You Can Teach An Old Dog New Tricks

I was a happy, die hard double point needle sock knitter. I had explored knitting socks on two circulars and hated it. I had heard Kelly Petkin from KnitPicks talk about how she liked knitting socks on one long circular needle-magic loop. I had watched a friend knit on the magic loop and noticed how effortlessly she moved from needle/sock to needle/sock. At Arnhild's Knitting Camp I had the opportunity to take a class from my friend on knitting two socks at a time with a magic loop. I left the class questioning whether or not I liked it, so I went home and played with it. I love it! The magic loop works on socks, sleeves, hats, and mittens so I am now a magic loop convert.

Knit A Rama

June 26, the MN Knitters' Guild sponsored an all day Knit A Rama. What a wonderful day! The main speaker was Staff Sargent John Sorich IV, who recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. He was a knitter prior to deployment, and while in Iraq taught other soldiers to knit. They found it a good stress reliever. He spoke for a time and showed slides of his time in Iraq, building bridges and knitting. Such an interesting time listening to him.
John does a lot of knitting from vintage war knitting patterns.

The event was held at Northland Inn in Brooklyn Park which was nice because it was so close to home. When we arrived a breakfast bar was set up outside our room with rolls, fruit, juices, cereal, beverages and probably more. Lunch was in the restaurant and was a buffet with a salad bar, hot table, cook to order grill, and dessert bar. I was so full I didn't even hit the dessert bar! Of course we had been told there was going to be a cookie bar in the afternoon, which there was with cookies, bars, fruit, crackers, cheese, and beverages.

The afternoon was a panel of Susan Rainey and Rox answering questions from the floor. Very informative. Then Susan gave a good presentation on state fair entries.

Skew Socks

When I saw these being knit by a friend, I just knew I had to make them. I love making things with unusual construction-and this was just such a thing. It's something you just have to keep working on to see how it was going to come together. Fun and they fit well.

Yarn: Regia Cotton

Pattern: Skew free on Knitty.com Winter 2009.

Needles: 2.5 mm

Shawls

Northern Lights Shawl was the project I took with me to knit on my trip to Eastern Europe. It was the perfect travel project as it only took one ball of fingering weight yarn. The pattern was easy to remember-luckily, because I left my pattern on the plane to London. I continued in the sequence I was doing and it worked out well. I worked an extra repeat plus a few more rows to use up all the yarn and complete the color sequence. My great grand daughter loves this shawl! (So do I. Just looking at it makes me smile) It was fun to knit to watch the colors emerge from the ball of yarn. I think the colors and feel of this yarn equal Noro and, but I only had one knot in this whole ball and it tied together ends of the same color. Also this was spun much more evenly.

Yarn: Kauni Wool.

Pattern: Revontuli-huivi (Northern Lights) a free download on Ravelry.

Needles: Size 7. The pattern recommended size 9, but that produced too loose a knit for me.

Another fun knit which was fairly easy and produced a beautiful shawl.
Pattern: Haruni, free Ravelry download.
Yarn: Knit Picks Bare, Superwash Merino/Nylon Fingering. 1 skein.