Little Gems Mitts Finished!

It is so cold in the office, I wear them all the time.
Alison Langley's Nautical Images Gallery opened last night; all our hard work paid off with a fun opening party!
Now back to work.

I'll Try

meyer's lemons

The holiday season has begun. What to do?
Simplify.
Simplify.
Simplify.

Summer Seven

This was in the mail! An invitation to an art opening.

"We'll go!" I think.

After all, we're in the painting. I'm talking to Ada, second from the left and my husband in the Green Acres overalls stands next to me. Vincent, is wearing black jeans. I'm not sure of the others, I don't think we even met them. This was back in 1993. It was a really hot summer. The BBC filmed us for some show called Beauty, which we never saw.

A chance to see this giant canvas (7.5' x 12') [230 x 370] would be fun, so lets go! We don't want to miss this opportunity. With an invitation from the artist, Alex Katz, himself!

Except it is in Milan. Italy. Oh well. The show is up until February. But we'll miss the party.

Not True

I have always harbored the idea that if I lived alone, my house would be as neat as a pin. A place for everything, everything in its place. As it turns out, there is just yarn everywhere. And pencils, magazines, knitting, fashion and art books on every surface, tape measures everywhere, and maybe not balled socks and power tools, but a litter of stitch markers and dangerous pins.

I would move in a bed and just live in the kitchen if it were only me.


Guess what? A clever woman made a sensational necklace using the knitted eyeball pattern, she's entered whipup's whiplash contest. Take a look and be prepared to be awed, it is so very Prada!

Leftovers

A lot of people were wondering what to make out of the leftovers from their December Lights Tam, including me. The answer was right in front of us! On the page just next to the tam, are Donna Kay's demure Little Gems Mitts, in a soft grey patterned with heathered juju-bee colors. (I know, can juju-bees be heathered?) The unfortunate reality of a cold office and a need to please, drove me to whip up this wild little number. It hardly looks the same! Shocking really. Trés 80's! Very Fiorucci! Klimt gone mad.

What I did: I have small hands, so after the ribbing I only increased 4 sts to make 60 sts, therefore eliminating 1 pattern repeat.
Color substitutes:
Granite= Magenta
Leaf=Olive
Aubretia=Lime
Clyde Blue=Blue
Tartan=Green
Raspberry=Chartreuse
Sapphire=Blue too!
SPECIAL NOTE! I used Red as the background for the blue rounds, ie the plain rounds before and after the pattern rows. I also used Red for the thumb, and sort of wish I'd used it for the fingers.

Hmmmm....since I decreased the total stitches I had to change the fingers....for the pinky I used 6 sts, picking up 2 between fingers, ring 7 sts, picking up 3 between fingers, middle 8 sts, picking up 2 sts between fingers, index 9 sts, picking up 1 sts between fingers.

Now I just have to make the other one. My hands have been so cold, I think I'll start tonight. I believe I should have plenty of yarn.
STAY TUNED!

Hello Visitors!

Hi everybody! I've been having a constant thrill lately. I subscribe to Statcounter, which keeps track of visitors to your blog. I look at it occasionally, when I'm feeling lonley and unloved. The 50 or so daily visitors always cheer me even if they don't comment, its nice to "meet"them here. I can click a line which displays the national flags of all my visitors, and a map view with little exclamation points to mark their spot on the globe.
Last week, all of a sudden there were 156 visitors before breakfast. I felt like the White Queen (who has imagined as many as 6 impossible things before breakfast). What it was: my favorite Craft site, the ultra-groovy WhipUp mentioned my Knitted Olive Tutorial! I was honored and bursting with pride. Wait Wait! It gets even better. I mentioned my Gruesome Knitted Eyeballs for Halloween in the "what are you making forum" and a little later, on Halloween they included my eyeball photograph and the link.

The snowball effect ensued: the cool Craftzine Blog pictured the eyeballs, some place in France has a link, Rachels Kniting Room, a yahoo group mentioned the olives and the eyeballs The place that hands down, brings the most visitors is Knitting Pattern Central, thousands of people know about this great place, patterns for everything, and all the links. To think I'd been missing this amazing resource! Knitters Review listed my Little Arrowhead Lace Scarf pattern. The latest place to list the eyeballs, which will make lovely cat-toys and stocking-stuffers by the way, is in Sweden! Hej då!

And a big thank you to everyone who links to me too! I'm kind of slow and disorganized in my linking, but if you email me I'll be sure and include you eventually! I hope to alphabetize them too...but that may prove to be too much for this Luddite.

The map above shows where some of my visitors hale from; the more exotic ones (to me, not to them) are Kazakhstan, Iran, Brunei, Slovenia, Guam (but I know who that is!) Venezuela, South Africa, Tasmania, not to mention the great place names in the US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But then I'm one of those people who likes to read the Zip Code book.

Since most of my readers are knitters, here's a glimpse of how to make a knitted hat into a tam! I wash the old thing, (this is one of my first, using genius-math-wiz-kaleidoscope-loving, Mary Rowe's wonderful Knitted Tams Book). I block the fuzzy thing on a 9" Russel Wright Iroquois dinner plate in Ice Blue. If I want a 10" circumference I use one of his Steubenville plates, Bean Brown is my favorite, but it broke, so I use Cedar Green.

Thanks for stopping by!

create your own visited countries map

If You Walk in the Woods, You need a Hunting Hat

When I heard the first shots ring out last month I hit the dirt. Had I forgotten about hunting season? Just bird hunting season, for which, in theory you don't need to wear blaze orange, humans not usually being mistaken for birds. In anticipation of Deer Hunting season I started in making more hats, adding to our collection.



Our visitors often are unaware that they might look like a deer to a hunter, so I like to provide lots of hats.

Wool is my favorite, so we're safe and warm. Bartlettyarns Maine Wool in Blaze Orange is my yarn of choice. I get it at Unique One, Sweaters and Yarn, in Camden, and I know they ship. This year I also had some bright orange, Princess, by Classic Elite, which I made into a feminine watch cap, with a simple scalloped edge I found in Nicky Epsteins, Knitting on the Edge.












Not a hunter? Never mind, in the woods you need to wear blaze orange.