"Sporran" received from Muirne of Clan Beauchamp

I belong to a group on Ravelry who love Diana Gabaldon's "Outlander" series of books. Members formed up into clans and we decided to have a swap. I received my sporran this week and was positively delighted by its contents. It included a handknit bag, hand-dyed sock weight yarn in my clan's colors, Scottish shortbread, cocoa, amber-colored stitch markers, needlecase, bath/body goodies and a beatiful teacup and saucer with my clan's crest!





And what a lovely wool purse with the pattern named "Caitlin" and lined in a lovely plaid!




I felt really honored to receive such a lovely gift from someone I've never met in person. I felt really loved just opening the package. This is the first swap I've ever participated in. What a generous bunch of knitters!!

"Jack's Back" pattern by Kaffe Fassett

These pics show a smidgeon of the pattern colors I worked throughout this cuff-to-cuff design. I took a class to learn how to do the fairisle technique and wow but it opened my eyes to free-form experimentation with color! Of course, Kaffe Fassett is particularly known for his artistic use of abundant color and this pattern is no exception.

I used an Anny Blatt angora/wool/thick-thin wool as the red-brownish alternating zig-zag in the pattern. Then I used a mixture of blues, forest greens, turqoises, purples, fuschias for the other alternating zig-zags. Each 'point' of the zig zag was always done with a beautiful turquoise ribbon yarn which I thought helped emphasize the points of the pattern. I think I used a little of every possible natural fiber somewhere in this jacket. There's a wee bit of man-made fibers but only as binder fibers within a few yarns.

Besides *really* learned the 2-handed fairisle technique, I learned to love the process of creating this jacket. I learned to look at a box of colored yarn in a totally free way. It was liberating and exciting. I loved working on this project.

I was working almost always with 2 strands of yarn in each hand on every row. It was great fun! It's my favorite way to work with color now.

This is one of my favorite knits. It's a bolero-style cropped jacket. The pattern came from the book "Naturally Noro" and was designed for their Aurora yarn. I was at the yarn shop all ready to buy Aurora when lo-and-behold I saw this gorgeous variegated 99% rayon hand-dyed gorgeous stuff from the Great Adirondack Co. just calling my name. It's seed stitch all over except for a picot edging around all of the edges. The drape of this fabric is just incredible. There's a little glimmer thread throughout the yarn. Once again, I wish the color was better so you could see that the base color is really a dark purple/navy with turquoise and other blue highlights.

Mohair sweater

I'm going to post some pics of projects I've made over the last few years. I wish the color was more accurate here in the pic, though...dang!

I bought 6 balls of a Filatura di Crosa variegated mohair from a clearance bin not having any idea what I would do with them. I later found a pattern for this "bomber-style" jacket. I also found a perfect match for the seed stitch border in a Brown Sheep superwash wool; dark purple with highlights of fuschia.

The gauge was like for Classic Elite's La Gran mohair. I learned that fluffy mohair on big needles doesn't do much for my...um...curvy figure so I've stayed away from such projects since then. I'll add mohair as a carry-along e.g. Rowan Kidsilk Haze...occasionally.

New Digital Camera & Kitty #2

I got a digital camera for Christmas and I'm still trying to figure out how it works much less how to use the editing features with Kodak EasyShare. Please bear with me as I try to work out the photo problems! This pic is of one of my cats named Gabby. I was putting clothes away, turned my back for a second and she made a bed for herself in my drawer. Wish I could get the colors right with this camera and especially figure out how to get clarity with people and animal's eyes.

Me & Kitty #1

This is me, your humble blogger, and my oldest cat Rhodi. He's 17# of hunky kitty love.