The beauty of hand dyed yarn, is that it's hand-dyed.  That means that sometimes your dyelots don't quite match.  I discovered this to be the case as I was cooking along on my mmmmmalabrigo hat.  Even though the skeins looked pretty similar in the shop, when I wound the second ball to go off to knitting group, I discovered that it had a little bit different flavor from the first ball.  This doesn't irritate me when I discover things like this, because, after all, it's the hand-made quality that makes it so beautiful in the first place.

The second ball was a little more on the side of greens and blues, and a little less of the purples.  I wanted to make a matching hat/cowl/mitts set so I decided that I needed to mix up the yarns so they would look integrated instead of like I bought two different yarns.  The hat was halfway done, so I just switched yarns and knit the crown out of the second ball.  The cowl wasn't even started yet, so when I started that one, I switched up the yarns about every 10 rows.  The skeins had the same colors in them, so you would never notice that they are two different yarns unless I told you.  Looks like a matched set, don't you think?  I feel quite pleased, it was worth the tiny bit of extra work weaving in the ends.  Next up, fingerless mitts to go with the hat and cowl, because sometimes you just want to be matchy-matchy.

And look who came to visit today, I think he's a red-breasted sapsucker.  I find it so interesting how neat he is about the holes he drills.  It was hard to capture him on camera.  As soon as I tried to get closer he took off, but this little set of holes is right outside my kitchen window, so I'll keep an eye on it and see if he comes back.  Even if I don't see him I may see that he's added to his tidy little arrays.

And today we've had snow!  Well you can hardly call it snow - just some flurries that don't stick, but we've been rather bereft of winter weather this year, in fact I feel a bit cheated by that, so I'm counting it as SNOW today.  I hope there's plenty more in store for us this year!

Well, I think that brings me to teatime!  I hope wherever you are that you're enjoying a sweet Sunday afternoon too.

 

I am positively smitten with this yarn.

Exhibit A

I rest my case.

I've been unexpectedly in a deadline knitting frenzy.  I had a project with a deadline, but the yarn arrived late and the deadline got shortened by 1/3 and ended up in the middle of the holidays so I had a last minute crunch trying to get everything done.  Why am I telling you this?  Because I was in such a knitting frenzy that I overused my hands/arms and had to end up icing my right arm and elbow.  Now, I knit a LOT.  Pretty much every single day and sometimes all day and I almost never have hand or arm pain, and that's because usually when I knit, I take breaks, frequently.  I get up and make a cup of tea, or do the dishes, or take a walk (or a nap heheheh) or anything that uses a different set of muscles.  So I was really mad at myself for ending up in pain.  I'm here to tell you that if your hands or arms hurt you should stop - Don't be a dope like me!

But now that the item has been shipped off, and I've taken a day or two to recover, I'm back to knitting form.  I'm pacing myself and I decided to work on something easy, something with fat yarn, big needles and plenty of yummy squish. 

I took a little stash dive and came up with two possibilities, both equally delicious: 

This and this.

The first one is Malabrigo Rios in colorway Piedras, and the second is Textiles a Mano Calafate (polwarth! and silk!) in a beautiful earthy foresty colorway.

In the end I decided on the Malabrigo because I only have the one skein of the Calafate and I want to make something special out of it - I'm just not sure what yet.  The Malabrigo was begging to me to become a hat and cowl set.

It really is enticing!  And I think it's made an auspicious start.

And now that deadline knitting is over, I can get back to my other love, the colorwork sweater.  I've made a little progress.  It would have been more, but I had to rip out an entire star's worth of knitting because I changed colors in the wrong place. This is such a satisfying knit.

I hope whatever is on your needles is equally satsifying and enticing, and that you're taking care of your tools (hands) and not having to ice anything!  Here's to happy and healthy 2012 knitting!

At the start of every new year I like to think about goals for the upcoming year.  They're not exactly resolutions, but more like areas I'd like to focus my energy.  2011 was the year of connections for me.  I spent a lot of my time thinking about connections to my home, my family, my community, my friends and the world at large. 

In 2012 my watchword is going to be adventure!  I have a new sock club starting that is all about adventure, and I have some really big projects up my sleeves that I think will bring me lots of adventure.  I also plan to go exploring.  There are so many great things to see and do in Oregon, and someone told me it's good to step. away. from. the. computer once in a while and go to this magical land called the out of doors. I plan to do that a little more often this year.  Adventure is more than going new places though, it's an attitude - a new recipe, a new way of doing things, an untested plan, heck - even the laundry! can be an adventure.  It's all in your attitude.  Well, ok, I'm not really sure how the laundry can be an adventure, but maybe trying that new detergent will help out.  The point is, I want to cultivate an attitude of joy, curiosity, exhilaration, and spontaneity (in a word - adventure) when approaching new things.

And that's it - it's really simple, but, if done right it's much more profound than it sounds.

What's your watchword for 2012?

Every year I love this time of transition from the old year to the new.  I am not a loud celebrator, I am a quiet one.  I like to look back on the year, and think of my accomplishments and look forward to the new year and things I might do better.  I also like to spend New Year's eve cleaning house, both literally and figuratively so that I can start the new year with a clean, shiny plate ready for all the life I'm going to heap on it.

It's also a good time to get your financial house in order.  This year I raised a bit of money for charity, and gave a bit more personally.  I gave charity donations in honor of my family for the holidays and I gave locally to charities right here at home.  And one of the nice things about giving to charity is that it's tax deductible, so December 31, I usually give a little bit more if I can.  My favorite charities for 2011 were Mercy Corps, and Doctors without Borders.   

In my professional life, this year I set a goal to design more, and to design some things other than socks.  And I think I accomplished that.  I released 39 patterns!  21 were socks and 18 were non-socks so that was a personal best. A big part of that tally were the patterns from my two sock clubs.  Here are the last installments of Art & Sole, Olympia shawl and Mackintosh sock,

and the Illuminations club, Floridia sock and Fortune Cookie sock.

Both clubs went out with a bang with luxurious yarns.  The Art & Sole club got Tracks of Bison sock yarn from Alisha goes Around, and the Illuminations club got Caricia (with cashmere! yum!) from Textiles a Mano.  In case you've been wanting the patterns from either of these clubs, today is the last day to purchase.  Tonight they go out of circulation and the patterns won't be released for at least a year.

In my personal life, 2011 was a good year, and a hard year.  I began 2011 feeling a bit lonely and isolated.  I hadn't realized how hard moving to another state would be when we came here - it was wonderful, don't get me wrong, it's just that I didn't know it would also be hard.  So 2011 was my year of making friends and roots - and I had to consciously work at it.  Not since I was in elementary school have I thought so hard about making friends.  And now that 2011 is almost out the door, I look around at all the wonderful new friends I've made here and I feel happy and lucky to have landed in Eugene. 

I hope that wherever you are, you are enjoying the end of 2011, whether you like to do it in a boistrous, rollicking party fashion, a quiet contemplative fashion, or a "don't let the door hit ya on the way out" fashion, and that you're getting ready for all the life that's going to be on your plate in 2012!  Here's to good endings!

 

 

The view from the 22nd floor overlooking the Willamette river on Christmas Day.  Christmas in Portland was sunny and mild - perhaps that's a good sign for 2012.  I love looking out from my in-law's condo windows, it's an ever-changing light show.  Monet would have loved it.
Here he is, the harbinger of 2012, surveying all in his future domain.  Intrepid and plucky!

Here was my "just for me" knitting project on Christmas day.  I've been eyeing this yarn at textiles a mano for quite a while and I finally decided it would make a good present to me from, uh... santa! yeah.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  I love these colors and the yarn is super squishy and soft, 40% silk and 60% wool is what the label says, the wool must be merino, it's reallllllyyyyy soft.  The name of the yarn is La Jolla.
And here is the "just for me" project today.  I must have been naughty because Santa also brought me a cold for Christmas, so I've been snuggled up in bed with needles and movies and tissues.  Makes for good progress, don't you think?  See that big goober mess at the bottom?  That's where I decided to adjust the size after casting on.  Don't worry though, I"m going to steek this baby and all of that goober is going to get cut out!

The presents have been opened, exclamations have been uttered, the wrappings cleared away, meals have been slept off and long journeys home driven.  I love the raucous joy and cheer of Christmas with family.  And now we enjoy the final tradition of Christmas, the quiet.  I love this time of soft contemplation and contentment, a few more days of decoration and suspended time.  I'm enjoying a nice cup of tea with the last of the cookies.  I hope your quiet finds you too.