Knit and Plenty

Nothing up my sleeve.

Do you see a theme developing lately? It's all surrounding this latest pullover sweater project. As you can see I am still being quite the dummy. My current issue is all about the sleeves. I have finished the front and the back, and quite frankly, I am wondering how many knitters decide to make vests when they get to this point in their sweater projects. The thought of making two sleeves at this point seems so booooorrrring! In fact, from now on I will always start a sweater by making one sleeve, then the back, then the next sleeve and end with the front. If I had done that, I'd be finished by now!!

The crazy thing about this sweater is that I created the back without a pattern, then found a pattern to create the front. Now I'm not quite surehow I'll pull off the sleeves - but sleeves I must!

I better keep the vodka at arms-length! 

I can be a real dummy sometimes!

My head is about to come off! I'm working on the front of a pullover sweater. The problem with making  a pullover sweater is that it has to pull over your head. So I have reached that wonderful place in the pattern where the head hole - better known as the neck edge will meet the arm hole. Stay with me now. Because the pattern instructions now read as follows:

DEC 1 st at armhole edge of next 3 rows then foll 3 alt row AND AT THE SAME TIME and every foll 4th row DEC 1 st at neck edge of next and only on every foll row from previous dec WHILE AT THE SAME TIME begin to cry incessently and decide that you really don't want to make a pull over sweater after all!!!

Of course, it is always 11:30 at night when I hit that section of a pattern and I hope that there will be a time, in the not to distant future, when I will be able to screw my head back on and not feel like such a dummy and figure out how to follow these directions.

I'd give my two teeth for time to knit!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

It's been quite a week. Beautiful One went back to college after her long Christmas break. All my clients wanted me to go back to my real job after they seemed to have put everything on hold back around Thanksgiving. I had two teeth extracted which is REAL fun, and I've been writing the next article for Yarn Market News. (You can still help if you haven't taken the survey yet by clicking here. TAKE THE SURVEY. )I'll give you all the low down on the survey as soon as the Vicadin wears off.

Meanwhile, the first article I wrote for the magazine is in print and viewable online.

It's all about the fun names of yarn shop and you can CLICK HERE to read THE ARTICLE. If you know any of the shops listed in the story, please pass it along.

Hope you are all knitting more than me. I miss my sticks!

Raise Your Glove/Hand

Razzle Dazzle -  I've graduated from fingerless mitten to real ten-finger gloves! Here is my first pair! The pattern is from this great book called Knitted Accessories by Claire Crompton.    

^ This picture looks rather Bob Fosse-esque, doesn't it?

Sewing little buttons on the back is a cute idea - and would even be cute on those $1.99/pair you can buy at Walgreens.

Now whether you are wearing gloves or not, would you considering raising your hand if you'd be willing to be a part some surveys. I've been asked to write an ongoing marketing column for Yarn Market News, and I'm looking to create a consumer panel. If you're in, leave me your email and I'll send the first survey -  If you don't want to be a part of the panel, maybe just answer one question: You've decided to start a new project, you enter the yarn shop - what one word describes how you feel??? !

It Just Looks Simple

Can you image how excited I was when i found out that the Gettin' Knit Together Kit was going to be featured in Knit Simple?? There it is - in the Knits+That section. They even call it a 'godsend'. Now, if the gods would just send a few orders, things would feel a lot better. The mag came out right before Christmas and so far, well - let's just say, I don't need a new IBM server yet and no one has called about doing a commercial about me and how FEDEX grew my home-based business. Even though it looks like this venture will never be more than a lark, it's still a kick! I just  hope this doesn't count as my 15-minutes of fame! Maybe I still have 11 or 12 minutes left.

Two Thumbs Up!

I am so grateful for all the wonderful encouragement I received about continuing my blog. I must be a Blogneanderthal because I didn't know anything about Bloglines - which is a service that tells you when your favorite blogs put up new posts. (hello, 21st century!) The consensus was to post whenever the muse is within, and as long as I have projects to share that's what I am going to do. After giving it a lot of thought and getting your comments, I've come to the conclusion that this blog does three things for me. It is a great motivator for getting projects finished. It gives me a forum for getting feedback and ideas, and it keeps me connected to an amazing community of creative individuals.  So, let's knit on.

You'll see in the coming posts, I've developed a gluttony for gloves. My first pair was a simple fingerless in a Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk, using a Magic Loop. I guess once you knit a sock, a glove is a breeze. These took two sittings of two hours each. That's all I needed to be hooked on hands!

So, what would come next?? Multi-colored fingerless gloves with attached mitten-cover tops, of course!!

Stay tuned, I'll tell you all about these when you come back.

First things first

Happy Knit Year!  Today is also my blogiversary. I started this blog last New Years Day. I wanted to see if I could do it for a year.  It's also my five year anniversary with 'my guy". I said I'd do that for a while and see how it went, too. Well, it appears that both have lasted a lot longer than I thought they would. And I really love both. I have to say, I am a bit up in the air about continuing to blog - or to figure out how often to post. I think there are so many great knitting blogs out there that even the most faithful readers don't have time to read more than one or two, more than once or twice a week. And no one likes to talk about it, but without getting comments, blogging is sort of the equivalent to a tree that has silenty fallen in the Internet forest.

During the last week, I have been madly knitting, however, so I do have to get the camera clicking to post some new FOs. Ive been obsessed with gloves!!

One thing that I always try to accomplish on my blog is to keep my posts short and sweet, and to ask your opinion:

what's your vote:

1) Knit and Plenty Mondays?

2) Go Knit. I've had plenty.

3) Whenever. Whatever.

4.) Your suggestion?

5) Hellloooo - it's that forest thing again....hellooooo???

Wishing you a happy and very knitful 2007!