We interupt this knitting blog....

to bring a cute baby picture.


This is where I'll be this week - in Austin visiting my friend Suzanne & her baby Annabelle.  This is a shrug that I made for her & proof of why I'll knit her anything her heart desires.  A fun baby knit, an appreciative mom & a cute baby to show it off.  Win win win.

How I Got My Sock Mojo Back

I have 5 drawers like this. This one is full (except for that one sock in the very bottom right hand corner that we aren't going to talk about). I think it's so pretty. Is it wrong that I'm on a mission to fill my lingerie drawers with hand knitted socks?

What?

I DO NOT have socks just like these that I'm making. Why do people keep asking me that?



Clearly they are very different.

All About Kay

Last year I knit the Autumn Pi Shawl for my mother in law for her birthday.



Dawn found it from new patterns on Ravelry & it turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. A pi shawl, leaves, pretty. I was the first project on Ravelry other than the designer and I will admit that made me very nervous. I usually like for many other people to knit a pattern first so they can work out the kinks in it before I jump in. But I was knitting on a deadline for a gift & I couldn't find anything else that fit the bill as nicely as this one. I jumped in with both feet & despite some issues with my yarn (that Dream in Color sure is pretty stuff but NO dye lots & much variation between skeins), I knit this sucker up & could barely wait the month or so I had to for it to be her birthday. She absolutely loved it, cried when I gave it to her & hey, to me, that's an appropriate response for this shawl. I almost cried when I gave it to her too.

You know how sometimes you knit a pattern & you just "get it"? I love when I click with a designer's pattern writing style & can follow where they are going with it. That's what happened to me with this pattern. I was really impressed with the well written directions (both charted & written) & I started chatting with the designer, Kay Meadors, online. She was absolutely lovely & I started following her designs. I immediately put a few more in my ever growing queue - not the least of which is A Piece of Pi. Looks easy, fun, very pretty, extremely wearable. So much so that I cast on for it this week.

So imagine my excitement when Kay contacted me last week to see if I was interested in test knitting her new design, Notes of Lyra. She let me steal this picture from her:



You can see more about it in this blog post.

I'm making the larger size with beads. In the spirit of my "don't save the good yarn for the pope" rule for 2010, I'm using this Madeline Tosh silk. Yum.


I'll let you know how it goes. So far I knit about 17 rows & don't really love the needles I'm using, so I'm off to get some Addi lace needles today & I think I'm going to start over. More time spent with this yarn will not hurt my feelings.