Monday, January 11, 2016

One Love Shawlette ~ and a sock blank club giveaway!

Hi, Knitters,

I want to quickly announce that I am off to Vogue Knitting Live this weekend in NYC. I am having two book signings for my new book, Kids' Knitting Workshop. One is Friday night about 5:15pm at StevenBe's booth and the second one is 5:15pm on Saturday night at the Knitty City booth! I hope to see any or all of you there if interested. My books will be sold at the booths, too, during the event.

Thank you for the many wonderful comments for my book and yarn giveaway! I read every single comment and loved your stories of learning and teaching and hoping to teach others how to knit. We all have a story and I enjoyed them all. I have randomly selected 10 winners from the comments pool and the winners are....

kimmin121, stripesandpolkadots, zip022, vermilliongirl, fromkersey, Lynette Larkins, GrAnLu, blondie11, bookboxer1, and VCR!

Congratulations to all of the winners! My book publicist, Breanne, will be in touch with you shortly either via Ravelry or through the email address left in your comment. Arrangements will be made at that time for you to receive your prizes. If your name is listed please be checking your Ravelry messages or emails so you can respond to Breanne.

Today I have a super fun new shawlette design to introduce to you and a fun giveaway (information at the end of the post). You can make this shawlette with ANY 100 gram sock blank or sock/fingering weight skein of yarn.

I knit my new shawlette pattern out of one of Gale's Art's Secret Sock Blanks called, Blue Love.

Click here to see more information or to purchase the One Love Shawlette on Ravelry!

I am running a special discount price celebration for the week (the pattern is already marked down, no codes necessary). The pattern is on sale for $4.00 starting today Jan. 11 and will go up to $5.00, the regular price, after January 18, 2016.

Click here to go to Gale's Art on Etsy! The Blue Love Sock Blanks are up for pre-order right now if you are interested.

The new pattern is called One Love and here is why....

One Love Shawlette

One sock blank or one skein, one hundred grams and a one row increase repeat! The word one kept popping up all over the place when I was thinking about a name for this crescent-shaped shawlette. The shawl is knit in a Blue Love single sock blank from Gale’s Art. So I combined the two and One Love it is!

We all have a 100 gram sock blank or skein of fingering weight yarn sitting in our stash. Often times we are not sure what to do with it besides knitting a pair of socks. Well, I have the perfect solution with the One Love Shawlette. As the name implies this shawl takes one 100 gram sock blank or sock skein of yarn. The shawlette couldn’t be any easier to knit. You can either follow your yarn striping pattern as a guide or you can use the specific instructions provided to make a shawl like mine in any type of fingering weight yarn. I’ll share how to do both versions in the pattern.

Finished size: 15-inches in depth, 60-inch wingspan; finished shawlette weighs 99 grams.

Shape: Long-shallow crescent-shape

Yarn: Gale’s ArtSecret Sock Blank (single strand), 75% Superwash Merino, 25% Nylon; 463 yards/100 grams. The sample is made in the Blue Love colorway.

Sock blanks are individual works of art and may be the same colorway but striping will vary due to the artistic nature of the dyeing.

Yarn Note: Any 100 gram sock blank or fingering/sock weight skein will work fine. Also, any striped, variegated or tonal yarn will all work great! If you have more or less yardage you can stop or keep going at any point.

The Blue Love Sock Blank (photo from Gale's Art)!

A note on using a sock blank:

I knit the shawlette straight from the Gale’s Art Secret Sock Blank - single strand (Gale has double-strand blanks but you'll want the single-strand for a shawl), unraveling as I worked. The yarn was very kinky while I was knitting, but it smoothed out significantly with a good soak and block when it was finished. However, some of the unevenness does remain in the final shawl. I like this appearance and think it makes for a fun watercolor-like fabric. If you don’t want this look you could unravel the yarn before knitting and make a skein (with lots of ties) to soak and straighten out before starting the shawl. After the smooth yarn is dried wind it into a cake or ball and then begin knitting the shawl. It’s up to you!

Needles: US size 6/4mm, 32-inch circular needle or size to obtain gauge

Gauge: 5.5 stitches per inch in stockinette stitch

Materials:

Yarn needle

Stitch markers

Optional: Scale to weigh yarn in grams for starting the final edging. If you don’t have a scale you can just estimate.

In the pattern I have provided two options of choice in the pattern.

Option 1: Let the yarn be your guide. Gale’s Art Sock Blanks, like the one I used in the sample, are often striped. Instead of following or counting rows, I just changed sections in order every time the color changed until I had a certain amount of yarn remaining to finish off the final border (all details are included in the pattern).

Option 2: Row-by-Row Pattern. I wrote out exactly how many rows/repeats I did of each section, including a row checklist for your counting convenience, if you’d like a more detailed pattern to follow. Every aspect is written out in full-detail, step-by-step.

In progress photo before blocking.

Photo from Gale's Art

Do you remember the Gale's Art Sock Blank Subscription Club that I gave away a few months ago? Click here to see it.

These three sock blanks would be perfect for a One Love shawlette!!

Today I am so happy to be offering another chance for one lucky winner to win a 3-month Sock Blank Club subscription for February, March and April! For each of the three months you get a new exclusive sock blank in the mail from Gale. The club membership is worth $99 and the sign-ups are running now through January 15, 2016. Click here for the Gale's Art club information. I'll tell you how to enter at the end of the post.

That's a lot of information I know but here's where you get to enter to win a subscription to Gale's Art Sock Blank Club. The photo above shows the three sock blanks you will receive in February, March and April. They are so beautiful, works of art!

Please leave one comment on this blog post to enter to win the 3-month Sock Blank Club subscription. Please leave your Ravelry username or an email address so we can get in touch if you win. Please only click on Publish one time. There is a delay before you will see your comment appear.

Click here for the One Love shawlette pattern!
Remember the shawlette can be knit with ANY 100 gram skein of sock yarn (mine had 463 yards), not only a sock blank.

Good luck if you enter to win! Thank you, as always, for the support.
Let the comments begin!
xo ~ susan

Friday, January 08, 2016

Susan B. Anderson's Kids' Knitting Workshop ~ Giveaway!

Cover photo provided by Artisan Books/Photographed by Lauren Volo

Hi, Knitters,

Be sure to read to the end to find out about a huge giveaway opportunity! Also, early registration for Yarnover 2016 in Minneapolis starts Jan. 9th at 8am! It's on April 23rd and it sells out quick.

Here is the LINK for Yarnover.

A couple of weeks ago my latest book was published, Susan B. Anderson's Kids' Knitting Workshop. Today I am very excited to share a little bit about it with you. I have been teaching kids to knit for many years now. I have taught kids in small groups, individually, and through my daughters' Girl Scout Troops and in a lot of different settings. Do any of you remember these photos from TC's Girl Scout Troop's knitting lessons at my house in 2009?

If you want to see and read more about how I taught the Girl Scouts to knit Click Right Here!

First of all, this book was a labor of love on two topics that are near and dear to my heart, kids and knitting. The book is geared to reach 8-12 year olds but it is a good book for any age person, including adults, wanting to learn how to knit. The book takes you step-by-step through the basics of knitting in the round as the ideal place to start, and lesson-by-lesson techniques are added through tutorials and projects. If the beginning knitter works through the book she/he will come away with a great base of knowledge about knitting, and could tackle any number of projects out there in the world of patterns. It's exciting to think about.

Click here to see the Kids' Knitting Workshop on Amazon! (I am not an affiliate, by the way.)

Included in the book are 17 do-able, snappy projects that are fun and appealing for a wide age-range but will also hold young attention spans. Most of the projects are fairly quick and are knit on needles ranging from a US size 7 to a US size 13 or so. There are a couple of slightly bigger projects including a tube scarf and a pillow.

Click here to find out more and to see all of the projects in Kids' Knitting Workshop on Ravelry!

The photography, by New York City-based photographer Lauren Volo, is fun and bright, and the models are adorable. One aspect of the book that I am especially impressed by is the illustrated tutorials by Alison Kolesar. Alison is a remarkable artist. I would provide a photo of my hands doing a certain technique and then Alison would create the illustrations to show exactly what I intended. It was a really fun and successful aspect of the book. Both of these creative women were wonderful and added so much to the pages of the book.

There have been some generous reviews if you'd like to read or hear more about the book from some other industry people. Here are a few to start:

The Knitting Pipeline

Knitty.com Cool Stuff Reviews

The Knitmore Girls

The Knitgirllls

I have made a couple of supplementary book tutorial videos on my YouTube. One video is on how to do magic loop and the other is on how to use double-pointed needles.

Click here to visit my YouTube Channel, SusanBAnderson.

Okay, here are a few of my favorite projects from the book.....

Click here for more information on the Stripy Legwarmers on Ravelry!

Click here for more information on the Snowman on Ravelry!

Click here for more information on the Cowl on Ravelry!

Click here for more information on Hat with a Rib on Ravelry!

Click here for more information on the Fox Pillow on Ravelry!

Click here for more information on the Owl & Kitten Toys on Ravelry!

Click here for more information on Mason Jar Cozies!

I am so excited to be able to offer you all a gigantic giveaway today to celebrate!

I am offering 10 winners each a prize package. Each winner will receive a signed copy of my book along with 3 skeins of Schachenmayr Leana yarn! Along with the book you will get one skein each of three different colorways (rainbow, blues, pinks and purple all mixed with gray), perfect for many of the projects in the book. Thank you to Artisan Books and to Schachenmayr for the prize packages.

Please leave one comment on this blog post to enter to win. The comment must include either your Ravelry username or your email address so we can get in touch if you win. Tell me about who you might teach to knit or your favorite project if you'd like. I'd love to hear about it.

Please click on the "Publish" button only one time when you are leaving a comment. There is a delay before your comment will appear.

The Mason-Dixon Knitting blog/website is reviewing Kids' Knitting Workshop soon along with a giveaway so be sure to check them out, too!

And don't forget that StevenBe's has Kids' Knitting Workshop kits (including a bag, yarn, needles, the book and a furry pom-pom) all set to go if you want a gift set for a new knitter.

I'll be back soon with the 10 winners!

Let the comments begin.

xo ~ susan

Friday, January 01, 2016

Full of Good Moments

Hi, Knitters,

Happy New Year to all of you!

When I was young, maybe a teenager, I remember that I would often figure out how old I would be in the year 2000. I could never remember what my age would be, so every time I would have to figure it out again which is kind of funny but not surprising. The number would never stick in my head. It seemed so far away and thinking about myself in my mid-thirties was hard to imagine way back when. I would try to dream about what my life would be like at that point and really I couldn't possibly have imagined it. Honestly, I don't know what got me thinking about the year 2000 today.

Now that it's another new year I am taking a moment to remember that sort of momentous year in history, the year I used to think about so often, the year when those numbers flipped over. This morning for some reason I am taking stock of what had happened in my adult-life at that point. Some of these things you may not know about me.

By the time the year 2000 had finally arrived...

I had been happily married for 11 years,

I had already moved five times in my married life,

My beloved mother had battled acute leukemia twice and had miraculously survived,

My father had passed away four years earlier,

I had stopped teaching in the public schools where I had been commuting to work about an hour each way for several years with kids in tow,

I had had four kids and a miscarriage in seven years, our youngest was only 6-months old,

And of course, through it all I had been knitting non-stop for the last 16 years.

The year 2000 came and went in a blur that was barely noticed. The year that I had dreamed about as a youngster? It turns out I didn't have much of a moment to think about it, literally. I didn't even have a moment to take a shower most days or if I did someone was probably yelling for me and pounding on the door (remember those days?). It was a wild time in life, sleepless and full of everything, full of laughter and joy and some sadness and little kids and babies and family and love. All of it. There were ups-and-downs and everything in between. I remember those days with fondness and amazement. I loved it.

So it seems that 16 years later life would have slowed down a bit and in certain ways it has and in other ways it is still just as busy or maybe even busier at times, but it's a different kind of busy now. Life has moved on and progressed as it should. Things become more meaningful in some ways. It's a good time in life, happy and interesting and full, not without bumps here and there. I am thankful for all of it.

I always feel like I should be reflective somehow when a new year begins but it doesn't always happen. I'm not really one for resolutions. I just always strive to try harder to do a better job with everything all of the time. That's a blanket resolution that covers it all. I'm not always successful but I try.

I had a couple of people comment (in a nice way) in regards to a photo I posted online last week that my life always looks so perfect. That made me pause. I replied, "No, it isn't but there are good moments." Mine certainly is not a perfect life, not by long shot, but there are many good moments from the past and hopefully many yet to come. I like to share the good moments.

Anyway, back to this new year, 2016. I woke up this morning and thought I should acknowledge this new and fresh year somehow and be somewhat thoughtful about it. I was looking for a good way to welcome the new year in writing so I started looking up some quotes or inspirational messages to see if anything would catch my eye. Here is a quote that I came across that struck a note with me.

“And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, poet

2016 will be full of things that have never been. I like this way of looking at the new year. The year ahead will be full of new things, fresh things, changing things, growing things, and things I could never imagine! And that's exciting to think about.

Together I hope we can discover things that have never been in 2016. I hope your 2016 is very full with good things that have never been, both new and old. I am always hopeful that the new year ahead will be the best year yet.

With that and no matter what events happen in our collective lives, let's knit the heck out of 2016 and make and create things that have never been! We can do it.

Now let's chat about the sock knitting.

JoAnna from Knit Spin Farm sent me some of her lovely handspun for socks as a gift. I was blown away by the kind gesture and the yarn. Thank you! It's fabulous. Knitting with JoAnna's handspun makes me realize that I need to work harder on my own handspun because hers is pretty near perfect. Maybe this should this be my resolution this year. Anyway, the yarn is glorious. You can see that I am having a great time knitting with it.

Yarn: 102 grams of fingering weight yarn. It appears that JoAnna spun half of the fiber as a traditional marled 3-ply and the other half of the fiber is Navajo-plied to keep the colors in check to create a self-striping yarn. Genius! JoAnna suggested striping the 2 skeins and that is exactly what I am doing to a wonderful effect. I am switching colors every 4 rounds for the leg and foot of the sock. The cuff, heel and toe is knit in the striping yarn only. The second sock will be completed the same.

I sincerely think this is the best sock I have ever knitted. That's how strongly I feel about it.

Fiber: 100% Cheviot from Quillin Fiber Arts in the Owls colorway (LOVE the name).

Needles: US size 1/2.25mm dpns from Knitter's Pride Karbonz, 6-inch length.

Sock pattern: My free pattern: How I Make My Socks

Project bag: From Hue Loco on Etsy.

Sock blocker: From The Loopy Ewe.

Click here for the Knit Spin Farm Instagram ~ the farm animals are enchanting.

Click here for the Knit Spin Farm video podcast (one of my faves!).

Click here for the Knit Spin Farm Etsy Shop! JoAnna is such a talent, I can heartily endorse all of her products as I have used and purchased everything she offers in her shop and have loved it all. She cares and she is thoughtful about her shop and it shines through.

I think that's enough for today. Have a relaxing holiday weekend ahead, Knitters.

In a few days I am posting a gigantic giveaway that will include 10 winners. Each winner will receive a signed copy of my new book, Kids' Knitting Workshop, that was just released a couple of weeks ago, and each winner will receive 3 skeins of yarn for projects in the book. I can't wait!
xo ~ susan

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Good Tidings

Hi Knitters,

I hope you are doing well this holiday week. I love this season and all of the home-y activities with which we devote our time. I've been planning gifts and sewing and knitting up a storm and baking and cooking, etc. All of my kids are home and on break from school. It is bustling and busy. You, too?

Well, I have randomly selected a winner for the Kermis Kit giveaway from Infinite Twist! And the winner is...... matildachelsey on Ravelry or Josette! Congratulations, Josette. I have sent an email to Cate Carter of Infinite Twist with your contact information and she will be in touch with you directly to plan out your kit specifics. Click here for the Kermis pattern on Ravelry.

Thank you for the fantastic Kermis Kit giveaway response. Cate is just thrilled and has sold a lot of kits this past week. She is so thankful and excited to give good homes to her beautiful yarns and kits.

Here is some information and links for the photos in the collage:

Rainbow Socks: Quaere Fibres 10-Stripe Rainbow colorway, sport weight; US size 2 needles; toe-up with an extended afterthought heel. 56 sts for the leg and foot count.

Knit Collage Mittens: Yarn is Knit Collage Castaway in the Prism colorway, 2 skeins. I made up the pattern but there is a similar pattern on the Knit Collage website. I knit the mittens with the knit side facing me and then turned them inside out so the purl side is the right-side. I used US size 10.5 dpns to make the mittens. I gave the finished pair to my niece as an early Christmas gift. She LOVES them and now my other niece wants a pair, too. I see more of these fun mittens in my future.

nylon blend from Regia to see if he likes it better. He is so knitworthy! He wears the two pairs of socks I knit him constantly, they are always in the wash. I didn't enjoy knitting with this cotton blend yarn as much but it is doable. It feels a bit like string in my opinion. But I love the end results. He picked out the colorway (I love that he likes colorful pink stripey socks!). I used US size 1 dpns and my free pattern How I Make My Socks for men (here is the men's sock information).

Rag Quilt Placemats: I made a quick set of 6 placemats for my sister-in-law. I made the same rag quilt placemats last year and wrote a blog post (click right here) with all of the details and the YouTube video tutorial I used. I made a few more for another gift for this year, too, nine in total. They are really fast!

And lastly, my son has been baking and baking and baking! I try to sneak in and bake and cook when he's not in the kitchen which is not often. He has gifted most of his cookies, muffins and breads to others but leaves plenty for us to enjoy as well. He is currently working as a baker in a popular Madison bakery and loving it.

Yesterday as I was working on the rainbow socks I sat across from TC at our kitchen table. She is working on her beaded ornaments which she has been making for the last several years. I love her focus and concentration while she is working. It is so much fun to have her on break from school and sports and whatnot. I enjoy her company so much.

And I want to mention the Santa project bag that I've been using for the holiday season this year. It is from ShopLouleigh on Etsy and it is just the cutest bag ever, honestly. I'm so in love with Leigh's work and fabric choices. She is spot on.

Click here to visit ShopLouleigh!

Here are the ornaments TC has finished so far! She'll wrap them up in little sets to give as gifts. It's so sweet. Each of these designs come in kits that we purchased at the Wisconsin Craft Market this year and last year. Some of the kits only cost a couple of dollars and include the materials for several ornaments per kit as you can see.

Merry, Merry and Happy Holidays, dear Knitters. Thank you for the support and for the fun here on the blog and everywhere else. I appreciate you all so much. This is the tenth Christmas I have celebrated on this blog, it's hard to believe that it has been that long.

I'm wishing you all good tidings of great joy!

xo ~ susan