Okay, I know I just blogged yesterday, but I am so excited about Sheldon and our new Facebook page, I just can’t stop myself. It’s been tough keeping him a secret for so long!
This little turtle stole my heart the first time I saw him on Knitty, so when Ruth Homrighaus and Brooke Higgins agreed to partner with us to create new outfits for Sheldon exclusively for Knit Picks, I was practically giddy with excitement. Every morning I’d come into the office hoping I had an update on Sheldon and maybe a photo or two of his shells-in-progress in my inbox.

The final patterns are so SO cute. Brooke designed what we’re calling the “career shells” (Is beach bum really a career? Sign me up!), and I’m floored by her talent and creativity. Katie and I had so …

While not strictly knitting related, this is still pretty darn rad. You enter the URL of your blog (or you can cut and paste any text you want), and Wordle will create a “word cloud” using the words you use most in your blog (not counting or, and the…) and then you can customize the colors, layout, and fonts. The more frequently you use a word the bigger it is in the word cloud. This is what you get when you paste in the URL for our Knitting Community. Who knew we blogged about laptops so much?
Make your own at http://wordle.net/. <

Have you seen all the new samplers that we’ve added in the past week? So much temptation! Usually I’m pretty good about only buying specific yarn for a project, but I couldn’t resist the Spring/Summer Kettle Dyed Essential Sampler. Those rich jewel tones are my colors, and even though my sock yarn stash is huge, it’s full of multicolored yarn that isn’t nearly as versatile as semi-solid yarn. My sampler arrived on Tuesday all wrapped up in its tidy package with the patterns. Kerin did a great job writing all these patterns. My absolute must-knit is this Busy Bees pattern. Bees are a favorite theme of mine, and I really like the different elements in this sock. I don’t think I’ll knit mine in gold though, since that’s not a color that would match my wardrobe. Grasshopper and Spruce are the main …

I’ve gotten out of my solid-color-pullover slump, but now I’ve fallen down the cardigan-with-patterned-yoke rabbit hole. I got a copy of Norah Gaughan’s Knitting Nature, and it has a pattern for a sweater coat with a colorwork yoke done in a fractal pattern. Here’s the image from the book:

I’m making a bunch of adjustments, though. I’m just going to make a standard-length cardigan, instead of a full-length coat, and I’m converting the pattern to knitting in the round so that I don’t have to do purled colorwork on the yoke. I’m also substituting yarn, since the original yarn (Reynolds Odyssey) is a little too spendy for me.

The body is Wool of the Andes Kettle Dye in Timber, and then I’m going to do the yoke background in Auburn with the fractal pattern in Oak. One warning: I did …

Remember my Comfy hat that was made for any and all bad hair days? I took it camping two weeks ago and when I unpacked, I threw a bunch of wet towels and icky post-camping clothes in the laundry hamper. A few days later I discovered that my Blackberry Comfy hat was thrown in with all the smelly wet towels. My two choices were to throw it away or wash it in hot water and hope it’s truly washable.
Well check this out:

It’s perfect. It didn’t shrink or stretch or fade or pill or fuzz or (insert other negative verb here). It’s perfect, and now it smells like my yummy cruelty free “Method” detergent. I washed it in hot, and threw it in the hot dryer with a bunch of beach towels,
Moral of the story–wash away my friends, Comfy can take it. …

Knit it a sweater of course!

Actually, this zuke from Tina’s garden weighs more than 10 lbs. but that’s as high as our office scale can count. Kerin made that little sweater out of Essential and Felici.

It was originally her first swatch when she was designing the Happy Stripes Yoked Baby Pullover Pattern from the July catalog, but it seems to suit our summer squash as well. Paired with the tassel, I think it looks quite dashing.

<

Around here this seems to be the week that students of all ages are heading back to school, much to the relief of some of the moms I know. 🙂

The students at Platte Cove School in Elka Park, New York started classes this week, and I hope the transition from summer to school was slightly less painful when they got to their classrooms and discovered we sent a new pair of knitting needles for each student involved in their charity knitting project. These students spend their quiet time knitting sweaters, hats, and blankets for Project Linus and PET International while their teachers read out loud to them. The knitters range in age from 7-14 and even first and second graders are getting in on the action, knitting squares that are later stitched together to form blankets.

Thanks to Carmen …

I finally finished editing the videos I made while Bob and I were in Ireland. The only technical glitch I hit was that one section was recorded on a landing of our hotel. That segment is quieter than the rest so you may have to turn up the sound.
<