I have to admit that I’m not the hugest Harry Potter fan in my family. My dad and my sister have both read all of the books, and I’ve only read, um, 2 chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone. BUT I have seen all the movies. Since my dad is such a big fan, I’m thinking of knitting him something from Charmed Knits for either Christmas or his birthday in March (his birthday is looking likelier and likelier as Christmas gets closer and closer!) Picking colors for a lot of the projects in the book is pretty easy since Alison Hansel used lots of Knit Picks yarns, but since we’ve introduced some new colors, I’ve been thinking a bit about which yarns I’d actually choose.
This post on Ravelry was the final push I needed to compile a list of all the …

So, I am working through my lace yarn stash. I’m sorry I keep showing you all discontinued colors in my projects. About a year ago, when we put the discontinued lace yarn colors on sale, I bought a TON (while, not quite literally, but enough to keep me knitting for a long while, obviously). On the upside, this enabled us to bring in lots of new, delicious colors of lace yarn for your enjoyment!

I absolutely love the shape of the Curved Shawl from Victorian Lace Today. It’s the only shawl I’ve ever worn that actually stays in place during the day. I knew my hand-dyed yarn was a little busy for a lace pattern, so I decided to make a shawl in simple garter stitch, but with the curved shawl shaping. I’m going to use two hanks for the body of the shawl and …

All of us here at Knit Picks, including Sheldon, would like to wish you and yours a very happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day, mateys.

In honor of this auspicious holiday, we’re giving you a sneak peek at one of the new upcoming colorways of Imagination– Pirate King.

We hope you like it, it will be available in late February. If any of you land lubbers try to steal it before then, we’ll have to make you walk the plank!

Buccaneer Humboldt got in on the fun sporting a Kettle Dye eye patch and a stitch marker earring and protecting his booty of blueberry crumble bread.
How are you going to celebrate? Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum? …

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 been away so long! I think I may finally be caught up after my vacation, so can post a few pictures of what I’ve been working on. The Myrtle Leaf Shawl went with me to Italy and really helped the airplane and layover hours pass pleasantly. It’s getting a little big to carry around now, so I found an old plate box to keep it in. I love cool containers! I’m about a third of the way through the second hank of Shadow lace yarn. I’m just going to make the Shawl two hanks long and then use a third hank for the border.

Pattern: Myrtle Leaf Shawl from Victorian Lace Today
Yarn: Shadow in Campfire, a discontinued color from my stash
Needles: US 3 Harmony Wood 24″ fixed circular
And, here are my meeting socks. It looks like I’ve been …

Parker’s Baby Blanket is finished! And, I used my Flip Mino to record a little lesson on applied I-cord borders.

Here is the blanket without the border.

And, here are my little videos! The first one covers getting the applied I-Cord started.

Now I show you how to turn a corner!

Now join the ends with Kitchener Stitch!

Here is the Moderne Baby Blanket with the border! Notice how I have enough yarn left over to make a Baby Surprise Jacket? I always get 9 balls of each color so be sure I don’t run out. I figure that I can always use up the extra Swish Worsted yarn in a sweater, or something! <

I’m really excited to finally get to share with you a yarn line that we’ve been working on for 9 months! Imagination is a hand-painted Superwash Merino and Alpaca blend sock yarn. It’s machine washable (we weren’t sure if it would be, but it passed the machine washing tests with flying colors), and it knits up to be slightly thicker than our existing sock yarns, probably because the Alpaca content makes it a little fuzzier and lofty. The photo on the right is my ad photo, so you can see the names (click for bigger).
I thought I would give you a behind the scenes look at how we picked colors for this yarn, which has up to 7 colors in each colorway. At our fall color choosing meeting, Tina and Kelley approached Katie and me and asked that we come up with …

This has been a week for finishing things. It’s not every day that I get to prop my feet up on my desk, take a photo of them and call it work!
Pattern: Two at Once, Toe Up, Magic Loop Socks
Yarn: superwash Merino/nylon Sock Blank
Dye: turquoise Jacquard Acid dye
Needles: US size 0 40″ nickel plated fixed circular

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 <

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 …