Olympic rundown

1. I finished a hat for Ravelympics:

Pattern: Sixteen-Cable Hat, by Circe Belles.
Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca in Lovage. I love this yarrrrrn.
needles: sizes 6 and 8
notes: I think my gauge was off (didn't check). Two fewer rounds of ribbing, started decreases after third cable round instead of fourth. Love it; husband seal of approval ("I like the twisty bits").

2. I dyed yarn for Ravelympics:

I don't know what to use it for, because I suspect the base (Brown Sheep Top of the Lamb Sport, tag removed by the weirdo store so I don't know the colorway but it was white) is too scratchy to wear next to the skin. I'm not getting a "felt me" vibe off of this, either. Thoughts?

Still: look at what you can do with food coloring and Kool-Aid! Just mix your complementary colors until the Kool-Aid is coaxed out of neon status, and you can get almost anything.

3. My husband and I attended a curling league open house last Sunday. There were 600 people there.

4. Yes, I love the crazy pants of Norway.

5. SXSW is almost upon us. Brace for impact.

FO: Mitten Puppets

A few weeks back, I finished a late Christmas gift for a couple friends of ours.

See? They're mittens...

and they're puppets!

The puppet faces only sort of resemble my friends themselves, but it's enough to get the point across. I'd suggest it as a great gift for any newlyweds in your life.

Pattern: Basic Mitten Pattern from Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns (remembering to take at least 10% off her stitch count for each size, of course).
Yarn: Rowan Soft Baby, color SH004, less than one ball.
Needles: Size 5 bamboo DPNs, and oh my gosh has anyone told you how wonderful those feel? Very light and easy on the hands.
Notes: The embroidery is all scraps from the stash, in fingering and laceweight.

Defeating Bad Juju, One Skein at a Time

Sometimes, you're in the middle of knitting a sweater for somebody, and a big reason comes along to stop knitting it. Sometimes you keep going with it, and along you float down De-Nile river, feeling increasingly sad about the state of the sweater, mean things that have happened, health care in America, every possible character flaw you might possibly possess, and the Amazonian rain forest.

A blog is not the place to discuss specifics of this sort, but rest assured, I'm still married. (Not that kind of sweater curse.)

In November, I abandoned one such case of denial. In a burst of highly effective catharsis, I frogged a partial sweater.

I used some of the yarn to make a gift bag for someone else.



With my new sewing machine, I sewed a lining out of a fabric whose color coordinates in a very clever way with emerald greens, browns, and grays. (Didn't shoot a picture, drat! Trust me?) The gift bag has been given, and with it some of that negative energy (dang, I sound like one of those people) has been defeated.

It was altogether for the best.

Help for Haiti donation: thank you!

Thanks to everyone who purchased my pattern in the last two weeks. I don't have an enormous donation - with my own money I'm rounding it up to $12 - but it's $12 that ought to be given.

I am giving the money to Medicine Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders today.

January Updates

Man, oh man. I never get insomnia. My husband does (and not to be insensitive to his position, but try sleeping with an 800-pound gorilla with allergies and insomnia - it's more fun), but not me.

I do tonight. Let's make the most of it, shall we?

• I'm interested in talking to some small-scale indie dyers, folks with great skills who have maybe set up their own Etsy shop and may be looking for another outlet for their wares. Everybody, search your stashes: whom can you recommend?

• Everybody is already completely and totally aware that lots and lots of Rav designers are donating proceeds from their patterns to organizations participating in relief for Haiti. I joined in, and this is not a bid for me to get more sales. Honestly, if you want to make a bigger difference, donate directly rather than having part of your money sucked away to Paypal. If you were interested in purchasing my pattern or any of these other designers' patterns, now is a great time to do it.

• Did you see that Ysolda raised over $6000 in a weekend that way? Holy moly.

• I was amazed to see that the Fishens I knit on a whim in the fall have passed the 100-heart mark for favorites on Ravelry. That's pretty cool - and they weren't even the colors I really wanted.

• I've got a couple test knitters cranking away on a cardigan I designed. FYI: test knitters are good. They catch things like me putting the repeat in the wrong place on the chart.

Endpaper Mitts FO with hand-dyed yarn

Way back when, I tried dyeing for the first time with Kool-Aid. I really enjoyed the bright blue that came out. But turns out, it's really hard to match vivid robin's egg blue with anything else.

Fortunately, I'm married to a graphic designer who knows color theory. (He comes with other perks, too.) Sweet man: he sat down with me one day and went through some color sample books and some graphic design websites until we found the best combo possible from my stash. I typically go for two complimentary colors, but he reminded me that you can reach for another shade in the same general family, and sometimes those can "pop," too.

Last week, I finished these:

pattern: Endpaper Mitts by Eunny Jang
completed: January 12.
yarn: Knit Picks Bare, dyed with 2.5 packets of Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade, and Knit Picks Palette in Calypso Heather. What a shock, another blue-green yarn from Yours Truly.
made for: Now here's the thing. I ought to have used size 2.5 needles, but I don't own any, so I went down to size 2. Shocker: they're really snug on me, even after blocking with my handy-dandy new blocking T-pins. Not unbearably, but still. And I do have other gloves. Perhaps a gift for someone else.
mods: See above re: needle size. When will I learn?

Piecework Magaine: How could I almost forget?

It's a good thing in the life of a writer when you become so accustomed to seeing your work in print that you forget that it is still awesome.

And it is.

If you get a chance, pick up the current issue of Piecework Magazine. My article "Knitting for the Stage" appears.

Can you figure out what this gentleman is wearing that was in fact knit by hand?

Fredric Stone as Jamy in the Utah Shakespearean Festival’s 2009 production of Henry V. (Photo by Karl Hugh.
Copyright Utah Shakespearean Festival 2009.)

Read the article to find out!