stitch marker

happy valentine's day

Tina at Blue Moon Fiber Arts has made my year.

She made this colorway with inspiration from the palette for Knitalong.* I'm having trouble finding a word to describe how that feels. To get a colorway designed with your book in mind. When I visited Blue Moon for the first time I thought that was more than a person could ever hope for. To see so much of their yarn in its natural habitat. To meet the people who make this wonderful stuff. Then a colorway for my book! Then, then....! Tina wrote and said there were more colorways, a series. I haven't seen them yet and I'm dying to (no pun intended, actually).

All you knitalongers have made my year, too. We're nearing the end of our little rainbow here, with the book nearly drafted. Happy Valentine's Day to all of you.

And ggrlogan, smileshiner72, aka Jan-Knit, and Jennifer MW?  That yarn up there is yours. I randomly chose one person from each of the book knitalongs to give this to.** And there's one more skein to give away, after the Recycle Along ends. So please submit some recycled sweater photos.

* It's called Tide Pool. Here are several more shots of it up close.

**If you're reading this, please email me at dumbmail AT larissabrown DOT net with your mailing address to get your yarn!

recycled sweater things to admire

Well, you don't have to admire the ones I made. But I think you ought to admire all the others. Just click anywhere on the pictures to go to a flickr page with all the individual links, so you can visit every one of these photos and artists.

Just to be utterly clear, these are not all entered into the recycle along (yet?). They are simply some recycled things I found around flickr and enjoyed looking at, as I sit here thinking about redeploying old sweaters. Just gorgeous.

For me, what I really want to make is something like this anthropologie blanket.

This may be the only noble use for the bags full of  tangled yarn ends, and stacks of project beginnings and middles, that I have stored in my craft room. Well, or maybe felted doggie beds for strays. But one of these blankets for me, too.

regrand opening

For years there was a Kleenin' Korner laundromat in our neighborhood that had a rather crusty banner reading "REGRAND OPENING. (some date way in the past) Free Soap!" I've always loved how confidently wrong REGRAND OPENING seemed. It seemed to sing out its wrongness, instead of just chirping, oh, say, GRAND REOPENING? And the free soap? That was just the icing on the cake.

That place is gone now. I was just reminded of it, thinking about a title for today's recycling post. And so here we are at the last knitalong of the book! And it takes no knitting whatsoever! A recycle along! 

The idea is to make something, anything at all, out of a previously knitted item. It can be previously handknit or previously machine knit, by you or not by you (for example, from Goodwill). The little shrug above is one of my recent recycled crafts - my first attempt at blanket stitch. It combines an old Gap sweater with some Blue Moon Fiber Arts yarn in the Neptunite colorway, an oddly perfect match. The bird is just hanging out for interest.

If you're interested in joining, I'm posting all the details over on knitalong.net.

And I think I'll send some free soap to a randomly-chosen winner :-)

you win!

This post is really a big thank you to every one of you who knitted squares. They came from England, Canada, Portugal, and from across the US, everywhere from Alaska to Brooklyn. We laid them out yesterday (my crack squares team and I) and it's confirmed that we have enough to make at least two blankets. Whew! So one will be saved for book purposes and one more will go to Warm Up America.

And so, to thank everyone properly and really celebrate how fast a bunch of knitters can put together two awesome blankets, the prizes have been drawn. (How fast I can sew those squares together is another question entirely). But anyway, the prizes are as follows:

C, also known as Muscadine Hill, you've won this incredible sock yarn dyed by Adrian at Hello Yarn!

Cindy of Knit for Joy, you have won two skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca, a new yarn that's included in our book, along with a sweetly scented candle donated by Tracy from England.

Rhonda M., you've won two skeins of yarn - KnitPicks Shimmer in Grape Hyacinth and Cascade 220 in a pink shade - donated by Celaine. (It all comes around, right? Aren't you the same as C. above?)

Aurora, I did get your amazing square, and you've won yarn buttons and magnets from Girl on the Rocks.

Katie B. who made the Hawaii-colored square, without a blog(!), you have won a set of gorgeous stitch markers from Knitwit Momma.

JJ, you've won a very cool clay needlecase donated by the artist, Francie O. The prize one is green and salmon pink toned squares. (It'll go nicely with your "detail oriented" baggie system for storing your circs, JJ. Which I really admire)

And of course Froukje has won the two skeins of sock yarn from Funknits! And Froukje, you win it yourself. No giving away prizes until after you receive them (then I can't stop you). :-)

Thank you everyone. More news soon...

i can tell you this

It's so late for me, I'm sort of turning into a pumpkin as I write this. Or at least, I'm degrading to  the reading-and-writing-at-grade-level of a pumpkin. So I do not have a total square count for today, deadline in the mailbox day.

But I can tell you that the winner of the coveted and harder-to-win-than-expected Prize for Most Squares* goes to Froukje. The mysterious Froukje who lives right here in my town but has no blog and so I do not know anything. Anything! It's driving me mad. Froukje, who are you? Your squares are gorgeous. And blocked like my Uncle Les's hospital corners. I used two of yours (on top there) to practice sewing up today and they lined up so perfectly it was eerie.

Thank you. And raise your hand and tell us about yourself. :-)

More winners will be announced on Saturday, after I make sure all the names are entered and I find an adorable child or two at Mama n Me Knitting @ Sydney's to draw winners. There are more wonderful prizes than you know.

* The Prize for Most Squares, donated by the pattern designer herself, Shelley Mackie, is two balls of sock yarn from her online shop Funknits. Froukje, I'll contact you with details.

cave woman progress

I think it was Ursula LeGuin, but I'm really not sure and can't find a source, who wrote that it was easy for cavemen to tell exciting stories about the hunt, but that it wasn't so easy for the cave women who did repetitive work to tell stories about wrestling berry, after berry, after berry from the bush.

That's how I feel about any knitting I might show you tonight. It's good, I did it, and it's likely dull as hell to look at. If you're really curious, it's 5" of All Seasons Cotton in stockinette stitch on the little man's Drive Thru sweater.

Some more exciting things came to pass, though. M learned to knit! He's been threatening to do so for many, many months. I guess he thought with the book due in a few weeks this was as good a time as any. He went to Abundant Yarn's drop-in class tonight and Pat got him to make this. "It was going to be a washcloth...It's a bookmark."



And in the mail today, we got 4 more squares! I have to admit that I was a bit surprised at the fewness of them. That brings us to 27 total in hand, and we have about 400 people signed up who are ostensibly making them, with just 2 days left to get them here. I'm thinking either we're going to have a very high non-completion rate, or the UPS store is going to be reeling tomorrow.

However, even though they were few they were mighty. Very very pretty squares and all four went together and matched my coffee cup. Thank you Dana, Jenn, Michelle, and Beth.

p.s. Despite the truly wretched nighttime photos in this post, I do think I have a couple sources of photo tips and one or two of my own amateur insights to share about taking knitting photos for blogging. I'll write a post about that to answer a question or two I've gotten about photos. But please note, a lot of the good photos I use are credited to Sarah, who takes gorgeous photos and shares them all with me because she's a generous and kind person. She wrote here about her film camera, and about not taking digital shots. She takes no digital photos. None.

11 and rising

That's the square count as of today, what I have in hand. Every day Mom goes to her mailbox to pick them up and it's like Santa coming all over again. I have squares from Oiyi, Siri, Chawne (that's her square above), Katie, and Jessica (we sound like a private school cheerleading team).

I had a date with a neighbor today to block a shawl for our book. Erin has a whole room with a whole bed in it that no one is using, something that sounds strange and wonderful and far off as we are still living four humans and four pets to a tiny house during our construction. And Erin doesn't have as many creatures crawling and sniffing around her house. Anyway, her place is good for the shawl blocking. But. She wasn't home during nap. So I got to "sneak away" from my obligations for a few minutes today and I got to do some knitting. For myself.

I actually finished and bound off the front piece of my klaralund...

...so now all that is left is the back. I felt awfully guilty, but also realized I needed a break from thinking about more complicated patterns, where I am in charge and peoples' future project success is depending on me. Enough of that sort of pressure happens when I open the square envelopes and realize I have a lot of blanket making to do in the next week and a half.

But I'd almost forgotten how very nice it is to get all the notes and little presents that come along with such squares. Siri sent me a thrifted camo shirt that looks oddly like this fabric (which I never did get). Very cool! And she sent six squares, all gorgeous.

(She is seriously contending for the most squares prize, so anyone who has a few done you might want to crank it up, honey).

squares

A couple things have happened. Don't they always?

1. I knitted my own square finally.

And learned something. (You know, I've written before about how I hate when that happens).

I told y'all that Socks That Rock mediumweight would make a good 7" square. But I knitted mine in the above gorgeous Mudslide colorway, and knitters, it is Yooge. Great. It's got its own weather system. It's 8" if it's a centimeter. So, don't listen to me. Use your STR lightweight if you want to knit a 7" square with our knitalong pattern and size 2 needles.

2. People continue to be generous and kind and enthusiastic.

And it makes me happy to be alive and reminds me to always treasure things that people make. I see Sebastian learning to paint and being so small and vulnerable and new to creativity. Giving me things he makes with pride, even before he knows that there is a world where you can create things and have them rejected. He puts out such pure expressions. And I see that in each of us grown ups when we put ourselves out there and make something for someone else.

But I digress. What I was going to write about was how we have several prizes pledged for people who are knitting squares in the knitalong (still open for signups here until 1/20). Each square that lands in our mailbox by February 1st will be good for one chance in a big drawing.

• Knitwit momma has donated a set of her stitch markers!
• Celaine has donated a skein of Cascade 220 and a skein of Knitpicks Shimmer in Grape Hyacinth!
• Girl on the Rocks has donated a set of knitting buttons and a set of knitting magnets!
• And a non-random, volume prize!  Shelley--the designer of the pattern, who also owns a yarn shop--is going to donate two 100 gram balls of sock yarn from her online shop to the person who gets the most squares to me by February 1.

3. I heard today about another different square along.

And as I sat in my big green chair thinking about squares and generosity, and feeling my ususal generalized weepy sentimentality about my son growing up so fast and how I love him so fiercely, I thought I should really pay back the universe for all the goodness. So I'm knitting a square for a knitalong being run ironically by The Lone Knitter. Here is her call for squares.

And here is my effort (on top of my gigantic mudslide square).

I'm making my favorite kind of square (corner to corner dishcloth style with stripes of gorgeous yarn). I just feel like even though I'm busy, if I can't do this today then I have no business writing about the community of knitters. So thanks Lone Knitter for the opportunity to partake in this industrious indulgence.

no one's going anywhere

In Portland today. (Well, except maybe this guy.)

The news of snow is going nonstop on the big flatscreen TV at our neighborhood coffee shop, and I'm holed up here at the bar. I got stuck here partway to work this morning and I'm still here now at 2 pm. An hour into my normally-30-minute commute, having found myself no further than 8 blocks from my house, I stopped and ordered hot chocolate and turned on my computer and whipped out a scarf project. There are soooooooo many people here today at Cooper's Coffee. Lovely cabled hats and woolly scarves and arm warmers as far as the eye can see.

Today is a great day to knit a square, no?

Just note, please, that I've changed the size specs over at knitalong.net.

the next knitalong is only for squares

Julie called them the “precious coin of knitterly love.”

Afghan squares.  The go-to project for knitters when anyone, anywhere is in need.  No Knitalong book would be complete without them.

And I hope you will knit one or two.

My Knitting Life wrote about sewing up such squares, "It is humbling to be in the presence of the handiwork of so many knitters."  I know I will be awed and overwhelmed by your goodness and uniqueness if you do.

Please see the knitalong.net/testalong main page for information, and to register if you're interested in squaring along.

It's for the book, and for charity, and for fun. I hope you'll join me. (Maybe you'll pay more attention to your square than I did. I hope you can't see my mistakes.)