A Contest At Knitnana

My very good friend, Sallee, has a new contest over on her blog Knitnana. This last weekend, she added a new goodie to her line of Nana Sadie Rose bags & needle holders. Gladys is designed to hold interchangeable needle sets like KnitPicks Options or the Boye NeedleMaster sets. What's the contest, you ask? It's voting on which type of closing you think the needle case should have - a ribbon tie, a button tab, or an elastic loop and button. A little over a month ago (see the Feb 7th post) I received my Grand Mera & Posy bags, and an Oressa double pointed needle holder. I love them!! And I can testify to the meticulous workmanship of Sallee's masterpieces. So click on the link up there and voice your opinion. The contest's prize is a Gladys all your own. Be sure to look at all the other bags she sells while you're there.

In other news, we are in the middle of the move to the new house. It's going slowly as there's no rush, but cats, computers, cookware, yarn, needles & books are over here now and as we discover that we're missing something, we drive the two blocks to the old house and grab it. I'm in the middle of deciding how to use all my new cupboard & pantry space. The spices were moved yesterday - yes, I have lots of spices as we like Thai, Indian, Mexican, & Lebanese dishes - and are now "filed" in the bottom pull out shelves next to the stove. They're even in vaguely alphabetical order with labels on the top so I can see what I have at a glance. This is going to be so much nicer than having to rummage through a cabinet shelf in search of the Five Spice powder for stir-fry. {g}..

As you might imagine, with all this going on, I haven't had much time for knitting. Sock #2 is about where I left it a couple weeks ago. I did whip up four plain hats last week between Monday & Thursday to go with scarves one of our K4 members, Frances, had crocheted and knit a black garter stitch scarf over the weekend. My biggest project at the moment is the sweater that I'm designing for my grandson. These photos are from a week ago, but I now have the fair isle pattern on the yoke complete and am just about ready to start the back yoke.




The yarn is Bernat's Super Saver worsted weight on 10½ needles. The body is knit in the round up to the armholes and then back & forth for the yokes. The Norwegian Star pattern is from Alice Starmore's Fair Isle Knitting Book. It's another "design as I go" original so things may change as I go along, but right now I'm planning on a boat neck with 3-needle bind-offs for the shoulders, then picking up the sleeves on 16" circulars and using a small fair isle pattern at the top while I work down to the cuffs in the round. Grand-daughter's sweater arrived in California last week and she tells me that she's already worn it to school, kung-fu class & Girl Scouts. I think it made a hit!

A Rose By Any Other...

Found this one on Shelob's site who originally borrowed it from Sallee's:

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 14 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

There seem to be some 379,493 Janes out there and some of are gathering in the Not A Plain Jane group on Ravelry. I think I'm the only one in the group with the "Plain Jane" handle which sort of negates the title of the group. Ah well, after so many years as a Jane and only meeting five or six in my lifetime, it's nice to see a whole lot of others who grew up with "Me Tarzan", "Jane Doe", and, yes, "Plain Jane" comments. {g} There are only 14 with both my first & last name in the whole country - one of them races huskies, but that's not me.

On the knitting front, the sweater has been shipped to my Grand-daughter and Grand-son's is on the needles though no photos yet. The rest of my knitting this week has been pretty bland - a "fashion" hat & scarf in a pale mauve chenille yarn, two hats in aran fleck to go with scarves I'd made earlier plus a couple washcloths knit while I was web surfing, not the stuff of exciting photo sessions.