Zeneedle...needleart as life

Miss Charlotte

Stephanie, who is a great knitter, designer and who has one of the best blogs around, stopped by to say that "reading" your knitting was "a darn valuable skill".  If anyone would know a good skill she would be the person.  You must see the amazing Snowdrop shawl on her sidebar (and you can knit one for yourself). The story about the shawl is also worth looking up on her blog.

If you look at Sandy's post of May 30th, you'll see why reading your knitting is a good skill to have. Here is a close up of the pattern from my Char.
The single stitches line up and the 'points' are also stacked one above the other.  This is a skill that you need to work on and practice as it takes time to train the eye.  "Reading" my knitting has made Fair Isle, textures and lace much easier and less problematic.  Even if you keep your markers in place as you practice you'll find with time they can be removed and you will enjoy watching the pattern evolve and grow.  Check the row below as you create the next and it will become second nature.

It is so much fun to see all the different Charlotte colorway's as the grow. Don't you just want to find ALL the Koigu colors in one place and play with them until your heart is content?  It might take awhile, however and some of us would have a dozen Charlotte colorway's when done.

Don't forget to check out the contest posted on the 28th. You have until Thursday to send in your answers.

More Charlotte

Didn’t think that I would blog over the weekend but had something to say about Charlotte.  She is looking very pretty and the rhythm of the pattern has kicked in.  What a joy it is to knit with Koigu as this yarn is pure luxury.  It’s the reason Charlotte lured me.

Mary Beth blogged about the size of Charlotte and while I was starting her the other night the same thought struck me.  Was she really only 154 rows long? That seemed so small. So taking Kerstin's dare I frogged back to where A-B yarns ended their mixed rows and decided to go for 20 rows instead of 16.  This does throw the way the colors work in the pattern off a bit but I'd rather have the mix of colors last a bit longer and make Charlotte more likely to fit my 6' size 12 body. So, every color will now go for 20 rows plain and 20 rows mixed.  There should be plenty of yarn and as Kerstin said it might be nice to mix the first color in at the end to tie it all together.

Then another thing....the markers seemed to be a good idea until I really got into the pattern. 

Sandy Terp was here a few years ago and taught classes on cables (sans cable needles) and lace, which included ‘reading’ your knitting.  She advised us to really look at the rows as they are created to see how the stitches work together. How do the rows mesh to become the pattern?  By being aware of the pattern it becomes easier to see if you have made any mistakes in the rows before.  This pattern does flow into the little points that are almost leaf shaped and watching how they form will helps to understand and remember the pattern.  All the single stitches line up, too.  As you knit each stitch watch to see that everything lines up and any previous row mistakes can be corrected without going back.  As Annie said you can always pick up a YO you missed in a previous row if need be.  The markers have now been removed from Charlotte and the pattern is now unobscured and easy to 'read'.

It's cold and rainy here and there is even new snow on the mountain peaks!  We can't complain while in our 6th year of drought. It's a perfect weekend to have Charlotte lure me with her warmth.
Happy weekend everyone!

Contest

Cameo Voltz won Fixation Yarn on my first ever Blog Contest. Here is the sock she knit for her Mother. Don’t you just love the way the colors spiral and play around the foot?  Great job Cameo!

This segues into the next contest.  You have the weekend and all through next week ‘til June 4th to send your answers to me via the Email on the side bar. 
This is what you can win this time around. It’s a skein of Crystal Palace Chenille yarn in Turquoise (8117) along with the darling pattern from Oat Couture for the stuffed animals.  Pictures in a day or so.

This time the questions are a little tougher and might take more careful research.  I found the answer on the Internet but then I knew what to look for. Your name will go into the proverbial hat if you answer correctly.  You need get only one answer right to be added to the hat but, if you get both and your name is picked you’ll get a bonus!

Questions:

Who stitched the “first” American-made sampler?

Who stitched the oldest signed and dated sampler in the world (and what is the date)?

Good luck and a fine knitting weekend to you all!

Mail Art

This arrived in the mail on Monday. It’s from Pat in New Jersey. She stitched a white Swan on blue linen banding and filled her handmade envelope with a postcard from New Jersey and some very special needles of gold and platinum.
This is a project that the Swan Sampler Stitchers is doing. Each person has a secret friend and you stitch an envelope for them with a treat inside.
YES! They do go through the mail and rarely do they arrive damaged or not at all. This is an idea that started in France and spread to stitchers throughout Europe. Now Mail Art spans the globe and Swan members in England and Australia also joining in the fun. My envelope (pictures soon) is going to Houston. Here is a site with many of the beautiful and creative envelopes that the French stitchers have produced for Mail Art. And here is another site. Knitted Mail Art anyone?!

Charlotte...
After starting twice last night (chose the wrong color to start with) Charlotte is looking good! Pictures later as it was 11:00 when I got to row 26. Uli's chart is very helpful and all the suggestions from other Charlotte harlot's (thanks Kathleen!) have been helpful. Charlotte is now on track and it's so nice to be knitting with Koigu again.

Lure of the Web

The Web of Char has tangled me in its stands. Here is the lovely colorway that will become THE shawl. The colors are vibrant and strong. Rob and Matt at Threadbear were so nice with my constant calling and the search for just the right thing. Well, it was almost the right thing. One color was mostly Kelly green and just not the right color for me. The colors of red, blue and violet are more to my liking. So while looking through the small stash of Koigu the discovery of P524 saved the day (the little ball in the center of the twist). It was the perfect match to complete Charlotte in a more pleasing colorway. Now it's time to join the other Charlotte women.

Another package arrived from the Isle's of Scotland.
Here is Rosarie. Since I am nearly 6' tall the body wouldn't be long enough. Jade took the time to write an addendum for me that will make the body long enough and put the buttons (12 of them!) in the right places. This is service above and beyond. The colors are so vibrant, rich and luscious. My stash is filling with such wonderful projects that it is difficult to choose which to start. But, Charlotte has lured me into the Web so she shall be first. Can we lure you into the Web?

Seaweed

From the divine A. Starmore on the Isle of Lewis, in the country of Scotland to the shores of the Great Salt Lake in the high country desert, a special package arrives. Just seeing the brown paper wrapped box with Scottish stickers attached is enough to make the heart flutter! When the box is opened and the Virtual Yarns sticker torn away from the tissue paper protecting the ‘ultimate’ in skeins of yarn, you can’t help but gasp at the loveliness of the wool inside. This is the rich, dark rust called Tormentil with flecks of brown, green, gold and plum peaking from the within the fiber. The skeins will join together in becoming the Seaweed Wrap. The undulating lace pattern will bring the foliage of the sea to this poor landlocked soul who will be wrapped in the warmth of its fabric on cold winter days. Aaahhh.

Copyright

Last Friday’s post about "sharing" may have been perceived as negative. Please forgive my inability to say correctly what this button means to me. I will try to explain it better.

It does not mean you can freely take a picture or pattern from someone else’s site with out their express consent IF it is a copyrighted item. Sharing free items or ideas with other blog readers, by adding the information to your own blog of where the pattern, idea or button, comes from is the right way to handle this. If you are not sure, then email the owner of the blog where you saw the idea to make sure that it is ok to share this information.

Copyright is sacred to a designer. Designers are paid for the patterns that are sold. Their pictures or text about this pattern is also copyrighted.
At a recent SNB night someone brought copies of a clog pattern used for Laurie’s Clog Along. This is very wrong. The pattern is easily available for purchase at many stores in the area. It is a very inexpensive pattern. When I brought it to their attention they all agreed it was wrong and the patterns were destroyed. It turned out that everyone in the Clog Along had already purchased the pattern. If we don’t support our designers there will be little reason for them to create and sell their designs. We will be the losers. There are plenty of free patterns on line from good sources such as Knitty and MagKnits. There are hundreds of ohers, too.

Be kind, share ideas, obey copyright law and let’s enjoy our Blogland community.

Here are a couple of copyright info links that are very intesting.

about.com
www.girlfromauntie.com

Sharing

Yesterday Susan blogged about members of our Stitch ‘n Bitch Group here in Salt Lake City. We have a fun group that meets and enjoys knitting and talking (boy do we talk!).  Here are a few pictures snapped on Tuesday night. 

This is Susan telling me not to take her picture.  This is Laurie and Steph. You should read Laurie's post.) 

Melissa is working on a clog and was also knitting her first sock. 

We have a fine time together and enjoy talking about blogland and all we learn here, plus the cool people we 'meet'.  I took a picture of Julie, who's clogs are shown on Susan's blog, but she may never speak to me if I show it, and Andrew's picture was very dark so we'll try both again later.  We had a small group Tuesday so hopefully more will show up next week and there will be more pictures of the gang to share.

Speaking of sharing.

This button is a reminder to us all that our blogging community is small and needs to be handled with care and respect.  Sharing is good...stealing someone’s ideas, patterns or pictures without permission or credit is not.  This button on your side bar means that you are part of a sharing, caring community.  Kim made the button after Erica had a bad experience.
Maybe this button will remind us to “get together”.

Take this button to show you are open to sharing your site following the guidelines that:
1. Your work, pictures, blog text, instructions, patterns, etc. will be appropriately credited to you and linked to your blog.
2. You promise to appropriately credit stuff you show from other people.
3. Knitting is about community!  Sharing is fun!

Have a super weekend!!

Disaster Strikes

After a busy day at work and no time for tripping through Blogland, I headed for DH’s home office to check some sites before heading out to dinner and a concert.
As I walked in to the office imagine my stunned surprise to find this!

Now this man isn’t the most organized person but this was a bit more of a mess than I expected. (My computer is too old and needs an upgrade so I use his new system from time to time). It took a minute for the scene to register…the brackets had pulled away from the wall dumping all the content onto his desk, chair and floor. He had just added “one more thing” to the shelf, a ream of type paper the day before. The shelves were hung in his office right after we moved in 24 years ago and in that time he just stacked one thing after another on them. Finally, that last ream of paper was the “straw that broke the camels back” and down it all came. The computer is barely visible in the rubble and the keyboard totally buried.
I couldn’t/didn’t touch a thing and quietly backed out of the room so he could see it and attend to it later. As I left the room I glanced around for the camera. There is was on the corner of the desk untouched. A grabbed it and snapped the pictures. Later when he walked into the room he was stunned, too. It took all night (I was at Stitch ‘n Bitch) to sort it out and get to the computer. The piles of ‘stuff’ are now in boxes and the poor dear is trying to decide what to do with all of it…more shelves? (He put a little 'disclaimer' on this picture that you can't read "Warning-destruction is smaller than it appears") NOT!

The thing about it is that I am so thankful this happened during the day when we were away. If either of us had been sitting at the desk, as we usually are in the evening, who knows how badly we would have been hurt! It’s frightening to think about that consequence.

Time

Here it is another post about Time, our elusive freind. This week has been hectic and almost impossible to get around Blogland. It’s sad to have just bounced from blog to blog quickly, if at all, and miss visiting the blogs that I enjoy. It’s busy at work and then the two needlework guilds for which I do tons of work/play are having big workshops and parties during the next couple of weeks.

Thursday is the 25th Anniversary party for the Salt Lake Needlepoint Guild. It is wonderful to still be around after that amount of time. We have invited all our needlework friends to the party. Friday and Saturday we have workshops with teacher Betty Chen Louis, who is a renowned teacher of silk and metal embroidery with Asian influences. By Sunday I’ll be shot and in need of rest but, it will be fun.

Then on June 3rd we have another teacher arriving for the Swan Sampler Stitchers. We will have three days of workshops from Lauren Sauer. We had pre-stitching to do for this project but, alas, it will not be finished. It should have come a month sooner but that’s the way it goes. It is a very unique design. I’m only about 1/3 done with the stitching so the Sea Chest will just be finished after the class.

I do miss my blogland buddies and hope to be back reading, visiting and commenting next week. I will try to get a post done for each day however, so come visit.

BTW, Charlotte is on her way!! Mmmmm.