Here's the photo of Peaches that won the CO HRS calendar contest. Our big brown bunny girl is Miss June.







Although Peaches looks like she was smelling the wildflowers, she was actually just about to eat them. I learned rabbits love to eat flowers several years ago after I put a beautiful bouquet of sunflowers on the coffee table and woke up to a vase of stumps.



The photo above is also one of the 12 I used for the Cafepress Peaches calendar. I think the calendar turned out well and DH took my copy to work. DH reports all the foster care kids he works with adore stories about Peaches and can't put down the calendar. If you want your very own 2005 Peaches calendar (all proceeds go to rabbit rescue), go HERE.



For the socks shown yesterday I used two strands of stash worsted weight yarn, size 7 dpns, and 36 stitches. I was too lazy to do ribbing and they are definitely too thick to fit into shoes. I do the heel on half the stitches so it was 18 stitches wide and 18 rows long. To turn the heel, I knit across the row until there were 7 stitches left, did a K2TOG, then turned back and purled until there were 7 stitches left on the heel, did a P2TOG and so on. One of my little sock secrets is that I NEVER knit an additional stitch after the decreases while turning a heel. I have very narrow feet and heels and this makes them fit a lot better. I also occasionally decrease more than the pattern asks for in the gusset to fit my narrow feet.

Wow - Blogger is acting very strange! Anyway, I hope you all had a great week. We had a terrific Thanksgiving weekend. Peaches feasted on bananas for her own bunny celebration. I started work on a six color hat I may or may not have ready to show tomorrow. DH is home due to snow and I never get as much work done when he's here.



Here is a simple pair of thick roll-cuff socks done in two strands of worsted weight yarn and size 7 dpns.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!













Here are my turkey mittens from last year at this time. The pattern was from the A Year of Mittens pattern booklet (Patternworks may still have it) and I believe I used Country Garden DK yarn.



I'm off for the holidays and hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'll be back next Sunday and I hope to actually have something knitted to show you.

The Bishop's Wife (1947 version) is on television, a roaring fire is going in the wood stove, and it looks like snow is on the way. I am cooking up a storm and planning my Thanksgiving feast. Yesterday we were at Ta Lin International Market on Central in Abq. They have even more foods in stock than last time I went. Their British foods section is quite large and I'm planning a terrific Christmas gift basket for my Brit friend Diane. I even found Sticky Toffee Pudding - my father sent me some a few Christmases back and it was the best non-chocolate dessert I've ever tasted. I purchased lots of imported Italian tomato products and some frozen falafel.



Here's one dish that is going to be on our vegetarian Thanksgiving table. It is a terrific pot luck item and is quite pretty to boot.





PARTY FIESTA SALAD



Serves 6



16 ounces frozen green beans -- thawed

2 cups frozen corn -- thawed

1 cup minced roasted red peppers

2 cloves garlic -- minced

1/4 cup chopped fresh basil (use 1 tsp dried in a pinch)

1/4 cup minced black olives

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 1/2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice



Mix all ingredients together in serving dish. Serve at room temperature. This dish can be made in advance and refrigerated, covered.

Lately I've noticed when I knit two-handed I knit much faster Continental, maybe twice as fast. I knit English/American (aka, throwing the yarn) when I knit plain stockinette or lace or textured stuff. I am planning to do a plain sock project Continental to see if I notice a speed difference.



The other thing I'm noticing is HOW I knit with 2 colors. I know there are people who knit with 2 colors by looking at the stitches on the needle and determining what colors to knit by where they are in the row. I go by the numbers pure and simple. I'll look at the chart once, determine I should be knitting 3 black, 2 white, 4 black, 1 white, etc., and then just count 3,2,4,1, on and on throughout the row. I'll occasionally look down at the row to make sure I haven't screwed up but too much looking at the knitting slows me down. Once I get in the rhythm I'm not doing as much mental counting - I think at some point the fingers take over and remember how many to knit of each color on a row. Things get even faster when I memorize a chart pattern and no longer have to consult the chart.



I was asked by Kathryn in the comments about how I manage to finish so many projects. I am definitely a production knitter. I really love looking at piles of items I've finished and I usually only do small projects which helps. Knowing I need to show a picture of something on this blog also helps me knit faster.



I have the luxury to knit A LOT, maybe 4-6 hours a day during the week (weekends much less). Knitting with 2 colors is fastest for me because I find it so much more interesting than other types of knitting.



I knit while playing Scrabble or Jeopardy with DH. I knit while watching tv - in fact I feel weird if I'm watching tv and not knitting. I knit while surfing the web. My best knitting time is while listening to tapes by the Teaching Company. DH and I sit on the floor next to Peaches the rabbit and the cats come in with us and we all hang out together. Listening to the tapes is perfect knitting time actually.



Here's some of the stuff that went to the Albuquerque Rescue Mission this week. I included my Level II and III sweaters and was incredibly happy to get rid of them. I considered including Ringblomst (Dale of Norway sweater) since I never wear it but I changed my mind. I hope to fill another box full of goodies for them by the end of the year.

Ahhhh. Is there anything more pleasant than spending a sunny afternoon knitting with lots of colors of Shetland wool on small needles? I don't think so.

ANGORA RABBITS NEED HOMES



The state of Colorado confiscated 187 rabbits, most of them Angoras with a few Satins, and are desperate for help. They found homes for all but 57 of the rabbits. If you can take in an angora rabbit or if you know of a fiber person who may be able to take one or two, please contact the head of the Colorado House Rabbit Society, Nancy La Roche ASAP, at co-hrs@comcast.net . This is all I know currently but I do believe their network of volunteers can transport some rabbits outside the state. Thanks!



Anne surprised me with this lovely wool mohair blend. The color is a brighter turquoise than it is scanning. For some reason my scanner can't handle turquoise! It was such a thoughtful and generous gift and will become some socks some day. Thanks Anne! I've also included a photo of some handspun I made with it on my new Woolly Designs production spindle.

Here they are hot off the needles before blocking. I used 56 stitches and size 4 dpns and Nature Spun sport weight wool. The patterns are from Anna Zilboorg's Fancy Feet.

I'll show you the completed Turkish socks tomorrow. I didn't get much knitting done this weekend - it snowed both days and DH has been hanging around more than usual, challenging me to many games of Scrabble.



I have some links for you. HERE and HERE you can find two excellent articles on how to help the homeless and both mention the need for warm knitted accessories in winter. If you find yourself with extra handknit items, consider looking HERE or HERE to locate a homeless shelter near you. It appears most shelters are church-based and receive little or no government funding. This kind of knitting is perfect for me - because the knitted items won't be sold I can knit someone else's pattern instead of designing my own stuff. Plus I don't have to worry about sizing or colors and can just enjoy knitting projects that interest me.



Chery has managed to finish yet another beautiful Dale sweater. It seems like it was only a day ago she finished her last one. Wow! And Sue has completed her first stranded color knitting project - a beautiful pair of Norwegian mittens. I only wish my first stranded color knitting project looked so good!



I added two new reviews of Stranded Color Knitting to the booklet's main page at http://home.earthlink.net/~nanetteblanchard/id6.html .



HERE's a link for a beautiful pattern for pink ribbon breast cancer awareness socks. These may go in the queue as I have some pink sock yarn in the stash.



And perhaps it is all our snow but THIS Christmas baking site just turns me on completely.

After knitting for what seemed like forever, here are Liidia's Gloves from Nancy Bush's Folk Knitting in Estonia. I used some vintage Nylamb yarn (a baby fingering weight yarn that was discontinued years ago) and size 0 dpns. I liked how you do the double wick decreases (i.e., decrease every row) with a different color yarn each row. I'll have to remember that because I like how it looks. I used a different 2-strand cast on for these instead of her braid cast on.

These gloves are going to be added to a pile of stuff to donate to the homeless shelter but first I hope to finish a pair of 6 color socks from Anna Zilboorg's Fancy Feet to include in the box. Tune in on Sunday to see if I manage to finish them in time.

I was going to show you what I do to choose the colors of a project in proper proportion but that will have to wait. I recently realized I'd planned to finish Liidia's gloves by tomorrow and I'm only on the first finger of the second glove. Yikes!



I know I don't NEED to finish these gloves by tomorrow but sometimes I think my deadlines spur me on. Otherwise this house would be full of incomplete and unfinished projects. I hope to finish them and show them here by late tomorrow evening. Here's a close-up of the glove cuff. I think the mint green section was an unsuccessful color choice but it doesn't look as noticeable when you see the complete glove.

Last weekend I managed to finally organize my yarn. I took it out of the Rubbermaid containers and displayed it in some wire shelving units. It is nice to have the yarn out where I can see it all and I feel less of a need to buy more yarn seeing it all displayed. The wire units came in black and white and were quite inexpensive at Target.



(Right after purchasing them I found out that Target has decided not to allow the Salvation Army bell-ringers in front of their store this season as a result of many other charities wanting the some privilege. While I've read that Target donates quite generously to community charities, the newspaper reports are saying this decision may net a loss of 9 million in donations for the Salvation Army this holiday season and this report says the trend may be toward the disappearance of the bell-ringers completely. sigh )



Today's photo shows Jack the cat playing with a feather. For some reason he always looks possessed in these photos.

This week I need to choose the colors for the Fair Isle mittens. Fair Isle color selection is truly an art and I've seen some really awful combos and some that take my breath away. In the past I've taken the easy way out by using all similar colors like the blues and greens in my nautical tam above or tone-on-tone (all shades of the same color) or I've simply recreated the colors used in the original pattern.

I have a good selection of Shetland colors so I could certainly do something in all bright colors or all jewel tones or all pastels. But I have quite a bit of bright red Shetland so I've decided that will be the main color. I'm going to include both pastels, brights, and tweeds for my color combination to further challenge myself.

We'll see how successful I am. Sometimes I wish I could just throw all the colors of yarn up in the air and just use whatever colors fall near my feet.

I hope to finish Liidia's gloves this week. They fit pretty well but they're not for me. They're going (along with some hand-knit socks and mittens) to the Albuquerque Rescue Mission. They have a Clothing Room where they give away items for the homeless and near-homeless and I figure I'm prolific enough to keep them supplied with wool accessories this winter. Plus I can still knit whatever projects I want to knit and not worry about sizing or colors or anything. It is also a good excuse not to do any holiday gift knitting this year! The Colorado HRS shelter's gift shop already has plenty of handknit stuff of mine to sell and all they need now is for me to spin angora for them.



We just started two new Teaching Company classes. After much indecision I finally ordered Pharoahs of Ancient Egypt and Thomas Jefferson: American Visionary. I recommend them both. So far we've learned that men & women wore eye makeup in ancient Egypt for the same reason that football players wear black under their eyes - as protection from the sun's glare. We also learned that no one other than his immediate family members ever heard Jefferson laugh or tell a joke in his life. Interesting, eh?



Peaches apparently got hold of the credit card and ordered this from Amazon. I highly recommend the book to other rabbit people - she turns into a happy tooth-grinding blob of fur or contentedly flops over on her side after her daily massage. If I don't massage her long enough she hops over and keeps nudging my hand to continue. How cute!

Margene told me about Haloscan and I managed to install some new comments in about 2 seconds. Thanks so much! Margene, I believe Lisa made the Anu's Christmas Gloves so maybe she has some words of wisdom. I like the gloves but haven't figured what to do about those really long floats in the pattern.



Siow Chin, I bet your Wensleydale hat will be beautiful. It is such a lustrous and shiny yarn.



Chery, I think I'd do better if people weren't always begging me to knit them things. I do think I enjoy knitting more if I'm just knitting, without a particular recipient in mind. And I completely agree with you about Squawkbox comments.



Sandrine, your Leaf Socks are what inspired me to make my own pair. Everyone go check out her Leaf Socks HERE and HERE.



Jessica, one thing I've noticed about Folk Mittens is the gauge. Lots of the patterns use thick yarn with smaller-than-usual needles (probably for warmth) and I rarely get her gauge. On the other hand, I almost always get Nancy Bush's gauge. Anyway, they're both great books!



Cassie, you're absolutely right about working on projects that are fun rather than obligations. And I love your feather and fan socks!



Beth, I do hope to start knitting only for my enjoyment. I get so sick of easy and/or boring projects.



Valentina, I can't wait to see your Tongue River socks. I have the book but haven't started a pair yet. I'm hoping you will inspire me!



I'll be back on Sunday. I'm off to order a copy of Scarf Style because of Lisa.

Here are the gloves in progress. I'm using Nylamb in green, white, and red. (Yes, I do have Christmas on the brain.) The red you see here is where the thumb will go. I'm almost done with my first finger. These do seem to be taking forever but I remind myself that the second knitted item always goes a LOT faster than the first.

I removed my Squawkbox comments and will answer all those I haven't responded to yet here tomorrow. I am waiting for Blogger support to look at my HTML and tell me where I went wrong. Until the new comments show up, you may contact me at my email address at nanetteblanchard@NOSPAMearthlink.net . Remove the NOSPAM from the email address before sending.

I've been trying all day to post but Blogger wouldn't cooperate. I suspect my problems are related to trying to add Blogger's comments. I'm sick of Squawkbox as I don't always see all the comments that are made.



Tomorrow I'll try again with the comments and I'll also post a progress photo of Liidia's glove so you can see the colors I chose.

Here is the latest kit from Redbird Knits Sock of the Month kit. Isn't the cabled pattern beautiful?









Even better - the yarn that came with the kit is this terrific Wensleydale Longwool spun in Yorkshire, England. I love the color but it is less elastic than other wools. Since I'm such a tight knitter, I prefer a more elastic yarn for cables. I may instead use the Wensleydale for plain socks and substitute some of my Regia for the cabled socks.

I've been guilty all year of knitting things I really don't want to knit. I knit gifts or to make things someone else requests or to fill up my sock drawer or to help out a charity. But I rarely knit exactly what I want so I'm devoting the rest of 2004 to knitting only what I want. I'm only knitting projects that I find interesting and I don't care if I have a purpose for the project once I'm done. So far I've finished almost 70 projects (33 pairs of socks so far this year) for the year so I can now officially slack off the production line.



I'm currently working on Liidia's Gloves from Folk Knitting in Estonia but they aren't speed knitting. The cuff alone on the first glove took me almost 3 days of knitting. I also plan to start the Fair Isle mittens from Folk Mittens once I choose some colors from my Shetland stash.



Two new projects isn't enough though. I chose the mint green Nylamb yarn below to do the wonderful Leaf Socks from Socks, Socks, Socks. Do I have someone to give these items to when I finish? No. Do I need more handknit mittens or gloves or socks? Far from it. I don't care. I just want to knit these items and that's what it is all about.