Happy Halloween!

The kids elected to carve a scary jack o'lantern this year...

I've been sneaking candy out of the bowl all night...and now I'm too shaky and sugared-out to knit. So I'm posting a picture of our pumpkin instead.

Yours in knitting,
Claire

Just one more...

Okay, three more...but they go SO FAST!!!!!!!



I'm in a huge state of denial about all the knitting I really have to do very very soon.... I keep telling myself, I'll just finish this one Lizard Ridge block and then I'll get to it...but then I can't wait to cast on another skein because it's so TOTALLY COOL to see how the waves will work up!!!! And anyway...knitting should be about calm, not about guilt! So while watching an unbelievable run of scary movies on (I think) American Movie Classics, - whatever channel 26 is... - I've managed to whip out 3 blocks. I've come up with a method of knitting them which will enable me to make all the blocks unique using only 5 colors of the Silk Garden.

This project is extremely portable -
I've taken it to riding lessons, the last of the outdoor lessons for this year maybe, considering the change in the weather this weekend...





And I worked on it while driving down to Cornstalking USA, at Buffalo Nickel Farm in Edinboro which, if you haven't been, is worth the trip. It's a corn maze in the shape of Sponge Bob and Friends. At the start, you're given a page with a grid of characters. As you proceed through the maze, you find stations with the character's pictures which you tape onto the grid. The pictures are actually bits of a map of the maze.
Here we are about to get started...We began the maze as a group, but almost immediately disagreement on strategy and the general competitiveness of the group led us to split up...



We met up briefly to compare notes... The girls had gotten off to a good start and were 4 or 5 characters ahead of us at this point,

However, my son was on a mission...at about the hour mark, we found the last, trickiest character, hidden in a corner of the maze, and after a mad dash through the twists and turns, we got to the finish less than a minute ahead of the girls!!!!




The maze is open till, I think, November 10th and is a ton of family fun, regardless of age and interest in Sponge Bob.

In the meantime, stop by Cultured Purl and check out the Silk Garden and Kureyon and see Shirani's blocks. They're lovely.

Yours in yarn,
Claire

So much yarn; so little time....

I am plagued right now with project-guilt...all together too many pending projects when all I really want to do is work on Lizard Ridge... (As a total aside here - I could have easily typed "alot of projects on the needles" but as my sister called to point out to me last night: "alot" just isn't a word... Susan doesn't very often take the time to read this blog, but she was so mortified by my error, that she searched on "alot" and was horrified to find 4 instances of it in my writing...As I pointed out to her, there are just as many occurrences of "a lot" as I do, in fact, know it's two words. I type fast, however, and tend to rely on Blogger's spell check which, it turns out, does NOT recognize the error of "alot". My sister did go on to say that maybe I rely a little tooooo heavily on this phrase, spelled correctly or not, and so, in deference to her, I wrote instead, "all together too many." And there you have it Susan!)

Anyhow...

Shirani and I were just agreeing today that Lizard Ridge really is our favorite thing to knit on these days. The yarn is wonderful, the blocks are manageably small, the pattern is simple, yet the short rows keep it interesting...just an all around satisfying project!!

The guilt though...there's that Sock It 2 Me class project...


meeting tonight so I REALLY need to be farther along on that...

Then there's the Lace Triangle Shawl that I'm knitting along with my students. It's a Christmas gift, but more importantly, how's it going to look when my class is leaving me in the dust?

And then of course - George's Mitered Blanket...if it weren't for all those bloody tails I might be nearly done with it. The class is around the corner (can you believe November is almost upon us????? WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE?


I cannot be alone in this kind of project guilt, can I??

So tonight, I am really really really planning on getting those miters out the back of the linen closet...I'm just going to do a couple more short rows first!

Yours in knitting,
Claire

Ooops!!!!

Daren drew my attention to a small boo boo in the Lace Triangle Shawl pattern. I'll contact everyone officially on Monday, however I'm hoping I might get to some of you sooner if I post the correction here.

Rows 35, 43, and 51 on Chart 2 should have "(R/L)" next to them. The chart itself is correct, you just need to move the marker 1 stitch to the right (before the centered decrease) on the first half, and 1 stitch to the left on the way back.

Sorry about that oversight; I hope it didn't hold many of you up.

Let me know how it's going. Good luck!

Yours in knitting,
Claire

Ann's Afghan

We're just about to wrap up another 7 month long afghan class and one of my star pupils finished her project ahead of schedule!



Everyone in the class is doing a great job. I've loved our meetings and it's been really rewarding seeing the group's progress over these months. This project really increases confidence! All that's left now is the seaming ladies!!

Yours in knitting,

Claire

Lizard Ridge

The Lizard Ridge Afghan, pictured here on Knitty, is so beautiful that the stash of Noro at Cultured Purl is disappearing like hotcakes! Shirani's midway through knitting up a small throw out of this totally cool short-row pattern. It uses Noro's Kureyon or Silk Garden yarn and 1 skein works up to be about 1 square. For a while now I've been sneaking peeks on the sly at Shirani's progress and I just couldn't take it anymore, so....

I picked up a few skeins of Silk Garden and decided to jump right in the deep end of the pool with another new project!

These are the colors I've chosen for my throw - all pretty bright and similar in tone so I think the overall effect will be nice.

And while it might seem INSANE for me to have purchased more Noro, considering how much Silk Garden I have in my stash, my logic here is that it would be really great to make two: one colorful, one more soothing in muted golds and teals (the stuff in my stash from last spring...) Yes, I could have gotten started on the yarn I already own...but I am really in the mood for some color and didn't quite think I could face muted gold this week.




Here's my progress to date...

The colors blend nicely. I love the richness and depth of Noro's colorways. And the Silk Garden softens beautifully when blocked. (I had to block right away to convince myself that the rather odd, udder-shaped bumps caused by the short-row technique would, despite initial appearance, wash out...and yes they did...)

I would have gotten more done this week, however...

what used to be my deck,




became,

almost overnight (not really because it was 2 years in the planning but it did seem to all-of-a-sudden go from "thinking about" to "OHMYGOD there's so much mud..."),

this...

--

that's my friend and builder extraordinaire, Tim Colvin, in the middle of the big mud pit!---


and then just as quickly
(his guys EJ, Doug, Richie, Bobby, and Jake, really are amazing!)

it became...





THIS!!!!

so....I haven't been doing alot of knitting, because this project has CONSUMED ME!!!! (but in the nicest way possible, there's not a nicer builder on the planet...)

for now though, it's back to LIZARD RIDGE..

We're talking about getting a knit along going. So stop by and take a look at the Noro before it's all gone!!

Yours in Silk Garden,
Claire

What a cute hat!

Rita knit up this adorable little hat that Leo is modeling...You can't see in this picture, but there's a little green leaf and stem at the top, making it a pumpkin... (Although I suppose it also works as a tomato!)

Stop by the shop and see it in person. There are several varieties of fruits & veggies included in the pattern.

Yours in knitting,
Claire