Patterns & Kits now available on EarthFaire

I'm very excited to announce that Ellen, at EarthFaire, has chosen several of my patterns to pair into kits and also to sell as patterns.
The first one is "Starflower Beret" which as a kit comes with beads and your choice of 3 yarns.  She is also featuring this pattern through February. So if you purchase the pattern you will get beads for free.

                              Select and paste the URL below or click on the beret in the sidebar on the right.

                 http://earthfaire.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=starflower+beret

Valentine Sock Marathon Complete

MVOS' socks are on their way

Jim's are now done too!!!!!

And I finally took another pic of Jim's vest.

Tried to do all this yesterday from my iPad but Google is not playing nice with iPads so I couldn't upload any photos unless they were on Picassa or in my blogs.  sheesh.  The app they wanted to me to download had 2.5 stars. Not going there.

And this was taken from our dining room window yesterday.

Valentine Socks Update II

MVOS' socks are done, wrapped and going out tomorrow!  = 200/400

Can't show them but I can say they are knit from a blend of merino, silk, mink and cashmere yarns.

OK!

Sock on the left is at ~78/100.       4 of 6 inches on the cuff remain.

Sock on the right is at  ~89/100.    2 of 6 inches on the cuff remain.

Total percentage is now

~ 92

ta da

14th - today = 6 days to go.  This is so doable.

         

Clutter or not

Is it too much winter?  Too much staying inside so I see the mess?  Or the fact that the clutter has gotten to critical mass?  Whatever it may be I sure am seeing piles and trying to do something about it.  Everyday I either throw something out or  move stuff around to be more compact.  At any rate, I am not seeing much improvement yet but hope by the end of March there will be actual space under tables and even on tables.

Yesterday I was reading Franklin Habit's blog and he said:
   "Speaking of ugly truths, I reached a point in my workroom where the options were either to clean the place out or to brick up the doorway and pretend it was never there. City real estate prices being what they are, I settled upon the former.
   ... I also slotted upwards of 100 million loose knitting patterns into binders.
   For somebody who uses patterns as little as I do, I've acquired more than my fair share of them..."


Wow can I relate.   The other day, before reading that blog,  I opened the buffet table in the kitchen, piled all the loose patterns onto it, sorted them, put the ones not in sleeves into sleeves (96 new sleeves to be exact) and then into some old binders Jim gave me.  However I still don't have a real place to put them

                        so they are piled on the chair in the Yarn Room.  Sigh... that chair holds a lot. 

                                                                       The floor too.

I have made a date with Joanne to help me sort the yarn room next week.  I am actually scared of what we will uncover but hope she will help with tossing twelve zillion small bits of yarn into the trash and who knows what all else.  That room holds a lot of art supplies too.  When it had only one or two uses it was fine but now that it holds knitting, swatches, pattern books, hand spun and commercially spun yarn, my laptop and its accessories, UFO's, art supplies, crafting supplies like lots of beads etc, it's really overloaded.
And what to do with all those old magazines?  I know they are worth something but......

I could board it all up and might only miss a few things (this week) but we don't have another room for me to fill so this one has to be it.

Valentine Socks Update

MVOS' second sock is now at 84.5%,
bringing the grand total to 81.6%.  And I must say that the first completed sock looks really pretty.

knit knit knit purl

I'll be taking one of Jim's to the Ithaca anti fracking info meeting this afternoon. Should get at least an inch done.  NOT ONE WELL NOT ONE WELL NOT ONE WELL in NYS.

A Little Valentine's Math

After my holiday knitting, I did not get to take a knitting break.. sigh.  I try to give myveryownsister a pair of socks for Valentine's and her birthday as she, along with Jim, are my most enthusiastic and appreciative recipients.

Often, Jim gets a pair for Christmas but this year he got a hand spun, hand knit (on US5's) vest. (now where is the pic I took of that vest?). He does love the vest but still hankered for a new pair of socks.  Being a sucker for someone who so enjoys my knitting, I promised that the pair I had started last summer would be done for Valentine's Day.  I do tend to compartmentalize my projects which is how I often get into a knitting frenzy trying to make deadlines.

So I have been dividing my time between mvos' socks and Jim's.  Of course just doing socks becomes boring in a very short amount of time so I have amused myself with a Mystery KAL

and thinking about a new bottom up scarf/shawlette idea.  OK so a few times I stopped knitting to make a swatch or three, but really, they took up no time and kept me interested, even though Jim did mention the digression with a bit of jealousy in his voice.

So here we are on February 1. The thought for this morning was that I should take stock and see how close these objects are to finishing.  My sister's socks have to be mailed so I have concentrated on them for the past week.  One is actually now completed and the other is ready for the heel to be turned.  Both of Jim's are on the cuffs.  Sounds good to me but just to make sure I thought I'd formalize that into actual percentages and then into a plan for the next 2 weeks.

So if I count each sock as 100%, I then need to get to 400% to finish.

One mvos sock completed = 100%
The other mvos sock is ready for the heel to be turned so is at ~43%
(That's because I count the toe as ~10%, the instep with gussets as ~33.%, the heel as 25% and the cuff as ~33%).

One of Jim's socks is about 2 inches into the cuff so ~75%.
The other is just above the heel so ~66%.

That all adds up to about 285% out of 400% or about 71.25% of the total.
If I get mvos' heel turned today I will then be at 77% of goal.

I think hers can be done by Monday or Tuesday which gives the package plenty of time to get to Rhode Island and then leaves me a week to get Jim's done.  His are way slower as there are 80 stitches on US0 needles while mvos' are done with US1.5 and 60 sts.  Her yarn is a bit thicker too.

WOW this is so doable!!!!  Nothing like a bit of math to see reality.  My reward will be to actually get back to some socks I started for myself almost a year ago and to start that new shawlette.