The Official Manly Yarn Contest

A couple days ago, I posted about the Manly Yarn Contest. I thought that I would give it it's own post and make things easier for all contestants wanting to play!

Here's the deal:

You - provide your idea(s) for the perfect skein of manly yarn - the one that you want but can never find. The "perfect" skein for knitting and gifting to the favorite man in your life, or at least one he won't look down upon as girly.

Me - I put your name into a drawing for at least one skein of free sock yarn from Yarn Love. (You'll get to choose!) If we get a lot of entries, I'll increase the boodle accordingly. I'll draw the winner April 1st and let them know.


Stats -
* You can enter multiple times, as long as you provide a unique color idea each time

* Enter by posting a comment or emailing me at katie AT shopyarnlove DOT com (remove at & dot and insert appropriate symbols)

* Anyone can win and you don't have to buy anything! So even if your particular suggestion or suggestions doesn't make it into the inital Manly Yarn Collection at Yarn Love, that's no reason for not being able to win.

* Be as specific as you can about color. Include links, graphics or pics of the colors you have in mind if you can.

* Tell your friends. Seriously, this is free sock yarn! Grab a button and tell your friends about it.

The first Manly Yarn Collection will be available with the Summer Collection, early May 2007. This is your chance to be a part of it!

All grown up in three short weeks

You may remember forever ago, when I posted a picture of twin potties, sitting there new in the filter summer morning sun. Another picture of two girls sitting on their new potties in the summer morning sun. Well, the summer morning sun has faded into the the thin, clear light of cold air, and the potties are no longer gleaming and new. Three weeks ago today the girlies announced to me that they wanted to wear their big girl panties. I assented on the condition that from that day forward they would not wear diapers again.

The first day was hell. They went every 10 - 15 mintues. There was no "holding it"; they went as soon as their bladdder had anything in it. Forget the timer at an hour, or 30 minutes or even 20....between the two of them, 10 minutes was usually too long. The second day was better. At least we could go 30 minutes between accidents. The third day Miss E started to go. She was good about peeing but forget poop. Halfway through the fourth day Miss G went once! We still don't spend a lot of time out of the house, and nights are spent in Pull Ups, but they now go without prompting. Only occasionally is there an accident and that's usually due to not getting pants pulled all the way down before proceeding.

Today they called me upstairs to the bathroom, and proudly pointed to the two potties. Both has "presents" of the solid type in them. They'd been sitting up there, side by side pooping. They were so proud. They are so big. Birthday number three is still nearly two months away and they can now go poop on the potty by themselves. I see them gaining independence every day. I miss the little girls they used to be. I love the toddlers they are. I wonder what happened to the time and why I didn't notice the changes. The tiny changes every day, so small they sneak past consciousness until the change is so defined it can't be missed. I remember with perfect clarity the day we brought them home from the hospital. Both 18" long, one weighing slightly less and the other slightly more than 5 pounds. It's bittersweet. Change is here. Change is coming. I wonder what's next?


Today I took a 1/3 knit wash cloth off my shelf, cut it off the two balls of yarn it was being knit from and then hacked it into small rectangles, about 1" in width. Am I dangerously insane? I think not. I just thought that I could pull out some of the ends and spin it into yarn. I do wonder what people would say if (the fiber uninitiated) were able to peer through my office window to see me happily cutting a hand knitted object into shreds. It was freeing, though. No more UFO staring me down from it's jumbled and unhappy corner of the open yarn shelves.



Yarn Swag: just another pound and a half of Joan of Arc gracing my workspace today. I've been rewinding and banding it this morning. The electric winder isn't finished, and every skein of yarn that I dye is skeined and reskeined by hand. In fact, the entire process from cone to finished hank is compeletely done by hand. Hand crafted has a distinct meaning to me. I like that with every skein I mail to its new home, I am fighting mass production. I like that every knitter who uses Yarn Love yarn sees my impression in the strands that flow through their hands. I am a small part of their creative process.

The Caffeine Dumps, Flying Yarn and Hot Fridges

And here are the fruits of my labor in various stages of skeining. Sometimes the yarn is so pretty, it just breaks my heart to send it away. A rocking chair full of yarn is one of those simple pleasures of life......

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This week has been a flurry of activity. Last week was too, but it wasn't good activity. It's the kind of activity where you feel like you're running 90 miles an hour just to spin your wheels while someone beats you over the head with a two by four. Let's just say that I never want to repeat last week ever again. It wasn't wholesale tragedy or anything like that. Just entirely unpleasant and inconvenient and lots of stressors coming one right after another. The last hurrah of the previous week was the refrigerator deciding it didn't want to work. It had been a little warm on the door, but then cooled back down one day last week so I just assumed one of the girlies held the door open too long. Sunday morning we woke up to find any open dairy item soured. So we loaded all our food into our big camping cooler and stuck it on our deck in the snow and frigid air. Despite the inconvenience of having to make multiple trips out to the deck for any refrigerated item we were doing pretty well. Called a couple of repair places and discovered no one could get here until Wednesday. Grrr, but at least the food is OK in the cooler. Forecast is for cold temps, so we should be OK. The very good repair man comes Wednesday and identifies what we need but has to order it. So more deck food until midday on Friday (yesterday! No fridge for 5 days with 3 kids under the age of 3....starting to get on my nerves.) So the part is in, the freezer is good and frozen and the repair guy says "Load her up! You're in business!" The fridge seemed much cooler so we did. We had company for dinner and proceeded to put all our beautiful bourbon marinated flank steak with garlic mash and decadent chocolate cake into the fridge before spending the evening talking and having fun. This morning we wake up to a fridge that is 60 degrees. Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Crap! Stupid fridge!



Ahem, apparently Mr. N is one of the handiest men around because he looked it up on the internet, pulled apart some apparatus in the fridge and found the problem. The space that conducts the cold air down from the fridge and the "warm air returns" were completely blocked with ice. That meant no cold air could get into the fridge and the warm air stayed in the fridge instead of moving up into the freezer to be returned as cold air. So he dried those out with a hair blower and sucked all the air intakes out with our vacuum...it made a huge mess in the kitchen which the girlies thought was the funnest thing ever. And wah lah! We're back in business....at least I supposed until the thing blows up tomorrow morning.

At least the upshot of all of this is I have an extremely clean fridge. If you want to lick your food right off the fridge shelf, just stop on by!

Besides the frenetic emptying and reloading of the fridge, I've also been on a dyeing tear. Some more yarn came in for an order and I've been busy getting it all ready to go out the door. It's always nice to dye and have the fun of reskeining it all. It's so pretty just slipping through my fingers on it's way to the swift. Each skein has it's own nuances and it's neat to see the differences develop. Yarn Love has been selling like hotcakes, and I've been putting together many packages for shipping. Mr. N drives right by the mailbox every day on his way to work, so I handed him a stack of four and asked if he would drop them off. It's been 0 degrees actual temp with a foot of snow on the ground for the past few weeks, and I just didn't feel like walking down the drive to the mail box only to return as a snowman. A few minutes later, I see these four, beautifully wrapped packages of $200 worth of yarn sitting on his trunk as he backs down the driveway!!! So, I did what any self respecting yarn dyer would do. I threw open the door, ran out into the snow in my slippers while waving my arms frantically and all the time picturing the packages, my beautiful babies, hitting the dirty, sandy, salty snow of the street. He nonchalantly rolls the window down, assures me he knows they're there and proceeds to go merrily on his way.

They all made it safely into the mailbox. I was still cold. And mostly baffled at why he would do that.

And my favorite part of having a distracted week: the Caffeine Dumps. Let me start off by saying that when I am pregnant I don't have caffeine. When I am nursing I don't have caffeine. Caffeine in pregnancy causes the baby's brain to work differently and there's preliminary evidence showing that it causes a host of problems such as ADD, etc. When I'm nursing my body is hyper sensitive to it, and a cup of 1/2 caff, 1/2 decaf coffee will have me laying in bed awake 15 hours after I drank it. So I prefer to stay away. However, now that my nursing relationship with X is minimal (he nurses once or twice in the night) and can have some. But I'm still working my way up and rarely ever get above 1/4 caff, 3/4 decaf blend. Unless I'm so distracted by my funky fridge and copious quantities of dyeing that i don't count the scoops of coffee right.

Oh, the thrill of the caffeine high! I am getting so much done! I feel so great! My kids have never been such angels. Never mind that you can't see the floor in the family room due to the layer of toys. I'll have them picked up in a jiffy. Right after I finish these last 10 pounds of yarn.

Two hours later I can't understand why every little thing is jangling my nerves and I'm the hugest grump you've ever seen. It's so bad, I'm wondering what I can do to get away from myself. Oh, and I hate that 10 pounds of soaking wet yarn waiting for me to dye it. Die yarn, die!

So that in a nutshell is the last few days of my life. My best tip of the Valentine's Day week? If you stand outside in subzero temps for 10- 15 minutes while filling your car with gas on your way home from a bikini wax, you'll notice almost no redness and swelling! It's like instant gratification! So remember that beauty tip from me, your friendly yarn dyer, next time it's off the the aesthetician.


Here is my knitting project of the week. I think I actually started it in the midst of last week, the Week From Hell, because I realized that the gorgeous Tiger Eye lace socks would never get done in time to qualify for this month's Socktopia challenge. I have over achiever tendencies. Sometimes I'm pretty good at suppressing them, but this is not one of those times. Rather than get most of the way through the lacey ones, I just put them down and grabbed some Emu Superwash that had been sitting in my destash box forever. Got to love that. The pattern is one that I made up. It's just like the Beverly Socks, only a heavier gauge and not quite as symmetrical. I didn't actually use a calculator at any point during the knitting of these socks, I just cast on at the toes (which are really much wider than normal) and started knitting. But they're turning out OK after all, and I know I'll wear them. They will be pair number THREE of Katie's hand knit socks when they're done. I'm nearly out of yarn, so it will be soon. I've promised myself that I'll get back to the Tiger Eye lace as soon as these are off the needles. I've already committed to sending that along to Socktopia members as a free pattern. I've never really done lace before...what was I thinking? Eeek!

Some of you have been asking about the Spring Collection on Yarn Love. It's up and you can take home anything you want. I promise to send it right out. I won't keep it even though I love it. Every skein of yarn you buy helps get me to my exhibitor's booth at the upcoming Knitter's Connection in Columbus, OH. So if you want to see me there, buy a skein!

Oh Christmas Tree

It's Christmas time in the bungalow! Well, at least it's Advent, the season of preparation for the feast of Christmas. I am very proud to report that my Christmas knitting is done. And when I say done, I really mean done. The kind of done that means if for some heinous reason Christmas actually came tomorrow, I could hand over the knitted items to their recipients without a regret. The kind of done that means the finishing work and the end weaving wasn't left for 6 or more weeks because I moved onto another project. It's a good feeling to be done.

I must admit that the reason I was done with my Christmas knitting by December 10th this year is because I set my sights very low. In fact, I think I've done less knitting this year than I did last year. Last year the girlies were 19 months old, and I had a two month old. Little X was (and still is) very mellow, so I was able to camp out on the couch and knit. Now he's starting to walk, and well, the house is more chaotic. But, I have accomplished all my goals and have been setting some new ones. I'll get those done if only my yarn arrives on time.

So far this year I have knit two Totoro hats from the free Hello Yarn pattern.

I knit one as written, and the second I reversed and knit from the top up. I had a bit of trouble with the row gauge - it was way, way off, even though I was using a heavier yarn than called for & it should have turned out longer than needed. The first hat was knit and ripped out three times before I got it to be long enough. I do completely detest (and suck at) the figure 8 cast one, so I knit it from the bottom up and kitchenered the top. It took me much less time. I also added ear flaps and ties to the hat so that it will stay on my wiggly girls heads. Oh, and I knit it big and fulled it for warmth and ease of embroidery. The pattern is great - I just rearranged things per my personal preference in knitting. Misses E & G are enamored with the Totoro movie and I know they'll love the hats. What a clever idea.

I knit them "matching" pairs of mittens. The grey base yarn is the same as was used for the hats, and then I used a skein of Noro Silk Garden for the colored stripes. I loved working with the Noro. It was my first time using it and the color gradations are incredible. Lots of fun to watch it develop in my hands as I knit along. I had less than a yard left over after I finished the last mitten. It was a close call. Not too bad, if I say so myself. The merino that I used for the hats (incidentally the same stuff I used for my dad's scarf) just lasts and lasts and lasts. So I got both hats and all the mittens out of 6 ounces. I used one 50 gram ball of the Noro, color #87.

My dad's scarf is the Open Cable Scarf which I highly enjoyed knitting. I do have a few cables that crossed the wrong way, but shhh! No one will notice if I don't point them out. It was a great pattern for a scarf. Complex enough to be interesting, but easily memorized and knit while watching Lost. The scarf is fairly long - my dad is 6'2" and I got his scarf out of about 5 1/2 ounces of the same merino that I used on the girlies' hats. If you're looking for some, you can find it in my ebay store as Anne Shirley. It's great stuff. A pleasure to knit with and it lasts forever. mhm. I kettle dyed the yarn, and it's very pretty blues, greens and olives. The picture is making the olive look much more mustard than it does in person. It has a nice blending quality in person that is just lost on my digital camera.

Now if all goes well, I still plan on knitting some cotton face cloths for my mother in law, a hat for little X and a hat for Mr. N. We'll see if I get it done. I dreamt both hats up last night as I was laying in bed awake, and the face cloths late last week when Mr. N casually mentioned his mother would like something hand knit for Christmas. I'd whip her up something really quick, like a hat, but she's allergic to wool, so I have to send out for the yarn. Hopefully some pretty, pampering face cloths will be just the thing. Fast enough to get done and conveying lots of love. I'll post on my progress with the hats. I'm planning on combining the cable from the Open Cable Scarf pattern with a simple 6 X 6 cable and decreasing in the purl stitches in between. We'll see how it goes, I guess!