stitch ya neck out: October 2005

Sunday, October 30, 2005

TRICK or ....


TREAT! It's a RUFFLY treat for Kiri! I'm going to have a hard time sending this off. I've become attached to her and love it! My SnB friends named her the never ending noodle. She is made up of 490 yards of Patons' Katrina in Ocean. She did see the ocean here in Florida on a couple of occasions. She's off to Indiana next week to her rightful owner.

Thanks Jac and Kris for being so smart and creating the Necking with Friends swap. It's been great to knit and receive, as well as meeting new blog friends. Knit on! Sonya

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Ruffles is here!

Thanks to the talented Miss Twiss, I now have a lovely Ruffles scarf. I had to wait for the package a bit longer than expected, because it was stopped in customs. I had to get the envelope to be transferred to a postal office in Helsinki (instead of the one by the Helsinki Airport which - as airports tend to be - is uncomfortably far from the city and not too easy to reach with public transportation). At the postal office the customs officer asked me to open the package to check if there were any meat products(!?) inside. Of course there wasn't, but I did receive this:



Isn't it lovely? And it arrived at a good time too, as we had our first snow even here in southern Finland this week. (Eww!)

I think what attracted the attention of the customs office was a box of green fusilli. Miss Twiss sent them along, as she thought Ruffles in the making looked exactly like those... And the colour does match quite well, don't you think?



The green theme continued on a little encouraging sign that I put on the livingroom bookshelf right away:



In addition to these goodies there was also a little toy figure: a swimming lady. My toddler was quite fascinated, but of course we only let her play with it when somebody grown-up is watching. I'm sure there'd be lots of nice tiny little parts to chew on... ;) And last, there was a lovely silver-coloured leather bracelet, made my Miss Twiss herself. I didn't think of getting a photo of it, and now the battery of the camera is quite dead, so you'll just have to take my word for it. :)

Anyway, this swap has been great fun. Thank you Miss Twiss for the lovely package, and thank you Kris and Jacqueline for organizing! We should do this again next winter. ;)

Another Backyard Leaves

I am so thrilled that my Backyard Leaves knitted by the wondefully talented Anna is here! In fact, it's chilly enough now in St. Louis that I wore it today:


Isn't it just super cute? I got so many compliments at work...I was almost sad to admit that I didn't knit it : )! And I must thank Anna for sending some gorgeous silk
Hip Knits yarn and yummy chocolate. What totally awesome British treats! (Note: sorry I couldn't take a pic of the chocolate...it's already been devoured).



Thank you again, Anna, and to Jacqueline and Kris for organizing this awesome knitalong!

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Backyard Leaves are on their way!!

Hi Leanne,

you should have BL within a couple of days now, I hope! I sent it on its way across the Pond today :-)

I totally procrastinated on the grafting part, and I'm afraid it didn't really turn out very skillful ... But I *loved* knitting the lace pattern, and working with Cashmerino was a dream! I hope you'll enjoy your new scarf :-)

Tatjana

Sunday, October 23, 2005

calgary rock/scarf city

this friday i saw a brilliant band called chixdiggit. as they are from calgary, i naturally had to get myself a t-shirt and take a pic with the here and there cables scarf heading for morgan in, yes, calgary!

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us


(see more details and specs on my blog.)

i had a lot of fun knitting this scarf - i thought perhaps i would get sick of the cables going here and there endlessly, but no such thing happened. so, morgan, your scarf should be on it's way to you within a couple of days! hope you'll like it!

My Turtleneck Shrug

My SYNO package is here! Heidi did such a wonderful job with it. Her expert finishing touches are so perfect that even after staring at it for a long time, I still couldn't figure out how she managed to hide all the yarn ends. I've never seen such mad skills! Without further ado, here's her FO on me - as a shrug, as a long scarf, AND as a keyhole scarf.
Heidi also included a pack of Halloween candies and a bar of lavender oatmeal soap in her package. She didn't have to, but I'm so thankful she did. Thank you so much, Heidi. I love them all!A big thank-you also goes out to Jac and Kris for organizing this swap. It was the first for me and I can see myself participating in more swaps in the future.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Just in time for this cold cold weather!

Look what came in the mail today! My Turtleneck Shrug made for me by the wonderful Annie, some Regia sock yarn (I've never used Regia before but how lovely), and a beautiful card! Thank you so much Annie!


The yarn was Rowan Kid Classic, and it feels so wonderful! Warm and soft with marvelous halo! I'm definitely going to be getting more of that stuff. You want a picture of me in it? Here ya go!



Thank you so much to Annie for all of her wonderful work and dedication through all those rows of ribbing! I absolutely love it! And the neck turned out just fine! In fact, I'm wearing it to a local craft fair tomorrow. Also thank you to the wonderful organizers behind SYNO. It was a fab idea, and so fun to participate! If y'all ever decide to do another like this one, count me in!

-Gabby

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

handknit for me!

i finally found five minutes of daylight to take a just about half decent pic of my gorgeous interlocking balloons scarf that arrived from diana last week:



how beautiful is that! thanks, diana! the yarn is called baby silk, a silk and baby alpaca blend from the norwegian company du store alpakka (warning: their web site is only in norwegian, plus absolutely horrible).

i have already started wearing scarves this autumn, as it's freezing here, so this was a welcome addition to the wardrobe.

as for my own scarf contribution, i finished morgan's scarf a couple of days ago. i still have to weave in a couple of ends and give it a bit of a blocking, but it shouldn't be too long now before it's on its way to cold calgary.

Friday, October 14, 2005

Almost done, Winnie!



Only the turtleneck part to go. And I already have a few little treats to mail with it! It's fun to put together a package around Halloween. This might be in tomorrow's mail...yay!

Nichola's Backyard Leaves Progress

We just moved into our new place in Seattle! Yeah!

That means that I've still been super swamped with buying/selling house crap and moving. I cannot find anything in my house at the moment (my husband packed and moved us - agh!), including my camera to take a picture of my progress!

However, I have made some progress on Nichola's backyard leaves scarf. I just went to NYC on business this week and had some good airplane knitting time. I am two repeats from completing one side. Sorry this is taking so long, Nichola! I'm glad it is turning into summer down under...it's the only thing keeping me from feeling super guilty! As soon as I can find my camera, I'll post a photo.

I have a trip to San Diego coming up at the end of the month and a trip to Chicago the following week - more business trips = more uninterupted knitting time = more progress!

hands off it's mine!

So I got home from holiday and went to the post office this morning to get pick up a package. I suspected that it was from Kristel, since she emailed me to warn me that it was coming. In fact it got here in 2 days, all the way from Finland.


....
Check out my beautiful scarf


The leaf pattern is similar to the one that I did for Grumperina's scarf. See how perfect all the stitches are.


....
So good that it can stand a close-up


I think that this picture might had worked better if I had longer arms, or bothered to read the instruction book to work out the timer, but I did want you to see the scarf on me ;-) It's so fuzzy, soft and wonderfully warm.

....
Does it just look lovely peeking out from my coat?


Thank you, Kristel for making me a wonderful scarf which I will treasure. The workmanship is so perfect that I can't even see where the yarn was joined. The edges are perfectly flat and the scarf just the perfect length. I'm now hoping for a very cold winter.

Thank you Jacqueline and Kris for organising this swap. I had a great time participating, meeting 2 lovely knitters and of course getting to know a few knitters just a little bit better.

To all the Liberty girls, I'll bring this to show you when we next meet, just don't forget, hands off, because it's mine ;-)

Turtleneck Shrug!

Like others, I ran out of yarn while working on the neck of Hillary's Turtleneck Shrug. Being able to find the same dyelot here in California, we agreed that I would send it off and Hillary would decide whether or not to add more. So, in a way, it's done. Hillary, your shrug has:

  • Ridden the Santa Monica Blue Bus (no small feat!)
  • Moved across the 405
  • Attended an academic conference in Irvine (it may have understood more than I did)
  • Read journal articles (I think it wants to go to grad school)
  • Sparked conversations on the walk to campus ("Are you knitting? Is that a giraffe neck warmer?" while working on the sleeve)
  • Clarified why you'd call it a shrug - after the fifth time of being asked "You're making a turtleneck with sleeves?"

You shrug.


I enjoyed working on this - the yarn is very nice and anything without seams is great - hope you like it!

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Good news, bad news.

I'm sorry. The bad news is, I'm late. I confess it. I took the finished Backyard Leaves scarf for Annie to work to post at the beginning of the week, yet totally failed to send it, and now I am off to the Knitting show tomorrow, and then it's the weekend, so the earliest I can post it is Monday. I'm so very sorry. I'll buy something nice from the show to make up for it.

The good news is, I received my turtleneck shrug from Blossom! And more! It's beautiful. Pics this weekend.

Arrived - Moonlight Madness

I got my scarf from PurlyWhites. The pattern is lovelier than I thought it would be, and the finishing work is impeccable. Thank you PurlyWhites!!!



My roomate and I have settled on a truce wherein the scarf belongs to whomever is wearing it at the time. And not a moment too soon, I heard the 'paca bears scheming that if we couldn't sort it out between ourselves, they'd claim it! Bad 'paca bears.

You see it's her yarn. I decided to do this swap if, and only if, I could find yarn from stash, you know, those piles of yarn already living in my house that I'm trying to get used. I was quite close to deciding that I couldn't meet that criteria when she kindly suggested a cotton/tencel blend by Classic Elite from her stash. It was a lovely color and we decided that it could be sent out and we'd determine ownership when the scarf got back.... oops!
Now we're stuck, it's back and we both love it, her yarn, my labor, the only conclusion is to make another one. We have more of the same yarn, but it's in an aqua greenish that doesn't look really good on either of us, so I think we'll have to over dye it. (yay... dye party!)

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Arrived!

[no title]

Scarf swap scarf has arrived--hooray!  An utterly perfect Backyard Leaves arrived just in time for fall scarf season.  Perfect timing, Winnie, thanks a million.  ...Still amazed at how quickly you turned this scarf around.  

 
Backyard Leaves in Knit Picks Merino Style  

Thanks again Winnie, love it!     

Friday, October 07, 2005

Progress

There has been some progress on Rosa's scarf.



It's getting there, even if it is slowly!
I hope you like it so far Rosa.

How's my scarf going Hillary?

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Grafting

Hi,

I'm procrastinating because I haven't dared tackling the grafting of the two halves of Backyard Leaves yet! Can anyone point me to an online tutorial or has any helpful advice? Thanks!

Tatjana

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Ruffles Ruffles


Dear Kristel,

I have your address. I need to carry it and your scarf around with me before I pop it in the post. For some reason this step has to be fulfilled.
The yarn was lovely to knit with and I think I'll knit a pair of socks with the skein you gave me. I am of two minds about the sock thing. I love the idea of having beautiful socks. I don't love the idea of falling in love with a new time consuming skill.

Thank you goes out to all the bloggers who knit lovely things. I am always inspired and motivated by the quality and creativity.

This was lots of fun.

Laura

A later edit:

To answer the blocking question. I laid the scarf out on my ironing board to look like a slinky, and I steamed it. It helped to true the short rows.

here is a side view: