07.07.10
Posted in General Info at 11:56 pm by Sue
Don’t you love it when you find a perfect marriage of yarn and pattern? I just finished up a new shawl, and I think it looks great! The yarn is Socos from Ester Bitran Hand-Dyes, and the pattern is Nicky, a free Berroco pattern (available at Berroco’s website or as a Ravelry download.) I made only minor changes to the pattern – I used a US size 13 needle and omitted the fringe, and used 3.5 skeins of Socos in color #305.
I really like the contrast between the super-bulky, wooly Socos yarn and the open look of the dropped stitches – this was a fun and fast knit, and I can’t wait for cooler weather so I can wear it.
I’ve got marriage on my mind today, because tomorrow’s my dear hubby and my fifteenth anniversary. I’ve planned a little surprise – an unexpected brief getaway – that he knows nothing about. The weather’s not playing nice – we’re heading to a waterfront area, and the forecast calls for lots of rain and thundershowers. Might not be so bad, though – I’m thinking that cocooning in our getaway room, watching the rains come down in the harbor might be sort of romantic…
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09.25.09
Posted in General Info at 9:37 pm by Sue
I came across this photo a few days ago, and thought it was the neatest thing! After some research, I also found a bit of background on it – it seems that they had trouble getting a good shot, because it was hard for the sheep to balance with a full fleece on one side and none on the other, so it kept falling over!!
Don’t cha love that?
Baaaaaa (that’s “Bye” in sheep-talk),
Sue
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09.18.09
Posted in General Info, Yarns and knitting at 12:44 pm by Sue
Well, I’ve fallen head over heels for a new love. I was smitten the first time I laid eyes on it, and after I cast on, there was no turning back — it was like butta on the needles. My new love is Malabrigo Worsted yarn — what a wonderful yarn!
This is my first project with Malabrigo, and it’s immediately apparent why this yarn is so popular. It’s incredibly cushy and feels amazingly soft in your hands. I’m using the color Lettuce, a semi-solid with all the subtle variations of color that are characteristic of hand-dyed yarns. And I’m completely in love. Maybe even enough to challenge my well-known affection for Noro Silk Garden. (But don’t worry, Silk Garden – you’ll always be special to me!)
The neckwarmer pattern I’m using is a freebie on Ravelry called Crofter’s Cowl, and I plan to cheat – I’m going to keep knitting repeats until I like the length, instead of knitting it in two pieces and Kitchenering it together. Quicker, and I think it will be just as lovely. (Are you on Ravelry? Come join our Ravelry group “GreatYarnCompany”!)
You can see this neckwarmer and lots more next month at our booth at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, October 14-18, 2009. We made many new friends there last year, so don’t be shy, come visit us in our booth again this year!
I’ve just added several new yarns to our website, so hop on over and check out cotton blend Rowan Calmer, fun Regia Kaffe Fasset sock yarns, and a sweet fluffy baby yarn from On Line called Paloma Soft (Linie 252).
Knitting happy,
Sue
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08.17.09
Posted in General Info at 10:47 pm by Sue
Butter. Yes, I think that was what did it… I totally love butter, which, alas, is quite evident in my feminine contours. Saw the new Meryl Streep movie Julie & Julia with my knitting buddies (did you catch that scene with a supposedly French woman knitting English style… sacre bleu!!) and now I’ve caught Julie Child fever.
I grew up during the Julia-Child-on-TV era, but wasn’t really into cooking at that time, so she didn’t have much impact on me back then. But now, I’m totally smitten. (Whether it’s with Julia herself or Meryl Streep’s portrayal of her, I’m not sure.)
According to the movie, Julia Child really loved butter – a sentiment I can totally relate to. And now, many years after her TV show debuted, I’m finally ready to try French cooking a la Julia, so after seeing the movie, I ordered her cookbooks Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volumes 1 & 2. Apparently, a lot of us are smitten, as there’s quite a wait to get these books right now, but my books are on their way.
Fear not, this is not going to convert from a knitting and yarn blog into a cooking blog, and I’m not about to embark on anything as ambitious as Julie in the movie — no cooking every Julia recipe in one year for me, thank you, I’ve got enough commitments already. I doubt I’ll be deboning any ducks anytime soon, but I think many of her recipes will seem much less daunting to me now than they did some years back.
As usual, I brought knitting with me to the movie theatre, but didn’t knit a stitch. I’m all about knitting when I watch TV at home, but somehow, have never been able to do it in movie theatres. Maybe it’s the poor lighting, or my fear of dropping perfectly good yarn on a sticky theatre floor, or having the yarn roll away from me in the dark… just seems so, well, risky.
I do hate to waste all that good knitting time, but really — when you consider how much movies cost these days, it’d be a shame to look away from the screen at the wrong time and miss the most crucial scene in the movie, right? Maybe if the movie was really boring, I might manage a few stitches, but Julie & Julia held my interest through-out – then again, it just might have been the butter.
Anticipating good meals to come,
Sue
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08.08.09
Posted in General Info at 11:05 am by Sue
Wow, the few past weeks (make that months) feel like they went by in a flash – we’ve had big goings-on in our family (and at Great Yarn Company too)!
My beautiful step-daughter’s wedding was two weeks ago, with all the excitement and hoopla that leads up to a big wedding. The ceremony was sweet, the bride was amazingly gorgeous, the groom looked happy (and maybe just a little stunned) — a very joyous occasion all around.
And then we baby-sat two little grandsons for a week while the newlyweds honeymooned… lots of fun, busy, busy, busy, and jeez, louise, am I ever tired!!! It’s truly amazing how fast a 5-year-old and a 16-month-old can be! They kept us all running the entire week – they’re so cute and so smart – definitely kept us on our toes! I didn’t think I was slowing down, but ya know, I was wrong – it’s gonna take us a few days to recover!
And just a few weeks earlier, there was another wedding in our family – dear hubby’s niece and her red-headed cutie had their special day. Another beautiful bride and very fun wedding!
Has anyone else had weddings or new babies or visits from little ones to share? I love new babies – such a great excuse for knitting adorable little tid-bits!
There are a lot of big things going on at Great Yarn Company too – new yarns on the way from Rowan, Alpaca with a Twist, and more, lots of great new pattern lines coming, along with cool notions and gift items, and we’re working with our computer gurus on our new website, which is coming soon! I’ll keep you posted!
Catching my breath, finally…
Sue
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03.27.09
Posted in General Info at 8:41 pm by Sue
It’s wonderful having a husband who can cook. We trade off on who’s got kitchen duty, and as I write this post, I can hear him working in the kitchen, frying fish and eggplant. Fried eggplant is one of my favorite things in the world! (Bet you can tell that I’m from New Orleans – we’re having two deep-fried foods in the same meal, and I’m not hyperventilating about it!)
Last night, my weekly knitting group consisted of just two of us, so I was actively involved in conversation all evening – I usually mostly just listen in, while I concentrate on my knitting, but with only two of us, I couldn’t sit on the sidelines. I brought my Modern Quilt Wrap to work on – it’s fairly simple, but does involve some row counting, which apparently was beyond me last night.
When I started knitting, I was about to change colors, so I cut the yarn from the previous color, joined the new color, and knitted five rows before I realized I had forgotten to do the decrease row twice. I ripped back five rows and re-knit them with decreases where they belonged.
Then I noticed that I had changed colors too soon – I had not knitted enough rows in the previous color. Theoretically, this shouldn’t matter, because who’d know, right? But I can be a little obsessive about my knitting, so I ripped it back again.
Since I had already cut the yarn from the previous color too short to get another row out of it, I joined a new strand and knitted the missing row, cut the yarn, joined the new color and knitted the five rows again. But something didn’t look right. That’s when I realized that I should have added three rows in the old color, not one.
So I ripped back the five rows a second time, ripped back the newly-added single row of the previous color, joined a new strand of the old color and knitted the three missing rows before the color change. I double-checked the pattern, and my stitch count was correct, row count was correct, all is good.
Joined the new color, knitted the five rows with decreases where they belong. This is the third time I’ve knit the same five rows in the new color, but who’s counting? Then I looked more closely at the pattern, and discovered that while I am knitting with color “I”, the pattern says I’m supposed to be using color “H”. Yep, I joined the wrong color. Three times.
Now, again, in theory, this shouldn’t matter – in a wrap of many colors, it wouldn’t be apparent if one color were out of place, but my slight obsessiveness kicked in again. So I ripped back to the old color one last time, joined the correct new color, and knitted the five rows again. Like I said, not enough progress to document it with a photo. Pitiful!
Knit, frog, knit, rip, arrgh…
Sue
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03.22.09
Posted in General Info at 10:16 pm by Sue
As I’ve mentioned previously, my little kitty Coco is a bob-tail. She was born bob-tailed, and has a very short little tail, only about 2 inches long. It’s so cute when she’s annoyed and whips that little tail from side to side, only it’s this tiny little ball of fluff instead of a long tail! Although these photos are a bit grainy, I’m posting them because I finally managed to capture the motion of that little tail in a picture, and it’s too funny not to share!
Front view of mildly annoyed kitty: 
And rear view of increasingly irritated kitty, complete with tail movement: 
I started a new project today with Rowan Kidsilk Haze – I may well be the last knitter on earth to start the Modern Quilt Wrap). The Kidsilk Haze has such a lovely halo – I can tell already that this sheer and light-weight wrap is going to be much warmer than I expected.
The gold color I’m using is the now-discontinued Swish #578, the unavailability of which has frustrated many a knitter longing to knit the Modern Quilt Wrap in the colors shown in the pattern. (I stashed the yarns for this project some time back, and was lucky enough to get a ball of Swish before it became scarse.)
But I’ve got great news for anyone still searching for it! Rowan has introduced a new color, Ember #644, that’s VERY similar, and as I understand it, Ember is actually intended to be a replacement for Swish. I have photographed the two colors together, so you can see for yourself. They’re not identical – Ember is just a tad less intense, but I think it would work beautifully as a substitute for Swish.
If the Modern Quilt Wrap is still on your wish list, or if you’ve been postponing this project because you couldn’t find certain colors, you’ll be pleased to know that we’ve got all the Kidsilk Haze colors for this pattern in stock, including the new Ember color that replaces Swish!
Fanning the embers… (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun!)
Sue
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12.19.08
Posted in General Info at 1:44 pm by Sue
Snip, snip – I’m trimming down my To-Do List!! The holidays have really snuck up on me this year – it’s becoming increasingly clear that I’m just not going to get it all done… and Santa’s got to be realistic!
Only six days til Christmas, and we haven’t even put up our Christmas tree yet! I’m considering going tree-less, but it is SO nice to sit in the cozy glow of the Christmas tree lights, watching a crackling fire in the fireplace, with a mug of hot chocolate, or better yet, mulled wine. (Well, okay, our fire doesn’t actually crackle – we’ve got a gas fireplace with ceramic logs, but hey – it LOOKS really great!)
On the positive side, I got the last of our out-of-town packages mailed today, so I am getting SOME things accomplished!
I posted recently to my Ravelry group (if you’re on Ravelry, come join our GreatYarnCompany.com group) that I was keeping my gift knitting list pretty small this year – but even that short list probably won’t get finished in time. I’m not sure where all my time is going, but it sure isn’t knitting. This week, I think it’s going mostly to traffic jams and lines at cash registers, cha-ching.
How are you doing on your holiday knitting? Gonna get it all done? Or will you give your knitted gifts with the needles still in them, then immediately take them back so you can finish knitting them? I admit it, I’ve done that more than once! The last time, my sweet sister-in-law thought I expected her to make her own present – she was very relieved when I clarified who would be doing the knitting.
The new issue of Knitty is up – I’m in love with the Amused sweater, maybe in Cascade 220 or Mission Falls 1824 Wool. And check out Bijouterie – knitted earrings!
Taking a deep breath, with visions of sugarplums dancing in my head…
Sue
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07.26.08
Posted in General Info at 10:31 pm by Sue
I’ve been quietly working on my Wrap Me Up Shawl, and I’ve made enough progress to share some photos! This is such a great pattern. It’s a modular shawl pattern knitted in self-striping yarn, so each section looks totally different – think of a sampler done in related colors.
I’m using Noro Silk Garden in color 241 – nice mix of purples, greens, magenta, and a bit of rust (looks much better than that sounds!). The second photo is much closer to the actual yarn colors. I’ve just finished the first beaded section – the beads I chose are a bit iridescent, so they catch the light very nicely. I’m very pleased with the effect!
This modular knitting is very addictive!
Take care,
Sue
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07.06.08
Posted in General Info at 11:33 pm by Sue
It’s well after 11 PM, and I still can’t drag myself away from Ravelry! Are you on Ravelry yet? If you’re not, go here to sign up, and if you are, come join our new Great Yarn Company Ravelry group!
And while reading other people’s blogs (I know, it’s an addition… but at least it’s not as bad as my yarn addition), I came across a cool website that creates a painting just for you. Here’s mine – what’s really amazing is that it looks like it’s got a yarn ball in it, yet nothing in the questions I answered to create the painting had anything to do with hobbies!
Click here to create your own painting.
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