Is this me or what?

I was surfing knitting blogs -- don't ask me how I do this -- it's pretty random. I did a quiz and check it out -- it had me pegged! You are interchangeable. Fun, free, and into everything, you've got every eventuality covered and every opportunity just has to be taken. Every fiber is wonderful, and every day is a new beginning. You are good at so many things, it's amazing, but you can easily lose your place and forget to show up. They have row counters for people like you! What kind of needles are you?

And so it begins

The retreat was wonderful. My aunt joined us this year and she and I started the yarn crawl at Commuknity, raced down 17 to Gayles for lunch and met the rest of the crawlers at The Yarn Place. We then split up again and several went to Swift Yarns while we went to The Golden Fleece. My aunt was on the hunt for Brown Sheep worsted for the Color Party Parka in Sally Melville's Book 3: Color. She had enough to start though. We all met again at Luminous Threads and then proceeded to our destination. Set high up in the Santa Cruz mountains we were well away from civilization as we knew it. For me this means, no diet coke, no computer and no TV, the latter being of no consequence whatsoever.

Like I said in my previous post I brought several projects in progress, but alas, made none on those. They didn't even make it out of my basket. I also brought a spinning wheel, but it never made it out of my car. I did however get a good start on Mavis from Naturally Noro by Jane Ellison.

Most of the knitters at the retreat are ladies in my guild. Some though are those that I see only at the retreat which is usually twice a year. So I do a little visiting and a little helping -- we all do our bit to answer questions and offer advice -- knitting or otherwise. Plus we have this elaborate gift exchange that takes a good part of one afternoon.

The real reason I didn't get much done was this swatch on the left, which is not a swatch but the umpteeth attempt to start the Vogue Twisted Float Shrug. So there I was with a friend who was starting it with me. We cast on, knit a row, then started the rounds -- but something went wrong -- I mean doesn't that sound wrong? If you're knitting in the round wouldn't you cast on, JOIN, then knit a RND? Then we were suppose to be working on the WS, you start with yarn B, then join with yarn A, so B has to be hanging around ready on the WS, however both of us had the yarn on the right side -- see the hole? You think you could get a ball of yarn through it? Frog. Start again (something was definitely wrong with row/rnd 2). We persevered and got about this far each and went on our merry way. Except the next morning I wasn't happy with it. Besides the bad start my stitches were too loose. Plus it was worked with 2 colors but the second color doesn't come back into play for several rows rnds so you have to carry it up and I didn't like how I wove it in at first. So I stopped working on it, actually, I frogged and restarted several times before I finally gave in. We packed up, had brunch (the food over the weekend was fab, btw) and finished the retreat with a final yarn crawl to Knitting Arts, who by the way was having a HUGE sale! I found a few yummy things -- my aunt found more -- and Brown Sheep to boot! But the best part was they had a completed Vogue TF Shrug. Seeing it in it's full glory made me want it more -- it also made me want to rip my meager start and start over. When I got home it occurred to me to check for errata -- sure enough there was a mistake for row/rnd 2. To the frog pond I went and this is the result. I went down a needle size and see and I even like the way I'm carrying my 2nd color (the hot pink solid) -- yup that's the wrong side you're looking at.

Happy New Year

chocolate cake anyone?

I have nothing so I'm trying to distract you with this yummy chocolate caramel cake. Saw a picture in a magazine and commited the thing to memory. All you need is chocolate cake mix, chocolate frosting, caramel frosting and an assortment of caramel/chocolate candies (mini twix, mini milky ways, ghirardelli caramel squares, heath bar bites, rollos, and caramel kisses). Frost the top and middle of the cake with the caramel and the side with chocolate. Fair warning, it's one thing to see this in a magazine, it's quite another live in your kitchen beckoning you to eat it. In a word? Delish!

I baked (duh -- see the cake) all Christmas, cookies mostly but not nearly as much as Cris. I finished the scarves and necklaces on time. No final pix though, you'll just have to take my word for it. I only worked a little on the current socks (on the foot of the 2nd now), plus a few rows on the jester scarf. I'm taking the fairisle to do the ends to my daughters sing-fest tomorrow night in hopes of getting that done. I've got 2 new projects I'm packing up for this weekend's knitting retreat (the Vogue shrug and a Noro sweater) and I'll be taking 3 of the current projects and a ball of sock yarn (Trekking XXL) in case I feel like starting a new pair of socks.

The new year really doesn't start until the "retreat". This is an annual pilgrimage, if you will, with my knitting group (we meet every month on 4th Thursdays at a local yarn shop), and it's set in a rustic lodge in the Santa Cruz mountains. We start the weekend with a yarn crawl and we spend the weekend well...knitting. Someone cooks our meals and there's a staff that takes care of everything else. Besides the 6 knitting projects I'll be packing my walking shoes and a book or 2. It's meant to be stress free so I'm looking forward to it!

Not Quite Ready

But I'm getting there. See I'm on the 3rd ball, once I finish that I have to decide if it's long enough, and/or whether I want to add fringe -- there's one more ball for either of those decisions. After this or sometime in the next week I have one more necklace to make and that's it. I think. Well maybe. We'll see.
Chronicles of VJ continue with mirrored increases centered over the same stitch as the decreases. Notice there's only one marker needed in this case. My aunt has finished her project. She didn't need help with the increases but since I was swatching... She did call for help one more time -- and I thought I'd have knit the entire thing but giving her assignments over the phone (okay do the next 9 rows and call me when your done) seemed to cover it. The pattern she was working on was the Yoke Vest in Loop-d-Loop. It sounds intriguing, I may just give it a try with some sock yarn and see if it fits a Barbie or something.
Gifts, gifts, gifts. It's that time of year and there are rewards for all the knitting, shopping, jewelry making, etc. Tuesday's Lace Day and we had our annual gift exchange. I got the cute little Debbie Mumm teapot teaspoons pictured here with Mary Engelbreit teapot teabag holders that I already had -- how did she know they'd go so well? They are all sitting on a handwoven scarf with handspun pink angora weft. This is a very talented group of ladies with great taste, of the gifts there were 3 scarves (2 handwoven, 1 handknitted), homegrown honey, handpoured beeswax candles, lots of home canned jellies and jams, a handmade/stuffed lace pillow and a beautifully handpainted egg from Hungary. Our theme? Handmade but not necessarily by you. It's a good theme, 2 years running. I like.

One To Go

I finished one xmas scarf. Pretty crazy looking eh? Not quite my colors but it was fun to knit. I used Cherry Tree Hill Confetti in Fiesta and Faux Fur in Champlain Sunset. This is your typical garter stitch scarf with both yarns held together. To be honest I did start with something more complicated but then I dropped a stitch and couldn't recover. See, that's the thing with complicated yarn -- you have to keep the stitches simple.
Started the next xmas scarf in the queue, this one's a bit more interesting (less complicated yarn). It's the "Quick Knit Magic Mohair Scarf" by Effectiveness by Design. And it is definitely quick and definitely effective. The instructions were very clear, however I ended up frogging this puppy 1/2 a dozen times because I misinterpreted the directions. It's gotta be right now as it looks like the picture on the pattern.

I'm using this to keep track of the 4 row pattern repeat. You can keep track of up to 6 rows. As you can see I'm still having fun with my stitch marker supply. These are 12mm split rings, which fit nicely on my US 13 needles. I like how they dangle on the end of the needle -- the Czech crystals sparkle just so.

And now we interrupt this blog to bring you The VJ Chronicles

Here's the first of many installments of what I'm calling the VJ Chronicles. My aunt (VJ) just started knitting and she's so far accompanied me to a couple knitting conventions. She's coming with me on a knitting retreat in Jan and then Stitches West in Feb. She lives in Atascadero which is a couple hours south of here, so I get a few random calls on my cell when she runs into a pattern problem. Mistakes in patterns do exist, however it never fails to have you asking, "Is it me or is this just wrong?" Here's a tip -- before you go chasing your tail over some problem in a pattern, check for errata. Most publishers will put it right on their website. Anyways, I usually try to solve the problem on the phone. Sometimes it requires me to try a swatch and get back to her. This is one of those cases. Pictured above are the mirrored decreases as described in Loop-d-Loop. The left-leaning decrease will look a bit puffier than the right-leaning one because the twist unravels the yarn on the left-leaning and does the opposite on the right-leaning. Note the position of the markers. Next installment: mirrored increases.

Finally, this is now on it's way to a very worthy recipient in Co-- (ssh its a secret and while she knows of the blog I still want it to be somewhat a surprise). This set consists of fresh water pearls, chinese crystals, czech beads and bali silver, I also made a bracelet (not pictured). It's a few days late, hope she likes blue!