Life LackaDaisiCal

When the post man rings, well, he doesn't ring around here.....we have a rural mail box and the post man drives by in his white jeep and delivers the mail around 9:00 am. Usually, Daisy is on watch in the living room window, on the back of the chair, and she barks when the post man goes by. Then we go to the mail box to see if anything interesting has arrived. Yesterday, there was a "You've got mail" card in the box.....it was addressed to She Ewe Knits, so I figured right away that it was a box of yarn - yeah, I never get tired of boxes of yarn! After lunch, Daisy and I headed into town, to the Post Office, and yup - it WAS a box of yarn! Daisy always wants to help with these things. Stonewash, Dusk, Mulberry, Fog -- some of my favourite shades and I order them often so as to not run out. After the shipping list is checked, downstairs they go onto the shelves. Daisy helps with this also.......running up and down the stairs with me. (I use this as a home exercise pr...

While doing a lot of nothing it seems (where does all the paperwork come from and the days just fly by) -- I have done a bit of knitting of the Nicky Epstein Faux Fair Isle. I think I mentioned that rather than doing this in pieces, I'm doing the fronts and back altogether -- but I'm not doing them in the round. Back and forth, purling back, and working with separate balls of yarn where necessary. This is definitely "Faux" Fair Isle -- it's not a Fair Isle by my definition anyway -- it's a stranded knitting sweater -- there are a few motifs that use 3 shades per row, and there are a few areas where there are blocks of fair isle surrounded by plain colour knitting -- look for the blue area below. I cut open the armholes on my Alcea body and tried to take a photo myself in the bathroom mirror -- I'll have to get the Hubby to take a photo for me. I need to measure how long I need the sleeves to be and figure out the pattern placement Happy Knitting

Do you have trouble deciding on buttons for a particular sweater? I do. One day while down in Burlington, I visited a quilting store and they had a great selection of buttons. I saw these buttons that I thought would be perfect for Alcea. Not having the sweater with me, it was just a guess, but I was so sure that I bought 4 cards of them -- that's 12 buttons! (You have to have enough right?) Well, sure enough, when I got home and put them on the body of my Alcea, they were perfect (in my eyes). One thing I hadn't thought of.....they had 4 holes to sew them on with -- they didn't have a shank. Usually with the corrugated rib I like a shank button so that it sits up and through the corrugated ribbing, not disturbing the ribbing much. As these PERFECT buttons didn't have a shank, I recalled something that my Mom once showed me to do -- off to get some toothpicks! Yes, toothpicks. I use a strand of Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift in my needle to sew on buttons -- you...

Check out Eunny Jang's blog.......she's going to be the new editor of Interweave Knits. This is interesting! Eunny likes to take the traditional, and ramp it up a bit to a modern day look. I wonder how this is going to translate to the magazine. Good luck to Eunny - can't wait to see your influence on Interweave Knits. I' m assuming she won't be blogging? Who knows, she might......but in the meantime, she's designed a great sweater in Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift -- for the fall Simply Shetland book. You can get a sneak peak on her blog. (I'm actually very surprised at this as usually designs for books are top secret!) On the personal knitting front.....I had a quiet day yesterday, so watched the DVD's of a series called "Eleventh Hour" with Patrick Steward (I LOVE PATRICK STEWART) -- and later watched the Canadian Brier curling final.....so a lot of knitting was done on the Nicky Epstein Fake Fair Isle jacket. Fake Fair Isle is a go...

It can be scary to cut open the large front cardigan opening steek . When you cut it, your knitting loses stability, and those front edges seem to stretch! Not to worry. Use a much smaller needle to do your front bands -- I knit the body on 3.25mm needles, and got 8 sts to the inch. The cardigan button bands I'm using a 2.5mm needle. Knit up a stitch for every row. By knit up I mean -- designate the space between your steek edge stitch (which is in the background shade always which makes it a definite row that you can see) and the first stitch of the body -- you need to go down between these two stitches, wrap your yarn around the needle and pull a stitch up through your knitting. You do this for each and every row. I picked up 182 stitches on my front button bands -- I also count how many I did on each edge of existing ribbing (the bottom rib and the neckline rib) to make sure that I picked up the same amount on both sides -- the rest of the stitches being picked up on the body ...

Finally, the knitting drought around here is over. This might have helped -- a challenge by my guild, the Kitchener-Waterloo Knitter's Guild - knit a 6" square in PINK! Pink! Anyone who knows me would tell you that I'm not a pink kind of gal! But for a good cause, I took up the needles. You are probably expecting a pink piece of fair isle knitting -- but look, what could this be! It looks pretty squirrely here, but with a bit of wet blocking, it'll be more recognizeable. I'll give it a little steam blocking when I'm ironing this week. This is a very simple lacy pattern -- even I could do it! The Guild is going to sew all of the 6" squares into a Pink Afghan which is going to be raffled off with the proceeds to benefit a Cancer Recovery Program at the University of Waterloo -- good cause! My square was done with Lipstick Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift -- looks so good I just might have to make a scarf with this pattern -- of course, it won't be pi...

Daisy to Caelee -- Oh my Caelee -- are you ever lucky that you don't have to go outside in this weather. It really does wreak havoc with a girl's hair! Caelee (silently to herself) -- well if you weren't such a dog, you'd figure out how to use a litter box! Caelee to Daisy -- yes I am so sorry for you when you have to go out in the cold at all times of the day and night! (TEE HEE ). Well knitters, after a 3 week knitting drought, I feel that a couple of days of confinement just might be what the Dr. ordered to get back on the knitting wagon! Stay safe -- this storm that we're getting here in Southern Ontario has already worked it's way across the US -- Spring is just around the corner! Happy Knitting!