Here’s some eye candy for ya:  a few FO’s!
Sari Silk bag:  this was knit from some recycled-sari silk yarn, although at this point I’m not sure exactly which manufacturer.  This major FO accomplishment started life as "Unbiased", a bag pattern from Knitty, Fall 2004.
Unfortunately, mine was biased.  When I sewed the pieces together, they did [...]

Oh, hi. You got that basketweave sock done all the way to the heel then?  Not quite?  OK, good, we’ll "pick up" where we left off.  (ha, ha, little knitting humor there.  Very little.)
Last time we went through the exercise of setting up the basketweave pattern st so that it was centered on the [...]

Well, life has been happening with a vengeance around our house the past few days.  So you’ll have to forgive me for just throwing out a couple of updates here.
First of all, there are a few spots left in the Knitting 911 class this Thursday night at Knitting Bee.  This class is always a lot [...]

(This is the second in a series of posts discussing the process of designing DH’s basketweave socks.)
We left off Part 1 with a completed toe, and have discovered that in order to have a sock foot that is about 7" circumference, we have ended up with 64 sts total for the foot of the sock.
Part [...]

Oh, happy day!  DH has another pair of handknit socks, and I have one less UFO.  (Believe it or not, I’m down to just SIX UFO’s.  My advice is to keep an eye out for plagues of locusts.)

I started these socks on the trip to New Zealand, with yarn I bought there:  Naturally Haven, a 100% [...]

Last week, I wrote about some great things I am fortunate to have in my life:  DH, yarn, a specific cat.
This week, I have even more great things to write about:  specifically, Ben and Jerry’s "Birthday Cake" ice cream some really fabulous, generous knitters and blog readers, not to mention family and friends!  My heartfelt [...]

Yes, both of you already know my ffffoooo…  ffooorrrr…  my birthday is this week.  (Turns out it’s a bigger mental milestone than I thought it would be, actually.)
Thankfully, I already have a lot of great things in my life.  My DH is first and foremost — then there’s a hutch full of yarn, and my [...]

This week, I finished off four — count ‘em, four — UFO’s in the stack.  Not only that, I have a good shot at finishing off a fifth.
I’m as shocked as you are.  Probably more so.
Admittedly, none of them was a great deal of work.  (That part is somewhat more shocking, actually.  This project has [...]

The rest of the old Buddhist saying is, "…then the teacher will appear."
Well, usually I’m the knitting teacher — but in this case, I became the student. 
Last Friday, I was grousing about the short black socks I had knitted for DH while on the trip in New Zealand.  Although I had faithfully copied the original socks, [...]

One of the cold hard truths I learned when I quit the engineering job and started setting my own schedule was this:

You can’t get anything done on the days when DH is home.

It was surprising to me — after all, why on earth should it matter if he is upstairs in bed sick with a [...]

I’m sure at least one of you is wondering — "Well, fine, lots of sheep, some yarn stores, but did she actually get any knitting done on the trip?"
Well, yes and no.  OK, well, actually, there can only be one accurate answer there, which is YES, I did knit a couple of things on the [...]

The "Z" here refers to NEW ZEALAND!!  Yes, here I am on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Queenstown, New Zealand.
Ah, the magic of modern air travel.  Here is how bad it was getting back home in PDX just before we left.
And after only 4 separate flights and 34 hours of misery traveling, here is what I was [...]

Here is what it looks like from my office window and my backyard these days:
 

And here is the yoke to my top-down raglan sweater so far.

With all this snow, and everything being cancelled, you might think I’d have gotten a bit more knitting done, wouldn’t you?
However, there have been extenuating circumstances.  A couple of colds [...]

Oh, boy.  It’s been, like, a week and a half.  What happened to blogging?
Well, I’ll tell you what happened to blogging.  Life happened, that’s what.  That, and as I mentioned recently, knitters wanting knitting lessons have reappeared this fall with a vengeance.  In the past month, my teaching hours each week have been up 50-70% [...]

OK, I know both of you were kind of worried about it, but I believe I have figured out an elegant solution to a looming knitting problem:
What on earth do I take along to knit in New Zealand??
See, it’s a three-week trip (not to mention a loooong flight), so I couldn’t possibly go without taking [...]

Saturday afternoon:  DH and I are running some errands together, so he is driving and I am knitting.  He turns into the Home Depot parking lot, finds a spot, switches off the engine.  Usually he walks around the back of the vehicle, and meets me there — but this time he stayed in his seat, [...]

Out of the blue, my DH sent me an email this morning:  

"Our friends at the Art Institute of Portland are having an Open House on Saturday (9.13) afternoon starting at 11am until 2pm. Their mission is to help you develop your artistic ideas into abilities and your passion into a creative career. Students can earn [...]

Hey, are you getting as sick of the UFOlympics as I am?
It was fun to begin with — it was great to get a couple of projects out of the way and all that — but I’m getting a definite feeling of stuck-in-a-rut now.  Maybe this is why the real Olympics only last a couple of weeks, [...]

If you think waaaaay back, you might remember a few issues I had while trying to make some felted slippers for myself.
Of course, these were not just your garden variety felted slippers.  No, I had to make it harder than that.  My goal was to replicate my dearly beloved, but quite elderly, pink furry bunny slippers:  Hip and Hop.
I had a couple [...]

Hey, we’re back from our trip to [Sasquatch->] over the Memorial Day Weekend.  And it was an interesting weekend.
(BTW, this post really does include something pretty interesting about sock heels too, although that bit’s way at the end.  Just skip down there if you must.)
Sasquatch is a big 3-day music festival held annually in an [...]

What a week it has been.  I had a birthday, so I took a few days off — DH had the flu, so he did too.  Is it just me, or is it darned near impossible to get anything done when your husband is home?  So, not much posting going on.
Last week I did fix [...]

Over the weekend, I had a touch of  "the depression" *.
Specifically, I had the knitting depression.
I didn’t have a single decent current project, the UFOs were one big pile o’ crap, I hated everything in my hotlist **.

I HAD NOTHING TO KNIT.

If this sounds to you a bit like closet angst (I HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR), you [...]

As part of "fun weekend", DH and I went and visited a place on the other side of the river, called "SCRAP".

SCRAP — The School and Community Reuse Action Project – is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and our mission is to promote creative reuse and environmentally sustainable behavior by providing educational programs and affordable materials to the [...]

On Saturday, DH and I went downtown to play a little bit in the nice-ish weather.
His idea of fun was to pick up some tickets for the upcoming Joe Jackson show, have lunch someplace new, and take some photos of the downtown bridges.
My idea of fun was to stop by and check out a new yarn shop.
Fortunately for me, [...]

Admittedly, I haven’t written much in the past week (heck, I haven’t written anything).  But, I have an excellent excuse reason.  Actually, several reasons…

#1 reason is, I have a bad Continental knitting habit of using my right index finger to help out on each and every stitch.  I don’t actually need to use it — I can [...]

The other night, I complained mentioned to my loving, caring DH how my feet had been freakin’ FREEZING ALL DAY.
DH was kicked back sideways on the chair-and-a-half, with his legs propped up over the arm of the chair and his feet aloft.  He said smugly in a very meaningful manner,

"YOU should wear hand-knit socks more often."

Well, it was obvious just [...]

Aaaaaand here they are, in all their glory:

These socks comprise many of my favorite sock-knitting techniques to date.  I prefer techniques that work well and are easy to memorize, so for those of you who want to know the nuts & bolts, here’s a brief recap:

 Tess’ Best Toe-up Socks recipe
Judy’s excellent-(but-not-magical) CO:  20 sts.

(M1, YO) inc to [...]

OK, it’s high time I wrote something new & exciting.  Hmmm…!
First, let me tell you that the site has gotten just a teensy bit better, with the addition of two new pages:  look up at the top, on the navigation bar, and you’ll see "Site Map" as well as "Knit Links".
The former will give you a listing [...]

Well, on Sunday evening (Sunday the 13th!) I finally cast on another pair of socks for DH.
The yarn is Lana Grossa "Meilenweit 6 fach" in a true solid dark green – his favorite color.  I like doing toe-up socks, so I don’t have to bother too much with a gauge swatch or any math or anything.  I [...]

Anyone remember this?
Ahem.  OK, I admit I’ve been stalling a bit.  Last time, I said I was going to address the fitting issues, which leads me straight to a couple of my personal bugaboos.
Let’s just state right up front that I have dinky arms.  They are so short, I can shop in the Petite section and [...]

Both my sister and a college friend recently sent me copies of this Wall Street Journal article about knitting.
More specifically, it’s about "Sock Wars", where the idea is that everyone playing the game is an "assassin" and has an assigned  "target".  You are supposed to "assassinate" that person by knitting them a pair of socks, and then you send [...]

Last night, Don said he had a “dangerous” question for me.
“Did you knit me another pair of black socks?” he asked.
I knew right away what had happened.  After all, there are only two pairs of hand-knit black socks in the house.  Yes, it was quickly confirmed that the black heavyweight socks I had made for me (Mission [...]

Every so often, of course, the subject comes up. Why (the expletive) would anyone HAND-KNIT a pair of socks?
One year, at my family reunion, I presented one of my brothers with a pair of obviously hand-knit socks, in his all-time favorite color – dark purple.

(Where, you ask, did I get dark purple sock yarn? Funny [...]

Last Friday, I made another attempt at a pair of felted slippers for myself. (For those of you keeping score, DH has a pair already that he wears & loves – made in 2004.) 
The original concept behind this project is that I have a fabulous but very elderly pair of slippers that I’d like to [...]

So, you may have noticed that in the previous post, I said that my sister was knitting a sweater for her fiance.
YIKES! but what about the famous, infamous Sweater Curse? 
I didn’t know about the Sweater Curse then: I was only 6, after all. The Curse didn’t work on her though, because my sister did get [...]

“A year from now, you may wish you had started today.” – Karen Lamb
OK, so I’m starting today. Hiya. Welcome to my blog! I intend for this to be a blog about knitting, mainly, with some color commentary about life and whatnot thrown in.

My goals for this blog / website:
 

to disseminate good, accurate, free information [...]