Congratulations on your Gold Medal!

Today is the last day of the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games. It's also the last day of the Ravelympics and the Knitting Olympics.

Today I'm writing to celebrate the gold medal that Sue, aka soxchik won because it's dear to me too - she knit a shawl from my Chrysler Crown Shawl pattern.

I love this early picture she took early on with a picture of the building:


And here's the finished object blocking.


Sue told me that she was working to the deadline of wearing it to Stitches West - and she was successful! Congratulations to you!

For those on Ravelry who want to have a look, Sue's project is the Team Sasquatch Chrysler Crown Shawl.

My Olympic knitting is also complete. I completed Ishbel. My early guesses about whether or not I had the yardage were accurate - it was close, but on the side that worked out well for me. I had about 16 yards left.


This has me thinking about working on something that will make these guesses a little easier to make - a kind of generic tool where you can put in some data & figure out whether you've got enough wool, or how big to make your project. I have seen a couple of spreadsheets that do this kind of thing, but I'm thinking of something simpler and more generic. More on that soon, I think.

Donation made to MSF!

Thanks to all who bought the Chrysler Crown Shawl pattern in January, I was able to make a $75 donation to Médecins Sans Frontières Canada. Just to be really open & clear about this, here's a shot of part of the receipt:


On the weekend I finished my Miralda shawl. Here's how it looked after blocking:



And once again, it was using lovely alpaca/silk laceweight from Silent Valley Alpaca.

And now I'm on to a secret project, to be revealed later on. What I can tell you is that I'm using this lovely silk/linen blend, Muireann in the lovely "Oh Ruby" colour from The Woolen Rabbit. Oh, and beads are involved. The Muireann is delicious stuff to knit with and I'm making excellent progress given that I only started on Saturday.

Awesome Response!

There has been an awesome response to people donating some profits from their patterns to help Haiti. The end of the month is coming up in a few days & right now the total I'm set to donate is at least $69. That's just incredible. And since it is way more than I'd normally sell, I decided to spend some of my portion on patterns too. I bought both of Ysolda's collections. Don't ask me why I waited so long to do that, because I've no clue, but it worked out well for donations as she's giving 80% to Doctors Without Borders. I also bought Kristen Rengren's Harlow pattern. I have appropriate stash yarn for this, just not enough time. All of this donating means that the total for the Yarn Harlot's Tricoteuses Sans Frontières / Knitters Without Borders is now over $1,000,000 since 2004. Crazy, no?

Progress on Miralda's shawl was good for a while but has slowed with a silly work/life schedule. I'm in the home stretch and I've started the final chart. I'm about 10 rows into it and it's easy to remember. The decreasing should mean that it's still possible to finish it this weekend for my first entry into the 10 shawls in 2010 group! Stay tuned for pictures.

It's not too late! Buy the Chrysler Crown Shawl before end of day Jan. 31st & I'll donate half of the price to Doctors Without Borders.

$6 CDN

10 shawls in 2010: the start of the first

On Jan. 1, I cast on for Miralda's Triangular Shawl from Knitted Lace of Estonia.

I'm using 4.0 needles (Addi Click), and gorgeous alpaca/silk laceweight from Silent Valley Alpaca, a local producer. This was the lovely stuff that I bought at the Almonte Fiber Fest and I'm really enjoying the knitting process because of the feel of this wool.

I'm having some fears about not having enough yardage to make it through, but hopefully this first skein will last a few more rows and it'll all work out in the end. So far I've finished the first two charts and have moved on to the section with the nupps in it.

The thing that I'm looking forward to is that this shawl is knit from the outside triangular edge in, so the rows are getting shorter & shorter. It doesn't feel like they're getting any quicker, but soon I'll just be racing through them and finished. Perhaps. Here's how it looks today: