Heiligabend

What's there to say? Still keeping with German tradition we'll unwrap our presents tonight. There's a package from my Mom and one from my sister.

Our present to each other (and a bit to the environment) was a new car - a Honda Civic Hybrid. We already unwrapped (used) it and we both are enchanted. Having to dig it out of a heap of snow last week was less so. It still is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I am woefully behind everything. After a baking marathon on Saturday - we baked four different kinds of cookies - I still have to finish (decorate) half. Christmas knitting? What's that? Honestly, there's nothing like that going on here.

Everyone, happy holidays!

Shop Talk

One thing I never felt compelled to knit is baby clothes. I can't really say why, it just did not appeal to me. Now that I come to think about it, I rarely knitted small things but socks. I say "knitted" since when my job required to design some baby/kids garments, it wasn't as difficult as I'd thought and now that I have to think of some more I find myself enjoying the process.

One reason - or rather: four reasons - is the yarn I get to work with. Reynolds came out with a Kids line this fall, and there are four different yarns that really give you every excuse you want to knit small things.

- Wash Day Wool (psst, my favourite!) is a superwash 100%, very soft wool yarn in a fingering weight

- Sunday Best is a 51% cotton/49% viscose mix in a fingering weight, soft and shiny

- Cottontail is a worsted weight, 60% cotton and 40% microfiber - which gives the good ol' cotton a new, soft twist

- Play Time is a very reliable and soft worsted weight mix of 80% acrylic and 20% wool

There are 12 colors of all four of them, you'll find the pastels (cream, light pink, light blue, yellow), brights (red, orange, pink, green) and, of course, neutrals (indigo, charcoal, chocolate brown, camel), to mix and match as desired. All the colors go well together, there's almost no end to the variety of combinations.

To celebrate the newly created kids' yarns we have a whole book with 42 designs - accessories, toys and garments, ranging in sizes from 0-3 months to 4 years.

The coolest thing I haven't even told you yet: when choosing the yarns we made sure that they can be substituted with each other. Any design in Cotton Tail can be knit in Play Time and the other way around, or, and I've tried it, in Wash Day Wool doubled up - and I get gauge with two strands of Sunday Best, too. Any Wash Day Wool design can be knit in Sunday Best and vice versa. (No, we couldn't think of a method to substitute the fingering weight with the worsted weight yarns, but you didn't really expect that, did you?)

The Kids line is dear to me,  and I do hope you will enjoy looking into it, too.

BTW, the yarn works also well with "adult knitting". Wait, that doesn't sound right...Well, you know what I mean!!

Snow and more snow

With much dread I watched the snow falling yesterday. There's a lot of shoveling to be done yet.

See:


That would be our car in that big honking heap of snow. That's the top of the car with a rearview mirrow sticking out, just in case you really can't see it.



That's our deck. Good thing we don't want to have a BBQ any time soon, eh?

Knitting content is soon to recommence chez "Knit stricken".

Isn't she lovely?

Though spindles do not tend to have a gender, to me it's always a 'she', just like boats are always female. Looking at the size of this particular she, I just cannot imagine her to be a 'he'.



I got this one at Golding Fiber Tools for which I've had a weakness for quite some time now.





This particular model I chose since I wanted to make sure I'd be able to spin as finely as I wanted to - and boy, it works like a charm! I wouldn't call the outcome 'thread' but it's close. "Tsunami" (that's how the spindle is called) weighs only 0.5 oz, and spinning the merino/bamboo mix is as easy as pie.




This is my first trial with the new spindle. I don't know what the fibre is, I was given a sample with the merino/bamboo mix but I suspect it's a superwash 100% merino. It is sooo soft - and I managed to get a 2-ply laceweight.