Baby Cashmere and a sneak peek CLOSED

CLOSED Which came first: the Baby Cashmere or the sneak peek? I'm not sure there's an answer to that question so let's start with the yarny goodness. How about six skeins (yes, really and truly six; I counted) (used both hands so it's gotta be more than five, right?) of gorgeous soft yummy Elann Baby Cashmere.
There's not all that much cashmere in it, to be honest: 60% baby alpaca, 30% merino wool, and 10% cashmere but it's so soft and so pretty that it's irresistible. We're talking US3 needles, 100 m - 109 y in each skein. It's #3317, Morning Mist, and you're going to love it.

Send me an email here with MIST in the subject header and I'll pick the winner on Sunday night. (I didn't use the on-line random number generator last night. The site must have been down so I hollered into the living room to Goldisox: "Pick a number between X and XXX" and he yelled back, "Seventy-three!" which is how Leslie B came to be our winner.)


Willa, friend and web designer and jewelry designer extraordinaire, worked her magic on my website and the first chapter of LACED WITH MAGIC is posted and ready. Let me know what you think.

BLISS #3 - let's keep the party going CLOSED

This was actually supposed to be Bliss #1 but I couldn't remember where I hid it in this great big yarn redistribution area I call home so it's now Bliss #3.

Gorgeous, isn't it? Debbie Bliss, 100% cashmere, 10 skeins, pale blue. All good things and all for you (with another one of those #@(!!# signed books) if your number comes up tomorrow night.

You know the drill. If you've already entered, you're already entered. If you want to enter again or for the first time, email me right here with BLISS3 in the subject header and I'll do the rest.

I'm not a gushy woman as a rule but I wish I could send cashmere and books to all of you. Your enthusiasm has talked this extremely anxious author off the ledge. I owe you!

Hot Pink Bliss CLOSED

I know it comes as no surprise to you that I love pink. I mean I don't just love it, I love it. (I am, after all, still the girl whose mother painted her bedroom to look like the inside of a watermelon, right down to rind and seeds.)

So how about helping me destash a little of the pink surplus currently swamping us here Chez Crazy. Ten skeins of hot pink Debbie Bliss 100% cashmere and a signed book. (Whether you want it or not!) If you've already entered for yesterday's contest, you're fine. If you entered last week, you're fine too. If you want to enter again by emailing me here with BLISS 2 in the subject header, that's okay as well.

I'll announce the winner tonight around 11 ET.

And because this has been so much fun, I'll continue the daily giveaways this week or as long as Stash Overflow warrants.

Good luck!

CLOSED Blatant Self-Promotion in the form of CASHMERE!

Ten gorgeous skeins of luscious Debbie Bliss 100% Cashmere, a $50 gift certificate to Elann (one of my favorite occasions of fiber sin), and a few surprises: that's what the lucky winner in tomorrow night's My Book Is Out and The Election Is Over and We All Survived With Our Dignity Intact drawing will receive. And even if you aren't an American citizen, I'll bet you're glad our election is over too.

And yes my book officially escapes tomorrow and the nail-biting begins in earnest. Hold a good thought, okay? My nerves are shot.

To enter, send me an email here with BLISS in the subject header. If you entered my last few contests, I've got you covered but feel free to enter again.

I'll post the winner around 10 p.m. ET tomorrow. Good luck!

Bliss . . . Debbie Bliss 100% Cashmere (a cruel sneak peek)

Not that I want to whet your appetites or anything but part of Tuesday's prize package is Debbie Bliss 100% Cashmere . . . gorgeous, luscious, mouth-watering cashmere.

The color you see isn't the color you'll get but that's the yarn family.

I'm thinking 10 skeins might be nice . . .

Watch for all the details Monday night. Winner will be drawn late Tuesday night so we can all have something other than the election to think about.

More tidbits tomorrow.

Win Recycled Purple Cashmere

I'm begging you: please enter the drawing for my stash of recycled rich purple cashmere. Please!

It's laceweight and we all know I'm not going to be knitting lace, real lace, any time soon. This yarn is depressing me. It mocks my lace-a-phobia.

It needs to go.

Details:

6.5 ounces

100% cashmere

Lace weight

Violet

You can either stake your claim in Comments or email me right here

and I'll announce the winner Thursday morning.

Commission Completed

Here's the finished Short Row Scarf being blocked on my guestroom floor. Of course, the blocking board wasn't long enough for it so I had to add a garbage bag-wrapped piece of foam core. Does anyone own a blocking board big enough for all their projects? Sigh.



Here's the finished commission! I delivered it to my brother-in-law on Tuesday. (Being a full-service knitter, I even put it in a holiday gift bag.) He was amazed that I had finished it before December 24th. Obviously, he knows something about writers and deadlines. When I pulled it out of the bag, he was delighted, and now I'm afraid he won't be able to resist giving it to his wife long before Christmas.

Project specifications:

All About Short Rows Scarf (with some modifications for gauge) from Creative Knitting Magazine, March 2008.

Keja 100% Mongolian Cashmere in Uptown Red (Colorway #15) from Jade Sapphire Exotic Fibres, 2 skeins, approx. 200 yards each. (I used every inch of the yarn to avoid buying another pricey skein.)

The geometric pattern gives a nice textural interest to a solid color yarn, IMO. Blocking improved the scarf; it emphasized the geometry of the triangles by straightening out their lines. Of course, the pure cashmere feels absolutely luscious.

Trouble with the end

O ye goddesses of knitting, I need your advice!

I went by your excellent suggestions and made my sister-in-law's scarf match her height. Of course, I did this partly to avoid starting a third skein of cashmere so I really wanted to end it quickly.

The only problem is: I didn't have quite enough yarn to do the entire border on the end. I had to shorten it by two rows. Here's the photo showing the two ends together. The top one is the "short" end. The bottom is the beginning. I honestly don't think anyone but me would notice the difference.

However, if I decide I want to make them match, is it possible to open up the cast-on end, rip out two rows, and then bind it off somehow? If so, can you point me to some directions? Or is this risky and foolhardy?

How long should a scarf be?

Ginny and I are crying in our cheer towels: the Devils got eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. The good news: I got a lot of scarf knitting done as I watched my team go down in defeat.

In fact, I got so much knitting done (I needed to soothe my nerves as the Rangers harried Brodeur) that I'm pretty close to finished with my commissioned scarf. However, here's my question--and I always have this issue with scarves: how long should a scarf be?

Currently, this one is 63 inches long (unblocked). If I make it any longer, I will have to start a new skein of very expensive Mongolian cashmere (which I have in my possession but it's returnable). So what do the pros on RTY think?

How long do you make your scarves?

(Ginny, there's always next season, right?)

Sister-in-law's Short Row Scarf

Taking my cue from Laura, I took my WIP outdoors to photograph it. Here's about half of the commissioned cashmere scarf for my sister-in-law. I'm loving these short rows because I tend to work one triangle at a time and then feel a great sense of accomplishment. I can also count the progess very easily.



Given that the scarf is a solid color I think the alternating triangles give it visual interest--and keep me interested as well. I'm using the wrap-and-turn--or more accurately, wrap-as-you-turn--method recommended by Creative Knitting, the magazine where I found the pattern. They say it eliminates the holes which just turning on the short row can give you. Since this is my first attempt at short rows, I'm taking their word for it. Anyway, the idea is to wrap your yarn around the last stitch in the short row (which you slip). After you turn, you slip the next stitch also and then purl the third one so you get groups of three stitches at the end of each row.

When you finish all the short rows in one triangle, you knit back across, picking up the wrapping and the wrapped stitch and knitting them together. See what you think in the closeup below.



I tried another first on the this project: I felted my yarn join when I switched to the next skein. I was looking up the Russian Join recommended by one of our wonderful commenters here and found this other suggestion. It only works on wool, of course, but I was thrilled because this cashmere is so expensive that I didn't want to leave much in the way of ends when I was joining. The felting method eliminates ends all together. Here's the link to the felted join video: http://www.knittinghelp.com/videos/knitting-tips . Just scroll down the page until you see the "Joining Yarn" videos. It's really easy.

So that's the report from the field. I'm a little depressed because my Devils can't seem to win a game these days and have slipped from leading the entire Eastern Conference to second in the Atlantic Division. It's a bummer!

What's everyone else working on?

The same only different

Do you remember how I poked fun (in a very friendly way, of course) at some of you veteran knitters for having multiple projects "on the needles"? I certainly remember your polite restraint since I'm sure you were justifiably laughing behind your hands at the newbie's presumption in chiding you for that.

Well, I am duly humbled because I have discovered the virtues of having a project "on the needles" for those days when you don't have the time or the mental energy to start a new project but you desperately need something to knit.



The scarf above is something I started ages ago because I had way too much very expensive cashmere yarn left over from my husband's lo-o-o-ong scarf (below). I wasn't making it for any reason other than I just couldn't bear to waste all that gorgeous fiber. Was I ever grateful that I had it when I finished my Noni Bag (due to the sprained foot) and didn't want to hobble down to the LYS to get something new to occupy my needles. Now I'm thinking it will make a lovely Christmas gift.



It's so interesting to see how different these scarves look even though I'm using exactly the same yarns and exactly the same stitch pattern. All I've changed is the color pattern. They look more like distant cousins than fraternal twins, wouldn't you say?

Is anyone else finishing up an old project for a holiday gift? Tell us about it!

Four More Winners and My Filatura di Crisis

Yes, we have four more winners.

#25 LJ from The Bead Knitter

#26 Ellie Lewis

#27 The one and only Georg

#28 Sharon Hurlbut

I'll need your snail mail addresses ASAP so I can send out your sock yarn. You can email me here or here. Your choice.

Now about my Filatura di Crisis.

First let me tell you that I've fallen head-over-heels in love with knitting cashmere. The yarn is so soft, so plush, so . . . okay, I'm gonna say it: cashmere is voluptuous. Take a look. What other word could describe that lush roundness better than voluptuous? I can't come up with one. Cashmere is the Sophia Loren of handknitting yarn.

Anyway, I managed to score some Filatura di Crosa 100% cashmere (which apparently has been discontinued) in a gorgeous rich purple and decided to knit it up in the Kata Scarf pattern from Tara Jon Manning's wonderful Mindful Knitting. (Knitting may be the only activity in which I even come close to anywhere close to an understanding of Zen. I am way too much of this world, far too connected to people and things to comprehend the art of letting go.) (Or the wisdom of it, for that matter. I want to hang on for as long as I can to all the things I love.)

Anyway, this isn't about Zen. It's about that damn FdiC which went wonky on me. You see, I got too smart for my own britches. One of the things that I didn't care for in the Kata pattern was the way the cast on edge didn't match the bind off edge. Or at least they didn't match close enough for my taste. When you wear a scarf the one thing you can be sure of is that the cast on and bind off edges will be on view, most of the time right up close to each other. I'm not a matchy-matchy type but this drove me crazy enough that I decided to knit the purple FdiC scarf in two sections then Kitchener them together which would, in my demented dreamstate, lead me to The Perfect Solution.

Hah! I forgot the other thing thing that drove me crazy about the scarf: the two edges were different. Not different enough that it would bother you in the wearing, but different enough to bug you as a knitter. Especially if you happened to be somewhat spatially dyslexic knitter who forgot to factor in the reality that when I joined my two sections of scarf I would in essence be joining Side A to Side B and Side B2 to SideA2.

ACK. I was not a happy girl. The scarf looks great on but the joining point (even though I did my Kitchener stitches proud) rows were offset as a result. What to do? What to do? I finally decided to do embroider a row of lazy daisy stitches (looking for all the world like duplicate stitches) at the join to provide a visual break that makes the difference more acceptable. At least I hope it does. I'm also thinking about popping in some beads hither and yon. Also beads at the cast on/bind off edges a la Dawn Brocco's wonderful beaded scarves.

Okay, so the scan is weird and filled with ends that need to be woven in. The scarf also needs to be blocked which will open it up and smooth it out. I'm showing it to you in this imperfect state in the interest of full disclosure.

But here's the real reason the FdiC made me nuts: fragility. I had two pristine skeins complete with bands. #1 knitted up beautifully. #2 lost easily 8 feet to random breaks and perilously thin sections that occurred with no warning at the beginning of the skein and intermittently around the mid-point. I'm almost afraid to say it but the M-word came to mind more than once. You know the M-word: it usually has wings and a voracious appetite for fiber. I know I don't have m-m-moths . . . or at least I didn't have until the FdiC came to live. I didn't see any larvae. I didn't see any insects. But I'm wondering if the thin spots and random breakage was the result of previous infestation.

I really don't like the word "infestation," do you?

So there's that. I'm also working on the Vintage Velvet scarf from my old favorite book Scarf Style (hi, Nancy!) and it's been pure pleasure. Of course what's not to like about knitting with Muench's Touch Me in a gorgeous forest green? Again, that's a scan so I didn't get it all smoothed down on the right side the way I should have. And again again it really doesn't matter because when this is done the scarf gets tossed into the washer for some mild felting action then (OMG!) tossed into the dryer to complete the transition from fluffy, pouffy cableknit scarf to antique-y velvety gorgeous scarf.

Fingers crossed.