A couple weeks ago, Kelley and I talked about the joy, the wonder, the magic of blocking lace (podcast 69), so I thought I’d share my finished lace project and include the dreadful before picture too. This is the Juno Regina pattern by Miriam Felton from knitty.com in the Sterling color of Gloss Lace.

Lace blocking wires hard at work. They make blocking lace so easy compared to pinning every inch.

Here’s the lace while it was still on the needles. Big difference, huh? <

One of my favorite tasks here at work is to proof the podcast every Friday. It’s half an hour of knitting/listening enjoyment. I bring a small knitting project to work with me every day to be on hand for meetings, lunch, etc. My current “mindless” project is the Lace Ribbon Scarf by Veronik Avery, originally published on knitty.com. I’m knitting this one in Essential for my sister-in-law for Christmas. The Essential yarn is soooo soft, it will feel so cozy on her neck and will keep her warm without being too bulky.
And what is Kelley’s podcast topic this week? Hat and scarf knitting, especially for stash busting and gift giving. Serendipity! (I listen to the podcast on RealPlayer here in the office. I don’t know why, but this funny dancing sheep is the visual that RealPlayer runs along with the audio.) …

So as I mentioned in my last post, Miriam and her son Thuur are visiting our offices this week from Holland.

We kept Miriam pretty busy yesterday filming video tutorials and posing for a catalog photo, so we decided to do something a little more low key today and film Miriam and Thuur out and about in Portland. First we headed to Multnomah Falls.

Thuur got some amazing shots of a hummingbird. I’ll have to see if I can borrow a couple and post them for you.
Then we snagged lunch in downtown Portland at Veganopolis. Thuur’s vegetarian and I’m vegan, so Veganopolis was a perfect choice. It was delicious! We’d planned on doing more sightseeing downtown, but today was unseasonably rainy so we decided to wait until later in the week.

Those of you in …

I am sooo close to being done with the regular knitting. I still have to cut the steeks, do the neck/hood ribbing, sew up the hem, weave in ends, etc. The deep v-neck steek makes the neck look so much smaller than it will be after I cut it open. It certainly doesn’t look like it could fit an adult human right now, but maybe an alien..? My alien says hello.
Pattern: Apres Surf Hoodie from Interweave Knits Summer 2008
Yarn: Shine Sport Sand (discontinued color from my stash)
Needles: Knit Picks US 1 (2.50mm) 32″ nickel plated fixed circular for the body and two 24″ nickel plated fixed circulars for the sleeves
And, here are my meeting socks. Getting close too. I only knit on them during work meetings – maybe two more staff meetings worth of knitting – or one staff meeting and two podcasts. What …

I had been looking for an excuse to try out Comfy ever since I knit up the buttons-and-closures swatches for the cover of the April catalog. It was so soft in my hands, and I loved the resulting fabric (even though I had to do even *more* dreaded seed stitch for the swatches). While I was editing Kelley’s podcast interview with Joan McGowan-Michael, I got to listen to them talking about Joan’s Shaped Lace Tee pattern in Knitting Lingerie Style. Apparently I’m an easily impressionable lady, and their discussion was enough to make me pull out my needles and get to work.

I had purchased 9 balls of Comfy in Blackberry when it came out, thinking that I’d make some kind of short-sleeved sweater. The amazing part to me is that I only ended up using just under 5 …

Whew! Now that it looks better, I’ll show it to you…. When I took the photos of my Apres Surf Hoodie on Monday, I placed the body strategically so you couldn’t see the sides because I was embarrassed by how the sides looked. Early on, I had decided that I didn’t want to deal with increasing and decreasing in pattern while I was knitting in the round, so I started at the hem with an extra 8 stitches in stockinette at each side. These stitches got decreased out to the waist, then increased back in to the bust. And, they looked terrible!
I’m glad the bottom side sections of stockinette are there because I will use them for the steeks for the side vents, but the side stockinette sections at the bust height were just plain ugly. Soooo, I …

After a little episode with a smoking cookie sheet under the broiler, I decided that I need some new pot holders. And, I wanted them to match my kitchen, which would require dyeing the yarn. The Fire King jadite color is one of my all-time favorites; but I can’t wear that color, so I painted my kitchen that color instead. I was so excited to try out dyeing in my new, dedicated dye pot. I followed Melissa’s excellent advice from her hand-dyeing podcast to test the dye color with the corner of a paper towel to get an idea of how it might look on the yarn. This was my first time to intentionally dye a pale, not fully saturated color. I’m pretty pleased with the results, although the yarn is a little bluer than perfect.

Yarn: Bare Peruvian …