No piggies today for you but here are some toes. I had to change the length of most of the toes to fit my feet - my little toe was much longer and my middle toe was much shorter. You can tell the middle toe is still too long in this photo.





My feet really don't like wearing toe socks so I'm in a quandary about these socks. I am planning to give everything I knit this year (except any socks I need and DH's Dale sweater) to the rabbit rescue people to sell at a garage sale but I'm not sure anyone will want piggy socks in non-machine washable yarn. Therefore I'm putting these socks aside until I figure out what to do.



Speaking of the rescue garage sale (the one I knit 10 zillion rabbit finger puppets for), I wanted to show you what the money they raised was used for. This is a fancy rabbit cage to fit six bunnies for the city animal shelter to use. You can see the cage at the Lucky Paws shelter in the Coronado Mall in Albuquerque.

Wonderful Parrots

This week's SockPixie collection, the Parrot Collection was inspired by the cutest little parakeet, Boston Creme.
We found Boston Creme on our street last weekend. She was sitting terrified in a bush in a neighbor's driveway. I was able to coax her into sitting on my finger. We brought her back in the house, put her in a safe cage, and called the MSPCA. We gave them our contact information in case she was reported missing.



Boston Creme (as we nicknamed her)was incredibly friendly, and playful. We were falling in love with her. The morning after, we found an egg in her cage, and we were even more excited. We marveled at the perfection of the egg, the kids were completely mesmerized by this miracle. We all hoped (quietly) that no one would claim her, and that she would become our new family member.



Unfortunately, shortly after laying the egg, Boston Creme started acting sick. We ran to the Angell Animal clinic. The vet told us, that she had probably injured a chest bone when she got lost, and laying the egg broke the bone completely. She passed away. We all felt so sad.

After finding Boston Creme, and in the process of helping her, we read a lot about parakeets, and parrots, and parrot rescue. We looked at pictures of glorious colorful parrots, and I was inpired to create this week's Parrot Collection. Parrots are often misunderstood, and as a result abandoned, so I decided to do a little to help finding new homes for these wonderful beings, by donating 10% of this week's proceeds to a rescue organization called Foster Parrots. They do an amazing job welcoming, rehabilitating parrots of all kinds and sizes.



I hope you will enjoy the Parrot collection.

Albuquerque

I rarely get to downtown Albuquerque so when I went last weekend I took a few quick shots to show you.






This is San Felipe de Neri church in Old Town Albuquerque.





The world needs more bright blue doors, don't you think?



Old Town is quite popular with tourists and has lots of fun shops.

In the comments yesterday Nancy commented that what I was doing in the rainbow hat was knitted in I-Cord and PatB said her wonderful clock socks in Socks, Socks, Socks used a method of intarsia in the round. Check it out if you have that book or look her up as patknitter on Ravelry for more info. I'm almost to the heel on the first piggy toe sock and I decided to do duplicate stitch since I thought that would be the fastest. We'll see how long all that duplicate stitch takes me.

Granny Square Bliss

A few months ago, I posted about making granny squares with left over tweed yarns. I finished the blanket a couple weeks ago for my oldest daughter's birthday.

I love the texture. I crocheted with double strands throughout. This made it a much faster project. I used left over tweed yarns from Jo Sharp, and Rowan, as well as a few other odds and ends.
I really loved making the vibrantly colored squares. To unify them, I picked a natural, undyed wool. I found that this was the best choice as it married itself beautifully with any square.

I love the boldness of the blanket,and in fact I love it so much that I have already started a new one. This one will be for my son's birthday which is on Wednesday...

Happy Mother's Day

I will start this post by wishing you all a Happy Mother's Day.
This week's SockPixie Collection has a very Mother's Day feel to it, as all the colorways were inspired by my favorite vintage hankies from the 50's, state hankies.
The colors are so fresh, they look like rays of sunshine! It was so hard to pick which ones to create, I could not stop making new colors, and I ended up with 8 luscious colorways. Here are 2 of them, California and Washington.



This week I also made a little Mother's Day gift that will go in each one of your packages, a little sewing needle case.



I had so much fun making these for you, choosing the felt colors, combining them, trimming them with pinking sheers, and most of all embroidering the little daisies.




Happy Mother's Day!

Too Cute to Resist

My grand-mother is a knitter, and to this day (she jut turned 88) she has knit sweaters for all the children in the family. Her mother was a wonderful seamstress. I still remember the wonderful Regional costume from Martinique she designed for me one year. My mother is mostly an embroiderer.
I knit mostly, I sew occasionally, and up till now I had barely embroidered.

The other day, I was at Windsor Button, in dowtown Boston, and I was just browsing when I spotted the cutest stamped embroidery pillow cases: 2 adorable retro kittens in a basket with daisies everywhere. It was love at first sight. I walked over to the embroidery threads,and quickly decided I was going to pick my own colors to embroider these kittens. Reds, corals,teals and a little gold were my choices.Since I was at the time a "virgin" embroider, I also picked up a hoop, and a set of embroidery needles. I could not wait to get home, and stitch.

I went down to my studio, put on some Georges Brassens, and sat in my chair next to the window. It was 2 o'clock. The children were out with Mr. SockPixie that afternoon. It was past 8 o'clock when they came back, and I was still stitching...



I guess embroidery was in my genes too!

Chasing Rainbows Cap

INTARSIA IN THE ROUND

The one and only time I did intarsia in the round was for this Chasing Rainbows Cap. (No pattern yet but I do hope to knit another cap and offer it as a free blog pattern this fall.) For each color I cut about 2 yards of yarn. I worked in the round with the black background color and each time I got to a new color, I did an interlock (i.e., twisting the yarns) and knit with that new color, then another interlock and back to the black which was stranded.




Here's the inside - this method will only work for narrow stripes though. As it is because the yarn for each color is pulled back to the beginning stitch every time you start a new row, it kind of puffs up the vertical stripes. I believe this is what PGR calls "zigzag intarsia" in the article referenced below. Interestingly she says to weave the background color in EVERY stitch when working the new color which I did not do for this hat. I bet her method will help the stripes from puffing up so much.



Here are some resources I've found for other methods of intarsia in the round. Some of these methods are called festive knitting or motif knitting. Some methods are considered true intarsia and some are a mixture of intarsia and stranding. Most seem to involve some sort of combo of short rows or moving counterclockwise either by purling back to a specific point or by knitting back backwards. If I've missed any good references, please let me know in the comments.

PRINT

"Traditional Techniques for Creating Ethnic Intarsia Designs," Interweave Knits, Fall 2003, Priscilla Gibson-Roberts - She outlines four methods - zigzag intarsia, motif knitting, intarsia with a seam line join, and seamless circular intarsia (which looks seriously complicated). There is also a pattern, the Love Stamp Socks, which uses all four methods. I checked and this back issue is no longer available so Ebay is your best bet.

Ethnic Socks and Stockings, Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, XRX 1995. She includes a section discussing motif knitting and zigzag intarsia.

"About Festive Knitting," Heel and Toes Gazette, Fall 2001, Dawn Brocco. A back issue is available at http://www.dawnbrocco.com/ . The issue includes a pattern for Cushy Socks which use this method.

According to the Dawn Brocco article a few other print resources on festive knitting are: Meg Swansen's Knitting, Anna Zilboorg's Socks for Sandals and Clogs, and Mary Thomas' Knitting Book.

ONLINE

Meredith Davey's free Ravelry pattern for Baseball Socks uses festive knitting.

Knitty's Intarsia Fun Hat is worked in the round.

Moth Heaven has a tutorial on one method of intarsia in the round with photos. There is no direct link - check the sidebar to the left.

Let Me ExplaiKnit discusses some methods of doing intarsia in the round.

Honeybee33 discusses four methods of circular intarsia.




This is Patch the sweetie pie. She's waiting to be adopted at Petco West Side on Old Airport Road in Albuquerque. The woman who grooms the dogs says Patch is very curious and just loves watching the dogs get haircuts. She'd be a great first-time house rabbit!

You can also meet Patch tomorrow, May 9th, at our next HRS Rabbit Adoptathon between 10 am and 2 pm at the Petco Lomas (10700 Lomas NE). Please stop by to meet our adoptable rabbits and talk to our knowledgeable rabbit people. You can also bring your bunnies in to get their claws clipped or to bond with another bunny.