Tag Archives: in the loop

cey & i: blog tour, day six

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i love clogs.

i have for awhile now.

the weight of the shoe itself makes me feel substantial,

a force to be reckoned with.

another, more crazy, truth is that i am only recently

discovering the joy of wearing hand knit socks.

not sure what took me so longIMG_8333bt

(perhaps a lasting bout

of second sock syndrome)

but now i’m all in.

with hand knit socks in the drawers,

i wanted to pair them with clogs and slides.

alas, heels are functional

and not often the pretty part of the sock.

since what i wanted didn’t match up with what i found,

IMG_8326bti set out to fill the gap.

garter stitch runs

from the cuff

through the heel flap

with a back center column

of paired knit stitches.

these are

the rocker version of imp.

for contrast,

the remainder of the sock

is straight up stockinette.

its opposite is the boho version:

mainly reverse stockinette stitch with a column of garter stitch

dividing two wide vertical stripes of stockinette stitch up the back.

imp boho side and heeled heelmy friend lindsay pointed out

how all that reverse stockinette stitch gives these socks

a sort of ‘princess sole’.

all i know is that they feel good this way,

and that’s what i wanted.

the imp socks are featured today

on the blog of my favorite local yarn shop, ‘in the loop’.

if i could give you anything knit related, i’d give you a lys as supportive as they are.

‘princess’ taken from 45:13 in the psalms.

today’s the day

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it’s friday,

which is a celebration all its own,

but it’s also the day to announce the winner.  ready?

i let random.org do the choosing.

it’s fairest that way.  since some of you i know well

and some of you are brand new names to me,

i don’t want to be biased by mistake in any way.

first, thanks to all who said why they chose the colorwy they did.

i loved learning a little bit about so many of you!

ok.  without farther ado.

random.org says:

IMG_6567so count down to the 6th comment below and it’s terry.

congrats, terry!

i’ll get this package headed your way asap.

thanks to mountain colors and in the loop for being part of this giveaway.

i couldn’t have done it without them.

‘below’ taken from 4:39 of deuteronomy.

 

paper and bows

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gifts.

we get them.

we give them away.

we make them to give away.

i think today’s giveaway could be all of the above.

one skein of 3-ply wool from mountain colors yarns,

wendy bernard’s book ‘up, down, all-around stitch dictionary’,

three cute pins from local yarn shop ‘in the loop’,

and a copy of my pattern ‘mixta’.

i include my pattern, because it was test knit with this same bulky weight yarn

in a different colorway.

i tend to be leary of multt-colored yarns

and cables, fearing that the stitch work will be lost,

but i really love how this yarn knit up.IMG_7542crop2it adds to the pattern instead of taking away from it.  don’t you think so?

the colorway i’m giving away is red willow (deeper reds and purples),

the perfect jewel tones for holiday cheer.

IMG_7990urband these pins will make even the crankiest knitter laugh.

not that any knitters, ever, were cranky

as they tried to push through

way too much gift

knitting…

so,

just head over here to pick your favorite colorway,

then come back and leave me a comment saying what’s your fav

and why (i love knowing stuff like this).

you have until midnight this thursday (the 11th) to leave your note.

on friday,

december 12th, i’ll choose  and announce the winner by 5pm

(that’s eastern standard time).

sounds fun, right?

get to it.

‘mixta’ photo by wmr photography.

‘gift’ taken from 3:13 of ecclesiastes.

the disclaimer: mountain colors yarns

gave me this yarn to play with, but you know me.  i am

way too stubborn to be influenced toward lies or embellishment by two free

skeins of yarn.  therefore, the opinions expressed here are honest, and truthfully mine.

myself in a yarn store

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cheryl, owner of lys in the loop,

commented on facebook last week that

the look on my son’s face in the candy store on vacation

was very much like my face when the new fall (or spring) yarns arrive.

015-2cropwe took a pic this morning to see just how much of a family resemblance there is.

and she’s right.  i look almost as excited as he did.

so fun that as a grown-up something like yarn

makes me feel this good.

‘face’ taken from 6:25-26 of numbers.

yarn i’m holding is julie asselin’s sevilla.

contrasted

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they say that

taking a black & white photo

will give you a good idea of whether

the yarns you’re considering will ‘pop’ enough

when you mix them together for colorwork, or not so much.

IMG_3752

above is my shot at knowing.

4 worsted wt yarns (thanks in the loop!)

set in the southern sun of my kitchen windows.

now you’ve seen what i’ve seen, so what would you mix together?

and

do you want

to try to guess what the actual colors are?

i’ll give you a hint.  the darkest one is actually true black…

‘sun’ taken from 29:7 of genesis.

cey & i: ‘bossy’ is misunderstood

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“i’m the boss of my knitting”.

i am, although today the knitting doesn’t seem to know it.

working on the math for the first sweater in the collection.

using a lace stitch pattern

that repeats every 4″.

this is a designing challenge,

because if it’s not adjusted in some way

the only chest circumferences available would be

28 (36, 44, 52, 60) inches around.

not gonna work for way too many shapes and sizes of knittahs.

hence,IMG_2588urban

today

finds me

currently

hunkered

down

at this

little desk

in my little

workroom,

a #2 pencil

 and

a back-up

at my side

(oh, how it annoys me to have to stop mid-way thru a math equation to sharpen a tip).

IMG_2567colorwarpi’m hacking away at

my brainstormed

list of

possible solutions.

and one of them

is going to

work.

my new pin from

lys ‘in the loop’ is here on the desktop reminding me

that “i’m the boss of my knitting”.

take that you wiley lace stitches!

‘sharpen’ taken from 27:17 of proverbs.

(this is part of an ongoing series of posts

chronicling my collaboration with classic elite yarns on an

indie collection.  all posts tagged with ‘artistic differences‘ and titled ‘cey & i‘.)

enter to win, or don’t?

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seriously, is that even a question?

it’s a luxurious yarn, a free copy of a new pattern and some other little goodies…

of course you should enter.

i’ve just released a new pattern knit up in

galler yarns’ heather prime alpaca.

this stuff is amazingly soft

and there’s enough in

just one skein to

to knit this.

‘this’ being valleys of the sea

a rectangular wrap with wave like edging

along the right and left edges as it’s knit end to end.

really now,

does it get any better

than high altitude alpaca

(‘the cashmere of alpacas’)

that you can contentedly

knit an entire wrap in

out of a single

600 yard

skein?

did i mention that this means

no yarn ends to weave precariously into the lace pattern?

leave a comment to this post saying

which galler yarn you would most like to try and why

on or before saturday, december 8th.

i’ll choose 5 winners by rng.

(one for each skein shown)

winners will be announced on monday, december 10th.

check back this week for posts on my fav galler yarns,

and which one i so very badly want to work with next.

‘valleys of the sea’ taken from 22:16 of 2nd samuel.

addendum: remedy for the 4 o’clock slump

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note: i intended this post for friday, but it was delayed (in all honesty)

by friday’s 4 o’clock slump.  “so”, you ask, “what is your excuse for yesterday?”

ah, yesterday was saturday.  packed, as always, to the gills…

4pm almost always

finds me well into weary,

lugging my bedraggled to do list limply behind me.

i’m often mentally calculating the hours left

until the kids drift to sleep and the intensity of the physical motion

required of me every few seconds decreases significantly.

tried plain old knitting as a pick me up

and shortly thereafter nodded off

with upright needles still in hand.

i was at a bit of a loss

as it is only those mid-day hours that trip me up.

once it is deeply dark outside the glass

my ‘night owl’ genes kick in and i am good to go for hours.

then poking through a fav lys,

i spotted this.

the only question

was how many colors

it would take

to properly

recharge me

the next time 4pm

came stomping the mud

from its boots into the workings of my mind.

the answer?  four.  four colors and a tall glass of ice water.

and here it is, 4:05 pm yet again.  so i’m off to knit in these rich machine wash tones.

more later. much later. say around midnight.

‘weary’ taken from 25:25 of proverbs.