You haunt me. You must stop. Stop falling out of crevices in my closet and landing at my feet. Stop appearing in Knit Happens bags that I have forgotten about. Stop flowing out of the basket in my living room. Just stop. I am fighting back. I am making a pledge to knit five sweaters by February. That will show you now won’t it? That’s thousands of yards, more than five thousand  yards from your mass that will be taken. (well that’s a lie because I am currently on the hunt for 12o0 yards of Fiber Company Organik for one of the five sweaters). Ok, fine, that’s over FOUR thousand yards of fiber taken from you.  Then what will you do? You might actually have to keep yourself contained to three large plastic bins instead of five “or so.” The sock yarn will have a majority and might take over. How awful for you to become mostly sock yarn! ha! take that! Reduced to fiber that I will eventually put on my feet. What a fitting end for your years of torture!

Check out Amanda’s gorgeous Rusted Root…all complete!

I visited a college friend this weekend, who lives in Kent, Ohio. (my second trip to Ohio this month. Who knew that Ohio could be so interesting). She was kind enough to indulge my need for both Starbucks and fiber within a few hours of arriving in town. We set off for coffee and then hit the local yarn store: Miss Chickpea’s Funky Fibers, perhaps the most amazing yarn store in the world. It’s not the fiber in this store that makes it amazing, although I must say that she had quite a collection of fibers that I have never seen before, in addition to a pretty amazing stock of Colinette and Noro. As a marketing guru, it was the presentation of the store that struck me most. This gal knows what she is doing, right down to the little signs on the new fibers that read, “I’m new!” and featured a little baby and stork graphic. Her displays were dark wood shelves, which I have argued would work very well in a yarn shop. And she mixed in metal pots and pans, old fashioned strainers and a variety of other interesting items to display the fibers. Perhaps the most amazing thing in the store was the glass display of buttons that sat at the front counter, organized by colors and selling for “ten for $1.” I definitely stocked up on buttons!

I restrained myself and only bought two hanks of sock yarn to be used for a fall mittens class (more info on that soon!) but my partner in crime definitely picked up some amazing malabrigo for the Central Park Hoodie knit along that I am organizing next month.

While I know that most of you won’t be making a trip to the Akron Ohio area anytime soon, I would definitely encourage you to make it a day trip from any other location in Ohio that you might be visiting. Seriously, this store alone will get me out to Ohio more than once a year. It is that amazing!!

Every few months I dig into the basket of projects in my living room and start finishing things in a flurry. I think of it as a cleansing process, similar to what I do when I move or when I clean out my closet twice a year and donate clothes that I didn’t wear that season. For two days I have been cleansing. With so many amazing sweater projects waiting to be knitted, I am feeling a bit stressed about the number of projects sitting around the house waiting for an hour or so of attention so that they can be done. Last night I finished the Inga Hat. As you may notice, it is a tad on the enormous side. Just a tad. I think I am going to embrace the largeness and put a giant beanie on the end and wear it like a real hippy would, hanging off the back of my head. We have to work on Phil’s photo taking skills. He and the iphone don’t make pretty photos.

I also completed and blocked my Rusted Root. Very exciting! The sleeves aren’t as long as I wanted but I love it anyway. I used Debbie Bliss Cathay and the yarn is amazing with this pattern. It has just enough shine to make it pop and it feels lovely. Wearing it to work today!

I concluded last night that I have entirely too much yarn in my stash. The scary thing is that most of the yarn falls into one of two categories: sock yarn or bags of yarn intended for a sweater. At least there are themes to my buying habits.

So I have decided to challenge myself this fall and winter. I want to complete the following sweaters by February:

Durrow, by Jodi Green, using Debbie Bliss tweed. I love the cable on the sleeve of this pattern and it is the only pattern that I have ever showed phillip that he actually said he would wear. Now because of the sweater curse, I will hold off on this one until i actually have that rock on my hand…hoping that is before February.

The central park hoodie, by Heather Lodinsky. There are entire groups on ravelry dedicated to this sweater. I have seen them everywhere and on everyone. It is adorable and I want one!! I am thinking that the Fiber Company Organik will be used for this project. I have contacted the company to see how quickly they can ship the color that I want to Knit Happens since an employee there bought the last of it on FRIDAY (damn you Stephanie). I considered using this as a class but it would require several weeks and I am not sure that the cost would be worth it. If you are interested though, do let me know. I love this pattern!

The High Neck Cable by Kim Hamlin. I have long had a love affair with Blue Sky Alpaca yarn and patterns. They do an amazing job of attracting good designers that are able to develop patterns that really show off their yarns well. Having said that, I have decided to use a Fiber Company fiber for this pattern…simply because I have the yarn (from my MSWF buying spree) and this pattern looks perfect for it. I will use my Road to China, a luscious blend of alpaca, cashmere, camel and yak.

Ruffled Jacket by James Coviello. Such an awesome cable. I am not a fan of the huge ruffle on this sucker so I will probably make the ruffle a bit shorter or use a ribbed edge but the shape and back of this jacket is incredible. I am considering using the Fiber Company Terra that I picked up at MSWF (are you seeing a theme for the fall here…).

Balloon Sleeve Jacket by Olga. Love this jacket. HATE seed stitch but might be willing to “deal” just this once. Olga, if you don’t know already, has some amazing designs. She also happens to live locally and teaches at Knit Happens. This is one of her fab designs, featured on the cover of Sensual Knits. I plan to use the Cooper Circle color of Neighborhood Fiber Company’s machine washable merino…mmm…merino. Still waiting on my yarn from Karida, so this one might be the last project to get started but I am super excited about it.

So who else is up for a fall and winter sweater knitting challenge? If you have never knitted one before, perhaps just challenge yourself to complete your first sweater by February, tails tucked, blocked and all.

So you may notice a new name on the classes site. While I have been teaching almost all Knit-a-Gogo classes since its start in 2006, I have expanded and brought on another teacher to cover the Washington, DC area.

Karida Collins is the owner of Neighborhood Fiber Company, an amazing hand dye yarn company in Washington DC (the only one, in fact). Her yarns are all named after DC neighborhoods (my favorite is Logan Circle…the green, of course) We met at a local yarn store when we both worked there. We became close colleagues after launching our businesses at almost the same time.

She and I have taught a few parties and baby showers together and she is an excellent teacher. (she doesn’t really know it, so don’t tell her) Her classes will be expanding in the fall, so keep an eye on the site. I will indicate when the class is taught by someone other than yours truly

I think there is a point in a knitter’s life where one crosses a line. A line from reading a pattern and trusting every single character in it, even when it seems to be saying the wrong thing (most of the time, they do)…to the other side, where one assumes that one knows what the pattern is saying and one plunges forward with the confidence of a knitter who has knitted for years…only to find out in the end, that you were wrong, oh so wrong.

About two months ago I decided to knit the pinwheel baby blanket pattern and to teach it as a class. In short, this is the pattern:

Cast on 5 stitches and join for working in the round.

Knit one round.

Increase into each stitch.

Next row: K1, yo* around.

Knit one round.

Next round: K2, yo* around.

Knit one round.

Next row: K3, yo around. Are you getting the idea yet? This basically goes on endlessly until you are knitting something like 42 stitches, then a yarn over, then another 42, bla bla bla SHOOT ME

After spending endless hours knitting this stupid baby blanket, I cast off those millions of stitches on the ruffle, and there it was: a giant baby ruffle, not a baby blanket. (Kirby liked it though) No matter what I did, it would not block flat. After much internet research, I concluded that I was the only person who ever had this problem with the pattern and therefore, I am an idiot and am clearly missing something.

Last night I figured it out. As I was teaching the baby blanket class, one of my inquisitive students asked for clarification on the pattern, “Now that I have done one increase round, I do a knit round, right?” Um…let me check the pattern. Um, yes, in fact, you do. But I did not. Nope, not even once. I worked this entire pattern without ever doing the knit rounds…just kept on goin’ with those increase rounds. Awesome. Awesome Danielle.

So I frogged. I frogged that miserable baby blanket and now I am on a race to complete it before July 25th, when the baby is due (not my baby, clearly. But A baby…someone else’s baby. A friend’s baby)

So in short, read the pattern. Read the entire pattern.

The newest issue of Knitty is up for viewing…so many free patterns and so little time…

I love this sock pattern and I have so much Socks that Rock in the stash that I can use and I was careful to not purchase yarn with so much variation that the lace patterns wouldn’t show. That does drive me totally bonkers.

I do also love the lace wrap and Rowan Kidsilk Haze comes in gorgeous colors…hmm… perhaps a holiday gift for someone or something for myself to keep warm in the office A/C. Although I still haven’t finished the O Street Mansion Retreat project. yikes, I should get on that.

I don’t know quite how I feel about this hat thing with the propeller on the top. I am not sure that I would actually put it on a child of my own. Perhaps something to torture a friend’s child with. Kimberly, protect Aubri’s head, cuz I am sending this your way.

These bags are cute as hell.

I am looking at the fall and things are tight! Too many events for knitting in the fall…

Wanted to know if the following August dates work for those of you that were interested in the Tree Jacket pattern:

August 3, 10 and 17 (Sundays)

And what location do people prefer?

It is that time of year again: time for Stitch n Pitch at Nationals Stadium.

When is it?

Friday June 20th. The gates open at 6 pm and the demonstrations open at 6pm. Goody bags will be available for the first few hundred folks to sit in our stitching section (we have a section!)

What is it? 

Stitch N Pitch is an opportunity to bring together two great past times: baseball and the needle arts. It is an opportunity for us to knit, crochet, cross stitch, etc at the ballpark during a game with others from our local community.

What is Danielle doing?

This year I am helping out at the knitting demonstration table which will be inside (ie. in the airconditioning!) Kel from Knit Happens is going to join me. If you know me at all, you know that I do not like baseball. I was raised in Pittsburgh. We have an awful baseball team and are slightly [sarcasm] more fanatic about football. I realized when I was in LA a couple of years ago just how bad the Pirates are. I was in a hip expensive second hand store and saw a faded Pirates t-shirt for $80. Apparently the team is so bad that it is cool to wear their shirts again.

I digress.

What am I doing at a baseball game then? well, my “real job” dragged us all out to the new stadium about a month ago for “bonding” and I was amazed at how entertained I was despite that whole baseball thing going on. It is like being at all of the best parts of Busch gardens: amazing food and lots of it, beer stands everywhere (they even have wine!) and the people watching is spectacular! Oh, and one more thing. They valet parked my scooter. Yes, they did. Right into a locked and guarded cage. Apparantly my scooter is a bicycle and gets the same treatment as bikes..which at the new stadium are taken by a valet and locked inside an enormous cage.

Anyways, if you haven’t been to the stadium yet, it rocks.  If you have, then this is the perfect time to go back. If you actually like baseball, bless you. At least at this game it will be ok to knit (of course that didn’t stop me from knitting the last time I was there) It is amazing how little you have to pay attention at these things.

So how do you get tickets?

While you can purchase them online, it is waaaaay better to get them from Knit Happens, who will have them starting tomorrow. The seats are all together and you will be in my general section Let me know if you are going and if you got your tickets. If folks want to go and sit together, reply in the comments so that you can all coordinate amongst yourselves with that whole buying tickets thing (not getting involved in this one)

Anyways, I’ll see you at the ballpark!