Just a Toe

If you haven’t heard yet, Magknits has shut down it's website and taken the site totally off line. No real notice, no archive, no access to patterns, nothing. I heard through Ravelry, and let me tell you, people are pretty darn angry. I did read somewhere that they gave the designers 24 hours notice to get their patterns down off the site if they wanted. That isn't much time. In the middle of knitting a pattern - you are now out of luck. I'm just not sure why they didn't give a month notice. Even a week. But 24 hours? That is just crazy. The designers are coming through though. More and more I'm reading of them putting the patterns up on their blogs, or as free downloads. Talk about pattern support. To me it seems like a huge faux pas on their part - I can only imagine how many emails they are getting in response to the sudden disappearance of the site and all it's patterns. I just hope it all works out and no one gets stranded without a pattern to work from!

Don't forget to check out the Countdown To Sheep and Wool blog. Contests, lots of great pictures and info about the festival and especially the Cloverhill booth! Only 22 days to go!

On a happier note, I am almost halfway done with sample sock #2. I took a bunch of pictures last night in the waning daylight hours to send off to the designer. This is about all I can show you....

Not much, sadly. It is killing me not to be able to blog this! I feel like there is such a lack of knitting to blog as the phyllo pullover is just more (and more!) stockinette. I may have to get creative. But, soon the sample will be complete and I can get back to blogging about knitting!

To pass the time, as promised, some cute photos of the boys. Ace is getting so big. It's really hard to believe he will be 8 months old next week! He's starting to mature and get his big boy coat. I think he is almost 40 pounds, and has about another 10 to go. His coat has a long way to go though - with the show lines in his breeding, he should be Mr. Fluffy! I'm enjoying the shorter coat now though. I know it always won't be this easy to care for!

Quite the intense look in his eye, huh? I love his little eyebrows - especially when he moves them up and down.

Otis couldn't help but stick his nose into the photo shoot - literally.

That nose.....always getting him into trouble!

Shhhhhh.......

There won't be tons of knitting to post in the next chunk of time. I'm doing some super secret sample knitting (SSSK) for Cookie, and the sock is under lock and key until the book comes out. All I can say is that it's a classic Cookie pattern, and has been quite fun and challenging to knit so far.

This one is going to be hard when the pair is done. Since it's sample knitting and not test knitting, the socks go back to her. I'm ok with that though - they'll probably end up more well traveled than me! Out and about in trunk shows, on the book circuit. Ahh, the life of a sample sock. Glamor at it's best.

What I can show you is the yarn I'm using. One of the sock classics. Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock. The color?

Cranberry. A beautiful pretty much solid shade of reddish purple brown. I do love Lorna's. I have two other pairs of socks knit with it and they hold up great. It must be the nylon content. The only problem I find with it is that it doesn't frog very nicely. I've already had to rip my sock once (the chart is HUGE!) and the yarn just doesn't seem to bounce back as well as some others. It ends up a bit splitty after. So, to prevent future over frogging and icky splitty yarn, I'm going to borrow a technique from the lace knitters and use a lifeline. The task of picking up stitches after I frogged was a nightmare, and the yarn just isn't tightly twisted enough to take it more than once. On the plus side though, it wears like iron, is squishy soft and the colors are amazing. A fair trade I think.

So, I'll try to post as much as I can - there may be some boring stockinette content on the Phyllo Yoked Pullover, or some cute puppy pictures. The socks may be incognito, but I'll try not to be!