Summer just keeps rolling in, eh?
I’ve been keeping busy down in our basement where it’s 10 degrees cooler than upstairs. In fact, sometimes it’s so cold down here that I have to put extra layers on. The temperature difference is tough in the winter, but right now it is heaven.

I’ve been working on a few projects shop-wise. First on the agenda is Sock Summit in Portland, Oregon. It’s fewer than 3 weeks away! (Gulp!) I’ve been bundling and tagging inventory to ship to the conference at the end of the …

I know I say this every year, but there is nothing better than a weekend knitting retreat with your friends. Food, gossip, belly laughs, drinks, cheese, food, knitting. I think I should stop calling our KBC weekends a retreat, but I’m unsure what name to give them. Weekend of Shenanigans? Weekend of Cheese? Margarita Madness? I dunno.

We usually organize a swap of some sort for our weekends of tomfoolery (I’m just throwing names on the wall here people) and this year was no exception. Hats!
Heather (ADDKnitter) was …

You know how sometimes you’re watching TV and an image sticks in your brain? It sits there like an earworm and won’t go away until you do something about it.
When Futurama hit Instant Netflix, the husband and I watched full seasons at a go. Episode after episode,  day after day. I hadn’t seen most of it when it was airing, but I caught up and HOW. After watching Volume 5, episode 4 (Proposition Infinity) I had this image in my brain that I couldn’t shake.

(Oh Bender, I love you.)

I decided …

Last spring, I joined up with two quilting bees. One, a bee with my KBC gals. The other, a whack of Twitter pals who all wanted to Bee it up.
Basically the way an online quilting bee works is that each person is assigned a month. When it’s your month, you pick a quilting block that everyone will make and then you mail each person in the group a bundle of your chosen fabrics to work up a couple blocks. (usually two, KBeeC does three.) Each person then has a month …

Amy Herzog is genius, did you know that? When Stitchy and I  were planning the sci-fiber chapter of Knitting it Old School, we ganged up on Amy and told her that she needed to design our Barberella / Planet of the Apes / Matrix-y sweater in the style of the future past. She resisted at first, but it’s almost impossible to say no to us. (We’re so charming!) Plus it was mostly just math, and Amy loves math. Thus was born the Apocalypta sweater.

The yarn is Berroco Seduce, which is …

Or something like that.
The shop is updated! Heaps of Biggie Boxbags this go ’round too. Woo!

Enjoy your weekend!

One of the more dreaded knitting finishing techniques is installing a zipper. I admit it, I’ve never been a fan either. There are multiple helpful zipper tutorials out there, and I’ve used a few of them. I always came back with the same issue though; you lay out the sweater, you center the zipper underneath and try to baste in the zipper. The problem is as soon as you pick up a piece of knitted fabric, it does what knitted fabric does. It stretches and drapes and wiggles out of …

I have so many things in the works behind the scenes. I still have 5 knitting FOs to blog. I upgraded my camera. I bought a knitting machine. I changed the way I’m approaching sewing for the shop. I’m waiting on a giant shipment of zippers. I have tutorials half written. I just seem to be spinning my wheels a little. I’m pretty sure I’m lagging behind because it’s March and it’s Spring. AND IT EFFING SNOWED YESTERDAY. Seriously. I’m over Winter, officially.

Let’s see if we can’t shove off the …

The husband celebrated a milestone birthday this year near the beginning of February. One of those birthdays that couldn’t be acknowledged by a simple Amazon gift card or a new tie. (Does anyone still give ties? Such a lame gift) I wondered for months what to get him, and of course he kept saying he didn’t need or want anything special. I stewed for ages on what the gift would be. Dude is a tough man to buy for.

I have waxed poetic about my love of Valley Yarns Northampton before, and you’ll hear me do it again. There’s a reason I chose it for my two sweaters in Knitting It Old School. For $4.99 a ball, at 247 yds, you can knit up a good sized sweater pretty inexpensively. My version of Rude Girl used 5 balls in the burgundy colour and a couple yards each of the black and white. Total cost if you don’t get it on sale? $25. How rad is that?