combos

when i am cold

i feel the most motivated

to knit something for myself.

the other night, feeling quite chilly,

i ran into holly priestley‘s ‘nomadic night’s slouch’.

ooh, i love how much personality this hat has

and how much room it gives

each of us individual

knitters to

express ourselves in color and yarn combinations.

in true antiestablishmentarian style,nomad yarns collagei chose three different yarns altogether.

it’s a big ol’ hat, so matching up exact gauge is optional, right?

i almost never would think that,

but in this case

i did and it’s working.

holly’s version is much more colorful than mine,

which in a different mood i might have wanted,IMG_8710upbut right now, all the neutrals and mixed textures sing to me

of varied experiences and how they’ve

shaped me, made me

who i am.

i have worked through the corrugated rib,

and found the colorwork chart to be fabulously simple.

nothing like clarity to make a project feel like it’s flying off the needles!

if i juggle things right today (ie: get the necessary stuff done),

i could have my ‘nomad’ ready

before the storm hits

tomorrow afternoon.

that’s my goal.  we’ll see if i hit it.

‘nomads’ taken from 13:20 of isaiah.

yarns in top photo: (left) hudson valley fiber farm ‘farmstead’ from a local market,

(center) malabrigo ‘twist’ in terron, and (right) classic elite yarns ‘blackthorn’ in alabaster.

it continues

the snow

just won’t stop.

flakes have been gently falling for two days

with a big 50 mph wind storm due to hit day after tomorrow

IMG_8701cropand drop over a foot more snow.

it was fun at first,

but has long since lost its charm.

so what do i do when

grey skies and blizzard warnings are

imminent?

i block knit things.  truth.

because this weather gets my forced hot air furnace

in full swing and things soaked and pinned today will be ready to go tomorrow.

IMG_8696crop

that kind of progress makes me feel

like taking a look out the windows

and still seeing

white snow on the roof of my neighbor’s white painted house under the grey white sky,

might just be bear-able.

(although it does make me growl a bit.)

‘truth’ taken from 13:6 in first corinthians.

 ‘allure fiber wash‘ courtesy of bijou basin ranch.

note: you know me and the strength of my convictions.

i am not one to be swayed by a little free bottle of fiber wash.

end result?  i really did like this stuff.  a lot.

cey & i: blog tour, day ten

i often have ideas

in the recesses of my head,

that i don’t have the means to make real.

either i don’t have the skills (yet), or the perfect yarn for the job doesn’t seem to exist (yet),

or (as was the case with the ‘tensity’ bags)

i need a little outside help.

my original sketches looked like this.

just at a glance you can see how much changed:

i replaced both the yarn and the colors,

and somewhere along the line i decided that the sling

was more rocker while the shoulder bag was more boho afterall.

IMG_2809urbafter searching all the nooks and crannies of the internet,

only to discover that the straps i had in mind

were available nowhere,

i got in touch with laura of jul designs.

i had worked with her closures before and so admired her pieces.

we decided that i would knit both bags and then

send them to her so she could design the handle kits

to fit perfectly.

the result

of our collaboration

is ‘tensity’, both as a sling sack

and as a more typically shaped shoulder bag.

one last little secret.  the two bags are knit identically

(except for the yarn colors).  they’re exactly the same.

this means if you invest in both sets of hardware,

you could be carrying it as a sling

or as a shoulder bag

to suit your

own mood at the time.

this would totally work for me,

as somedays i’m more ‘in your face’ rocker

and others i’m more ‘go with the flow’ bohemian.

check out the deal of the day and enter to win a free copy of the tensity pattern

over on the picnic knits blog today.

corrina also lets us in on

whether she’s more

rocker or

boho.

why don’t you check out her designs

and see if you can guess her style before you read it in her own words?

last blog tour stop tomorrow  stay tuned.

‘invest’ taken from 11: 1-5 of ecclesiastes.

cey & i: blog tour, day seven

oh, how i have longed for

a quiet space to be alone with the music in my head.

especially on a show night, there is no room to think.

i never did have the advantage of a fire escape to retreat to,

but i would have loved it out there.

the sounds of the city, the night’s lights, a slight breeze,7160intand ‘cade’ at my neck to pull up as a snood if the breeze turned stiff.

today for the blog tour, ruth (of rock + purl)

is featuring this cowl and taking comments for a giveaway.

…back to the fire escape of my dreams.

this particular fire escape

didn’t have quite the romance of the daydream.

to get this shot, we walked up to the sidewalk

(club passim is one level underground)

around the block to door # 26,

up three flights of stairs to the offices,

out the french doors of the conference room onto the fire escape itself,

and then two and a half flights down the actual fire escape

on the outside of the building.

i say ‘we’ because lindsay and i were up there together.

i’m just outside the camera’s lens to the left.

this is one of my favorite shots of the day.

it’s easy for me to look at her in my boots and my skirt,

playing my guitar in a cowl i knit

and feel like i was

really there.

but then again, i was.

‘think’ from 18:12 of matthew.

photo courtesy of classic elite yarns.

today’s the day

it’s friday,

which is a celebration all its own,

but it’s also the day to announce the winner.  ready?

i let random.org do the choosing.

it’s fairest that way.  since some of you i know well

and some of you are brand new names to me,

i don’t want to be biased by mistake in any way.

first, thanks to all who said why they chose the colorwy they did.

i loved learning a little bit about so many of you!

ok.  without farther ado.

random.org says:

IMG_6567so count down to the 6th comment below and it’s terry.

congrats, terry!

i’ll get this package headed your way asap.

thanks to mountain colors and in the loop for being part of this giveaway.

i couldn’t have done it without them.

‘below’ taken from 4:39 of deuteronomy.

 

appropriate

storm has past.  all is well.

yesterday’s rain kept my kids inside

and my 8 yr old wandered into my little workroom.

he was looking politely, so i left him as i went off to tend other fires.

later in the day, he comes to me to say,

‘mama, can you knit me a hat?’

‘sure,’ i say,

‘what color do ya want, bud?’

‘blue,’ he says, ‘lots of different blues, please.’

and i run through my stash in my head and can’t place variegated blues,

i say, ‘i don’t think i have any of that.  sorry.’

‘yes, you do.’ he says, ‘i saw it on the shelf this morning.’

sure enough, he walks in and pulls exactly what he wants out.

IMG_5709tempgreat stuff from knitcircus.  bulky and lots of blues all in one skein.

if the mix of shades didn’t hook me (which they did),

the color name would have.

how can you go wrong with a name like ‘blue skies ahead’?

who wouldn’t want to knit with it.

‘skies’ taken from 26:7 of job.

cey & i: experiment gone good

this was originally a swatch.

then i forgot how i did the swatch

(because i brazenly thought in the moment

that i was knitting it, that i would never forget how i did it).

then i dissected the swatch and wrote down how it was done in the first place.IMG_5695crop

now it’s one of the pieces in ‘artistic differences’

to be released later (i know, i’m a tease).

but, it you will see it later

(i promise)

and when you do, i hope you think the same things that i did

when i first stumbled over how to make it happen.

“oh.” … “hmmm.” … “wow.” … “cool.”

‘later’ taken from 20:25 in proverbs.

(this is an ongoing series of posts chronicling

the process of my yet to be released collaboration with classic elite yarns.

to search, all post titles will include ‘cey & i:‘ and be tagged with ‘artistic differences‘.)