Phildar love

I was just snooping around on the Phildar website and thought I'd share some cute numbers that caught my eye...

I've always been a bit of a fringe person (as in "I like fringe" not "I am on the fringe"), and just when I thought my love of fringe was on the wane I spotted these two:





Though I think those would both be easy enough to adapt, so I might have to re-visit some fringe patterns already in my possesion.

Also in love with:



Which I suppose could be considered vaguely fringe-y as well. And note: This is the only pattern of these here that has an English translation avaliable on their website right now.

And I've always had a soft spot for anything miltary or nautical-inspired...lots of patterns for that kind of stuff on Phildar right now too.

Also presently salivating over this:




and this:




I'm contemplating the dainty-ness of this next one, because I know it would probably be easy enough to bang out. I think it's time I veered away from cowls for a little while and into shawl territory again. There's a lot of really nice non-grandma-y patterns out these days.



That's it! I am well behind on taking pictures of things lately and have already been waylaid by Christmas knitting. In the past few weeks I've managed to crank out three cowls, three pairs of slippers AND a pair of socks for a co-worker...most of which has just felt like a slog (and I'm no where near done), so I am looking forward to getting back to more knitting of the personal/selfish variety!

Let's Neck!

Welcome to fall...



pattern: Burberry inspired cowl (I think I only did the four repeats that this pattern calls for)
yarn: Mirasol Sulka in "Cinnamon" (4 skeins)
needles: US 10.5



I love it when knitters come up with their own patterns for 800$ designer items...us common folk like style too dammit! God knows I don't anticiptate owning anything purchased full price from Burberry in my lifetime.

I love this Mirasol Sulka, and it has seen several incarnations of me looking for just the right pattern for it. My husband bought it for me all on his lonesome a couple Xmases ago --just walked into a yarn store and picked out one he liked. (I thought that was pretty good for a dude who knows next to nothing about knitting or yarn...) There was this cowl that never really worked out, but this hat that did. And I still thought I had several skeins of it left when I started knitting the burberry-inspired cowl last month.

Turns out I was wrong on that score, and given that it was about two years ago that he got that yarn in the first place I figured there was no way I'd get the same dye lot again...but I did! (maybe no one else was buying it?) I didn't even bother looking for the same dye lot, I was just thankful they hadn't discontinued the colour-- so I grabbed two more, brought 'em home and low and behold --the yarn gods smiled on me!

The same LYS had one of my other favourite yarns on sale as well-- Italian made Lang Silk Dream. So I bought oodles of it (well, oodles for me). This is good news and bad...good news: half price! bad news: probably because it's discontinued :( . Ah well, it's probably time for me to branch out and try something new anyway.

That said (and with favourite on sale yarn in hand), I also knit another Eternity scarf...



pattern: Eternity Scarf by Michele Wang
needles: 5.5mm
yarn: Lang Silk Dream (grey) 3 balls I think?

I was kind of bemoaning the last version I knit of this...



...because I had knit it in a DK weight yarn and I felt like it really wasn't thick enough and wanted to do it over again in an Aran.

Turns out I am slightly on the fence about it...I may still like the first one better. I think the Silk Dream is possibly just a bit too stretchy, I can't really wear it in it's "long" format without feeling like it'll be at my knees at the end of the day.

I haven't really decided yet if I will tear it out and start over with another yarn or just continue to wear it "doubled-up".



Which is pretty much exclusively how I wear the first of the first of those that I knit anyway (and I do get a lot of wear out of it), because as you know: I am koo-koo for cowls.

In fact my sickness for cowls is starting to get out of hand. So even though I loooove knitting them, I've decided I need to put a hold on any more of them for greedy little me and start busting out a few as Christmas presents for co-workers. (I will keep you posted on whether that gets accomplished--I probably need to do about 5 of them).

I think I will be abandoning a lot of personal knitting the next couple months as I scramble to get Christmas presents done ahead of time for once ---I don't want to be having hand cramps as I'm trying to stuff down all that Turkey. Though I do have a couple completed things that I still need to get around to taking pictures of (and posting about) so more to come.

I'm so happy it's fall and the need to knit is upon me again --it's a therapy I need right now!

Easing back into it...

I've had a trying couple of months. I won't go into all the gory details, but the short story is that our furry beast Poncho is no longer with us.



He deserves a mention here though because he's always figured prominently in a lot of my knitting photos. I will miss him like crazy. It hasn't been that long since we said goodbye to Archie and we find ourselves in an empty house that as far as I'm concerned is now devoid of it's soul.

We are very sad, but it has been a far less shocking situation for us than the loss of our last cat. Poncho was old and lived a full life and in the end we knew he was suffering, so it was at least a decision that we were able to make.



We love you P-man.