Skif-a-long

I think Sara hit the nail on the head with thinking the Knitting Fates were paying attention. It's barely noon (well, it was when I started this!) and we already have a huge amount of staff and customer projects to share with all of you.

We'll begin with Dana's lovely Rosamund's Cardigan (pattern by Andrea Pomernatz) from Interweave Fall 2009. Dana knit this cardigan with Joseph Galler's Peruvian Tweed in color 105 and it took her less than 3 weeks! I am loving the choice of alpaca for this short-sleeved cardigan, it really makes it the perfect layering piece for this late summer-early fall weather we are having. Thanks for sharing with us Dana!


Now onto a round up of some staff projects. Kevin was so kind to share with me a sweater of his own design, his annual summer sweater project which is turning out just lovely. He wanted to make a heavy winter sweater and so is working with Shibui Highland Wool Alpaca in Ivory held with Joseph Galler Peruvian Tweed color 117. The surprise contrast pockets are the Shibui Highland Wool and Malabrigo Chunky in Olive. Great choices for a winter sweater and I love the color palette, especially those pockets! I am such a sucker for green anything.

Thousand apologies for the horrid picture quality. I have now learned my lesson taking pictures in the basement.

Continuing on with Marjorie's beautiful Heart Skif. Her materials list is just absolutely drool worthy:

• Habu Silk Tweed Kasuri (coming soon to Knit Purl!)
• Habu Root Sizing Silk in colors 1 and 5 (coming soon to our website)
• Habu Silk Stainless in color 16
• Habu Tsumugi Silk in color 67
• Shibui Silk Cloud in Peony
• Isager Tvinni in colors 17 and 17s (coming soon to our website)
• Isager Viscolin in Wine

Wow. She is also contemplating doing the top in Art Yarns Silk Rhapsody color 251, talk about luxurious. I think we should all do our best to convince her this is a great idea. This was a fun project even to photograph, I can't wait until she finishes it!

and a detail shot

So, if you've noticed the title of this blog you would guess this post would include multiple Skifs and you would be right. Sara and the Sandy's are also in the early Skif planning stages which is very exciting especially since Knit Purl going to host a Skif KAL beginning October 1st!

I was able to wrangle Sara to get an idea of what she is pondering for her June, which right now is Habu Tsumugi Silk, Habu Cotton Linen Spiral, and Isager Viscolin. I can hardly wait to see what color family she is thinking!

And now onto a couple non-Skif related things.

If you've ever been interested in dyeing your own yarn and roving but never wanted to ruin your good pots or deal with harsh chemicals your wish has been granted! Coming this November Sara is going to be teaching a class on Kitchen-Safe Dyeing.


Here is a preview of some of her test samples which came out quite beautifully, I really want to see these spun and knit up. The class (which will be available for registration online or over the phone soon) will be held here at the store on November 7th from 1-5pm. Two skeins of yarn will be provided and a crockpot is the only material you are required to bring.

Just in case any of you missed our e-Card on Friday, we are getting into the end of summer spirit with a WoodSock special. All Noro Silk Garden Sock and Kureyon Sock as well as Sheep Shop's Sheep Feet are 15% off through the 14th of September. I must warn anyone interested in this to jump on it fast, these are going quicker than we anticipated!

As long as we're talking socks we should remind all the sock knitters out there about the opportunity to win a year's membership in our Sock Club through our Twitterific Sock Contest. Entries need to be submitted by midnight tonight, September 4th so if you're interested grab your camera!

Until next time blogfans!
-Lindsay

You know how the saying goes...

"So much to do, so little time."? That seems to be our new mantra 'round here as we transition from the old website to the new, from summer to fall (big transition in the knitting business) and just generally try and keep from being buried in wool. Not that we're complaining... especially about that last bit.

Now, let's see, we've had a slue of recent happenings. The most noticeable will have been Lindsay's first blog post last week. Lindsay is our web fulfillment person and will be blogging (hopefully) once a week about customer and staff projects. If you're a web customer and want to share your current wip or recent fo, be sure to shoot Lindsay an email [info(at)knit-purl(dot)com] and she'll be glad to blog about it.

Next, we have some photographic leftovers (that I just found in the back of our fridge camera's media card), which I thought our blog readers might find amusing...

First, during Sock Summit, we had many sock-themed goodies at our various events. Including sock-shaped cookies...

and sock-shaped doughnuts, made for us specially by Voodoo Doughnuts:

Something you cannot but love, right? Socks and doughnuts... together in a non-sticky-wool way!

There was also a pic from last week's "No Mean Feet!" - which I can't recall why it was relevant now, but thought might still be interesting to our readers out in BlogLand:

During which I took a photo of Hannah's literally just-finished BeGyle Socks:

Cute, huh? That link up there, btw, goes to Hannah's ravelry journal if you want more information on the socks. You have to give her props, since she knit them (argyle socks!) in 18 days! That's just over two weeks. It kind of makes me dizzy, actually...

Moving on, we have this lovely (if slightly blurry and anonymous) photo of a knitter and her recently-finished Vintage Baby Cardigan:

I'm afraid I have no more information than that. Maybe the knitter (or the knitter's friends) read this blog and might help a poor, befuddled knit-blogger out?

Now, onto the more recent goings-on. First, very exciting, we have our Twitterific Sock Contest! Don't know about this? Check out our most recent Newsletter or the Twitterific Sock Contest page.

Oooh, it's gonna be exciting (we hope). We're going to give away one membership in our Sock Club to the lucky winner. In the spirit of inspiration and leading the way and Good Old-Fashioned Silliness*, we posted the first image:

Lindsay and I had fun with entertaining the masses at Pioneer Courthouse Square. If you're thinking about participating, do! The prizes are amazing (one year's membership in the Sock Club or a KnitPod or ShibuiKnits Sock yarn) and it's not hard to enter. Seriously. If the Sandies can tweet, anyone can.

And finally, we have from last night's The Yarnover's (Lace Knitters Night), an extremely blurry photo in which at least two of the victims subjects are visibly trying to escape**:

But, it's worth mentioning (aside from the ha!-we-caught-you factor), as three of the knitters last night were working on their Girasole Shawls from our recent KAL. It was a nice big group, too, with ten knitters on the first night! Maybe lace knitting is bigger than we think, but just really really quiet.

It could happen.

Anyway. Until next time, you might want to check out our lovely Twitterific Sock Contest page, our recently updated Calendar of Events page and, quite possibly, stalk #twitterificsock on twitter. It's gonna be great!

* We're good at that, we know.
**Nice try, Marj & Leslie.