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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