Category: tyv sock knitting

  • winners!

    Whoops, sorry it’s taken me so long to get to this! When I went to get the names of the winners, I realized that in the site redesign I’d forgotten to add a bit of code that numbers the comments for me to make it easy for draws! Well, that’s all fixed now.

    winners of my book!

    Without further ado, the names of the winners are Heather N, Nada and Jennifer (comment #19). I’ve emailed the winners, so you should get your book shortly!

    Also, since it seems like it’s been a rather long time since I had an FO to show, here’s the mini Simple Yet Effective shawl out of Noro Kureyon Sock.

    noro mini shawl

    Noro Mini Shawl
    Pattern: my Simple Yet Effective shawl
    Yarn: Noro Kureyon Sock, 1 skein
    Needles: 3.5 mm Addis
    Finished Size: approx. 45″ across the top, 19″ deep

    love those stripes!

    I’m reformatting my pattern into a little pattern card, memo size (half the size of letter paper) to sell at lettuce knit along with the yarn. It looks like this, which I’m quite happy with:

    (ETA: I’ve decided to offer the pattern for sale, so I’ve taken down the photo of the pdf.)

    Since it’s a free pattern and all I’m not going to worry about it if you guys want to decipher the pattern from that screen cap to knit it! I just wanted to have something small and inexpensive as a pattern to accompany the Kureyon sock (or any sock yarn, for that matter). Now I just have to figure out how to print them properly!

    It’s quite a little shawl, but great for an accent scarf.

    noro shawl, on

    And it photographs awfully nicely!

  • giveaway time!

    Apologies for the lack of blog posting! I’ve been working and otherwise a little busy this week:

    that's a lotta tomatoes!

    Yesterday I (with some help) canned two bushel boxes of roma tomatoes from the grocery store – getting to the last of the season, they were only $10 each! I’m so tempted to go back and get another one to make sauce. The tomatoes that didn’t make the canning cut went into a vat of sauce to be frozen, and the good ones became 29 L jars of halved or diced tomatoes plus 18 500-ml jars of diced tomatoes.

    I can’t wait to crack some open a little further along in the winter! Mmmm.

    Another random food-related little note – I’ve been working on following a hypoallergenic and anti-candida diet these days (except for at my launch party, that was a special occasion!) and today I made the most awesome snacky food!

    brown rice oven chips

    I found brown rice tortillas in the frozen section of the grocery store where I bought the tomatoes – they have quite an extensive health food-type selection. I had ripe avocados today, so it was time for the guacamole and chips! I cut a couple tortillas into wedges, sprayed them with a little olive oil (I’ve got a little pump bottle that you can fill with whatever you want), sprinkled them with a little salt and garlic powder, and then baked them in the toaster oven for a couple minutes at 400 F. They were super crispy and tasty, just what I wanted. I’ll definitely be making these again. I think they’re go great with all the soups I’ve been making.

    In other news, I had my book launch party at lettuce knit last Wednesday and it was great! Unfortunately I suffered a bout of camnesia and didn’t take photos at all. People dropped by, yummy food was had (thanks megan!), I signed books and even managed to knit a little bit.

    And now to celebrate, how about I send some more books out into the world?

    53.365 - good mail day

    I’ve got THREE (3) copies of my book, Teach Yourself Visually Sock Knitting, to send away to three blog readers! All you need to do is leave me a comment to this post pointing me to something that you think is cool, interesting, funny, delicious (and vegetarian), or otherwise entertaining!

    Comments will close Friday, October 3 at 11:59 PM EDT (can you believe it’s almost October already?). Winners will be chosen at random.

  • the yarn…and a first!

    I bought a lot of yarn while I was away. A lot. I only bought one piece of clothing (an expensive but amazing, made-in-France skirt) and the one pair of shoes (which, by the way, are Doc Martens for anyone who asked), but I bought a hell of a lot of yarn. I hadn’t really intended to, but whatever. Yarn makes a great souvenir!

    I got some at k1 in Edinburgh, some at Le Bon Marche in Paris, but most of it came from iknit day.

    yarn from iknit (and fabric from liberty)

    In the top left, there’s cashmere from Devon Fine Fibres, some for presents and some for me – they raise their own flock, and have a very limited supply of yarn, but it’s sooo beautiful. And inexpensive, for sure.

    Top right is organic merino from ColdHarbour Mill, a working mill and textile museum! They had 100g skeins of the undyed organic merino on for 5 pounds, and I bought a sweater’s worth of the 4ply plus some others for gifts.

    Bottom left is two skeins of Bowmont wool from Devon Fine Fibres, a new rare cross breed. It’s a mix of merino and shetland, and is really soft in a still-wooly way! They didn’t have much left when we got there (I blame erqsome, she bought a sweater’s worth of the grey) so I just got the two skeins. Now, what to make?

    And in the bottom right, not yarn of course, it’s fabric from Liberty. Expensive, but sooo pretty. I’m going to have to make a few more practice skirts before I commit to cutting this up!

    And the first?

    48.365 - my first signed book!

    Last night I held my book for the first time – a box came into the store just when I was starting to work last night. And I sold my first book, to my friend Jeff (I’m sure books have sold so far, but this was the first one *I* sold!). And I signed my first book.

    Whew.