We launched the Knitting Community last March, and it took just under a year for us to reach 10,000 members! To celebrate, we’re giving a $20 Knit Picks gift certificate to #9999 (congratulations, Hind!) and a $50 gift certificate to #10,000 (congratulations, Linda Nelson!).
Thanks to all of you for joining. The users in the Knitting Community are so friendly and helpful, and it’s been really exciting watching all the activity and sharing in your knitting lives through your blog posts, photos, questions and comments. <

I finished my first lace project!

I was inspired by Franklin Habit’s Night Cap on Knitty.

So Alison helped me alter the pattern to make a scarf, knitting straight instead of in the round and helped me choose yarn and needle size.

Alison said to show off the beautiful pattern I should choose a yarn with sheen. She also said I could get away with a worsted, so I chose Shine. Here’s where the problem came in. I found some Shine in my stash that I had received from our stash swap party. The color was Sea Scape. I happily started knitting away. I came to the end of my second ball and went to order more, only to discover that we haven’t carried that color since 2007. Oops.
After asking advice from a couple people …

I am so pleased that the four colors for The Moderne Baby Blanket are working well together. I’m using Swish Worsted in Delft Heather, Copper, Merlot Heather and Camel Heather. I still have lots knitting!
I did enjoy knitting Delilia’s Log Cabin blanket from the same book, Mason Dixon Knitting, but I didn’t enjoy having it being the result of three failed attempts at a regular Moderne Baby Blanket. My inability to pull together four feminine colors that looked good together gave me a huge pile of yarns to use for the Log Cabin.

I just love having such a soothing, garter stitch project at hand. Bob’s youngest son, Jon, is in town for two weeks. Then he will be shipping out to Iraq with a small group of Marines. I don’t think I would be able to knit on …

Hi all,
Thought you might like to know that we just put the 50 gram balls of Essential Kettle Dyed sock yarn on sale for $3.39 per ball. We are clearing out of our stock of 50 gram balls because the new 100 gram balls are here. Don’t worry – we will continue to carry Essential Kettle Dyed sock yarn, just in a larger put-up to help avoid potential differences within dye lots. The hand-made nature of kettle dyeing can result in differences in color intensity between balls from the same dye lot. Larger skeins will help reduce that.
For the 50 gram balls, our warehouse staff are doing their best to choose skeins that look similar to each other (similar lightness or darkness) if you order two or more of the same color. …

When we went to Mexico a few weeks ago, I wanted to have something simple to knit. It was a short trip and I just wanted to listen to audible books and quietly knit. I didn’t have time to order any yarn so I scrounged through the office stash. I found four balls of Felici Paradise.
I cast on a pair of toe-up socks while waiting to board the plane. As I knit on the plane I realized that, purely by accident, I had chosen colors that perfectly matched the setting of my vacation. Beachy colors! I found myself more drawn to knitting those socks than any other vacation project I’ve every dragged along with me!
What an interesting thought. What if I took the time to match my travel projects to the destination? When we were in Ireland last summer I took along my Aran …

I don’t normally announce new books in a blog post, but this one is special. We’ve been anticipating Cookie A.’s new sock book for several months now, and once we knew it had shipped to us from Interweave’s warehouse, we were watching the truck’s progress every day. And, there were wings on that truck! The books just arrived!
Cookie is well-known for her fascinatingly constructed socks – they’re works of art, architecture and a marvel of knitting engineering. Please let me know if you’d like a knitalong for this book; we could definitely get that set up if there is interest. <

I’ve finished the Pumpkin Gloss socks! I will be dropping them off to my friend this afternoon. They don’t look too good on the sock blockers because I didn’t actually wash them. Cindy is really going through a hard time and I don’t want her to have to wait even one more day for her socks.
I just remembered that I promised myself the microwave popcorn popper from Sur La Table as an incentive to finish the socks. It turns out that Cindy’s troubles worked much more effectively.

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I’m at the point in the pattern where I can add a few extra repeats to increase the width (height?) of this shawl. In fact, I’ve already added two extra repeats, but I’m wondering if I should add more? There will be the last section of the lace body which is probably another 2 inches plus a border later that is about 3 to 4 inches. So, the total width would be about 25″ if I continued on now without adding any more repeats. I love my shawls to be really wide so I can scrunch them up (lace scrunches so nicely) around my neck and shoulders to stay warm.
Do you think I should add more repeats or go with the width as it is?
Pattern: Lady’s Circular Cape from Victorian Lace Today (except I am only doing 9 repeats instead of 12 hoping that …