the time to go forward with that as a way of thanking everyone. There are three prizes. You don’t have to do anything special to win — except comment. The winners will be randomly drawn from those who tell me via a comment on today’s post:

What are you knitting now?

And the prizes? First up, the book CowlGirls which I won in a contest on the Classic Elite blog. Here’s a photo of the cover. Cool book. Just not things I would wear, so I will pass it along into the blogiverse.

Second. A skein of yarn dyed by the amazing Kim of Cat Mountain Fiber Arts. Kim has a store in Alamosa; but, I think she will be transitioning to more online sales in the future. She does attend a lot of the major fiber shows, especially ones in Colorado and New Mexico. She had a booth at Sock Summit last year, has gone to Stitches, and is a regular at the Taos Wool Show. Keep an eye out for her if you attend any shows: The Yarn Gallery or Cat Mountain Fiber Arts.

This particular skein is one of my favorites. It’s in the Aster colorway, which includes soft lilacs, yellow and sage greens, with a few other specks of color too. The skein is 100 grams/420 yards and is 63% superwash merino, 20% silk and 2% silver. It has a lovely sparkle to it! I LOVE this yarn. I am offering this particular skein as a way to help give Kim some publicity for the gorgeous dyeing she does. She’s very talented!

fingering weight perfect for shawlettes, socks or scarves.

Third. A skein of Wollmeise. No picture yet. I have three skeins that I could stand to part with. I will allow the winner to decide which of the three suits her/his fancy. I’ll wait to post a picture in case the grab bag I bought last week arrives before the contest ends. Perhaps, there is a colorway there that I could throw into the mix.

So, again, thanks to all of you who offered kind words of support and who took the time to head over to JBW’s blogspot to vote for me. It was quite thrilling to have my design idea validated. Thanks!

Contest details: the drawing will be held on February 8. You must comment on this specific post to enter. I will ship to anywhere including overseas if that’s where the the winner(s) are. The winners will be selected via a random number generator. Only one entry per person, please. Can’t think of anything else. Hope that covers it.

This is the last post in which

I will pester you with links to other blogs.

Onward.

Technical information about knitting. You can’t go wrong with TECHknitting. There’s supposed to be a little trademark thingy after the name, but I don’t know how to do it. TECHknitter would. TECHknitter knows a lot.

Fleegle’s Blog, which I mentioned last time, often features some very interesting knitting epiphanies. That’s the second time I’ve gotten to use that word today. Scary for so early in the morning. It actually makes me a little nervous. Putting that aside, Fleegle posted a cool tip for eliminating holes at the top of sock gussets a while back and she has offered several other memorable posts on similarly arcane topics too.

let me expliaKnit doesn’t have any recent posts, but there is still some good information here. Likewise, Eunny Jang’s old blog, See Eunny Knit, has no recent updates, but there still is some great information. Her post on provisional cast-ons is one of my favorites.

And finally, I saw this link in one of my Australian friend’s blogs a few weeks ago, who, I can’t remember now. Fit to Flatter offers information on how to choose styles that work for you. Not exactly technical knitting, but why knit something that will look like crap on you?

There are tons of other blogs I follow. Many are friends in Australia, others are just knitters I’ve stumbled across through Etsy shops (like Grace, who is having a cool giveaway right now for a darling gratitude journal she made). I can’t mention them all. Please don’t feel slighted if I didn’t mention you! Of course, you could always post a comment with your blog link in it!!! Or, send me a message and I’ll post something for you.

Meanwhile, I’ve been stockpiling photos of things to share. Things like hummingbirds, elk, nostepinnes and yes, knitting. Till next time!

I am going to resort to stealing

blog content for the next few days while I’m really busy with work. I’ll be offering some choice tidbits from some of the blogs I follow.

First, I have been following this blog for a while. I love KnitBuddies textured shawls based upon A Textured Shawl Recipe on Ravelry.

Second, I realized today, after watching this video link, I had to send people off to view this video. It’s too good to miss.

Please, watch it, and as you are knitting, spinning, or engaging in whatever handcraft you enjoy, think about your connection to the planet and healing the planet. We so much need to heal our planet!

http://knitbuddies.blogspot.com/2010/07/kitty-moving-video-on-why-we-knit-found.html

Finally, in closing for today’s thievery, be sure to sign up for the drawing here on the Little Knits blog.

Gotta go! Catch you later this week with more inspired content from my favorite bloggers.

I showed the

RNK the post I wrote the other day. I thought it was so hilarious I could hardly stop laughing.

He looked at me. “What are you laughing at?”

“That post. It cracks me up.”

“Why? I can’t even read it. It just goes on and on.”

“You don’t think it’s even a little bit funny? Comparing myself to Opal? The little freak?”

“No, it’s sad. Is this how you spend your days? This must have taken hours.”

“But I write all day. I write fast. This didn’t take any time at all. Sometimes I don’t even think when I write. “

“Well, I can see that.” He got up and left in disgust.

Oh well. Some people have NO sense of humor. None. Not a trace. At least I enjoy myself. If I ever had any doubts about posting whatever I wanted about the RNK with complete impunity, they vanished like a wisp of smoke in an Oregon winter gale. Obviously however, I never had any illusions he would be interested in a knitting blog. Why do you think he has the moniker, resident non-knitter?

Meanwhile, here are a couple of shots from my office windows this morning:

A good day to be inside writing, working on newsletters and knitting. Red scarf knitting. I have one scarf two-thirds completed and the other is resting. I added some black bands on the resting one at the half-way point to alleviate any yarn shortage concerns. Don’t like it.

I may have to tink back a few inches if I have time and add black stripes at the very ends if it comes out short. It will. Hard to say how short after blocking, but pre-blocking it will only be 56 to 57 inches — less than expected based upon my initial calculations. I reweighed it and remeasured with many more inches knitted. Instead of getting 1.66 grams to the inch (which would have used every last bit of yarn to reach 60 inches), I’m at 1.76 g/inch or about 6 grams short. Too bad.

I found some black Shibui Knits fingering sock yarn that is a dead ringer for the Plymouth Happy Feet in terms of weight, twist and feel. The colors look really nice together too. I hope I can get both scarfs finished in time! Apparently though, that shouldn’t be a problem as long as the second one is mailed this month. I hope the recipients like what I made for them. Freaky personality notwithstanding. (Here I go, laughing again.)

I started a scarf

for the Red Scarf Project. (I’m not sure that the link worked in my last post — hopefully it will work this time.) It’s going to be touch and go on the yardage. I don’t have a lot of red choices in my stash and even this one isn’t exactly red. It is more autumn with maroon and bits of green and navy and a touch of orange. Rather masculine actually.

I knit an inch, took it off the needles and weighed it and calculated how long it would most likely turn out with the amount of yarn I have. I came up with 63 inches. But, I didn’t think it was going to be quite wide enough, so I made some modifications in stitch count and needle size. Hopefully, I will come close to the 60″ length. The worst case scenario is that I might end up with a 58 inch scarf if my math is right. I’m going to go with it.

I did find one more skein in my stash that could make up scarf number two if this one just blazes along. How about you? Any red scarf knitting?

Scarves are needed!

I follow a bunch of blogs. One of the more enjoyable is Anne’s of Knitspot fame.

Today she posted that the Red Scarf Project needs scarves! They are short by about 2,200 scarfs. And by the way, they need not be red.

In an effort to get a bunch more scarfs for this very cool cause, Anne posted this on her blog today:

Here’s what we’ll do: we’ll create a stickied thread in the the knitspot ravelry group where you can post a photo of your completed red scarf project and chat with other participants. everyone who commits to making a scarf can participate there, but only those that post a photo of a completed scarf will be eligible for a drawing to be held at the end.

On december 16th, we’ll pull one name from the ravelry thread (it MUST be someone who posted a completed scarf) and send that person a wonderful surprise package.

I’m sure any surprise package from Anne will be stunning!

If you follow the first link, the Red Scarf Project one, there’s also a contest there for monetary contributions. No need to break your Holiday knitting mojo if you got one going. Just send cash.

If you are of a mind to knit a scarf or two or three by the December something deadline, here are the detailed specs directly from Norma’s blog:

If you are able to eke out a scarf, or another scarf, before the December 15 deadline, (or even somewhere close to the deadline will be acceptable) I hope you will consider it. Remember the guidelines, but please don’t be paralyzed into inaction by the guidelines. The goal is a nice, unisex scarf, and the preferred color is red BUT there are hundreds of shades that are unisex… just stay away from pink and lilac. And there are dozens of unisex designs… just stay away from the lace.

Here they are again: 5 to 8 inches wide, 60ish inches long. Unisex. Sport, DK, or worsted weight. (bulky or super-bulky will not fit into the shipping boxes)

Mail completed scarves to:

Orphan Foundation of America
The Red Scarf Project
21351 Gentry Drive
Sterling, VA 20166

So, tell a friend, or two, or a dozen! I just made my contribution. How about you?

I won!

I entered in a Planet Purl drawing in August. Here’s what the contest required:

Which of these Vogue Knitting Fall 2009 hat projects is your favorite? Vote and be entered in our drawing.

Here’s the link in case you are interested in the hats.

Easy, fun and best of all, I won!!! Erin, the Planet Purl guru, emailed me a week ago with the good news. Planet Purl is a fun site. I have used it to find yarn stores when I travel. There are a bunch other cool resources too including a very nice link to pattern errata.

Winning was all the more exciting since my birthday was in August and I didn’t get to celebrate this year since I was in Tasmania. I did get a lovely gift of a gorgeous skein of yarn and TWO hand knit pairs of socks from my friend Chris shortly after I got home. However, mom didn’t even send me a prezzie. That’s how much of a non-birthday it was.

I’m going to think of this as a birthday gift. And the prize:

a set of the new Zephyr Acrylic Interchangeable Needles from Knit Picks. I had bought some of the Acrylic tips to try out. And yes, I like them quite a bit. My only complaint, the clear color sometimes reflects the yarn, making it harder to see what you are doing with some stitch manipulations. Minor. They are delightfully flexible and have the nice pointy tips that Knit Picks are known for. I like them better than the wood and as much, perhaps more, than the nickle-plated needles.

Can a knitter ever have too many needles? I think not.

So thanks Erin, Planet Purl and Knit Picks!

I hate pictureless posts

but if I wait to grab a picture, I may never post again.

Life is crazy. Someday I’ll tell the world all about it. Not enough time to write it all out now. Suffice it to say that the Resident Non Knitter is in Australia, I’m home alone and we still haven’t sold our house.

Meanwhile, I’m doing a major computer migration. I’ve got a new laptop — a Mac none-the-less — and I’ve made the decision to abandon the old desktop. This afternoon, I completed the migration from that machine to the new desktop. New being a comparative word in this case. I’ve had the machine about a year and have used it off and on for months. Used it enough in fact, that I have probably introduced Windows issues and it needs to be rebuilt. More work. That may just have to wait. I did solve all the little boot error problems so at least I can get a clean boot and it seems pretty stable now.

In between file transfers from one machine to the other, I read several Mac tutorials and loaded a lot of software on the Mac. Of everything I’ve done, so far, Quark seems like THE best company to work with. Their software license allows me to load the program on my Windows machine and on the Mac laptop with no extra fees. Adobe on the other hand, would require a cash outlay of something on the order of $1,700 for this privilege. Hmm. Time to migrate to Quark along with all the other changes?

In between all of these little projects, I’ve got lots of work and lots of projects to deal with on the home front. No knitting. Mom’s sweater languishes. She came out to visit for a week and went home sweaterless.

There is some happy news: Tag the old horse I watch for the neighbor is on Equine Sr. and some stuff called “Weight Gain.” He looks so much better and I can tell he feels better too. I’ll have to get a picture of him. He must have been a magnificent horse in his day.

Two parting comments. First, I just have to say I’m right in there with Sheri from The Loopy Ewe on the Twitter thing. I just don’t get it.

Second, check out the yarn contest at Yarn4Socks. It’s all about Hand Maiden Sea Silk and Shawl knitting and the winner will win a skein of Hand Maiden Sea Silk so they can knit their own lace shawl/scarf of their dream!

Knitter Assistance Requested

Just a quick alert to send you here. Serendipity is asking knitters to offer help to those who have been impacted by the horrendous fires in Victoria, Australia.

I am also quite concerned about the impact the fires (and the flooding in Queensland) have had on animals. I haven’t looked yet to see what opportunities there are to help our animal friends. I know there were a tremendous number of dogs, cats and horses who were separated from their families in the flooding associated with Katrina. The same situation must have occurred in Australia too.

Meanwhile, I encourage you to support serendipity’s effort to raise money for the Red Cross. And besides, you might win something fun.

Around here, there has been lots of work, lots of planning going on (more on this topic one of these days) and lots of knitting.

I don’t have pictures to show, but the sleeves on Hamefarin, the resident non-knitter’s sweater (which he now claims he never wanted me to knit for him in the first place! — What is it with men??) are about 17 inches long and the body is within an inch of the same. Sleeves need to be 20.5 inches at the armpit (Did anyone say “ape arms?” No, not me, I wouldn’t say that.). Body needs to be 17 inches and then sleeves and body become joined and I get to start the raglan decreases.

I hope I can figure out how to make the translation from a pattern written for flat knitting to real knitting in the round. It didn’t look like it would be hard to figure out. I am a little concerned about decreasing in pattern. Increasing in pattern for the arms proved to me a more challenging concept than I had imagined. Don’t know why. It just was.

Resident non-knitter may be warned about raising his arms above his head in public. I just might not allow this. Especially if other knitters are in the vicinity. It might look better after I get the arms connected to the body and I take a needle and fiddle with the increases to smooth them out. Meanwhile, I’m not pleased, but there is no way on earth that I am going to rip those sleeves out AGAIN and try it a different way.

Third time’s a charm. Either that, or after two tries, the third just has to stick because I am too irritated, pissed, disgusted, etc. to start over again. There just comes a time when you have to move forward because doing it over isn’t making it better. I mean really, he doesn’t even want the sweater. Or so he says. It will look very nice just the way it is when it’s folded and sitting in the closet. The thought did cross my mind that I could have a nice comfy oversize sweater to wear around the house . . .

I am chomping at the bit to start another project. Can’t decide what it will be; but, fair isle looms large. A whole new technique for me! Tentatively, I’ll start with some fingerless mitts. I bought the kit for Glenesk and am smart enough to know that I need to learn “how” to knit fair isle before I start that baby. Maybe mitts and a pair or two of socks, maybe a hat . . . I guess I’ll see how it feels before I decide.