Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Sunny Inspiration


Hi Knitters,
I am so inspired this morning. Dani from Sunshine Yarns has generously sent me a bundle of her Mini Skein Color Collection to help me figure out what colors I want to use for a project for my book. Can I use them all and then use them all together? Maybe not, but I feel the itch to start striping right away. Seeing this gorgeous array of color has carried my mind to a completely different place project-wise. I have a whole new set of toys in mind now that I am very excited about.

The colors include buttermilk, sunshine, mushroom, lime, avocado, fire orange, periwinkle, dusty plum, chocolate, and mermaid. See if you can match those up. I am a sucker for color names. Dani has these mini skein collections available for purchase and it is a great way to sample her yarn. The yarn is Soft Superwash and each of the 10 skeins is 60-70 yards. It is fingering weight and machine washable. The yarn is so incredibly soft and snuggly, squeezing these little cakes is a must.

Granny square update: 78
Last update: 76
I know that isn't much progress in numbers but I did stitch all of the squares together which is still progress. I am shooting to make the blanket 12 squares by 15 squares. Right now it is 6 by 13. Not bad.

I'll leave you today with another blast from the past. This photo was taken on my 28th birthday. (I think that is so funny that I had the candles with my age at 28. Who did that?) That is my cute niece, Morgan, who was the recent graduate I mentioned a few posts ago. I think I was pregnant here with my second son. The point of sharing this picture is to share that lovely sweater. I think this sweater came before the Susan Duckworth sweater for a couple of reasons.

I remember working on this Very Easy, Very Vogue sweater pattern from Vogue Knitting, maybe in 1986-87, while I was still a college student. I knitted on it while I worked one summer as a student advisor for the School of Education for incoming freshmen at the UW. I would pull it out to work on while I waited for the groups of students. I remember being very excited about the sweater. I distinctly remember the woman I worked with making comments about my knitting, especially the Very Easy, Very Vogue title in the magazine. She wasn't a fan. In the photo, which was taken in 1992, I was sitting at the kitchen table in our first house. I remember that awful wallpaper and I remember removing it later. That was not fun.

The sweater was knitted in a cotton and was quite heavy when finished. When I first taught myself to knit I twisted my purl stitches. This entire sweater was completed with twisted stitches making the fabric kind of strange looking up close. It had a lower band of a black and white pattern across the stomach and also a different pattern band across the upper back. This is so strange aesthetically. It is was the 80's is my only explanation. I wore this sweater to death for many, many years. It was perfect, being that it was absolutely huge, to wear through a couple of pregnancies. I don't have this winner in my possession any longer, not sure where it went. I don't have the magazine either.

Oh well, thought you might enjoy another laugh at my expense. I sure do.

Okay, Knitters, back to work for me. Have a good day.
best, susie 

9 comments:

Hilary said...

Oh that yarn is fabulous! To quote Wilbur - "Great names!" I think you should use them to design a Noah's Ark playset. My 2 year old daughter is intrigued beyond description with the 3 pigs playset in Itty Bitty Nursery - she always finds that page in the book and tells me the whole story of the 3 little pigs. It's next on my list of must knits. :-)

Mrs. MK said...

Not laughing, Susan! I like your sweater, and at the time, you were just as fabulous as you are now!! :-) It's funny how things change, yes?

Jersey Shore Deb said...

Susan:
I couldn't beleive it when I saw that sweater in your blog post! I made the same sweater from Vogue--I made it in 1995, and I actually think the pattern may have been from Elle Magazine when they used to have knitting patterns? I made mine in brown, black and cream and still wear it! The best part of the story: I left the sweater-in-progress in our car after knitting on it on a trip into Manhattan. Our car was stolen with the WIP in it. The happy ending is that the car was recovered a month later--the airbags were gone, but the sweater remained! I guess the thief was not a knitter. I think that's why I still enjoy wearing it!
Deb in NJ
You can visit me on Ravelry, where I'm JerseyShoreDeb, or my blog at http://rather-be.blogspot.com

Susan B. Anderson said...

JerseyShoreDeb!
I used to subscribe to Elle when I was a teenager and I looooved the knitting patterns on the back page of each issue. In fact, after they stopped doing the knitting pattern I let my subscription go. I wasn't even a knitter when I started admiring those patterns and I wish I would have saved those old issues, if not just the pattern page.
Thanks for reminding me. I also love your sweater story, that made me laugh.
susan

peaknits said...

What a lovely little pot of yarns - how sweet to have them! Can't wait to hear what happens with them next! And that sweater - I love that you are sharing things from the past - really shows your longevity as a knitter - you go girl!

Anonymous said...

The yarn is just beautiful. I went to their website to look around....tempting!

Corinne said...

I'm not laughing, it's a cute sweater. I made that sweater, too, in some Classic Elite Wool, orange with the cream and black. I believe I still have it, but haven't worn it in decades. I should bring it out for fodder on my blog!

Anonymous said...

Awesome, awesome sweater :) Thanks for sharing my mini-skeins!

Anonymous said...

What a lovely collection of yarns! And as for the sweater, I used to wear one that my mother had knitted for me in the 80s, that actually had a yoke in which tubes of foam were inserted under the different colored sections to create volume!