Tecno Technique Blanket Class

So I've begun work on my newest endeavor: The Tech Square Afghan by Joanne Clark. So far I've made three of the sqaures and I am having a blast playing around with the different techniques! I especially found the travelling stitches tree square to be quite addictive. Here's a picture of the first square in the book:



I'm knitting it out a wild combination of colors from the wonderfully bright palette of Sheep Shop Yarn Co's Sheep One - this is going to be a bit more colorful than the example shown in the book.

I'll be teaching this book at a monthly "block party" class at knit-one-one in Berkeley and I'm really excited about it. I think this is just the kind of class that I, the type-A knitter, would have loved to take as each square teaches you a different technique. Plus, we'll get to nosh on Sile's shortbread so you can't go wrong there. If you live in the area, I'd love for you to join us! It should be a blast!

Brenda Dayne - the new homeopathic no-doze.

I have recently made an incredible discover - knitting podcasts! Oh, I know, I'm waaaay behind the times - most of you have probably been on board with Cast-On, Lime & Violet and Stash & Burn since the beginning, but I never really figured out how to make them a part of my life. For those of you in the know on my life, you're already aware of my recent expansion of time on the road, but I'll fill the rest of you in. I'm into my second season on the road as a Yarn Sales Rep. This is the best job ever, but I do have a hard time dealing with extreme waste of time that driving seems to be (and there's a lot of driving now that I go up to Oregon and Washington in addition to my home territory of Northern California). After all, there are many things that one can add knitting to that make them feel productive - tv watching, doctors office waiting room visits, family gatherings, etc - but unfortunately I have just not figured out a safe way to knit and drive.

Thanks goodness for Brenda Dayne - this genius of the podcast has held me captured to her tales of knitting and her antics with other podcasteres the world over. If you haven't gotten on board with Cast-On, I strongly advise you to give it a try. This is not your typical knitting podcast - it's downright professional. There are all kinds of knitting podcasts, and I'm sure that everyone has their favorite style, and it's quite possible that I may amend my *favorites* status for no apparant reason at any moment, but I am very Type-A and I really appreciate how planned and organized her podcasts are (I can just imagine her ticking off the boxes alongside her outlined show-notes and she goes through the cast.)

Here's my dilemma - Brenda has now entertained me for 29 episodes (which is nearly 29 hours of driving time) and I feel as though I owe more than a blog-post as gratitude. She has a donation button on her site, and I feel like it's time for me to contribute to her art. So what I'd love to hear from you is - how do you show your appreciation for such great free art? Do any of you have a "per-cast" formula for donations?

While I'm waiting, I'll see if I can't at least add a link to her podcast on my blog.

Meet my new boyfriend, Oregon.

Did you know that attendants still pump your gas for you in Oregon? Seriously, it's either 1985 or the good people of Oregon are just that good. Either way, it's like you always have a boyfriend in Oregon - because in my dream-1985-reality a good boyfriend would pump your gas for you.

Ahh... Oregon. Bestill my beating heart

Scenic Nevada and some super-warm mittens

So I'm back from my first long sales trip up through NE California. It was pretty wild. Not so much the yarn, the yarn was pretty tame, but the scenery was pretty spectacular. I took a wrong turn on my first day driving from Reno to Cedarville, CA and came across Pyramid Lake. It's a pretty big suprise to find a lake this huge in the desert. And believe it or not - it's one thing we didn't steal from the native peoples of our land. It's all part of a giant reservation.

So I made it up to Cedarville Tuesday afternoon - it's amazing how right after you cross the Nevada-California border, things start looking up. I saw deer - a whole heard of them, and sheep and cows and green. Oh and snow atop the Warner Mountains. Pretty gorgeous country if you ask me. I might be able to live up there if it weren't so completely isolated. You'd have to make a lot of babies to keep busy.

Tuesday night I made it through the pass and down to Alturas. Much to my dismay there was snow along-side the road despite an outside temp of 70. Leads me to believe I'm lucky I wasn't there the week before. And despite my nasty cold I could still smell the pines - I think it would be pretty spectacular without sinus congestion.

Wednesday I visited Alturas and then headed off again towards Chico. I saw a whole lot of Mt Shasta on my drive that day. Who knew Northern California had a giant, snow-covered volcano? Well, probably lots of people, but I was impressed.

Thursday and Friday I was in Chico and Paradise (really cute town) and then I decided to call it a week and head back for Berkeley.

Whew - I guess that's my adventure in a nutshell. My mom's coming with me on my next big trip - so I'm definitely looking forward to the company. I had the pleasure of having my Aunt Marion along one day on my visits in the Tahoe area, and it was quite nice to have the company - and an assistant.

I didn't get nearly as much knitting done as I had hoped. I had all sorts of aspirations and brought a ton with me, but all I managed to finish were these mittens, but they're pretty rad so it's ok.

Pretty much the warmest mittens ever, what with their self-lining. My sister thinks she wants a pair, but I'm pretty sure it's going to take awhile for me to forget that making these is really like knitting four pairs of mittens, two of which are on size 2's. Sorry, Kathy, I think you're out of luck.

Out and About

Wow, this has been a great week. Friday I got to do the Oakland Art Murmur, Saturday I got to sit outside and listen to great music at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park and Sunday I got to take a class on color with Ms PunkRawkPurl (aka Tammy) at knit-one-one. Whew! I'm beside myself with satisfaction.

Tammy's class was rad. I always have a great time at knit-one-one but this was a different sort of class and I wasn't sure what to expect. Tammy made us think outside our favorite colors and play with new color combinations. She wanted us to pick out a color we would never knit with - this wasn't hard for me as one of my least favorite colors is currently one of Tammy's favs - ochre. (it just looks like baby poo to me) but then I started picking out things that could go with it, and I came up with this interesting combination:


I think it might actually make a pretty dashing sweater for a certain one-year-old that I know for Christmas. Elaine thinks it would make a darling "church-sweater," and luckily his parents are church-goers.

In other excitement, some of you may know that I've been working on becoming a yarn sales representative for some time and I'm finally getting out on the road. I've been toying with how I can comment on these adventuress on my blog because although I'm going to have some excellent insights on shops in Northern California and will get to see a lot of rad shops, I'm just not sure if there's a conflict of interest in me posting about the shops I sell to. Maybe if I just accentuate the positives everywhere I go?

I'd love to hear what you all think about my shop-blogging quandary!

Schnoodle Fever & Learn to Knit!

How much do you want a schnoodle? I never thought I needed a dog until I met this wonderful creature. I think he's secretely a cat - but the kind I'm not allergic to, best of both worlds. Thank goodness for Sammie and his snuggles or this might have been a very slow summer. So I've got it bad for Sammie, but I also like speding time with Sam's mom, the wonderful Kate Freeman.

I suppose after all my ravings about Sammie I could expound on some of Kate's merits - after all, she has many! Kate is a knitting genius -she's joked about starting a knitting bar much like the Mac genius-bar where people could come with their knitting catastrophes and with a less geeky smile than your average Apple-Genius she could walk you through the fix! For those of you in the bay area who are not yet knitting (and I was saying to Tammy George - everyone who I know that's worth knowing already knows how to knit!) this is the opportunity of a lifetime to join the club. Ms. Kate is teaching a beginning knitting class this month at knit-one-one and boy am I jealous of those lucky enough to learn from an expert (rather than my original attempts out of some crappy book from the craft section at Wal-Mart). Anyway, check it out, she's one rad teacher.

P.S. I hear Sammie is looking for a more public distribution of his thoughts on the world - I'll let you know when his blog starts up.

Thank God They're Cute!

Well I've taken a long recess from blogging... but I haven't been idle. July was the month of hosting. Don't get me wrong, it was absolutely wonderful getting to see three of my best friends from college and six relatives this month, but I'm glad to have life back to normal for awhile.

The above picture is of my ridiculously cute first-cousin-once-removed who we will herethereto refer to as my "niece"- white people are weird with their familial titles. Her mother and I had a wonderful time showing her around San Francisco, although I think she's a little young to grasp travel...

I haven't gotten as much knitting done as I would like to, but I did finally finish up my blanket for the Linus Project, and I think it turned out fabulously: