I’m Knitting As Fast As I Can

KOIA (who, BTW, hasn’t blogged since the summer of 2009), added a post to my Facebook wall last week asking why I haven’t updated the blog in a while.  Well, I have a nice bullet list, complete with photos, to explain why.

• I was in Denver for a week for work.

See, I have the shopping bags to prove it.

•  I turned around and went to California for 5 crazy days of Disneyland and cheer competition.

•  While I was in California, I made the 54-mile, 5-hour round trip to LA from Anaheim to visit my son who attends college in LA. As an added bonus, I got a free golf lesson.

•  I made three shop samples for the LYS where I teach classes.

•  I wrote up the pattern for the sock-weight version of Fog Lifter and knit another sample.  So the Bambino sample joins her ShibuiKnits sister.  Watch for the pattern next week.

•  I’ve been diligently (not) working on writing up the pattern for another scarf that I first knit last summer!  Yikes.  It made a brief appearance at Sock Summit and hasn’t been heard from since.  I think it’s time to revive it. What do you think?

•  And I’m working on a super secret project that I can only show you a peek of.

If I tell you more, I’ll have to kill you.

It’s Friday and I still haven’t found time to cobble together a blog post for this week.  But since 3 other bloggers have essentially done all the work for me, I’ll just piggyback on their posts.

Saturday, Margene, Eliza, Cheryl and I sewed up some adorable project bags.  I stumbled on the pattern several weeks ago and got it into my head that I simply had to make one.  I was able to complete three, notwithstanding the fact that I have: (1) a barely functioning sewing machine and (2) the sewing skills of a toddler.

The task was considerably easier on Saturday since I was able to use Cheryl’s fully functioning sewing machine and Margene’s razor sharp rotary cutter.  Cheryl blogged about our lovely day here.

Sunday was Margene’s 60th birthday.  For several months I’ve been planning, designing, and knitting a secret shawl to celebrate her day.  Back in December, I showed her a shawl prototype I had knit and she loved it.  Trouble was, I had lost both the handwritten charts and my notes.  But after she’d hounded me several times, I decided to recreate the pattern and knit a shawl from it for her birthday.  Kim kindly supplied me with the perfect (and I mean perfect) yarn.

Here’s the result:

I think Margene liked it.  She has some action photos of the shawl on her blog.

The pattern is currently available from Kim as a kit.  I’m  re-re-working it for sock weight yarn and it should be available as a stand-alone pattern in a few weeks.  Should be good for all those lovely skeins of sock yarn that are too precious to use for socks.  At least that’s the plan.

Last week, I made my way through the smog to the Jitterbug Coffee Hop where we celebrated the anniversary of our Tuesday night Stitch ‘N Bitch group.  Like it has for several years, the celebration included a no-obligation swap.  This year, the theme was cowls.  If you brought a cowl, you went home with a different one.  I was the lucky recipient of this little green number contributed by Laurie.

It’s knit from Malabrigo worsted so it’s fabulously soft.  Although it clashes horribly with my winter coat, I’ve worn it every day since the swap.  Love it.

My cowl contribution landed in the hands of Eileen and, happily, it matched her coat perfectly. Seriously, can an off-white cowl not match a person’s coat?

The pattern for the cowl I made for Eileen is now available as a free download on Ravelry.  As I mention on the Ravelry project page, I had a hard time finding a pattern that was exactly what I had in mind for my cowl.  There are similar patterns available but the cables either crossed too closely or too far apart.  And the cables were either too sparse or too crowded.   As Goldilocks would say, “This one is neither too hot nor too cold. It’s just right.”

And the best part . . . I worked up three sets of instructions for three different weights of yarn.  So shop the stash and cast on!