Life LackaDaisiCal

Why is it that a round that takes 15 minutes to knit, takes 30 minutes to pick back...one stitch at a time.

I hope you were't expecting a historical thesis on Napoleon here....well, I knew you wouldn't be.....while I'm knitting along I thought I'd share this photo of the new kitten next door! Napoleon! He was rescued from the barn at about 7 weeks of age, and happily converted to being a house cat in a matter of hours! My neighbour and friend Terry needed to wind some yarn (you see, I am converting her) and so I offered to bring my swift and ball winder over to make short work of it! Napoleon at first did't like the big twirly thing and hid. Eventually he came out and became fascinated with it. By the end of the 20 skeins that we did, he was crying between skeins because the twirly thing wasn't twirling any more! He was pretty tired after all this and promptly climbed on the couch for a nap -- you know how kittens do it -- nails out, climb up the side of anything handy! Alcea Update -- Well, I've done the underarm shaping -- put 8 stitches at each underarm point o...

I've been knitting along on Alcea -- this is a great design -- I love the colours and I'm making a smaller size than I normally do, so it seems to be clicking along really fast. At 6" per repeat -- two complete repeats of the 48 row pattern chart, would get me to the underarm point. That's 3" for the rib, and 12" for the body to the underarm. A full repeat, and then rows 1-26 will get me to the shoulder. I'm going to do some underarm shaping along the way -- so I'm off to figure that out before proceeding any further! Happy Knitting!

In the new issue of Interweave Knits (Winter 2006), there is a design called "Venezia Pullover" by Eunny Jang. It's a fair isle pullover sweater, done in Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift, with form fitting shaping and capped sleeves! MAGNIFICENT! Congratulations to Eunny for taking a traditional yarn, traditional technique and coming up with a current silhouette! I sat down this morning to read the pattern and digest how it was done. Lots of food for thought for fair isle knitters here. You can learn from this pattern how to custom fit your fair isles so that you can go from basic boxy, to as form-fitting as you'd like. ( Lorraine - please note the mini mince meat tart!) The big light bulb moment for me when reading this pattern was the purl "side seam stitch" -- brilliant! This solves something that has been niggling at me for a while. I've been decreasing every so slightly at the underarm "seam" stitch, but hadn't thought of doing a pu...

Just watching "On The Road Again" -- it's a Canadian show where the host every week features unusual, quirky, interesting Canadians. Among others, tonight he visited Shay Lynn in PEI, a 12 year old who loves to knit -- she's knitted a scarf 134 feet long! She doesn't know yet, she might go for the world record - which is over 3,000 feet long! She's got a way to go, but I'm sure she could do it. Knitting runs in her family -- they showed her Great-Grandmother, Grandmother and Mother all knitting with her on the porch -- fabulous!

I've joined the Blogger Beta group -- and I've posted the photo of the "real me" on my profile -- thank you to Leigh I've added my photo to my profile! Thanks for the instructions Leigh, they were just what I needed! Sometimes the smallest things technically challenge me! Check out Leigh's Fibre Journal . Happy Knitting!

Visiting Mary Morrison's Little Yarn Shoppe of Horrors -- she's reporting on her trip to Shetland in October.

While Lorraine is at the Ann Feitelson Color Theory Workshop (which I had intended to attend, but decided not to at the last moment)...... I took time out to pay homage to this great book...... "The Art of Fair Isle Knitting" by Ann Feitelson. If you want to purchase a book on this style/technique of knitting, this is the one that is still available out there. It covers tradition, technique and style of traditional fair isle knitting. There is a chapter on color theory which I studied again this weekend (since I chose to forego the class with the guru herself - I may in the future regret this, but ce la vie!). I've finished the first full motif of Alcea -- as this is a staggered allover pattern, the chart itself is actually two full motif repeats. You should feel honoured that Caelee granted an audience for a photograph this morning. She's usually only social for about 5 minutes, then she goes back to aloof kitty mode! This morning, Daisy was outside, so she decide...

I created this me at Avatar Portrait Maker -- and I'm going to use it as my blog profile photo, if I can figure out how to do it! Yes, that's Daisy under my arm! Too bad they don't have knitting needles as an option! Has anyone switched over to the new blogger in beta? Is it safe to do this yet? I'm thinking that if it makes uploading photos any easier.....couldn't be worse! Happy Knitting -- almost finished one repeat of the Alcea repeat -- photo soon!

Here's the rib portion of my Alcea cardigan -- I just love these shades. You can see where I've established the front steek for the cardigan opening. I'd taken this photo, and had kept right on knitting -- starting the body pattern, when I noticed this! Why hadn't I noticed this earlier? It's one ply of Grouse sticking out from a stitch. Not to worry, I just dropped the offending stitch, laddered it down, got out my handy 3 mm crochet hook, and knit it back up (following my chart all the way to make sure I got it right this time). It tried to snow here today -- Daisy loved it! Happy Knitting!