Wellspring Auction

For the last few years, we've donated a basket of yarn and a gift certificate for the Wellspring Silent Auction.

This year, we thought we would do a bit more.

We collected squares and then Jane (our Mayor) put them together. It's a beautiful blanket, with hundreds of dollars worth of yarn and hundreds of hours of time and care invested in it. We know it will get a lot of bids!

Thanks to everybody who helped with the blanket. If you would like to support Wellspring, the auction is April 21. Contact Wellspring for more information.

Jane, Me, and Keith were only some of the people who helped knit this blanket. But we were the only ones in the shop to pose with it! Lucky us!

The Bear turns into a Dog

First, Tonya made Otto. (Read her blog post about it here.) Then, we decided to schedule a class (Sunday, June 7, 14, and 21--read the description here.)

A friend of mine who moved away last year just had a baby. I decided to make an Otto.

But the more I knitted, the more I kept declaring that its cute little face "looked just like my dog, Harper."

So the bear became a dog.

For those of you unfamiliar with my dog, he only has three legs.

There he is, lifting his stump to pee on a fire hydrant--just like the real Harper. I always tell him that he's such a cliche when he does that.

Can I just say that when I was taking these pictures, there was a man picking his daughter up from the school across the street, and he started talking to me about the stuffed animal and I couldn't understand a single word he said. And that's when I realized he was speaking in German. What the...?

Lenpur Linen

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I love spring. Well, not the allergies and fluctuating weather (really? sunshine and 70 degrees and tomorrow it's going to snow?! that hardly seems fair.) but I love the yarn!

The favorite spring yarn around here seems to be Rowan Lenpur Linen.

First of all, the colors:

All those greens!

I know what you're thinking. Linen is stiff and hard to work with. And what the heck is "lenpur" anyway? But I'm here to calm your fears. Lenpur is cultivated wood fiber (yes, it's a link for lenpur.net) and this yarn is soft and wonderful, even before washing. And at a DK gauge, it's perfect for spring sweaters.

Like this one. (And that's Summer Tweed underneath--another perennial favorite!)

The book has a few beautiful sweaters in it. Including the one on the cover. Did I mention that the stitch definition is fantastic? We've even got a few people making the Yosemite sweater out of it!

Personally, I like this sweater. Although I realize that it probably has more to do with the big chunky necklace and the pool. (If she was holding a puppy, or standing on the beach, I would be done for!)

Check this out

This is so cool:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw



Have a great weekend!

Daylily

I've never been fond of novelty yarns. Maybe it's because I learned to knit at the peak of scarf mania at a wonderful yarn store, so I learned my derisive attitude along with my knit and purl stitches. I tend to like natural fibers and hand dyed colors.

So why the heck am I so in love with Daylily? [rav link]

It's a cotton/nylon/acrylic blend. It looks like a ribbon, but it's not. The colors are interesting, subtle but shimmering. Usually I'm lusting after the 100% cottons this time of year (I love spring and summer knitting--cotton is my jam!) But I find that everyday I'm at the shop, I end up bringing a ball of Daylily to sit next to me at the table so I can just look at it.


I'm not alone. Most other people have fallen for this sweater.



Carla was good enough to model it for us (since I always hate when sweaters are just shown on hangers--it always makes me think, "What's wrong with it that a human being doesn't want to try it on?" But worse is when baby sweaters are modeled by dolls. Gives me the hebejeebees!) and she was also kind enough to wear a dress that coordinated so nicely with the garment.

It's the Scoop Necked Cardigan from the Daylily book. A very versatile cardigan that takes 7 - 12 skeins.

But I'm not going to make it. I was thinking (dreaming, scheming) about a short-sleeved February Lady. [rav link] The perfect spring sweater.

Do Dye Lots Matter?

Cindy and Margie have just finished these sweaters. Cindy's is Rowan Summer Tweed and Margie's is Rowan Calmer.

If I hadn't titled this blog post so obviously, would you have noticed that each of these sweaters is composed out of two dye lots?

It's not a mistake, it's a design feature. That's what we like to say. Margie and Cindy love their sweaters regardless (except Cindy keeps tugging on the sleeves, wishing they were a bit longer. Good thing the summer/silk blend is very stretchy!)

And a note to all the knitters out there with similar problems: if you don't go around pointing out the different dye lots as soon as you walk into a room, most likely nobody will notice your sweater's condition.

Some Colour on a Cloudy Day

It's another cold and rainy day, but Heather's not complaining. She just finished her Tender sweater from The Colourscape Chunky Collection out of Kaffe Fasset's Colourscape [rav link].

Check out those wings--er, I mean sleeves!

Look how elegant she looks, reaching for a ball of just out of reach yarn!

(And maintaining elegance in those electric candy shades is quite a feat! But, Heather, you pull it off without a hitch!)

So, it's a cold, gray, rainy Sunday. So what? Pick up that wool sweater you haven't quite finished, turn on the basketball game, and knit!