A Few Sheep Shy of a Farm

Surprise!

Mystery Kit #2 is now available for sale!!!!

Newsletter will still be on Tuesday, but I managed to get the kit together and the page up today! Stop by and have a look . . .

RAOK’d

Thank you Melissa and Megan for the cute Halloween Greetings! Very thoughtful of you!

Happy Halloween!

Our niece is 2 1/2 this year and coming over to Trick or Treat! This is the first year she’s really old enough to have a clue and I can’t wait to see her in her costume! I think we might get the little ones from next door as well, but for the most part we don’t get kids in our neighborhood. Everyone just seems to take them elsewhere. Either that or they ususally come before I’d be home from work. Not a problem this year since its on Sunday, and since I don’t have to leave to go to work!!!! I’ve got a big bowl of candy ready for when they do come!

We’re also going out for dinner with J & L this evening and I’ve got a few things to do around here today, so I’d better get to it.

Another Inspirations Update

I spent today working on more pages for the site. I still have some others to do . . . but I’m going to tell you here that I’ve just added Books to the site! We now have a selection of books from Interweave Press and I’m going to be working up kits to knit some of the projects in them very soon.

Monday is the last day for people to submit their entries for the Mystery Kit contest and we have gotten an number of pictures of the completed projects. I’m going to be working up the Gallery and adding everyones finished works. Tuesday we will announce the winner and since I planned to send a newsletter to make that announcement I’m holding off from sending anything on the books or patterns until I can send it all together. . . . I also hope to open the next Mystery Kit with the newsletter as well. I’ve got some new yarns and new colorways to swatch up so I can get then photographed and into the pages, though that may take until after the newsletter. I’ve also got some other surprises coming as well, but I want to wait until they are closer to ready before I tell you about them . . .

Time to go work on the Leaf Lace Shawl again . . .

SSK – Sock Surprise Kits

One more day to to order your Sock Surprise Kit at Inspirations Yarn! Ordering will close on October 30th and the kits will be mailed approximately November 13th.

Inspirations Updates

Okay, since you are obviously a loyal blog reader if you are here . . . I’m going to let you in on a little secret. We are going to be carrying Fiber Trends patterns and will have kits for many of their projects in our hand-painted yarns! I’m really excited about this as I love many of their designs! I’m about to start working on the Leaf Lace shawl in a brand new colorway, one that may be a Mystery Kit color for next time around so I can’t show it to you quite yet . . .

One of the really fun things about their lace shawl patterns is that a number of them are written to be knit in several different yarn sizes and that allows us to offer as many as 5 different yarn choices in some of the patterns!

We also have 4 new yarns coming as soon as I can get the swatches dyed and knit and we are planning to discontinue one yarn and a few of the original colorways. I’ll be posting a sale page for the discontinued stuff once I have the new stuff out.

I’m working on a number of other additions and surprises. If only I could clone myself . . . then I could get everything out to you at once!

Sweater

Thanks everyone for your kind comments on the sweater. True to form, I’ve not had a chance to get back to it to weave in the ends yet so no pictures yet . . . At least its likely to be another 4-6 week before it gets cold enough for him to actually wear it!

DH has a pot roast in the oven, its starting to smell really yummy and I’ve got a few things to finish up before dinner . . .

Thank yous

Thank you Secret Pal and Thank you KnitSteph for the e-cards yesterday! What a nice surprise on a Monday!

The Story of a Sweater

Once upon a time, there was a boy who wanted a sweater. His loving wife wanted to make him the sweater, but feared to due to the curse of an evil witch. The curse was that if the wife had knit the sweater before they had been married for 3 whole years then the relationship would fail after the sweater was finished. The boy hinted, and hinted and finally the wife decided on a plan to make the sweater, but not to finish it until the 3 years were up, just in case.

In June she purchased a big pile of roving with which to spin the yarn for the sweater. On July 1st (the anniversary of their engagement) she began to spin the yarn for the sweater. She did this in secret, afraid to let the boy know that work had begun on the sweater; would knowing she was spinning the yarn trigger the curse?

Whenever the boy was not at home the wife would take out her spinning wheel and work on the yarns. When skeins were spun and the twist set and they needed to dry she hung them in a closet, far out of site. Once or twice the boy came home early and took her by surprise, but since she was always spinning these days he didn’t seem to notice what she was working on. After a couple of months she began to knit the yarn into the shape of a sweater, taking the measurements from another in his closet since she couldn’t actually measure him without arousing suspicion. She spun and knit at every chance she had, slowly making progress on the sweater.

In November, she traveled to a magical place, full of others who spin, who weave & knit. She carefully hid the sweater in her luggage so she could share it with her friends from the electronic realm . . . they were wonderful, asking question and giving compliments dispite the mishappen appearance of the sweater. She left greatly encouraged in her work.

Her goal was to have the sweater finished by Giftgiving time, but as things sometimes work out, though she had finished the yarns, the sweater wasn’t done. Undeterred, and knowing how much he wanted the sweater, she wrapped up the yarns and the partially finished sweater in a box, carefully wrapped them with a big bow on top and presented them at the appointed time.

The boy tore open the wrapping (as boys often do) and held up her work, he turned it and examined it and wondered aloud how to put it on. The wife explained that though she had tried, it was not able to finish it in time, but she would work very hard to be sure it was done.

Since she now had the opportunity, she decided to have him try on what was done. Well, it was a good thing she did! The sweater piece was about 10 inches too big, far, far bigger than what was needed! She promptly removed the needles, ripped out all her hard earned stitches and balled up the yarns. Next she measured and compared and read many, many books to decide on a new plan, a new design.

Once the plan was set, she began again, from a different direction, knitting the sweater from the top down this time. At each step she would have the husband stand still and wear the sweater long enough to remeasure, to plan, to adjust. After a while, she reached the sleeve, she knit it in the prescribed way, he tried it on, and couldn’t get his arm in. She ripped it out, measured and tried again. He still couldn’t quite get his lower arm into the sleeve, so she ripped out all the stitches below the elbow, measured again and knit a 3rd time.

At some point along the way the sweater found itself in the bottom of the WIP basket where it stayed for months and months until finally she pulled it out again to try tohe second sleeve. Her notes were old and jumbled and made no sense to her at all. So she very carefully “read” the first sleeve and slowly, almost painfully, managed to finish the second sleeve. It had now been well over a year since the quest for the sweater began and she soon realized that if she didn’t finish the sweater soon it would wind up having a 2nd birthday before the boy would even wear it once. So dispite having many, many other projects that needed to be worked on, she continued to work on the sweater every chance she had. As she worked she worried that perhaps she hadn’t spun enough yarn and though she had more fiber (somewhere) she wasn’t entirely sure she could even spin yarn of the same size any longer. Her spinning had changed so drastically since the orginal had been spun that she wasn’t sure she could even make more!

Over this past weekend, knitting on the sweater was completed. The ends remain to be woven in and in accordance with her plan, she will leave one end unwoven somewhere in the sweater until after this coming March 16th, just in case the evil witches curse still lurks somewhere.

The boy is happy that he has a sweater, though the final project is perhaps a bit heavy (weighing almost 3#) and a bit itchy for him. He will wear it with pride, over a heavy shirt, this coming winter when required to be out of doors in the very cold everyone says we will have. He will wear it knowing that every bit of it was made with love, just for him.

And pehaps tomorrow there will even be a picture of it here!

Inspirations Yarn Update

I am working again on the website. We have a whole bunch of new things coming soon and I’m working on some restructuring and reorganizing to make room for things. . . .so the pages will be changing a lot over the next week or so. Once I have a substantial amount done I’ll send round another newsletter to let you all know what is happening . . . . but feel free to have a look before then if you’re curious