Ravelry; Good Knitter-Friend
I finally got my invite to Ravelry and I haven't been blogging because I have become a Ravelry addict. If you haven't heard of Ravelry and/or aren't already on the waiting list, I highly recommend that you go and put your name on the list. Started by a knitter and her tech-guru husband, it is the ultimate knitters' forum. If you have a yarn and don't know what to do with it, you can easily look it up and see what patterns are available for it and what other knitters are knitting with it.
There are already tens of thousands of members, and it has become so popular so quickly that the web managers had to create a waiting list in order to manage the growth. The site is still under development and in "beta" (although it works really, really well). Don't be put off by the length of the waiting list. I signed up in late July and there were about 12,000 ahead of me, so I had to wait until last week to get my invite. If you sign up now, you will have a wonderful treat when you get your invite right in the middle of the post-holiday winter doldrums!
It's even more fun than browsing on-line yarn stores, and there aren't any "add to cart" buttons to tempt you to do things that you know you shouldn't. And it's free!
I just finished knitting the most boring thing in the world:
Why, you may wonder? Because my ultra-traditional friend Jim who lives in Chicago and freezes every winter tells me that store-bought hats never fit well. I hear that many tall men with large frames have this problem -- most hats are too small for them.
So, I decided to be a good knitter-friend and knit something that was really practical and that he would enjoy rather than something that I felt like knitting. Many years ago I knit him a beautiful scarf out of good thick wool handpainted in rustic browns and greens. He said the other guys made fun of him (he's over 60) for wearing a girl's scarf.
So, I bought some machine washable/dryable Louet Gems Bulky wool in plain old black, cast on 88 stitches on #9 needles and made the perfect, perfectly boring, warm winter hat that is long enough to keep the stubborn old coot's big ears warm under a folded up brim. The trick in sizing it right is making sure that it long enough to cover the ears, as well as wide enough.
In the process, I discovered how fine a wool the Gems Bulky merino is. It is so soft and non-scratchy that it almost feels like bulky cotton. The black is also a very true, deep black. I overexposed the picture a bit so that it would show up, rather than look like an unidentifiable black blob.
There are already tens of thousands of members, and it has become so popular so quickly that the web managers had to create a waiting list in order to manage the growth. The site is still under development and in "beta" (although it works really, really well). Don't be put off by the length of the waiting list. I signed up in late July and there were about 12,000 ahead of me, so I had to wait until last week to get my invite. If you sign up now, you will have a wonderful treat when you get your invite right in the middle of the post-holiday winter doldrums!
It's even more fun than browsing on-line yarn stores, and there aren't any "add to cart" buttons to tempt you to do things that you know you shouldn't. And it's free!
I just finished knitting the most boring thing in the world:
Why, you may wonder? Because my ultra-traditional friend Jim who lives in Chicago and freezes every winter tells me that store-bought hats never fit well. I hear that many tall men with large frames have this problem -- most hats are too small for them.
So, I decided to be a good knitter-friend and knit something that was really practical and that he would enjoy rather than something that I felt like knitting. Many years ago I knit him a beautiful scarf out of good thick wool handpainted in rustic browns and greens. He said the other guys made fun of him (he's over 60) for wearing a girl's scarf.
So, I bought some machine washable/dryable Louet Gems Bulky wool in plain old black, cast on 88 stitches on #9 needles and made the perfect, perfectly boring, warm winter hat that is long enough to keep the stubborn old coot's big ears warm under a folded up brim. The trick in sizing it right is making sure that it long enough to cover the ears, as well as wide enough.
In the process, I discovered how fine a wool the Gems Bulky merino is. It is so soft and non-scratchy that it almost feels like bulky cotton. The black is also a very true, deep black. I overexposed the picture a bit so that it would show up, rather than look like an unidentifiable black blob.
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