Waaay too much traveling going on the last few weeks! After Bob and I returned from Ireland I only had a few days before Tina and I took off for Stitches Midwest. After a couple of days in my office, sustained with many cups of coffee, I am caught up enough to be able to enjoy some blogging time!
The joke at the office is that it sounds as though Bob and I went on two completely different vacations. Bob’s focus was golf and he experienced all the weather challenges Ireland had to offer! His first course was in Connemara, just outside Clifden at the Connemara Golf Course. Here is a shot from the website –

And, here are the shots I took. Now please understand that I absolutely loved every minute of our trip! I’m just sharing Bob’s experience. The guy really needs to …

I had an absolutely fantastic time in Ireland! I loved the people, the food, the scenery the hotels and the history!
After writing up Bob’s rather pathetic golfing tales of Ireland, I realized that it would be helpful if I gave you our itinerary.
Our first two days were spent in Dublin. Sheldon enjoying his morning porridge. And, admiring the offerings at a flower stall.
Notice the bright yellow butter!! Oh, I love Irish butter!!

Here are a few of my highlights! Starting with Dublin. I love the city walks that are available in so many places. We went on an Irish Writer’s Pub Crawl and a historical walk the next day. Even on our own we did well because Dublin is one of those perfectly walkable cities.

Even though Bob’s taste run to haute cuisine, I like good old comfort food after …

Have you seen the snowmen pattern that I mentioned back in July? It’s up on our site free–in plenty of time for you to make holiday gifts or ornaments for your tree! The pattern is available here.
I also wanted to mention that we’ve added a new category on our pattern page, by request. We’ve been adding more and more low cost Designer Exclusive patterns, and now you can see them in one place here. Our exclusive patterns are available for only $1.29 as a download or $2.99 as a printed version. Of course, our free exclusive patterns can still be found in the ever popular “Free” category (and we just added a bunch of one skein patterns that were originally featured in the summer yarn samplers).
Happy holiday knitting! …

Last week I had a day out of the office shooting a sweater for an upcoming magazine ad. I love location shoots–they’re a lot of hard work, but the results are worth it. Plus, it’s nice to get out of the normal office routine. This shoot was especially fun because I was going for a bit of a retro look, and we had the perfect model and location to pull it off. The model, Jenny, is a software marketer by day and one of Angela’s roller derby teammates by night (derby name of Vixen). Jenny has the retro style I was wanting, so I asked if she would be a model for us. She also agreed to let us photograph her in her natural setting: her very cool condo and her car that was her grandfather’s.

Above you can see Jenny in the distance during …

What can you do when you live clear across an entire continent when a friend calls and tells you that she has breast cancer? Thankfully I was able to walk down to our Knit Picks yarn stash and find 10 balls of Suri Dream in Gloxinia – the perfect color.
The Prayer Shawl Ministry was started by Janet Bristow and Victoria Galo in 1998. Susan Izard and Susan Jorgensen published Knitting Into The Mystery which is an excellent introduction into the rituals of prayer shawl knitting. A very good introduction into the process and a good reference for starting prayer shawl ministries. But, there was really only one pattern so it was a bit limited in terms of yarns that would look good with that pattern.
Then Janet and Victoria used their years of Prayer Shawl experiences to write The …

YARRRN!!
Fer scurvy knittin’ pirates like meself, every day is Talk Like a Pirate Day! But for the rest of ye, September 19th is the day. As for me, I’ll be sailing off in me good ship this weekend to knit with me newest booty.

That is, if I can get it back from the Dread Pirate Sheldon!

(and yes, that’s really my license plate!) <