The Comfort Zone

Okay, fess up are you all holding out on me?  Have you all known about Garn Studio’s Drops Designs all along and just not shared the link with me?  Look at the pattern here.  Just have to knit it!  All those wonderful patterns—you wanted to keep them to yourselves didn’t you?  It’s okay though, I forgive you, because now that I have found Drops I am living there and soaking up all those glorious patterns and the yummy yarn.  I have not ordered any of the yarn yet.  Can anyone tell me how it goes?  Will my yarn arrive in any reasonable amount of time?  Will it be as luscious as it appears on the website?  I’m dreaming cashmere and alpaca right now!

I finished the second Rose Trellis sock seen here hanging out on the ivy trellis, and immediately cast on for a new pair in Cherry Tree Hill’s Birches colorway.   Also, I started a grey merino top-down in-the-round sweater using Lion Brand’s little summer short sleeved sweater pattern, and am enjoying the mindless knitting it brings.   The Kauni Sweater was considered (shown here at Purlwise) but it requires the use of US#3-#4 needles!  Crazy, I know!  I never knit sweaters with anything smaller than size #7 or #8.  Also steeking is required.  I don’t steek!  Never!  Life is too short!

Don’t you love the challenge of doing something different?  I think that sometimes when I’m uninspired by something as essential as knitting is to my life the only thing required to get me out of my funk is to do something different.

I fell in love with the honeycomb cable stitch and the arrowhead lace stitch.  I think I could knit socks with either of them.  And then there is the horseshoe cable and the gingerbread cable—I don’t know which to use first.  Maybe I’ll do a sampler scarf or a throw using all of them.   I hope it will inspire me and transport me to a better place in my knitting nirvana!

Dare to be different!  Go ahead, open those stitch books and do some math.  Put those designs to work and make something out of the ordinary, something unlike anything you have ever done before.  Then send me all your pictures.  Please.  I need the stimulation!

The Alpaca scarf is coming along.  I’m calling it “Lost” because it was created when I “lost” the pattern for Spectrum Scarf from Knitting Daily.  What was I supposed to do?  I was riding a long distance in the car and was “lost” without my knitting.  So I just started knitting a design that I thought would give me an open weave with supportive edges and be loose and soft in the end.  The overall structure is similar to Spectrum, but the design itself is very different.

The knitting of Lost is very satisfying!  I can watch TV, read, chat, watch traffic while riding in the car, almost anything except type (not knitting now!) while continuing the easy pattern.  Also the alpaca is enchanting.  Alpaca is my favorite fiber and I have 10 more skeins of this yummy wine colorway.  I don’t know what I will do with the remaining skeins when I’m finished.  There will probably be eight of 139 yards each left.  It will remain in stash until something calls out to me.

My Mother loved scarves but hated to wear them.  She didn’t like anything close around her neck—summer or winter.  I, on the other hand, was always cold and a nice warm scarf was just what the Doctor Mother ordered.  So she bought me scarves and suggested interesting ways to wear them, and thus enjoyed them through me.  She was also directly responsible for my sock passion.  I love to wear socks summer or winter and I know that came right from the Mother source because she did the same!  After spending mega-bucks on designer socks that didn’t last, knitting them became the only logical solution.

Speaking of socks—I am finishing sock #2 of Rose Trellis socks and then moving on to gift socks in the Snow Crystal pattern in baby blue Soft Sea Wool.  The knitting goes on, a symbol of life to me, and reminds me that nothing can be wrong with a world that contains so much glorious yarn.  Life is good as we attempt to sample it all!

My favorite dpns are on the scene—front and center!  The early fall issue of Knitscene, for sale on July 5^th, will feature a review of Comfort Zone Needles.  If you haven’t bought Knitscene in the past you are missing a very trendy knitting magazine.  It is a sister publication to Interweave Knits, published by Interweave Press, and offering edgy, chic styles with panache! A new, larger CZ ad will be in the same issue.

I was astonished to read a post in a knit group a few days ago.  The writer was lamenting the fact that she disliked the plastic dpns she was using (not CZs) because the points were too blunt and they broke frequently.  She was talking about those all-white plastic needles that will remain nameless, and wondering why she continued to buy them except for the fact that they were flexible and easy on her hands.  I wanted to respond to the group and say “COMFORT ZONE LADIES!!!”  It amazes me that there are still people who don’t know about Comfort Zone needles.  So allow me to hijack this post to tell you a little about CZs.  They are flexible, colorful, and don’t break under normal circumstances!!! 

The flexible part allows you to knit for hours without any discomfort/pain in your hands.  Hallelujah!  Also, the points are narrow and slide easily through stitches.

The colorful part allows you to match or contrast your needles to your yarn, and for those of you who knit with black or other dark colors a lot, you can see the stitches on the needles because of the bright colors. 

And the pain, how can I tell those of you who are young and don’t experience hand pain from long knitting sessions how wonderful it is to knit without any discomfort.  It’s like going to the gym, working out, swimming for an hour, playing tennis, and running 3 miles all in one day, and walking away without any stiffness in your body.  CZs don’t hurt your hands!

Then there is the breakage part.  As I said, they don’t break under normal circumstances.  A customer contacted me yesterday and said that the tip broke on a needle she bought in November 2006.  Guess what—we replaced the whole set of six needles.  We offer that kind of customer service.  We did stop short of replacing the needles eaten by a customer’s Great Dane.  I’m sure he thought they were tasty, but you have to buy your own dog food!

Back to knitting in the next post (I promise), but I just had to get this one in while I had a reason to crow about Comfort Zone Needles.  Truly a case of “try them you’ll like them.”  Then tell everyone about them.  They really do need to know!

At first glance I felt that I didn’t get much knitting done last week, but on second review I was impressed.  I dragged Scrambled Eggs (Hemlock lap throw) around with me and when that was ready for bind off I started taking Spectrum Scarf with me.  That’s another story!  Scrambled Eggs is wet and blocking right now.  I schlepped it all over Illinois (Chicago, Elmhurst, Hanover Park, Winfield and Wheaton) for five days.  Then I used it around my shoulders to ward off the chill of the car air conditioner on the trip home.  It needed a good bath.  Also shown is the center of Hemlock–the part I screwed-up thus making Scrambled Eggs.

Done and done!  I finished the hat project that took so long that I thought firefighter DS #4 would be wearing it for his 80^th birthday party.  Anemoi is well worth the hassle.  I am happy with the way it turned out and it is really an easy pattern.  I won’t go into what caused the delay again because I still don’t know!  I was just dragging my heels—or knitting needles as the case may be.  Usually I can finish a hat in a week.  I would have finished this one on Tuesday night if I had not been busy watching American Idol and missed a line in the chart.  I only had to rip back two rows. 

I finished one Peppermint Mocha sock in a pattern of my own design.  I wanted it to look like a trellis.  Actually I am calling the pattern Rose Trellis, even if it doesn’t look like a trellis.  I realized later, as I was pulling dead leaves from the ivy on the front of the house that it’s because most trellises are made up of diagonal cross-bars like so…/and \.  Our ivy, however, runs up and across a trellis of straight cross-bars just like my socks.  Okay, so I’m trellis challenged. 

Yup, the rain is coming down out there!  Perfect day for sitting and knitting and I’m stuck in the office.  But when I get home I will sit in my new rocking chair (Mother’s Day gift) and work on the Peppermint Mocha socks.  The finished Blue Parrot socks in Meg’s Artichoke Sock pattern are shown here:

DD#1 likes them very much—actually she said, “I l-o-o-o-v-e them Mom!”  That was something less than a gentle hint.  Since I think I can part with them (they weren’t exactly a pleasant knit) they will go home with her the next time she drops by. 

Why were they not a pleasant knit you might ask, the pattern is a nine row repeat and seems to go on and on and on.  Each sock leg seemed to take forever.  I know it just me!  I felt antsy the whole time I was knitting, and after five repeats on the first sock I said, “That’s enough of that!”  After that I developed an extreme case of second sock syndrome.  That has never happened to me before.  I have started socks that I didn’t like and ripped them out, but I have never encountered a sock that I just couldn’t seem to finish.

Anyway…I have fallen in love with Fiddlehead Mittens by Adrian Bizilla.  It happens to me so easily!  I see a pattern and immediately I am in love and craving the yummy yarn goodness needed to complete it.  Guess what came in the mail yesterday….

Add to this the Knit Picks Swish DK in maroon that I had in stash and those mittens are mine.  M-I-N-E I tell you!  The Ravelry purchase link for the mitten pattern is at hello yarn.  Have some fun and go see the other patterns there.  It’s pattern heaven!

Finished Marble Muffin, started another hat, worked on Blue Parrot socks and the Peppermint Mocha socks and so the knitting goes.  Since I can’t imagine myself without at least one project on the needles, and I usually have at least three going, I guess this will be the way of my summer knitting—picking at this and that.

Since tax season is over, except for the blasted extensions, I decided to take a few days off and just knit—and laze—and knit.  Sitting on the patio with my knitting early in the morning a few days ago I tried to enjoy the cool breeze, but my peace was interrupted by the squawking and honking of geese in the pasture behind our house.  This is the pasture that is usually inhabited by horses, cattle, goats and donkeys (I hate the donkeys).  It seems that the rain was so heavy last week that we now have a lake behind the house.  It didn’t seem to be bothering the animals, so I took some pictures and went back to my knitting.  I did ponder, as I knitted, what would happen to our backyard if we have another hard rain.  I may have to knit in a boat.

Did I mention that I hate the donkeys?  They come from the barn in the middle of the night, hang their heads over our back fence and bray loudly.  Our bedroom is on the back of the house and it is like an alert siren going off.  I come out of a sound sleep and sit straight up in bed when it happens.  I really hate those donkeys!!!