I know. I haven’t blogged in an age. I’ve been busy. Plus the dearth of real comments has made me wonder if my efforts at continuing to spend the time blogging are at all worthwhile. Honestly, I received 25 spam comments since October 1, and only five real comments since September 1. Though I love Ravelry, and have tons of fun communicating with friends on Twitter and Facebook, I think most other people are, too, and aren’t bothering with blogs as much as they once were. Well, not with my blog, anyway. In spite of that, I do have a couple of things to share with you.

Berroco newsletters

I continue to get a weekly newsletter from Berroco. Most of the designs they throw out there I’m not the slightest bit interested in—I’m so not in their demographic. However, one came in a week or three ago that I especially like. It’s called Avocet B (the A version is appalling—what are those things hanging from it?). This is a classic garter stitch cardigan, that could be dressed up or down, and worn comfortably for years. Just my sort of sweater. I haven’t knit with Berroco’s Ultra Alpaca yet, the yarn they used for the design, though I have a hank or two of it in my stash. It’s wonderfully soft. I do love alpaca yarns.

Yarn from Elann

I’ve been working furiously on the brown cardigan with the luscious Peruvian Sierra Aran (80% highland wool, 20% alpaca) yarn I got from Elann in July. And it’s finally getting there. I knit the back twice, the two fronts a total of four times, and at least five sleeves. The final sleeve is getting its cap ripped back today (again), hopefully for the last time, and re-knit. Then I get to do the seaming, and knit the button bands and collar. Yes, I get to do the seaming. I actually like seaming. Mattress stitch is one of those magical knitting things. It’s so satisfying. Unfortunately, I don’t have a current photo of the sweater for you. It’s not much to look at at this point, though. You aren’t missing much. I’ll let you know when it’s done, and I’ll have some (hopefully) nice photos of it to share with you at that point.

Just yesterday I got more yarn from Elann. And I have pictures!

First off, I have four balls of their sumptuous Silken Kydd yarn in Aloe. They only have four colors in stock right now, but I’m assured the full color line will be in soon. I’m not sure what I’ll knit with this yet. 1,000 yards is a lot of lace weight yarn. The color is so glorious, that I want to make something special. The ideas are beginning to churn. This yarn is Elann’s answer to Rowan Kidsilk Haze with 70% super kid mohair and 30% silk, at barely more than half Rowan’s price.

Since my dear husband is allergic to wool (he really is, even the tiniest bit in a yarn gives him a rash from short-term contact), finding suitable yarn to knit socks for him is… challenging. I got three balls of Elann’s Esprit yarn to try out on him. The yarn is 98.3% cotton, and 1.7% elastic. Hopefully there’s enough elastic in there to keep the socks from pooling around his toes. The balls are small, only 100 yards, so I got three of them in Cap Cod Blue. Hopefully it’ll be enough yarn to cover his size 11 feet, and go part way up his ankles. Fingers crossed.

The other yarn I got from Elann yesterday is a ball of Sonata. It’s 100% mercerized cotton, and goes in the washer. When I talked with Angela about the yarn, she says it’s fine in the dryer as well. I’ll knit up a swatch or two with this, toss it in the washer and dryer a couple of times, and see how it does. I’m hoping to use it for a baby blanket idea I have. Some friends just adopted a sweet baby girl, and they’ll no doubt be needing a blankie for her. I hope this yarn works out. It comes in a wide variety of colors, and they still have enough colors in stock that I should be able to have all the colors I want in this little blanket. Fingers crossed.

Along with these lovely yarns I got color cards—a color card for each of the yarns I got with this shipment, plus color cards for the yarns I got over the summer: Peruvian Highland Donegal, Peruvian Sierra Aran (this is the one I’m using for the brown sweater), and Peruvian Pure Alpaca. It makes such a huge difference seeing the real yarns in person, getting to see all the colors, touch them. It makes choosing a color for a project ever so much easier. Thank you, Angela!

Bits and pieces

I bet I forgot to tell you about the new group I have going at Facebook for my designs. Become a fan, and follow me there: Fiber Dreams (a link to this page is also in my sidebar).

My first ever magazine design is coming to a newsstand near you on November 6. Look for Love of Knitting, a relative newcomer to the knitting magazine world. I’m to have another pattern in the spring 2010 issue of the same magazine. I’ll be sending the project along to the editor to be photographed in a week or so.

Unless it gets postponed again, one of my patterns will be released in Classic Elite’s newsletter on November 24.

Early this year I decided that 2009 was going to be my year of lace. Have you noticed all the lace I’ve turned out this year? Fun. Anyway, I only recently discovered that I’m not alone in that endeavor; there’s a whole website dedicated to it: Year of Lace. This organized year of lace is actually a lace club. They’re still taking sign ups for the 2010 club. You can follow their happenings on Twitter and in their group on Ravelry.

I think that’s it. I think that’s everything I’ve been meaning to share here. I hope. If not, that’ll just leave more for next time.

Welcome to all who are here for the Sweet Summer blog tour, hosted by Karen and her Cotton Spice blog.

Yes, it’s really been a week since I last posted. Honestly, I can’t believe how quickly a week goes by these days. I think I’m starting to get the real gist of Grandma’s complaint about how fast a year disappeared when she was in her mid 80s. Between drafting new patterns, tweaking those that have come back from test knitting, sending everything off to be printed, and buying supplies for more blocking wires, I’ve been swamped!

Last weekend we suddenly found ourselves out of the annual fog and early morning drizzle otherwise known as June Gloom, and fully into summer. One day the high was maybe in the mid 70s, and the next it was in the mid to upper 90s across the Los Angeles basin. The temps have settled down a bit since then, thankfully, but the skies are clear and the days are warm. Yup. It’s summer now.

The current shawl project

Though I’ve been too busy to post, I have not been too busy to knit. In fact, just yesterday I finished knitting the center panel of the (so far nameless) shawl I’m making with the fabulous Kami Bison yarn. As you can see, I have made a good start on the border as well.

The border is so easy to knit that I’ve memorized it already, making the knitting of it extremely quick. The other thing that’s fast about this border is that there are at most only 18 stitches to it, and you have to work up to that number row-by-row from the starting ten stitches. I’m hoping to get this pattern off to Dixie, my test knitter, later today. Keep your fingers crossed. Dixie and her husband recently moved from southern California to Dublin, Ireland. Dixie’s recent blog posts are filled with the ins and outs of setting up her new home there in Dublin.

Naming poll

I don’t have a clue yet what to call this shawl. That makes me think it’s time for another naming poll. I’ll give you all through the weekend to come up with a list of suggested names for it. This time I’m looking for names on a theme of far away or exotic lands, historic times—but names that haven’t already been used much or at all. I’ll put my favorites up in a poll to be voted on on Monday, July 6, then you can vote for your favorite. The person who suggests the winning name will get a free copy of the pattern when it’s done. Leave your suggestions in the comments to this post.

A sweater pattern from Berroco

For the first time in ages Berroco has come out with a pattern that I think is worth the cyberspace it fills up. Ditto is a short-sleeved sweater that’s just in time for summer. It looks quick to knit, while having a little going on so you won’t be bored to death while knitting it. Personally, I’d stay away from the yarn they used for the model… I don’t know about you, but I don’t need those horizontal stripes to make me look even wider than I already am—besides, if it were knit in a solid color, then vertical lines in the yoke would stand out more. All good.

Miss Ricki in the sun

I’ll close today with a picture of my sweet kitty, Miss Ricki. She’s been lapping up the sunshine, moving a bit now and then to keep out of the shadows as the sun moves across the sky, barely managing to lift her furry little head to acknowledge my presence—I’m sure it was mostly in complaint as I was blocking some of her sun.

The only thing I currently have on the needles is the secret project I’m working on, and the yarn still hasn’t arrived from Dee at Posh, so there’s a dearth of my own things to share with you. So, here are a couple things that have recently crossed my desk.

Berroco has introduced a new series of how-to videos. According to their latest newsletter, the one below, how to do a nice mattress stitch, is the first in the series. There are a couple others, though, on their video list—picking up stitches along a curved edge, making a button loop, and making a four-stitch bobble. Like most people, I used to abhor doing mattress stitch—so much so that when I knit an Aran pullover for my husband I crocheted the pieces together. Some day I need to fix that. Somewhere along the way, though, I saw the light, and now I love seaming with mattress stitch. There’s something quite satisfying about making a seam from the front that doesn’t show from the front once done. It’s a little piece of seaming magic.

The following makes me groan, and that’s all there is to it.

Oh, and a month ago I took this picture of the mountain range that I can see from my house. It was the morning after a cold storm that dumped a bunch of snow on that range out there. For here, the sky was very blue. Today it’s foggy, and you’d swear, looking out my window, that there’s nothing out there that’s more than a quarter mile away, much less a mountain range.

Stitches West was great last year, but this year it was so much more fun. First off, (blogless) Denise let me share her room in the hotel that’s attached to the convention center. I can’t even begin to tell you how much better it was to be in the same hotel with everyone, and to be just footsteps away from the market floor. Being close made it easy to go back to my room, drop stuff off, re-group, knit a bit in peace, and return to the market energized, and ready for more.

Plus, being in the same hotel with all the Knit Knight folks who went made it possible to hang out with them after the market was done for the day. We had a pajama party one night, and Denise and I hosted a party the following night in our room. I don’t remember the reason for it, but this year the hotel offered knitters the opportunity to join their Regency Club for the duration of our stay. For a mere $30 per night per room (not per person) we got a continental breakfast, coffee, tea, soda, and bottled water all day, and appetizers worthy of a light dinner each evening. It was so worth it. Compared with their $12 per person for a plate of bacon, eggs, hash browns, and toast in their restaurant, it was quite a deal. A number of times during our stay we thanked the staff for allowing us that service, and encouraged them to offer it again next year. Hopefully they will.

Yarn-wise, my goal this year at Stitches West was to concentrate on lace weight yarns that are known, popular, already have a following. I wasn’t 100% successful in that, but I did fairly well. While I got some yarns that are relatively unknown, they’re divine, and I am eager to knit with them.

One of the very first things I did on Friday morning was to go by Webs’ booth. I wanted yarn, it’s true, but more importantly I wanted to say hi to Kathy while it was still slow enough that she had time to visit for a minute. I’d taken along the Canterbury Bells scarf that I knit from Webs’ Valley Yarns lace weight so that Kathy could see it in real life. She really liked the pictures, but no matter how good the pictures are, lace looks ever so much nicer in person. She loved it—it was definitely worth taking the time to pack it along. We had a brief, but very nice little visit. Kathy’s a doll. While there, I naturally had to buy some yarn.

I so love the yarn I used for Canterbury Bells last year, Valley Yarns 2/14 Alpaca Silk, that I got another cone of it. This one’s in a gorgeous teal they call Pacific. I’ve lived near the edge of the Pacific all my life, and have visited it here in California, down in Mexico, in Hawaii, Fiji, and in the Solomon Islands, but have never seen it in this particular color. I bought it anyway. It’s gorgeous! The half-pound cone has 1736 yards of yarn—enough to make something quite large, or several somethings of a smaller size. While I was at Webs’ booth I got more peacock colored yarn, another lace weight. This one is Berroco’s Ultra Alpaca Fine. They call the color Oceanic Mix. The 100g hank has 433 yards of yarn.

Last year I got a couple hanks of Acero from Brooks Farm in a stunning green. I haven’t used it yet, but that didn’t stop me from getting more of it. This year I got a hank of Mas Acero—worsted weight compared with Acero’s fingering weight. The Mas Acero—55% wool, 30% silk, 15% viscose—came in a 5.9 ounce hank, which translates into 400 yards. The colors in it range from stunning purple-y blues to light navy to chocolate brown. It’s gorgeous. This hank of yarn jumped into my arms more than once. I really wanted a finer-gauge yarn. It couldn’t be helped. The finer Acero doesn’t come in this color. I had to have this colorway. Had to. No idea what I’ll end up doing with it, but I’ll find something. Some day.

Making an effort to purchase popular yarns, I got a hank of Skacel’s Merino Lace. It’s 100% merino wool, and the 100g hank has 1375 yards. I normally wouldn’t have purchased this color, but Skacel’s booth was littered with gorgeous shawls in a wide variety of neutral colors. They were fabulous! I wouldn’t have thought it. But there you go. Since I can’t wear most pastels or light neutrals, I tend to just not think of them at all. It’ll be fun to knit with something different, something out of my norm.

Another popular yarn in a colorway out of my normal arena is Misti Alpaca Lace from Misti International. It’s 100% baby alpaca, and pink. I got two 437-yard balls. The color is called Pretty in Pink. None of the colors in the booth were remotely “my” colors, so I got pink. Lots of people love pink, and I saw I gorgeous shawl at TNNA in January that was pink, and oh-so appealing.

It’s good to get out of my normal range of colors, right?

Before going to Stitches I happened to be listening to the most recent Y Knit podcast, an interview with Kristine Vejar of A Verb for Keeping Warm. I wasn’t going to go into Kristine’s booth. I wasn’t. I’d even successfully walked by several times. But there was this magnetic yarn pull. I had to go in. I had to buy a 1,035 yard hank of Holding, a 100% baby alpaca yarn in a lovely combination of light green tones they call Jade. I had to! There really was no choice.

Yet another alpaca yarn found its way into my bag. When showing Dave what I’d gotten, this is the only one he specifically said he liked the color of. Naturally. It’s dark gray. What a guy. I bring home all these glorious colors, and he likes the gray yarn best. Cracks me up. Like all the other alpaca yarns I got over the weekend, this one from Suri-Al Paca is gloriously soft. The knit samples were even softer, and had a lovely halo. Since the yarn is relatively unknown I only got one small hank. I should be able to find something to do with 200 yards of lace weight alpaca, don’t you think? Maybe another little scarf similar to Cirrus.

I was a good knitter, and only bought two hanks of sock yarn. Blue Moon Fiber Arts is one of my favorite sock yarn dyers. They do incredible work. It’s amazingly difficult, though, to purchase their yarns online. They look so different online, even in the best photos, than they do in real life. The one that I absolutely had to have is Silkie Socks that Rock, a lovely combination of 81% superwash merino and 19% silk. The blue I got is called In the Navy.

The other sock yarn is the newly popular Malabrigo Sock. Again, I wasn’t going to buy it. I’m trying to concentrate on knitting lace, and sock yarn so doesn’t fit into that equation for me. As I walked by a booth I was grabbed by the basket of lovely colors, exquisite color combinations, so I leaned over to look. Upon closer inspection, one particular colorway was of particular interest. It’s called Rayon Vert. Don’t ask me what that means. I’ve no idea. But the color is a glorious combination of medium and dark raisin-y purples touched here and there with a light spring green. How could I not buy it? Please. By the way, the picture on Malabrigo’s web site definitely doesn’t do the yarn justice. I’d never have purchased it from that picture, but if I did, if that’s what I was looking for, I would probably be disappointed. The yarn I have is darker, richer, almost regal.

This brings us to my two favorite purchases of the week. Redfish (always reminds me of wiki(Dr. Seuss)) Dyeworks 20/2 silk yarn—450 yards in each 50g hank—is gorgeous. There was no way I could leave their booth without taking some of their yarn with me. Honestly, standing in their booth was like standing in the middle of a rainbow. Their silk yarns are available in more than “300 hand-dyed solid colors and numerous variegated colors,” and every one of them was beautiful. Stunning. Part of it is the silk. Silk dyes beautifully. The other part is their dye-master. She’s amazing. And wonderful. She was so much fun to talk to. I came away with two hanks of yarn in a purple-blue color that’s sort of like a dark periwinkle, yet not—maybe it’s more like a blueberry. Maybe. I don’t know what lace design it will be turned into, but it’ll be stunning if only because of the delicious color.

The final yarn I have to share with you is my gem. Just Our Yarn is another relatively unknown yarn, but I got it anyway. I couldn’t help it. At first I had a gorgeous purple-blue yarn in my hands, then I looked around a bit more, and this green one leaped off the table and into my hands faster than you can say, “Jack Robinson.” Myne is 500 yards of pure hand-dyed cashmere, and cost less $40 including tax. I know. I couldn’t afford not to buy it. As usual, the color in my picture doesn’t do the yarn justice. It’s a glorious combination of rich blue-greens, lots of them, touched here and there with a bit of redwood.

I picked up a few non-yarn things while I was there, including some buttons (eight each) from Abbey Yarns—one design is Viennese, and the other is a marvelous little dragon in flight—a handmade glass button from Geddes Studio for my West Coast Swing cardigan, a wonderful barrette from Lilla Rose, Kollage Yarns square DPNs in sizes 0 and 1, a WPI tool and some cute little plastic stitch markers that friends swear by when seaming sweaters, and a trio of German lace books. I got all three volumes of The Knitted Lace Patterns of Christine Duchrow. These books have some stunning lace in them, but will be a bit of a challenge to use. They’re all in German! You can be sure that I’ll be pulling out my old German-English dictionary when I get serious about digging through these old charts.

Did you see what I did? Yup. I snuck in another yarn picture. It’s the lovely lace weight Pastimes, Too from Conjoined Creations. They sent it to me to swatch with. There’s enough yardage there to knit something quite fine, but they say it’s an off color. At some point I’ll knit up a large swatch with this, draft a plan, and send it to them, so they can send me yarn that isn’t an off color to knit the design up with.

Speaking of yarn companies and their yarn, I’m most excited to announce that I’m going to be working closely with Dee of Posh Yarns for my next shawl design. She’s sent me a hank of Diana—70% ultrafine merino, 30% silk—in a glorious teal color. When the pattern is done Dee is going to bundle it with her yarn, and it will be available as a kit—just as a kit. I won’t be selling the pattern myself for a yet-to-be-determined period of time after its release.

While I’m waiting for the yarn to arrive from Dee, I’m hoping to get the brown dress for Stephanie and the second Linea de la Playa sock finished up. I also have a couple more small samples to knit up for a shop. Gads.

First off, I want to thank each and every one of you who came out of lurk-dom to leave me a comment over the last couple of days. I truly appreciate the effort you took. It made my day. Truly.

In fact, I felt so good that I finally felted the clogs I knit back in October. Honestly, I have no idea why I waited so long to felt these. Now that they’re felted, I’m eager to wear them. The KnitPicks Wool of the Andes yarn that I used felted up like a dream. Even after close inspection, it’s hard to tell that they started out their lives knit. I used two balls of Forrest Heather, and three balls of Onyx Heather for the soles.

I’ve no idea at all why the foot opening for one clog is bigger than the other. None. Nada. Zip. But it is. Regardless, I loved knitting them, they felted like a dream.We’ll see how much I like wearing them… I may need to make another pair of these. Totally fun. Very satisfying.

That brings us to the shawl. I’ve decided. Part of what I knit yesterday, most of what I knit last night, will be frogged. Yup. As I’m sure you can imagine, I’m very glad that I thought to put in a lifeline. While the stitches technically fit, I don’t like the way the second row of bees lines up with the first. I want them to be centered between the existing bees, and they’re not. Drat. Up until then I’d been congratulating myself on the cleverness of my charts. Ha. That’s what I get. There are one or two other little things with the bees that I want to try to fix. While I’m at it. Hope my ideas work. We’ll see…

As we know, knitting’s been in the press quite a bit the last year or two. Here’s the latest bit I’ve come across. As reported by the BBC, knitting can help delay memory loss.

I’ve been on Berroco’s email list for ages, but haven’t shared anything with you for quite some time. Nothing’s been particularly noteworthy, worth the effort of sharing with you. This week’s newsletter has a sweater with a nice cable to it. It’s called Wishbone. I don’t know that it looks like a wishbone, at least not to me, but I like the way the little cable twines around and with the larger one.

A bit of this and that…

It’s the time of year to submit your finished scarves to the Red Scarf Project. If you need a free pattern to knit, there’s a pretty cabled scarf pattern available over on Knitting Daily.

Ahoy, mateys. It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day! Cap’ns Chumbucket and Slappy have two books out: The Pirate Life and Pirattitude. Shivver me timbers. If you upload a new avatar image to Ravelry today that has the word “pirate” in the filename, it’ll show up in the forums sporting a parrot. Arrr.

This looks quite odd, doesn’t it? I had to go to Berroco’s pattern page to find out what in the world this thing is supposed to be. Turns out it’s a cover to go over an ice scraper handle, so your hand doesn’t get quite so cold when you’re scraping your windshield. The pattern is called Ember, and the official description is: “Keep your fingers warm with this simple scraper mitt.” It still looks odd to me. Now, this may simply be because I no longer live somewhere where there’s a daily ice-scraping ritual in winter, and haven’t in quite a whle, but I don’t get the reason for this. If it’s cold enough for ice, wouldn’t you be wearing gloves or mittens anyway? Wouldn’t those serve to keep the ice off your hand?

I am at once ecstatic and depressed about the opening of the new, completely rebuilt Academy of Science building in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. I’m happy, because the old building was desperately in need of a face lift. It appears that they did an incredible job. The old building was razed, a new one raised (funny language, English). The new building, opening on September 27, 2008, earned a platinum rating from the U.S. Green Building Council—a fabulous achievement. The photo spread in Sunday’s Travel section of the O.C. Register shows the building from top to bottom, from the rooftop garden planted with 1.7 million California native plants, walls insulated with recycled blue jeans, windows that automatically open and close to heat and cool the building, the new planetarium with a 75-foot diameter screen—larger than the one in Los Angeles’ Griffith Observatory—a new coral reef, a 100,000 gallon tank that simulates the Farallones National Marine Santuary, a rain forest complete with a clear tunnel so that you get a ground-level view of Amazonian inhabitants. It all sounds fabulous, doesn’t it? Next time I’m in San Francisco, I definitely want to go. Definitely. One of the very few things that they kept from the old building is the pendulum. This is what the newspaper said about the pendulum:

Foucault pendulum: On exhibit in the original Academy, the pendulum is back to demonstrate the earth’s rotation with a 30-foot steel aircraft cable that swings 220 degrees each day.

I’ve never been quite sure how the pendulum “demonstrates the earth’s rotation,” but it’s fascinating to watch. Mesmerizing.

The depressing part? To build this new eco-wonder building, they tore down the old one. Had to. It went in the same spot. And the old building was… old. The original Steinhart Aquarium was built in 1923, the Morrison Planetarium in 1952. And I loved them. I grew up going to this building regularly. The old aquarium had this totally cool circular tank that was huge. You’d walk along a circular ramp up to a central platform that was surrounded by the tank. It was no doubt horribly boring for the fish that lived in it, some of which were huge, Huge!, as they were stuck swimming in circles forever. But oh. It was fabulous to see. Then there was the old crocodile pit. When I was a kid there were always at least 15 or 20 crocodiles and alligators down there. For whatever reason people would make wishes and throw change down on the animals. I never understood that one. Understandably, the money wasn’t fetched out very often, and at times the floor absolutely sparkled with change. The pit was surrounded by smaller reptiles and amphibians in small cages. I’ll never forget visiting the spotted tokay gekko, and other odd creatures. With the old building and the old exhibits gone forever it’s the end of an era. One that I will definitely miss.

I blocked and measured my swatch when we were in Palm Springs, but it can be hard to tell exactly how big a lace stole will be when everything’s put together. Last night, after I finished the first full repeat of the fern motif, I moved the whole thing onto a piece of yarn. I blocked it out this morning. It’s perfect! Just what I was hoping for. Talk about lacy! And this yarn. If you don’t already have some, and you like cashmere and silk (c’mon, who doesn’t?), you must get yourself some Cecilia from Posh Yarn. Not only is this yarn incredibly soft, fine as gossamer, but the dye job! The color variations are so subtle. They shift with the light, giving the knitting incredible depth. This stuff is so wonderful that I’m already starting to put a plan together for the lovely purple Cecilia that Jacqui gave me. That one will include flowers. With that delicious floral color how could it not?

The most recently newsletter from Berroco arrived early this morning. Most of what I’ve gotten from them recently has been neither so wonderful nor so awful that I bothered to post about it. This time it’s different.

Instead of one free pattern, today they have a nice even dozen of them. But there’s a catch. The sweaters are all tiny. Yup. You guessed it. This year’s Minutia collection: tiny sweaters to knit to put on packages under the tree… or wherever they wind up. These tiny sweaters are adorable. There are cable sweaters, lace sweaters, color work sweaters. Delightful!

I’d love to stay and chat with you some more, but I really must be going. I have charts to work on so that I can continue knitting my lace stole this afternoon…

I’ve been tinkering a bit today. This morning I added a small sidebar to all of my pattern pages that has text links to all the other pattern pages. In addition, I changed the Diamonds in His Shoes and Forget-Me-Not pattern pages. I removed the patterns from those pages, forcing people to download the free .pdf files instead of just printing the pages, which didn’t print very well anyway. I also linked to the .pdf files that are on Ravelry for both those patterns. This way, if there are any additional changes to be made, I only have to change the file in one place. Yahoozie.

While I was playing on Ravelry I happened across a post about Ravelry stores that Casey had just updated. Seems he’s looking for the next batch of guinea pigs to upload for-sale patterns onto the Ravelry site. So I volunteered. If you’re on Ravelry already, you can visit my Ravelry store here. Sales will still work through my links here on my blog. At some point Casey will implement a shopping cart feature that works on non-Ravelry pages (like my blog). At that point I’ll switch to their service, so that all my sales go through them. Payment will still be made through PayPal. No worries there. It’ll just make tracking everything a lot easier. All in one place. And with quite reasonable pricing, and some good reporting features, I might add.

While I’m going on about Ravelry… The Posh Knitters group is doing a Garden Party KAL. You are welcome to join the KAL, whether or not you are knitting the shawl with a Posh yarn.

Though I’ve been working diligently on the sweater and the stole, I don’t have much to show for it photo-wise. Instead, I’ll show you a couple patterns I like from Berroco. I know. It’s been a long time since I’ve shared any of their patterns with you. Everything’s been so blah—neither striking me as really good, nor as really horrid. Just boring. I don’t need to intentionally fill my posts with boring pictures of boring patterns, so I haven’t.

The first thing I saw when I opened up their latest newsletter was this adorable knitted bluebird. The following bit is from their newsletter, which talks about the craze to knit cute little animals.

We have fallen in love with amigurumi, the popular Japanese art of crocheting or knitting tiny stuffed animals. This new craze also includes making inanimate objects such as food and geometric shapes that seem to be endowed with human personality. The animals, and even the food, are typically extremely cute. Technically, the crocheted pieces are usually made by working around and around in spirals. A small sized hook or needle is used, making a very tight fabric, so that stuffing won’t escape. With the proliferation of amigurumi on the internet, our design team has been inspired do some of our own knit and crocheted creatures for you to download and make in our Berroco yarns.

The other pattern I liked from this newsletter is called Celestine Sox. They’ve used their self-striping sock yarn to knit a dodecahedron. It’s not a little animal. It’s not cute. But I think it’s very cool. Wouldn’t it be a marvelous toy for a little one? There are a number of patterns for crocheted critters in the newsletter, a crocheted dodecahedron, and one knit bunny, but none of them did anything for me.

Somehow the weekend got away from me—like that’s never happened before—and I didn’t get nearly as much knitting done as I wanted to. The border is coming along splendidly, though I do wish I’d been able to get more time in on it. I really wanted to be farther by now. I’m quite happy with it so far. Now, if only my plans for the point work out… We’ll just have to wait and see. I’m hoping to be knitting the point by tomorrow at lunch, though that may be wishful thinking. Fingers crossed.

Of course, one of the reasons my weekend got away from me was that I got an email message from the kind folks over at TNNA. They accepted my membership application as a knitting designer! You’ll see the addition of their logo to my sidebar. Not only that, but now I can go to their Long Beach convention this week. Score. Of course, I’m “dragging” my good friend Kristie along with me. I know. I’m so mean. Poor Kristie. Now she has to go to this needlework convention where she’ll have to see all kinds of knitting and cross stitch booths. Drat. Of all the rotten luck!

We’re both making lists of vendors we can’t live without seeing.

Another thing that took me away from my knitting needles was the grocery expedition Dave and I went on yesterday. When I’m alone I can dash into the grocery store, grab what I need, and be out of there and back home in half an hour. Not so when Dave’s around. Though, to be fair, we did go to Costco, too. And the pub. Had to fortify ourselves with some yummy Celebration Ale from Sierra Nevada before braving the wilds of shopping for food in southern California.

Meanwhile, four hours later, we finally arrive back home, groceries in tow. We both worked at putting stuff away, leaving out a few items we’ll be using right away. Dave started a pot of turkey soup, using up the very last bits of our Christmas bird, while I cut the tops off, washed, and otherwise prepped the radishes so they’ll be easy to deal with this week. I picked up one of the bunches, and what did I see? Why this adorable little snail! We laughed quite a bit about that, bringing a snail home from the store. It just doesn’t happen with produce from the regular store. But the store we went to, the new Whole Foods down in Tustin, the one right by the old blimp hangars, is a store that specializes in organic foods. The radishes are organic alright, right down to the fauna.

I put the discarded radish tops down next to him, ran off to get my camera, and by the time I got back he was happily exploring the sudden change to his environment. Yes, he’s a tiny little snail, his shell probably less than a quarter inch in diameter, his little body less than an inch when fully extended, reaching for something good… over there.

I know. Dave thinks I’m so strange. I kept saying, “Look! He’s so cute!” He’d reply, “It’s a snail.” “I know he’s a snail, but look at how tiny and cute he is.” “It’s a snail.”

Back to knitting… The other day I got the latest newsletter from Berroco. Among other things this one featured a knit chair seat cover, Situate. I don’t know about you, but I find this quite appealing. It gets my mind to racing. I don’t know if you remember, but a while back Mom got us going recovering the kitchen chairs. While they turned out great, the fabric isn’t going to stand up to the test of time. It wasn’t meant for such abuse. The fabric was meant to be sewn into a shirt, not fashioned into seat covers. The chairs that get the most use are already showing some wear, fabric is pulling a little, pilling a lot. Though probably not in any immediate danger of tearing, I have been keeping my mind open to replacing the fabric before too long. And what could be better than knit and felted seat covers in the home of a knitter? I ask you.

I’ll leave you with a picture of my view about an hour or so ago. The sky is no longer visible. They were sure pretty for a while, though.

I found a different flower pattern that has a very similar feel to yesterday’s (at a glance it looks almost exactly the same), but is easier to knit, and I like the over all look of it better. I knit several repeats of this new pattern late yesterday, then pulled it all out and knit the rows again, adding an additional stitch between the last flower and the edge. It works better, and I’m much happier with it.

The light is horrible, so it’s really hard to see those knit flowers on the left. Sigh. Well, they’re there. Really!

Oh, and something else that I’ve been working on—totally exciting, at least I think so—The Loopy Ewe is going to start carrying a few of my patterns (not that I have a lot of them)! They’re off getting printed. I hope to be able to mail them to her late next week, or early the first week of January. If you’re in the market for pre-printed patterns, keep an eye out. I’ll let you know when she has them in her store.

I got another newsletter from Berroco early this morning. This one has a free pattern for a knit star for the top of your tree, Celestine. It’s a fun-looking geometric puzzle. Looks a little heavy for the top of most trees, but perhaps if a very lightweight yarn were used… Or maybe a gold or silver metallic yarn to make a star that sparkles.

That’s it for me today. Dave just left to pick up a computer then go to an office Christmas party, run errands, that sort of thing. That leaves me the morning for running my own last minute errands, wrapping packages… You know. Have a great weekend!