My dearies, I am back! I went off this weekend to Sudbury to attend our family’s posh annual garden party at my aunt Liz and uncle Gord’s. I took along the beau for the first time, so he met lots of relatives and they all made jokes about checking his teeth and ankles to make sure he was healthy and giving him the third degree. I gave my beautiful finished Spectator Grand hat to my aunt Liz, and she loved it! I played croquet with the beau and I beat him (HA!) even though he knocked my ball away twice when I was ahead of him. Then there was lots of drinking and carousing and eating and more carousing. I went to bed a very tired knitter.

The next morning I broke into aunt Liz’s giant, 30-year-old craft magazine store, and she let me take a few home! I picked the two that had cute animals on the cover, and another one with a pattern in it that looked very similar to Knit and Tonic’s Somewhat Cowl (but a bit more brash, because it was 1972 after all). Then we climbed up into the forest behind Liz and Gord’s and picked blueberries, and fortunately we weren’t attacked by any bears or moose or combinations thereof. We had to disappear after that so I didn’t get Liz to teach me how to spin, but she promised that next time we’re up she’ll take out the wheel and I can play with fibre. Yay!

I have much more to tell you, my dearies, but I have to go shopping now with my mum and buy fantastic clothes and furniture and imported asian stationery curiosities. Tomorrow I shall be providing you all with fantastic pictures of my knitting progress, because what else are you going to do on two eight hour car trips?

Destash & Restash is a Flickr group that lets you advertise your yarn and sell it as well as buy yarn from other folks. It’s not really the “rock bottom prices” you’d expect, though; pretty much average. (Unless the prices include shipping, and in that case I’m in!)

Another blog that’s been around for a little longer is DeStash, and it has the same premise. It’s a little more established, so there are wider yarn possibilities. It’s worth it to keep track of both of them.

I got this in the mail a few days ago. It’s the Regia yarn I talked about in this post. They’re going to become my FIRST SOCKS! I’m excited.

It’s the Amazing Lace! It’s the Sockapalooza Swap! No, it’s both! It’s Whose lace is it anyway?

Amelia Earhart Aviator Cap, sorta finished Friday, July 21st, 2006
Pattern: Amelia Earhart Aviator Cap
Yarn: 100% cotton frogged from a green sweater
Needles: 3.75mm circulars
Dimensions: Giant x humongous x cyclopean
Watched: The Kingston Symphony performing the 1812 overture (with cannons!).
Pattern Notes: I don’t know if it’s just my loose knitting, but the gauge was way off. If I had knit it on 3.25mm needles, it would have worked out better. I liked the beginning of the pattern and the end, but the middle was filled with way-too-complicated row-by-row instructions. I so don’t have time for that. I don’t like paying attention to anything. However…
Would I knit it again? I would knit it again. And I shall have to knit it again, because it was way too big the first time.

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I’ve got to finish my Spectator Grand hat by Friday, so I’ll have to operate like a well-oiled knitting machine in order to fully complete it. I’ve got all the knitting done, but I have yet to properly finish it. Here’s everything I have to do before Friday:

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In this series, I post the most popular search strings for my blog (minus the ones looking for “uruguay porn”) and answer the questions people seem to have when they get to my blog. Just my way of giving back to Google, and all you folks at home. You can read the whole series on this page, or subscribe to the RSS feed. Last time I talked about stitch markers and amigurumi, among other things.

There have been quite a few people getting to my site via questions about casting on and off, so that’s what I’ll be featuring this week. It’s incredible how much more professional a piece looks when it uses an appropriate cast-on; when I was knitting the Snowdrift Mittens for my aunt a few months ago, I was amazed by how a tubular cast-on transformed them. Compared to them, the other mittens I knitted looked painfully amateur; it was like my snowdrift mittens had been taken to a higher plane of mitten existence.

Before we get to the Search Questions, I want to start by offering links to tutorials for my very favourite cast-ons: The picot edge and the tubular cast-on. I guarantee you will not be disappointed by them. They’re actually incredibly easy to do, and such an ego boost when you try them for the first time and see what they’ve done to your finished product! I love adding little embellishments to patterns, and picot edging is perfect for top-down socks and shirt sleeves. Picot-edged garments are so cute, they could even be classified as “kawaii.”

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ALERT: The Deadline has been extended until Sunday!

I really like sending people to cool new blogs I find, and I love finding cool new blogs. I read a lot of them (I think I’m subscribed to at least 80 knitting blog feeds), but most of them just link to each other and the smaller ones go unnoticed. So I’m happy to report that I’ve decided to start a Blog Carnival for knitters to showcase their content, regardless of their place in the knitting food chain. What’s it called? You guessed it. Yarnival!

What is a Blog Carnival?

Blog Carnivals typically collect together links pointing to blog articles on a particular topic. A Blog Carnival is like a magazine, in that it has a title, a topic, editors, contributors, and an audience. Blog Carnivals are much less formal than regular online magazines, though, and anyone can submit to them. Essentially, every month you submit the post you think represents your best work on your blog (be it a really cool FO or an explanation of a technique you learned, or even just a post complaining about how noisy your dogs are), and the best are selected for publication.

Editions of the carnival typically come out on a regular basis (e.g. every monday, or on the first of the month). Each edition is a special blog article that consists of links to the contributions, often with the editors opinions or remarks. It’s totally relaxed and non-serious; just something to read and have fun and discover blogs you may not have discovered before.

I want to emphasize that anyone can submit to this, and submit anything they want. The point is to expose everyone to content from lesser-known blogs as well as well-established ones. You can read more about blog carnivals at the Blog Carnival FAQ. A great example of a Blog Carnival is The Synapse.

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To be knit across the tuckus.

Refer Snoop Dogg vs. Ice Cube.

I’m not a shawl person. I bought one last year at a sale for $10 because I thought it was a neat pattern and I wanted to spend time with it to figure out how it worked, but I’ve never worn it and I doubt I ever will. I don’t like having to hold things in place, and tying a shawl around me would never work.

My mother, however, would really appreciate a beautiful, delicate shawl and so I’m going to knit one for her for Christmas. I’m starting now because it’s a lace project and I figure I can take my time with it and do something new for the Amazing Lace.

I’m now taking submissions for which shawl to knit. I haven’t really taken a look at shawl patterns, so I don’t know which ones are the best. Here’s your chance to wreak your havoc on my life! To which shawl should I devote the next 5 months of my life?

As a guide: she likes really simple, elegant clothes. She’s teutonic, dontcha know. But if there’s something completely over the top that you just wanna namedrop, I love looking at new patterns so namedrop them like it’s hot. If you don’t have a shawl idea, what’s your favourite lace pattern?

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