kitty: celtic knotwork bracelet - class by Loren Damewood

Project: Celtic Knotwork Bracelet Material: Fine Gauge Silver, Chop Stick, Doll Needle, Nail Board Completion time: 2.5 hours Teacher: Loren Damewood The last five days have been pretty crazy at a convention here in Columbus, but I did have the great fortune to take a Celtic Knotwork Class using Sterling Silver wire over the weekend. A little escape in what has been known as the wife track at the convention. Loren Damewood has been tieing knots since he was a young boy when his brother came back from military services. Once he retired from the aerospace industry in 2006 he started traveling to shows teaching and selling Celtic knot work jewlery and chain mail. Last year when I was taking the tatting class at the convention I saw him tieing cotton Turk Head knots and was really fascinated by the craft. Here is his online tutorial on how to make them. The class was really the highlight of the convention. I now just need to find where to buy the wire and get a surgical clamp. I am so ready to make more.

kitty: second night of Candle night

Textured Shawl Start of Day 2 of Candle Night It is disturbing when you think about how much effort you have to go through to unplug your life for just a couple of hours a day. Just turning off a ups will send shrieking sirens to go off while electronics still run on battery power for several hours. Taking all rechargeable items off outlets. Unplugging cable boxes and clocks so they don't pull power. And then there is the draw of a computer, cell phone, telephone, tv, DS, PSP, ipod... that we just take things for granite.

Pattern: textured shawl recipe Fiber: Habu A-1B Kakishibu Tsumugi Silk Colour: 52

kitty: Happy Sumer Soltice

Setting outside between 8 - 9:30 tonight in observance of Candle Night . Sadly the bugs didn't agree with me staying outside until 10. I must admit that I found out about it from MG flickr stream. :) So I am a copy cat in the observation of the event. I may have also jumped on the textured shawl band wagon tonight since I will be in a conference latter this week I needed something to work on that is mindless. Pattern: textured shawl recipe Fiber: Habu A-1B Kakishibu Tsumugi Silk Colour: 52

kitty: how we do the things we do

Watching Libby knit a happy dishcloth I think it is always fascinating to watch people knit and see though we all knit, there are so many different techniques, tools, ways to hold the threads.

kitty: dreams do come true

Ysolda's Book Signing at WonderKnits
	Ok... This may sound really corny, but here goes..."Dreams Really Do Come True." In the blog world there are bloggers that you always hope that you will have the honor to meet, Ysolda has always been one of those bloggers for me. Tonight I had the honor to meet her at WonderKnits on her Whimsical Little Knits US Book Tour. I have always been a huge fan of her designs and thoroughly enjoyed reading when ever she posted on her blog. Though I haven't made a lot of her patterns the ones I have made have always turned out well and have been really easy to understand and follow. A Special Thanks to Libby and all the people who were involved in the Book Signing. It was to amazingly cool! THANK YOU See the full set of photos
Signing the copies that I bought.
Other fans who came to the book signing.
Libby taking a break
Thank you again...

kitty: indie shoppe - a garden

A Sweet & Dainty Pearl Button
Japanese Wood Button
Jade Buttons
Coconut Buttons
Japanese Wood Buttons
	Etsy: A Garden Content: Coconut Shell, Wood, Mother of Pearl, & Jade Would I buy again: Yes Shipping: From China
Anyone who either knits or sews has run into the hardship of finding good buttons for there project. Particularly people who are obsessed with Habu fibers due to there frailty of the fiber. It is just so hard to find buttons in the US. Olga aimed me the link to "A Garden" on etsy the other night because she though the buttons and fabric looked a lot like Lin-net. The jade buttons took me over the limit and somehow my shopping cart had 5 buttons in the card before I knew it. I am so happy I did. The prices are cheap and the quality is high. The coconut buttons are beyond a bargain price at 25 buttons for $2.50. Especially since Habu sells a similar button for $1.50 each. Though I will say the mother of pearl butterflies are a little thin and could only be used for embroidery decoration vs a button per say.

kitty: WWKIP Day

So what did you do to celebrate WWKIP day???

I spent my evening at Jeni's ice cream parlor working on my phildar sweater in celebration of WWKIP day. Jeni's was standing room only tonight so I felt a little self conscious pulling out my knitting, but M patiently sat there eating his ice cream as I knitted. Thanks M, you are the best

kitty: library

A few of you may remember back during the summer of 2007, Fleegle posted a post titled "Now that we have Mastered Knitting in Japanese.... Let's Learn Danish!"
	Here is the book that she had just found and tempted us with the creations within the covers. Feminin strik by Lene Holme Samsøe ISBN: 8711265965 ISBN-13: 9788711265963 Fleegle posted a links to where you could purchase it from: here I bought a copy of it last year for Mia for her birthday, but I just couldn't bring myself to order myself a copy. I didn't need to start collecting books in another language. I had to repeat this to myself many times. Wonders among wonders though, Interweave has brought it out and I have my copy in hand.
June's Featured Title	Feminine Knits: 22 Timeless Designs By: Samsoe, Lene Holme 2009/06 - Interweave Press Additional images ISBN: 1596681403 Ingram Annotation: Fall in love with knitting all over again with this intriguing pattern collection that blends captivating designs with flattering, feminine silhouettes. Knitters will be eager to start and delighted to finish each project that includes skirts, jackets, tank tops, pullovers, and accessories. An excellent showcase of texture, lace, and unusual pattern construction, each project is inspired by current and vintage fashion and the mathematical aspect of design. Featuring projects for every season, skill level, time commitment, and occasion, each collection is full of elegant finishing and the kind of impeccable detail that makes transforms each piece into a classic. This manual, packed to the brim with timeless yet fashionable patterns, also features beautiful photographs that highlight the detail and feminine silhouettes of each finished piece.
There are a couple of patterns that I think are super cute, I am not to sure I would actually make them, but my long desire of owning the book is now complete. You do not want to know how many times I went to Fleegle's site to look at the pictures. (Favorites - Plissé - Nederdel )

kitty: indie fibers - barefoot shepherdess

Naturally Dyed Polwarth Top, sakura 5 & 3
Naturally Dyed Silk Roving, safflower 2
	Blog: Cosmopolitan Purls Etsy: Barefoot Shepherdess Fiber: Polwarth Top Silk Colour: Sakura (Collected leaves from the park last fall) and Pink Safflower Natural Dyes: Sakura, Safflower, Madder, Onion Skins, Cochineal Would I buy again: Yes, and I have Truly beautiful fiber and it spins like a dream.
Check out what MG got me for my Bday! I opened up this magical box from Japan, and inside was three bundles of lovely fiber. She had been reading Cosmopolitan Purls blog for awhile and decided to order the fiber from her etsy site. The fiber is beautifully prepared, has lots of natural crimp, spinning was extremely easy. And to top it all off, who could resist fiber that had been dyed from sakura leaves. I definitely have a weakness for natural dyes and the beauty they possess. With all the indie dyers out there it has really become hard to know who produces beautiful work. This is definitely one to check out in the future. Her work is really well done and the colours are absolutely amazing.

kitty: memories of my childhood

(Photo taken by M; Park of Roses, Columbus, OH)
Dainty Bess Rose.. There are few flowers that have as much meaning to me as the Dainty Bess Rose. Before my time my grandparents were members of the Rose Society in the 50's.
	My mother tells stories of going and picking up petals that had fallen into the beds and knocking off bugs into cans of gasoline to prevent them from eating my grandfather's roses every day. My grandfather was very passionate about Petit Point in his latter years of life, and the last project that he worked on before his eyesight was just to bad, was of Dainty Bess. So Dainty Bess Roses will always make me think of him setting on the edge of the couch with two magnifying glasses, silk canvas, dmc threads, little gold scissors, and giant blown up photographs that he had taken of his roses.
(One of his larger stitch count works)

kitty: working on a new sweater

I for one love Faggot Stitch Patterns, there is something always so rewarding when you are doing a complicated knit pattern to come to a few simple rows of YO and K2Tog. It may be my absolute favorite stitch. They are open, easy, and don't require a lot of thinking.

So when I saw this sweater in the Spring Phildar magazine I was really excited about the pattern. I though the faggot stitch with its vertical lines could be slimming on me and it was a fresh and cute look. So while M, read saturday night I started swatching for the sweater, only to find out that the faggot stitch pictured I am pretty sure is not the one given in the instructions. I swatched the stitch that was given and it didn't have the strong heavy line in the finished garment. it had a thin line. Also the instructions say odd no. of stitches where as you are left with an even no. when you decrease. Something is obviously wrong here. So I did a little swatching and picked a new stitch variation that had the strong vertical lines I was after in the design. The other problem obviously was to find a stitch that had the same gauge as the pattern. Below is a little bit of my research.

Here are the stitches that I tested for the front insert of the sweater: I ended up using No. 3

Example 1: Multiple of 2 sts, plus 2 Row 1: K1, *YO, P2Tog*, K1

Example 2:Multiple of 2 sts, plus 2 Row 1:K1, *YO, P2Tog*, K1 Row 2: K

Example 3: Multiple of 3 sts, plus 4 Row 1: K2, *YO, K2Tog, K1*YO K2Tog Row 2: P2, *YO, P2Tog, P1* YO P2tog

Example 4: Multiple of 2 sts, plus 2 Row 1: K1, *YO, SSK* K1 Row 2: P1, *YO P2Tog* P1

Example 5: Multiple of 2 sts, plus 2 Row 1: K1, *YO, SSK*, K1 Row 2: P1, *YO, K2tog*, P1

Example 6: Multiple of 2 sts, plus 2 Row 1: K1,*YO, SSK*, K1 Row 2: P Row 3: K1, *K2Tog, YO*, K1 Row 4: P

As I was Googling, I found that there were two common questions that kept coming up What is a Faggot Knit Pattern? Faggot Patterns: A mesh stitch that has one of two vertical columns of eyelets separated by adjacent columns of decreases. Where does the term Faggot Pattern come from? OED "The term faggot stems from needlework techniques in existence before the development of lace knitting, principally the deflected-thread and drawn-thread laces and embroiders of western Europe, where narrow insertions of twisted and gathered threads resembling herringbone stitch were used to seams and between larger patterns." Knitting Lace (Susanna E. Lewis, pg 143) Mary Thomas's Book of Knitting Patterns also goes into other definitions and historical significance of Faggot Patterns and has it dating back to the 15th & 16th century knitters. Click here to read the Google Book Search page Other References: KnitWiki - Dummies.com MG also found an amazing online reference for the definition of the word "faggot" for the Oxford English Dictionary. Click Here joining of fabric that is jointed with an insert that is faggoted together to make kimono's for morning wear the use of a figure of a faggot, which heretics wore on there sleeve after they recounted a filling stitch in needlework the use in lace to join two pieces of canvas and so many more. It really is amazing the uses of the word historically. (Thanks for the link MG) So where does the word Faggot stitch actually come from may be a little harder to define than one might think. But like many things in history it is hard to determine the first use of the word or technique. It obviously has references to the 15th and 16th century in many walks of life.

MG: time to go...

knitting Regia Canyon Color

hi there, been a long while again...

early in april i suddenly decided i was ready and wanting to go back to school. the application process (GRE, facing old professors, facing my curriculum vitae, facing fears) then promptly gobbled up the next two months. now i await the yea or nay from an MS program nearby, a small decision on which the course of my future pivots.

with all this, i realized i was becoming less and less talkative about my knitting. and considering my already sparse contributions here, it's probably best to hang up my blogging hat after all...

i know it's time to go, but it's making me very sad today. i've had amazing fun in this space with Kitty Kitty, and i can't say enough about what knibuddies has given me. thank you all (including you, my knitbuddy) for the knitting fun, for your kindness, solidarity, and sympathies. most importantly, thank you for the daily reminder that strangers are warmer and kinder than i ever imagined.

Kitty Kitty will be staying; she has some exciting things planned here! i'll still be hanging out as her reader of course, so see you in the comments. many thanks and much love, MG.

kitty: resource link to designer interview with Olga Buraya-Kefelian

One of the things that has always really fascinated me is reading more about the designers of patterns that I admire. Gaining a little bit of insite into what they were thinking and what moves them to create the pieces of art they are producing. If you haven't caught the interview that Vanessa of Coloursknit did with Olga of Olgajazzy you should definitely go check it out. Olga also just released her pattern for the Grecian top that we all have been harassing her about for the last 2 years.

kitty: thank you, Monika of Smoking Hot Needles

There are few things in life that can make your day like seeing someone actually knit your sock patterns and post a photos of the socks on Ravelry. Monika, from Smoking Hot Needles posted her beautiful version of the Hopper Sock on Ravelry and on her blog. I couldn't be happier. Thank you so very much, you really made my day. :)