Charity Knitting

Hope all of my friends in the US had a great Thanksgiving holiday! On Wednesday Henry had the day off so we went to visit my mom and pick up some of her finished knitting. My mom is a very proficient knitter, and nowadays mostly knits for charity. If you click on the CIC label on the right hand side column there are some pictures of her knitting from couple of years ago.

It's been rainy so I have to take pictures indoor, the flash really hurts colors.

child's vest

berets and Rascal

knit/crochet baby blanket #1

more berets (wish I got these before Halloween)

baby vest

knit/crochet baby blanket #2

knit/crochet baby blanket #3

little girl hat and scarf set

child's vest

Happy Black Friday! When you are not busy shopping, join the cyber party on Andrea's blog, Tami's blog, and leave me a comment!

The Knitting Room

I worked at The Knitting Room in San Jose when I stayed home with Henry way back. The owners Mary Ann and Ed both had retired from high tech, so they were my mentors and role models in knitting, fiber arts, and life. This week is their 20 years anniversary as owners of the shop and they put up a big sale, everything in the shop was 20% off. I was very happy to have a chance to visit and catch up with Mary Ann.

Cascade 220

Manos de Uruguay lace

Yarn bowls

Finally have a picture with Mary Ann!

I had a hard time choosing what to buy as always. I had never seen this Plymouth Mushishi before, it's 95% wool, 5% silk, 491 yards, enough to make a little wrap. The yarn feels warm and lofty, and the silk gives it a nice texture.

Loot: Plymouth Yarn Mushishi

Happy Fiber Arts Friday! Join the party on Andrea's blog and leave me a comment!

St Brigid Progress, Ireland

I'm making good progress on St. Brigid. The back (draped on the back of the chair) is done and front is more than half way done. The back has six pattern repeats, and I just finished the fourth one on the front, so time to think about neckline pretty soon.

Completely unrelated. A few weeks ago I received a private message on Ravelry from a knitter in Ireland. She saw 20 skeins of WEBS store brand, Valley Yarns Stockbridge, in my stash and was wondering if I could sell it to her. WEBS doesn't ship internationally. I knitted Spencer Day in this yarn and rather liked it, but to help a fellow knitter I was ready to sacrifice. I figured I could always replenish at next Stitches, as if I wouldn't do that already. I emailed her back, told her I'd sell her at retail plus shipping. She replied back quickly and said if shipping rate was reasonable we had a deal. (first alarm). So I went on to check the shipping rates. The big carriers, UPS, Fedex, DHL, all wanted $140+ for 5lbs, $80 worth of yarn. USPS was the most reasonable, at $45. That's insane. Someone on Ravelry mentioned if we were lucky we might be able to find a traveler to carry the yarn in luggage. Low and behold, I actually found another knitter on Ravelry who was going to Ireland from Maryland in couple of weeks. It would cost me about $10 to send the yarn to her, and she even offered to deliver the yarn to the buyer if she was in Dublin. I was so happy! During the entire time I kept in touch with the buyer, telling her what I was trying every day. The day after I found the hand carrier, I got an email from the buyer, she was laid off from her journalist job and had to cut back her yarn spending. She apologized over and over for putting me through the trouble. I was very surprised we could make this deal work at all, and even more surprised how it didn't work in the end. But I was happy to keep the yarn!

Happy Fiber Arts Friday! Join the party on Andrea's blog and leave me a comment!

Sock Knitting Phantom

My friend Jocelyn is an engineer. I've known Jocelyn since I joined the South Bay Knitters in 1998. We both work in high tech and our kids are close in age, so we have a lot to share. In the past couple of years, Jocelyn got addicted to sock knitting machines, so she bought a few of them (something to the number of 10). Jocelyn is a huge fan of The Phantom of the Opera, so she named the machines as her cast of characters. Here they are in her own words:

"There's Christine the 2007 NZAK, Buquet a Verdun 47, there are the two Legare 400s Firmin and Andre, the large Legare Piangi, the Gearhart Madame Giry, the Canadian AK Meg, the Verdun Semi-Automatic Raoul, and of course the English AK the Phantom itself."

Did I mention she's an engineer? I'm not sure if I understand 50% of this. But if you counted, that's only nine. Her most recent acquisition, and I had the honor of seeing her working in action this week, is " NZAK Mark IV. It's the cadillac of all machines, with steel inserts, brass stoppers, she's a marvel, and my Carlotta."


Jocelyn's own blog entries about the machines are here, here, here and here. Stop by and tell her how awesome she is!

One of these black ones is Phantom, I think the one on the left.

The pink ones (they are more red in real life) are Christine
(the bigger one on the stand on the right) and Meg.

Carlotta and Jocelyn in action.

A full size sock in less than an hour!

Happy Fiber Arts Friday! Join the party on Andrea's blog and leave me a comment!