Blog Award

This little surprise was left for me in the comments to my Frivolity post by Valeria.  I have to say, I am unreasonably happy about it.  This blog doesn’t get a ton of traffic outside of family and friends, so it was quite exciting to be recognized by someone outside that group.  So now I get to pass it along to seven other “Kreativ Bloggers”.

In no particular order, my nominations are as follows:

Lolly  always has great projects going, and beautiful photography.  She is the creative mind behind Project Spectrum, and this year’s incarnation is fantastic.

Claudia is another great knitter/photographer. Hers is one of the first blogs I ever stumbled across when I was new to knitting and living in Japan, where help was difficult to come by. If it weren’t for bloggers like Claudia (and others) I might never have realized that frogging is part of the knitting process, and might never have progressed much past the garter-stitch-scarf phase.

Jane’s website is an open invitation to creativity.  Her free-range approach to knitting, and her wonderful use of color and yarn make for knitting that is a work of art.

Jen dyes gorgeous yarns, bakes yummy things (I’m always hungry after reading her blog), and knits cool things.  She’s also the founder of the Completely Pointless and Arbitrary group on Ravelry, which is one of my favorites even if  (especially if?) it gets a little bizarre and off-color at times.

I found Janet’s blog on the Tawashi group on Ravelry.  She’s a bi-crafter who crochets cupcakes (and crochets/knits other lovely things) and lives in Texas.  I liked her immediately (hubby is from Texas and we lived there for a few years.  I really loved it).

Christine is another fellow raveler whose blog I ran across while avoiding housework admiring projects.  Her blog is full of gorgeous socks (and other knits) plus other creative craftiness.  She also likes knitting dishcloths, which clinched it for me.

Chris’s dynamite cowl was what  first caught my eye (I’ve been thinking of making that pattern one of these days). When I also realized she has WIP’s (and posts about them) that have been on the needles for a long time, I knew she was my kind of knitter.

Happy Holidays

I hope everyone is on the verge of having a very merry Christmas.  Or whatever holiday you celebrate.  This blog has been neglected for the simple reason that I’ve barely done any knitting.  Life has been so busy the last few weeks, I just don’t have the energy at the end of the day to do even a few rows.  I’m pretty much planning to spend most of the day after Christmas knitting.  My WIP’s are alive and well, and I’m starting to miss them:

Plus I have some other projects (perpetually) I’d like to be able to get to.  But for today, I still have some wrapping to do and some cookies to bake.

My Favorite Time

I hope everyone that celebrates it had a very merry Christmas.  As much as I enjoy the holiday (and it was a very good one at Ms. Q’s this year), I always love the days after the best.  The work is done.  The days are fairly lazy – the kids are busy with their new stuff, the house is full of food (so no real cooking needs to be done for a day or two) and I can just relax a little, knit and drink tea.  And not worry about the whole production for another year   I’m happy to say the gift knitting got finished in time.  I really loved this pattern (maybe I mentioned that already?).  I was worried about knitting a whole scarf at such a small gauge, but the yarn is interesting enough and the pattern simple enough without being mind-numbing that I didn’t have that whole “middle-of-the-scarf-slog” feeling.  Having a deadline helped, I’m sure.  I’m going to knit one for myself as soon as I pick some yarns for it.  In the meantime, I’m back to the WIP’s that got put on hold for the Christmas knitting, and reading a couple of books that were under the tree for me (this one, and this one).

TV Knits

Is it weird to start a project because you liked the hat a character on TV was wearing?

I was watching an episode of Bones a couple weeks ago and one of the main characters was wearing this hat.  I did a little pattern searching on Ravelry and found the Irish Hiking Hat, which is pretty close.  I’m knitting it in Lion Brand Wool Ease in Oxford Grey, and am only at the boring ribbed part, but I think it’s going to turn out nice.  But, how weird am I to be distracted by the knitwear on TV?  I know people sometimes email TV shows about the clothes or accessories the actors are wearing/using, but do you think anyone ever asked about a knitting pattern?

I also finished this hat:

My original plan was to knit the Unoriginal Hat, but I decided the yarn I chose (Blue Moon Fiber Arts Leticia in Christmas Balls) was just too lively.  The cables were not showing at all, so I went with plan B.  This was a quick knit, and I’m really happy with how it turned out.  It fits just right, the yarn is super soft and light and warm.  And the colors make me smile on the cold grey days.  Here it is in the wild keeping my head toasty:

 I’m also still knitting (relatively) faithfully on the Chevron Scarf:

 

It’s turning out really pretty, if I do say so myself.  I was a little worried the small gauge would get tedious very quickly, but the variegated yarns, and the simplicity of the pattern make it go fairly quickly.  I just may be done in time to gift it at Christmas after all.

Gobble Gobble

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  If you live somewhere where it’s just another Thursday, I hope it’s a good one.

Trick or Treat

And if you don’t do Halloween, happy Wednesday!

Waiting for Ravelry

You signed up on July 5, 2007

You are #13997 on the list.

3572 people are ahead of you in line.

15140 people are behind you in line.

35% of the list has been invited so far

Yes, I am one of the folks anxiously awaiting my Ravelry invite.  I check my status every week.  Now that I believe they are close to being ready for everyone, I check almost daily (and pray that they don’t run into any major snags).  I can tell already that this will be right up my alley.  I’m a list-maker by nature, and  I already spend way too much time on the internet researching potential projects.  Usually, I just Google or search Flickr to try to find out who has already made what I’m thinking of making.  It’ll be so nice to have all that info under one roof.  But the wait is killing me.  In the meantime, I satisfy my Ravelry-lust by reading about how much fun other people are having.  Like here and here (and lots of others, just Google it).  There’s even been a tiny dust-up here, which I find interesting.  I believe the author was trying to be tongue-in-cheek, and did not mean to offend anyone.  And I’m equally sure he had no idea of the response it would generate.  Unfortunately the comments degenerated rather quickly into the “I’m a knitter and a techie, so there” type rather than focusing on the larger issue of why Ravelry made the tech page to begin with.  It made the page, not because it’s about knitting, but because it appears it will be one of the most useful, interactive tools out there.  And it has huge potential as a model for other crafts/arts/hobbies.  You can’t tell me that folks who are interested in other pursuits that could benefit from organization and linking (one of the features of Ravelry that most appeals to me is that I can look up a yarn that I have in my stash and see what other people have made with it, or I can look at a pattern that I have and see what yarn others have used.  The ability to link yarn to projects and vice-versa is something that I couldn’t do with the simple lists I’ve been keeping), with a little social networking thrown in for fun won’t be watching very closely.  In the meantime, I’ll be waiting.  By my calculations, I should be getting my invitation about the time my kiddos go back to school, which means I get the computer to myself.   How’s that for timing?