The Warm Woolies and There's A New Girl In Town

The Fair Isle sweater is finished! This is the one that I had to design a section which would use some other yarn so I wouldn't run out of the red wool. Well, as it turns out, I did a pretty good job of saving yarn!

I had a whole skein of red that I didn't even touch! Kathleen is going to use it for mittens. I'm really happy with how the "jogless stripe technique" worked out at the back too. You can't even see where each round is continued. Knitting stripes in the round, for those of you who haven't tried it yet, leaves a little blip when you change colors. It's because the rounds are spiraling up the work so the first round ends where the second round begins, thus leaving a blip in the way the colors align. But if you knit the first stitch of the second round of the new color into the stitch below of the old color it will run smoothly across the garment.

Here, this video will help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GshD9_qlUfE Barbara and Kathleen brought in some finished mittens and sweaters.

Here's the one Kathleen made using a contrasting yarn for an accent. Turned out really nice!

And thanks go to Kathleen's daughter, Margaret, from Vermont, who helped out by knitting this cute little vest for us. It's reversible so you can wear the basket weave light blue side or the navy and stripes side. It's folded so you can see both sides.

Karin is plugging away at the baby sweater....

And Beth finished those mittens she started last week.

Here is a sock Beth made using Karin's hand dyed yarns. This pair will be traveling to the Sock Summit in July.http://www.socksummit.com/

There's a new girl in town. Her name is Geraldine. My son visited the NY Botanical Gardens Orchid Show over the weekend and fell in love with this gorgeous cymbidium but he just could not justify paying $125.00 for a plant! So he stopped at Trader Joe's in Scarsdale, NY on his way home and bought the same one for $22!!!!

Isn't she gorgeous?!

I sure hope my orchids don't get jealous! This little striped Normandy hasn't bloomed since the mid 1990's. But I had to be patient. I knew she would pull through for me someday.

And she didn't let me down!

Now there's this little one I got in Florida in 2003...if only she would blossom. I can't remember what she looks like!