WORK IN PROGRESS ....

New year, new beginnings, new blog design!!!
I've been contemplating cleaning up this space for quite some time.  Finally I am getting a chance to redesign and reorganise!  Love it!

For the past two years I was crazy about colours.  I wanted my blog to have lots of colourful images and I really enjoyed making monthly collages for the blog's banner.  Today, I find my colourful pages too busy and awfully messy.  I am drawn to simple designs, to neutral colours, to black and white palettes, and I am crazy about simple bold fonts.  So I spent the beginning of the year working on the new design for my blog.  I know how I want it to look and, more importantly, I know how to make it look this way.

Over the next several weeks I will be changing different elements of SAS does.  The wise thing would be to wait and do all changes at once but I am impatient (and frankly I am getting really tired of the old look) so I will be doing it one element at a time.

Once again, please bear with me while things are being adjusted and let me know if you like the new look!

__________
A year ago: UPDATES and FREE PRINTABLE CALENDAR
Two years ago: BORSCH OR BORSCHT (RECIPE)
Three years ago: TRAVELLING ALBUM PART 1 and PART 2

More updates

Last night I got a chance to work on the "about" page for this blog.  For those of you interested in the story behind SAS-does, here is the link to the ABOUT SAS-DOES post.  Enjoy!

xxx
Anya

Award

I got my first award - the Brilliant Blog one. I was so excited last night that I even had a hard time falling asleep! Thank you so much, Susan, for nominating me. By the way, you should check out her blog (Knitting Alone).

Now it is my turn to nominate 7 bloggers to pass the award on. It is not an easy task considering the number of knitting (and not knitting) blogs I like. I will let you guess the number, it is a 3-digit one.

So my nominees are:

Knitting on Impulse
a Whistler-based knitter who dyes the most beautiful fiber, makes jewellery, and takes picture of the magnificent West Coast.

SweetP Knits
I have mentioned Gabes in my previous post. Her posts always put a smile on my face, maybe it is because of her beautiful knitting, or maybe it is her cute children, or maybe it is the pink background of the page? Whatever it is, reading her posts makes me smile.

Sel and Poivre
Can not quite remember how I found this blog but it is yet another blog with beautiful photography, knitting, and interesting posts.

Ysolda
This young lady is quite famous in the knitting community. If you do not know her - rush over to her blog. She got nice patterns, tutorials, and you might be able to attend one of her lessons.

We heart yarn
What can I say? I am a sucker for beautiful, clean designs and a nice mix of knitting and nature. Yet another visual candy (with reading substance!)

Anna's flying needles
Although I have never commented on Anna's posts I have been lurking around for a while. I really like things she knits.

And the last but not least ..... well it was hard to decide, so it's a tie between these 3:

Two little bunshees
Heart felt
The akamai knitter

I know I was suppose to nominate only 7 but there are just too many talented bloggers and it never hurts to spread the joy and brilliance, right?

What I will be knitting tonight.

Do you have those days when a certain word, item, or a song keeps popping up everywhere? Today was one of those days for me. It started with Esya (aka Urwen) sending me these images she found on one of LiveJournal communities:

They are all part of Luisa Cerano's collection
"Look how cool these bracelets are" said she.
And indeed knitted bangles are pretty impressive. I have seen pictures of bangles made simply by wrapping the yarn around the wooden/plastic base but it was the first time I saw knitted ones. And considering the popularity of the fabric bangles these will get popular soon.

I had just enough time to finish the conversation with Esya when Gabes (aka SweetP) posted this picture on her blog:


Not only prooving my theory about knitted bangles being "cool", not only explaining that this could be a very neat way of trying new stitches or making swatches, but providing us all with a link to instructions of how to make them!

If you want to have the latest "it" object for Fall, hurry up over to See Mi Knit, pick up some leftover yarn, and get to work. You have four days left until the First of September.

P.S. Do not forget to say "Thank you" to Gabes.

Blobs

I am back to civilization and knitting. Sorry for leaving abruptly but I was hiding in Toronto for over a week and since people from whom I was hiding tend to read my blog I had to stop posting for a while.... These people are the reason why I could not show my crocheted project until now.
Here is the last picture of "almost finished" secret project:


And here are all the balls and arms assembled into 2 "blobs":


Same blobs but with the hand-made card:


These are modified Doug and Gordo from Crochet Me book. They do not look much like the original ones (I hope Kim Werker would forgive me for that) - I used a completely different size of yarn and had to improvise with the eyes and "costumes". I wanted them to look more like a girl and a boy, since they were part of the wedding gift for my two wonderful friends.

Twist Collective

Twist Collective is out! I know, I know you all are aware of it, you actually knew about this Canadian project for a while (I found out about it this morning, thanks to Lin), some of you submitted patterns, others were posting sneak peaks on Ravelry, and those who were completely oblivious to it read Yarn Harlot's blog post. But hey, I am a bit slow these days.
I had no clue that Twist Collective existed until early this morning and I had no time to post about it because I was running late to my driving lesson (told you, I am slow, I do not know how to drive, at my age!). So even if you have heard about it already, hear once again, and go check it out!


Have a great knitting weekend, everyone!

Useful

From Label-free blog via Lime & Violet

Contest

I LOVE knitting community (all those people behind blogs and Ravelry profiles). It seems to be a very friendly, helpful, and entertaining bunch full of stories, photographs, FOs, stash, yarn give-aways, and contests. Just today I left a comment with a question on Monika's blog and got a detailed answer via email in a matter of minutes!

Yarn contests seem to be big in the knitting world. No wonder - who can resist an addition to the stash collection? For the yarn-addicts here is a contest from Knit Witch and Amia yarn store:

Just click on the image or HERE to read the instructions.

Good luck to all of you!

Ravelry and errata

I discovered Ravelry. After giving it just a quick glance I understand why most of the knitting (and as it turns out not only knitting) people are using it. I will try to dedicate a separate blog post to Ravelry, for now I just want to share a piece of important information I found. Remember my Reverse Psockology socks?
It turns out there is an errata for the pattern. As Anne Pattigrew, the creator of this pattern, mentions on her blog:

it is difficult to get the holes formed by the yarn-overs the same size
because of the transition between knit and purl stitches

I remember noticing it when working on my pair but I did not know if it was "normal" or if it happened because of my uneven knitting style, after all it was my first pair of socks.
For those of you who are working on these, here you can find a different version of the lacy pattern.

Defeated

There are no knitting news today. I slightly advanced on my second slipper and a bit on my new project but I did not even take pictures of the progress. Reason?

LACE

I started knitting lace and the last 2 days have been spend decoding ssk, k2sp, and k2tog(s). Inspired by my own post about the alpaca yarn, I decided to get back to my shawl, ripped down whatever I had knitted earlier, and started fresh with a 5-stitch chain.

- After the first 13 rows I had a light suspicion that the shawl did not look like what it should be

- After the 30th row, the annoying voice in my head told me to stop but I convinced it that I should keep going and that the pattern will miraculously emerge (I believe in miracles, I really do, even after last night!)

- After the 64th row I started panicking, wet the swatch, tried to pin it down, failed miserably, stretched it and looked at it from every possible angle to see the glimpses of the design.

- After yet another hour spend meditating on my swatch I said:
(I don’t think I should write down what I said, because there might be children reading this) and began looking for another …. lace pattern (did I mention before that I am very stubborn? Wait a minute; let me put it in my profile description).

- By 2 AM I learned how to do invisible cast on (KnittingHelp video), did it 2 times (again, I’ll omit everything I was saying and mumbling at that time) and knitted first 3 rows of this gorgeous stole, by Eunny.

Oh wait, there was also an incident with scissors but do not worry, everyone is alive and in good health.

Today’s plan for the evening: knit the first rows of the stole. G-d, give me strength and patience.



Meanwhile, I would have to admire the work of others, like this gorgeous Turquoise Lace made by The Daily Purl (click on the image to see the original post):


If you like knitting, weaving, and beautiful photography - visiting her blog is a must!

Books, books, books

I am still working on Mr. Sock II. As some of knitters mention, there comes a point in any project when you just can not wait to finish it, and that point came yesterday. Unfortunately my Ikebana class (what, you thought knitting is the only unusual thing I am into???) took longer then expected and I did not have time to finish the sock. I got to the heel part, but hey, it is all downhill after heel, right?
I also did not get a chance to take pictures - BAD blogger, Anna, BAD!

I do have something to share with you today: I place my first knitting Amazon order! I exercised great self-restrain and discipline while ordering. Those of you who know me in real life can imagine how hard it was. I first narrowed my choice to 30, then to 17, finally I picked 8 ... only 3 books made it to the "shopping cart" but I believe I made the right choice.
Here are the top 3, as chosen by yours truly

3rd place:
I am yet to share my full story of shawl knitting with you. For now I'll just say that I did not give up the Knit1 shawl. I actually got some awesome yarn and special needles (it's a blogworthy story on its' own), and I even started it. I also looked at tones of lace knitting sites and I feel that after socks-addiction it would be shawls. Oberle's book is PERFECT for that.


2nd place goes to:


I had to get a crochet book, I am a Crazy Crocheter after all. To tell you the truth my last trip to the bookstore left me disappointed; for some reason there were no good crochet books there. It seems like people knit but do not crochet, anymore. However, Crochemealong blog proves the opposite. This is the blog, where people share their progress on the objects they make from "Crochet me". After looking at all the gorgeous projects I could not resist ordering the book.


And the winner iiiiiiiiis:


It had to be about socks. Even if I already have 20 patterns waiting to be knitted, another 70 are more then welcome. I also heard great reviews about Rowley's book - can not wait too flip through all the designs.

P.S. the order of books does not reflect my personal preferences. I like all of them equally, just like mothers love their children.

Yesterday was an interesting day...

First of all, it’s finally cooling down here in Montreal. We had a huge storm the day before (I missed it working in catacombs): crazy winds, downpour, thunder, and lightning. I think that it was a sign from the Gods marking the birthday of Mr. Sock.

Secondly, I was puzzled by the following question:
Do you identify yourself with

a. Your country of origin
b. Canada

c. Quebec

d. Montreal

I had to think a while about that one and I am still not sure if my answer was final.

I kept thinking and then decided to cast on the little brother of Mr. Sock – there is no better time to think than while casting on. 60 stitches later I was interrupted by a gentleman, who needed help with the printer and the computer (oh yeah, I was knitting at work). After explaining to the gentleman that he is distracting me and will be responsible in case I’ll freeze to death, because the long Canadian winter is coming sooner then he thinks, and that I would like to be warm and comfy throughout those 8 months, and having TWO socks (not just one) is essential for my warmness, I received a rather interesting reply:
“You might be European, because Canadian girls your age do not knit”.
I was SHOCKED, I tried to contradict, but my shock was too strong – CANADIAN GIRLS KNIT!!!. You don’t have to be a Russian babushka (grandmother) to knit. So, Canadian girls, lets get out there and show people that we knit! And this is THE TIME to do it – June 14th is the World Wide Knit In Public Day. Get out there, bring your hooks and needles and show people that we knit.

If you are a Montréaler there will be some knitting at Parc Lafontaine. There more details on MontrealKnit website.

If you are a Torontonian you better be ready. Yarn Harlot is celebrating her birthday on the same day. And she invited this guy. You do not understand why it’s so exciting? Franklin, aka The Panopticon is making a 1000 Knitters project and if you are a knitter you have a chance to be a part of this! I would assume that most of the places are probably booked by now but you still might get in if someone cancels. Read this if you want to know where to call and what to do. If not for my friend’s birthday on Friday I would probably get a ticket to Toronto and enjoy the “happening”.

And if you are anywhere else in the world you should join one of the kip groups. And you still have time to start one, in case your city/country does not have any. Check out the website, get out there, and KNIT/CROCHET!!!

And here are pictures of Mr.Sock that I took last night. Let me tell you, it is VERY difficult to balance on one leg while taking pictures of the back of the other. It stroke earlier today that I could’ve done it sitting down – but hey, I like the challenge. I apologize for bad quality of these pictures and I’ll get someone to take better ones as soon as I can.

Patterns

I finally found the dishcloth pattern on the Coats and Clark website. For some reason mine is not as "fluffy" as the one on the picture. I got some orange and multicolored yarn and will crochet more of those in different color-combinations.

I also managed to take pictures of all the new and old unfinished knitting projects. I'll try to write a coherent blog-post and upload it later tonight. For now, here is a link to wonderful Stephanie Pearl-McPhee who is known in the knitters' world as Yarn Harlot.
Not only she is a knitter (a very fast one), she also has an amazing writing style, and manages to update her blog almost daily as well as write some knitting books. Oh yeah, she is Canadian.

P.S. click on the "button" to get to her blog.