Some Autumn Entrelac?

This is the beginning of a scarf from some yarn I spun maybe a year and a half ago. It's softer to the touch than it looks. Blue-faced Leicester. I can't decide if I like this enough to go forward with it. But I don't dislike enough to stop and frog. Oh me, oh my.


This is an experiment: making one oversized entrelac motif down a scarf. It's Rowan Tapestry, which I recycled from a sideways-knit scarf that really never made me happy. I'm not sure this is working for me, either.

I've got to get out of my cave more. Look what's right out my back door:


And this is out front:

Making Waves Socks

These socks will be in the next Knitcircus, Issue #8, which should be arriving in Madison for mailing to all of you around the first of November.

Size: Men's L. Fits approx size 10 shoe.
Needles: US #1. Use 0's for a snugger fit through ankle.
Yarn: shown in a vintage sock yarn from my stash. Cascade Heritage Solids would be a good moderately-priced substitution.

A fun pattern with a simple twist pattern. Suitable for someone moving up from the most basic socks to a bit more of a challenge.

YarnCon, Chicago

In spite of my ongoing good intentions, I have to say, I'm not winning any Consistent Blogger Awards these days.

Knitcircus went to YarnCon 2009 and had a great time!


This is our cute little booth, or should I say, table. We were well-positioned in the line of sight from the entrance to the first room.
YarnCon is a small-ish fiber/yarn festival that meets annually in Chicago at the Pulaski Field House, just northwest of downtown. It's a cool old late 19th century (I'm guessing) building in the Bucktown neighborhood. The room we were in had this interesting mural surrounding the stage:

It should get bigger if you click the picture.

There were 35 vendors, most of them small or micro-businesses. There was a lot of hand-painted yarn and spinning fiber, a lot of knitting accessories, some folks who ran actual yarn shops, a surprisingly good food vendor, and a good time over all.

Click here to see a craptacular panorama I stuck together from three iPhone pictures.


Here are three of my fellow Rubberneckers on Ravelry. From left to right, CyberFiber, eryn, Ogirl.

This was an interesting community art project:

Yarnies were invited to sit a spell and knit or crochet on to the skirt, as they wished.
Another view of the same:


For Knitcircus, it was a good show. We connected with a lot of folks who knew of us a little and were curious. And a lot more who had never heard of us and seemed favorably impressed.

After the show, we had a little comedy of errors with our dinner rendez-vous plans. It all worked out in the end, but the take-home lessons were a. get cell phone numbers before you split up and b. do your restaurant research before you leave home.

Weekend Update

In addition to the Great Pumpkin on the front step, there are a few more nice big pumpkins out back. And then there's these strange things.



These are snake gourds. Owen planted them. I think he and Scott were expecting some small decorative gourds we could put in the middle of the table or in a bowl, or something, you know, decorative. I think they look a little menacing. Like maybe they could have been used as props in Dr Who circa 1966? One vine climbed right up the apple tree and grew its gourd there, hanging. Seriously, it's as big as a baseball bat.

I've been puttering away on knitting that I can't show you yet. So, you get phallic snake gourds, instead.

Today, Jaala hosted the Knitcircus Hat Event. It was a great success! We had a bunch of volunteers come to cut and sew and cranked out about 35 hats and 20 no-sew scarves in 2 hours. We had a hat that a knitter in California mailed to us, too.

The past couple weeks have been a bit busy, some good and some bad. We've had the little guy to Urgent Care twice. We've had sick days. Car appointments. School events. Other volunteer events. Last Saturday Knitting and Friday Late Night knitting. Between all this, I've got about 85% of the next Knitcircus pasted in and formatted. I think tomorrow I'll get to sit and breathe for a while. Oh, yeah, and catch up on laundry and go grocery shopping.