my life in stitches

all the cool kids are doing it

buying a Bejeweled pattern (which donates money to deliver Dulaan goodies to Mongolia), knitting it up, and spreading good will! here's Dana's lovely Bejeweled-in-progress.

Tamara bought the pattern and wrote:

Thank you for making it so easy and enjoyable to do a little bit of good. I may make the scarf and donate it to another cause, to continue the efforts.

even if you're not going to knit this scarf right now, you should buy the pattern because your $2.25 is a $3.50 donation to the Mongolia Project at F.I.R.E. what's $2.25? i'm pretty sure it won't even buy you a double tall skinny mocha latte!

if you have a blog, please post about this and help to raise money to keep sending all the Dulaan goodies to Mongolia! thus far 33 sold, 267 to go!!

buy a scarf pattern, keep a child warm!

as you know, through December 31st, i'm donating $1.75 (pretty much all the profits - the patterns sells for $2.25, paypal charges between .37 to .39 cents per pattern) from the Bejeweled Scarf patterns, to F.I.R.E so that they can deliver all your yummy handknits to children in Mongolia. i've got great news! Anichini, the world's foremost luxury linens and textiles company, has offered to match the donations raised from the sale of my Bejeweled Scarf pattern. what that means is that for every pattern you purchase at $2.25, The Mongolia Project at F.I.R.E. will receive $3.50!!! please, post it to your blogs and tell all your knitting friends! my goal is to sell at least 300 patterns. with Anichini's matching donation that would be $1050 raised to keep kids warm. we can do this! only 280 more to go!

Bejeweled Scarf - because sometimes all it takes is a little scarf to make you feel really fancy!

this has been an amazing year for me, including the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. the absolute low point was this past spring when i had to have a very expensive surgery. as i was recovering and completely drowning in medical bills my dog, ashby, had to have emergency knee surgery. it was a disaster. i was completely broke. my mom was helping me with my medical bills, but i had no idea how i would pay for ashby's $1200 surgery. i had absolutely no place else to turn to, so i asked the knitting community to buy patterns and to donate money to ashby's surgery fund. thanks to the amazingly generous donations and sales that we received ashby was able to have his surgery and he has had a full recovery! i cannot thank you enough for supporting us through a really difficult time.

since then, i've been wanting to do something to say thanks. i can think of no better time than Thanksgiving to begin to pay it forward. i'm sure that by now every knitter reading this post knows about The Dulaan Project or has knitted lovely and warm scarves, hats, sweaters, and mittens to be sent to Mongolia to keep kids warm. i've been wanting to knit for Dulaan too, but with all the book knitting i just haven't had time. so, in lieu of knitting, i present the Bejeweled Scarf pattern. this is a pattern for the scarf that i am wearing in my Yarnplay author photo. through December 31st i will donate a major chunk of the profits ($1.75 per pattern) to the Mongolia Project at F.I.R.E., the non-profit organization that delivers all of the Dulaan goodies to Mongolia. it costs them $40,000 a year to ship to Mongolia, so they need lots of help! this super easy scarf is a fun project. buy it and knit it for yourself or gift it to a friend or relative. buy the pattern and send it to a secret pal or stash it away for later.

** update ** Anichini, the world's foremost luxury linens and textiles company, will match my donation to F.I.R.E. that means that for each pattern sold The Mongolia Project gets $3.50! **

 

 

Specs:

Finished Measurements: Approximately 6.75” x 72”

Materials
270 yds of aran or worsted weight yarn
Size 8-9 needles

Gauge: 19 sts / 4 inches over pattern.
Price: $2.75

PDF file will be sent by email within 24 hours of receipt of payment.

 

 

 

ashby sez, 'buy a pattern and help keep some mongolian kids warm and cozy like me!'

the lesson of the day

... is that you shouldn't hoard yarn while waiting for a magical pattern to appear. you want to know why? i'll tell you why. because that very special (mythical even!) yarn will langour in your stash for years while you create this imaginary perfect sweater in your head that no yarn or pattern can ever measure up to. it's sort of like carrying a torch for someone for years and then, suddenly, you find yourself on a date with the guy or girl of your dreams and you discover that they're not so special after all. bah.

anyway. as you can see i've started to knit a sweater with my perfect, mythical, 100% cashmere. and as many of you know, for years i've struggled with finding a pattern worthy of her highness. sigh. i'm not sure how i feel about this thus far. i didn't want the fabric to be too dense, so i went down a needle size. to me, reverse stockinette is always a bit more interesting than stockinette, so i went with that. don't really know if i'm in love with the look of this cable. so many questions.

on top of all of this, i'm feeling under the weather today and i'm pissed off about it because i have a lot of work to do. my mind's telling me to 'get to it', while my body is telling me to put on a dvd, curl up on the sofa, and relax. what's a girl to do?

a little time for myself

i'm pretty obsessive when it comes to my work. i work at home which means that there's no real dividing line between work time and leisure time. this is a problem. i love that i get paid for my passion and i love working at home. however, i need to find a way to draw the line between work time and me time because when i don't i find myself starting to feel a bit of resentment at not having any time to work on personal projects. and it's in my personal projects that i find inspiration for my work. hence, i've decided to allot myself 30 minutes of personal knitting time every day. no matter how busy i am, no matter how many deadlines are looming, i get to work on my own stuff, guilt-free, for a minimum of 30 minutes daily. yay! i can't even begin to tell you how happy this makes me! so, what shall i be doing with this new found play time? well, for years now i've been threatening to knit a sweater with the cashmere pictured here. last night i actually started writing out a pattern for a cable sweater and i'm all swatched and ready to cast on! one problem, though. i can't decide if it should be stockinette or reverse stockinette. the stockinette pattern is more complicated. the reverse stockinette is pretty easy to follow. as far as looks go, i tend to think that the reverse stockinette background may be a bit more chic. it's more of a surprise, you know?

poppy extra sizes

to receive the numbers for the larger Poppy sizes please send an email with the subject header poppy extra sizes. the replies will be sent out automatically, so in order for this to work the subject must say poppy extra sizes, no more, no less. i will not be reading nor responding to these emails. this request will only be replied to through the address in this post. please do not use the mylifeinstitches addy.

happy knitting!