Gorgeous!

She designed the wonderful – and naturally very colorful Crystal socklet in the current issue of Knitty.

Lynn encourages knitters to choose their own color combos for the socks, and inspired by a question on Ravelry from a nervous color-combiner, she wrote a wonderful blog post on this topic – “Color Combining for Novices“.

Helpful examples to illustrate different types of color combos

Even if you’re not planning to knit the socks, there’s lots of excellent material, well illustrated.

(Funny story: Lynn was my roommate at Sock Summit last year. She’s a wonderful woman, and we had a great time together. I wish I’d taken a picture of the closet in our room… my side was entirely in black and white, and Lynn’s side could only be described as a the wildest explosion of color imaginable.)

Knit your own team!

Fun stop-motion video of knitted Olympians, created to promote the book Olympknits. Be warned, it’s ever so slightly racy – contains images of a knitted streaker and a diver who loses his swimming trunks. I am particularly amused by the synchronized swimmers.

If you do fancy Knitting The Olympics, there are three books to choose from! There’s also Knitlympics and Knitting for Gold. No matter which book you get, you’ll have plenty to keep you busy while watching the coverage.

Fascinating

Our own columnist Donna Druchunas has a new video workshop, “Knitting Lithuanian Socks“ available from Interweave Press. You can see a sneak preview here. In this nearly 3-hour video, Donna takes you through the history of Lithuanian knitting, talks about the evolution of regional colorwork patterns, and discusses the role of knitting in contemporary Lithuanian culture. She provides tips and techniques for working colorwork designs and details several clever heel shapings. In addition, you get three patterns for fabulous socks designed by Donna, inspired by her research and travels.

The best dressed rubber chicken in the universe.

A knitter from the UK has been given the honor of knitting a new sweater for Camilla the Chicken, the mascot of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Camilla has twice travelled spaceward as part of projects to measure solar radiation, and will proudly wear her new sweater around the lab and on any future space ventures.

A thoughtful, thought-provoking blog post about the common comparison made between knitting and computer programming. Worth a read on your coffee break.

Capturing the beauty of these animals

A fundraiser for a heartbreaking cause: Liza Souza Dyeworks has created a limited edition colorway of their sock yarn, Appaloosa. This colorway will be available only until the end of June, and all proceeds will go to The Grace Foundation animal shelter to support their work with the ‘Susanville 70′.

The story is a terrible one: in April of 2011, more than 50 horses and several dogs (as well as two foster children) were rescued from a situation of great neglect and abuse. The Grace Foundation took in the horses, but due to a series of legal and financial blunders and maneuvers, they have been unable to adopt out the horses, and have been left to care for them – and to pay for that care. Many of the horses were in terrible condition, and many pregnant, and have required costly and time-consuming medical care. The legal situation remains unresolved, and the Grace Foundation is struggling to deal with the burden of the costs and work of keeping these animals.  More information on the story can be found here.  Kudos to Liza Souza for her efforts to help.

An article on the New York Times blog about scams that are starting to appear connected to Pinterest.

I love to squirrel away a few months worth of fiber and then see what goes together for some color blending.

Here’s my latest combo. The colors are called Beans (Romney) and Changes(Falkland).

From this:

Beans & Changes

to this:

350 yards of yum

a little closer:

As long as there is brown I am happy

a bit of knitting:

Sweater, please!

The yarn knits up great at 4 stitches to the inch, and could happily squeeze down to 4.5. The Falkland was quite soft and took away all of the prickles of the Romney.

Now I’m looking for a couple of others that would go well with this one. I love stash archeology.

Anyone else stash spinning?

Today I have a copy of California Revival Knits by Stephannie Tallent.  Have you seen the patterns in it yet? I’m loving the Wrought Mitts and Cardigan.

California Revival Knits

I also have an Elemental Affects yarn pack to make the stunning Peacock Mitts.

Beautiful Peacock Mitts

Thanks to Cooperative Press and Elemental Affects for donating today’s prizes!

One person will win both the book and the yarn pack.

The usual rules apply for our giveaway: Leave a comment on this post before midnight, eastern time, on Wednesday, May 23, 2012. 1 comment will be chosen at random to answer a skill testing question.

If he/she answers correctly, they will win our prize! Good luck, everyone!

(If you have won a prize from us already this year please give another knitter a chance and leave your name out of the hat. Thanks!)

Let the world see you knit!

The weather has finally turned in our favor here in the northeast of North America, which puts us in the right mindset to knit outdoors. And just in time to start thinking about World Wide Knit in Public Day. This year, it’s not just a day – it’s a week! Events will run between June 9th and 17th, in cities all over the world. The Toronto crew is planning a big day at Speaker’s Corner at Nathan Philips Square.  A list of events around the world is here.

Knitlympic fever is heating up in the UK: a piece from the Telegraph in the UK about the book ‘Knitlympics: Knit Your Favourite Athletes’ by Carol Meldrum. Bonus link to a free pattern for Jessica Ennis, complete with Stella McCartney designed gear.

A related piece from the NY Times’ blog about the thorny issue of copyright at it relates to crafting, specifically to do with protection of the Olympic rings image.

The coffee is great, too!

A great profile of Toronto yarn shop (and Amy’s LYS) The Purple Purl in working.com, focusing on the realities of running the business.

Fab!

Knitter Courtney Zurcher created a fun yarny installation and offered learn to knit classes as part of the Big Omaha 2012 conference on innovation and entrepreneurship, held last week.

Kickstarter project for a neat yarn storage device, invented by a Product Design student to help out his girlfriend with her knitting. Even if you’re not looking to support these types of projects, it’s fun to read about the inspiration and the design process.

Yarnbombers struck Norwich City Hall. Fantastic lamp post styling!

Excellent yarn shop name of the week: The Sheep’s Stockings.

We spin and knit, watch movies and eat a lot. We relax and focus on a hobby we all love.

Last weekend we went. It was beautiful and sunny, we even spent some time spinning lakeside.

Lake view

With no work or family constraints I got a lot of spinning done – almost a pound of fiber. I spun randomly filling bobbins with what appealed to me at the time. Of course I brought three times as many projects than I could possibly accomplish.

A little Spunky Eclectic

The spinning part of my brain feels relaxed now and I feel reconnected to my spinning women.

Do you ever spin away?

For me, it’s knitting with beads.  I’ve dabbled in it, but I’d never completed a full project, and I knew I wanted to learn more.  As luck would have it, knit designer Laura Nelkin was scheduled to come to Toronto, to teach at class at Lettuce Knit.  Laura’s one of the best designers working with beaded knits; her designs are beautiful, interesting, and clever. She’s got designs for those just starting out with beads, and designs for knitters seeking a serious challenge.

Her class “Advanced Lace with Beads“, filled up quickly, and I was happy to have a place on the list.

Laura, in action

And what fun it was!

Experimenting and learning.

We worked a small sample swatch, to try out several ways of adding beads to our work.

Fun and educational

We made nupps (and a few swear words, too, for those of us whose needles were too blunt to work that pesky p7tog).

Loose nupps are the best kind of nupps.

And we played with color combos.

I learned lots of great stuff – and not just about knitting with beads.

Laura shared a genius trick for working with charts…

Brilliant!

If the chart shows the WS rows, use a highlighter to highlight those rows, and highlight the corresponding WS definitions of the stitches on the chart legend. That way, you’ll always know which way you should be going on a particular row, and how to work a given symbol’s stitch on that side.  Simple and so very very helpful.

As a knitting teacher, I don’t get to take nearly enough classes, but every time I do, I learn something. I usually learn something about the subject matter in question, of course, but there’s always at least one other nugget – a clever tip, a suggestion for an easier way to do something, an explanation of a technique that helps your understanding.  After all, there’s no way we can all know everything, and a different perspective is sometimes just what you need to expand your thinking, or add to your knowledge.

I love taking classes. If you haven’t taken one recently, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Bigger on the Inside

Sue from Rochester, NY is our lucky winner of the Bigger on the Inside yarn pack. A huge thanks to Lorna’s Laces for providing our prize. And happy wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey knitting to Sue!

Environmentally sound and fully animal-friendly.

The University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor is hosting an exhibition of knitting as contemporary fine art. Ruth Marshall’s “Vanished in Stitches” exhibit is on display until June 9th. The artist knits accurate life-size pelts of rare and endangered big cats – including ocelots, tigers and leopards. Her years working at the Bronx Zoo, she launched the project to highlight the plight of these rare and beautiful creatures. More about the artist and her fascinating work at her website.

Fascinating and very clever.

Artists Pat Ashford and Steve Plummer have created one of their trademark Illusion knits in time for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. The oversized replica of a first class postage stamp with a portrait of the Queen is one of many such projects they have undertaken. An illusion uses texture to create an image that hides: when viewed from the front, the fabric looks only like vertical stripes, but when viewed from an angle, the image appears.

From the New York Times Archive, a pattern published in 1861 for mittens for soldiers. Although not necessarily immediately or obviously knittable, it’s a fascinating insight into how knitting patterns have evolved over the years, and what passed for a decent set of instructions for previous generations. I do like the thought that sock needles were considered “larger”.

Not strictly knitting (despite the article title), but absolutely lovely: Lace fencing.

Also not knitting, but great insights into the larger world around us crafters… two articles from Slate that we’ve enjoyed recently: one on the history of zippers and the Japanese company that dominates the market, and one on the ‘color authority’ Pantone and their color forecasting.

I tried it and it’s fun and easy. Perfect if you love drum carded fiber , but don’t like spinning from batts.

You need a drum carder (mine is a Patrick Green Deb’s Delicate Deluxe), a doffer (the pointy ice-pick-looking tool) and a diz (I use buttons. I love buttons).

Dizz and doffer ready to go

Build your batt. I did a quick striped batt for long color runs. Start by doffing just enough fiber to fit through your diz.

Pull of just enough to fit through your diz

And thread it through your diz.

Locked and loaded

Start dizzing by pulling the fiber slowly but firmly through the diz.

Diz away

There has to be enough tension in your pull for the fiber to run smoothly and steadily through the diz but not so much that the fiber breaks. Here are some tips:

• Try tipping your diz at a slight angle to the drum carder.
• If you use a button as a diz, don’t use one with a shank on it. The fiber will wrap around it no matter how careful you are, or how many bad words you say.
• If the fiber is hard to pull through your diz your fiber is too thick.
• Keep your hand between your freshly dizzed fiber and the drum carder, or it will catch back onto the carding cloth. Ask me how I know.
• If your fiber breaks or gets very thin, just doff the next little piece and start again.
• Don’t expect the pull of dizzing the fiber to turn the drum on your drum carder. I turn my drum a quarter of a turn, diz, then repeat.

The fiber will pull off of the drum in a giant spiral, like peeling an apple. The resulting roving is gorgeous, fluffy and ready to spin.

Please spin me

Use the exact same process to diz layered batts.

Layered batt in process

The roving comes off blended.

Mmmmm layers

Fun, easy and a great excuse for me to buy more buttons.

Here’s something I figured out about storing my drum carder recently. It and all the carding tools fit perfectly into a big blue Ikea shopping bag – it’s the perfect storage solution for me. Everything in one place and the bag makes hauling it off and on the shelf where I store it easy.

Drum carder in a bag

I finished Groove from Winter Knitty by Stephen West.

Stephen's tweedy Groove

I knit my Groove out of Madelinetosh DK

Madelinetosh DK - Clematis and Glazed Pecan

I haven’t stopped wearing it since I finished

Completely in love with Madleinetosh yarn

That puts my knit from Knitty count at 3 out of 6 for the year.

Here’s a little more groove for your Monday, I dare you not to dance!