No Knitting, Again

This NanoWriMo thing is taking all my time. The good news is, I am up to speed on my writing goals each day. The bad news is, I am just finishing Day 4 in a row of not knitting at all, not even one stitch. I guess my knitting needles will be glad when NaNoWriMo is done 

We got a shipment of Classic Elite's Classic 150 today. It is a great merino wool sport weight and has 150 yards per ball (thus the name). Grace has designed a lovely tam and has it knit up in the store in a pretty green. Classic 150 shows cables really well and it would be good for hats, gloves, scarves and sweaters. I would use reinforcement yarn in the heel and toe of a sock. It would be nice for babies, being soft and warm, but it is NOT machine washable. 

I looked up "Classic One Fifty" (since Classic 150 returns no hits) on Ravelry and found that there are 118 projects for that yarn... and they are very pretty too! It made me want to start some of them... but I won't be starting anytime soon, apparently. At least not in November! Unless I get my butt in gear!

There is a very cute little lacy cardigan designed by Pam Allen, available at Classic Elite as a free, downloadable pattern using Classic 150. You can see what it looks like on their Web Newsletter #7 and download the pattern there too!

Cool!

A wonderful, creative  girl crocheted a dress out of old cassette tape tapes! Click here to see her blog -- scroll down to see the dress up close!

I hope she doesn't mind, I want to put a picture of the dress here so I am borrowing it from her livejournal (click the above link to see the image in its original context):

"The tapes I used are actually very special, or rather, were.
They are mixed tapes I made back in my Russian teen years - when commercial music was not quite available yet, so I'd sit by the radio with my numb finger frozen on the REC button, waiting for the right song to come up. So there's lots, lots of hours in it! :)"

Kalamala, you totally rock, girl!!

The Things We Forget

Gah. I forgot to knit any charity knitting yesterday. But at least, I didn't do any non-charity knitting either. I just didn't knit yesterday, between Nanowrimo and blog reading and watching the tv coverage of the election. 

Darn this NaNoWriMo, anyway. It sucks up a lot of time. 

The good thing is, I am 259 words ahead of where I have to be for my daily goals (1667 words a day!) and so far my character, who has been pretty much not described at all but for having a name (Amy -- it is quick to type) and a gender (female) and a sort-of age (kid) has adventured her way into an old house and has explored a den, a playroom with a great dollhouse, a library and a planetarium. Now she is hungry and is going to have a picnic with some new and very odd characters tomorrow. Wish her luck. And let me know what the characters are too, I haven't thought of them yet, so if you would just fill me in ahead of time it would save me a lot of time and work. 'K? K. 

Now I shall at least pick up my Snowbird mittens and admire them, although I am not sure how much I will work on them. I think I haven't actually knit a stitch on them for about 4 days, and I am falling dangerously close to the brink of abandonement with them. As amazingly attractive as they were for me before I started working on them, they now lack interest. They're pretty. I think the cuffs are going to be a bit tight. I am sure they will stretch out and be comfortable with time (alpaca is good that way). I'm thinking after I knit one mitten and try it on it might have a tight cuff and a short hand; maybe not. The thumb looks big too.

I should just shut up and knit them, right? Right. Ok. Off I go. 

 

Election Knitting

An interesting phenomenon I noticed over the last week.... people coming in to get supplies for Election Knitting. What? 

Election Knitting. It's like Super Bowl knitting, but for watching the election results. Some people were having election knitting parties! Sounds like fun.. I had never heard of it before. 

Seems a little risky to me, if your friends weren't all supporters of the same party...since everyone is armed with pointy sticks and all.... 

I hope YOU all voted! And I hope you had fun Election Knitting! Wooot!

Book Sale

When times were better, I was on auto-ship from Unicorn Books & Crafts, a major book seller in the craft world. They sell pretty much every knitting or crocheting book that is ever published, including some pretty obscure stuff. When a yarn shop is on auto-ship, it means that you get at least one of every new title published in the craft category you choose. EVERY. When I started out with the auto-ship program, there were maybe 10 or 12 new knitting books published in a year. (Yeah, that's how far back it was.)

But then there was the explosion of knitters in the knitting world. Suddenly everybody had a Learn To Knit book in the works, and I got all of them. I got a lot of books. Lots and lots and lots and lots. Some of them were very good, and I was glad to have them. Most of them were ummmmm.... let's just say, they weren't best sellers. Knitted underwear springs to mind. Knitting with wire also jumps up. There were wayyyyyy too many variations on "Let's Learn to Knit with Pammie!".

Now, its not to say that these books were all bad. Most of them had at least one thing in them that was worth knitting, or one thing that was worth  learning, but not worth shelling out $22.95 for. Know what I mean? The books started to pile up... and up, and upppp and up upupupup.... and they began to take over my shop.

Long story short, I realized I had 5 shelves of books,  most of which, I had counted in the last 5 annual inventories,  and I could be stashing yarn on those shelves ... yarn that would actually SELL, as opposed to books that do not sell. So I ruthlessly picked out the books that I wanted to keep, and put all the rest of them on sale for five bucks each. I figure, you would buy a pattern for $5.00, and each book I want to get rid of had at least one pattern in it worth five bucks. So, if you are near Unique One, come on in and see if any of those $5.00 books want to go home with you. Remember, not all the books in the store are $5.00. There is a special section labeled for sale at $5.00. Hopefully I will be able to clear off some shelves and get more yarn in here.

     

Uh oh

I forgot to write a post today... this will have to suffice :) 

Did you know on Ravelry, there is NaKniSweMo? National Knit a Sweater in a Month? So cool ... so cool.... next year :)) 

Shoot Me Now.

I signed up for NaNoWriMo again.

It's not entirely my fault.... two demons in the basement said, we want to do it but we're frightened, and you have fought the war successfully. Then they batted their cute little eyelashes at me and I said, okay, I will do it if you will do it. I think they should at least *try* NaNoWriMo, because it is so very character-building, hahahahahahahha (pun intended).

So I jotted down a few notes last night and tonight I will start writing the most ill-written, boringestest novella in the world. It's about a girl named Amy (or something else short and quick to type) who spends 30 chapters exploring an old house. Lots of interesting characters live in the rooms. Each chapter, she explores a new room. Oddly enough, there happen to be 30 days in November. How perfect is that? :)

Meanwhile, last night I also worked on my Snowbird Mittens and I am almost to the decreases on the top. I would like to finish the top of the mitten tonight but ... hmm .... NaNoWriMo.... hmmm. We shall see.