A good friend of mine painted some yarn last year. Upon the painting of said yarn, I thought it was really beautiful and wanted to knit it up….so, I did the only thing any reasonable knitter would. I offerred to knit something for the painter with her yarn. Before you think that I’m generous of nature (yes, I know you’re really thinking I’m a tad tacky), I must admit that I was really lusting after the yarn. I had already named it. It is green and blue, so it made me think of the Lochness Monster in water. I called it the Lochness yarn for about 6 months before making my offer and getting her to bring me the pretty yarn. She joked quite a bit about when her gift would be done and I put her off all the while plotting the perfect mitts for the yarn her.

I looked through a lot of patterns. I wanted something with cables because she likes them almost as much as I do, but not too complicated so the yarn would be shown off. I cast on the Hermoine Mitts as practice, but that wasn’t moving me, so I frogged. I started to take a look at the Monkey Fingerless Mitts since I know the monkey socks look great in just about any yarn, but too many red flags made me continue my hunt:
red flag 1: the monkey socks are viral (15,000+ projects). These mitts have less than 50 projects.
red flag 2: there were two versions of the pattern that I might download. what does this mean? it’s a complete double rainbow?
red flag 3: the comments………did not bode well.

That’s when I sorted the patterns by popularity and settled on Mitt Envy. Surely, the kinks have been worked out after 1100+ projects. As is often the case with me, the third time’s the charm!

I surprised her with the first mitt on her birthday to make sure it fit and brought her the pair about a week later. I daresay she was pleasantly surprised by my turn around on the second mitt considering it took so long for the first one. It is nice to have a friend that appreciates the hand knits….and is willing to let me play with her one-of-a-kind hand-painted yarn! She’s a good egg!

Ps. Happy Leap Day, World!
Think of all the things you can get done this year now that you have a whole extra day!

Lisa and Katie had breakfast in the Executive Lounge and sat at the window with a great view of the Empire State Building.
Katie’s first class of the day was Morphing Cables with Fiona Ellis. Fiona is the author of Inspired Cable Knits and various other awesome cable patterns. She brought a number of her garments to show off, so just seeing them in person was very cool, but she was also a talented teacher. She spoke for a little bit about the rules of cabling, imparted some very useful metaphors (knits as divas and purls as backup singers), and then turned the class loose to create their own cable pattern swatch after reassuring everyone that if they needed help, she was there. She floated around the room to help and answer questions and Katie learned a lot. Katie thought the greatest advantage was being able to discuss design elements and being able to create with Fiona there as a safety net.
Fiona was warm and gracious, agreeing to take a picture with us.

Ellie of Knits by the Sea fame was sweet enough to take this photo.
The favorite tidbit from the class is the fact that sweaters with complex cables on the front and plain stockinette on the back are called “coffin sweaters” in the industry! love it! Also worthy of note is that Fiona and Katie were the only two people in the class in short sleeves! Katie and Lisa both wonder how people run around inside New York buildings dressed so warmly.
Katie met up with Lisa for lunch and they ate at the Old Castle Pub which was playing Top 40 Music. really? Lisa ordered the soup and sandwich wrap with the BBQ sauce on the side (because they were pretty sure it was not going to pass muster) and no sour cream. Katie ordered, “the exact same thing.” The orders came and one had sour cream. really?!? Luckily, Katie thought the spinach and crab soup was pretty near amazing and Lisa was sweet enough to volunteer to eat the sour cream rather than send it back. It is worth noting that she had to send her salad back twice the night before at Jekyll and Hyde, so one can imagine why she was over it. She mentioned something about having had her food spit in enough for one trip already. While they were there, seated near a window, it snowed!!

Then they were off to class again. Katie really enjoyed Melissa Leapman’s Cable Variations class. She met some very nice knitters:
Lindsey (delightful knitter from NJ…Katie had complimented her Fiona Ellis sweater and she had complimented Katie’s T-shirt by the elevator earlier that morning)
Mary (a fun sock knitter that Katie mentioned Hunter Hammersen’s SRS book to)
Rita (knits mostly baby things and sweaters; she encouraged Katie to make sweaters)
and one not as nice knitter:
a woman in the front row that wanted more than her share of help and seemed obsessed with the fact that the $4 coat check should be free. She claimed that this was ridiculous and that VK should play “hard ball” with the Hilton and told Gabby (the event coordinator who had come in to check on our room temperature) that “no one has ever told her no”. Katie was relieved that this particular lady did not have a Texas accent. The natives claimed she was from Long Island. She had purchased 3 full days of knitting classes (> $500) and was hung up on $12 worth of coat checking. astonishing.
Melissa taught the class how to read her charts which will come in handy since Katie has a couple of her books. She also taught them how to create a cable that goes up along a v-neck, a windmill kind of pattern, dropped stitch cables, and two-colored cables! It turns out you work them fair isle instead of intarsia. the end. Why she was making that so difficult when she tried them a couple of years ago, we’ll never know.

Katie spoke with Melissa Leapman after class and she was very nice., also agreeing to take a picture with us.

Lisa met Katie at the Vogue Knitting fashion show after class and then they ran into Shannon Okey in the Market. Meghan and Katie took a steeking class from Shannon Okey last spring that she never blogged about (the slacker). She really enjoyed the class and ended up buying Silk Road Socks that day. She hasn’t steeked yet since she kind of got caught up in her Hunter Hammersen pattern obsession, but she’s sure she could should the need arise. Shannon was even nicer than the last time they met and Katie continues to be a fan.


These pics are for Katie’s friend Katie that suggested she yarn bomb something in NYC. There was no need. Someone was all over it.

By this point, TH called to ask Katie if she spent $600 at a Wal-mart in Pennsylvania. When she responded no, he said that he was shutting off the credit card and would call back. So, it seems that their credit card was compromised at some point (Katie blames the old castle pub.). Lisa used her credit card at all the same places, but her number was not cloned, so the theory is that they don’t clone all cards, making it harder to track.

That night, they were off to the Gala. We’re just booties, but we thought both ladies cleaned up pretty good.

There wasn’t room in a purse for us, so we stayed home, but we hear they had a lovely time and even got to hear Alice Starmore speak. She was also very nice and signed a bookplate for each of them. They sat at the table with Nancy Marchant and Katie felt like a poser not ever really being a fan of brioche, but Nancy was fantastic when they spoke with her after the Gala. Her class was the one Lisa really wanted to take and then couldn’t get into, so they were glad they were able to sit at her table. It turns out she keeps her classes small so that everyone has a good experience. Katie asked her if she teaches other classes in the States and she volunteered that she’s from Amsterdam, you know, in the Netherlands so not really (they both wondered where she thought they thought Amsterdam was). But, she was such a likeable person that now, Katie is thinking about trying brioche at some point (especially after they ran into her in the elevator the next day and she was just as great when she quickly recognized them). Lisa seems to think that’s pretty funny. pro tip: Nancy recommends Hosta from Twist Collective as a next brioche project…. turns out to be one of her patterns (which makes Katie grin).

You’ll notice Katie is sporting the Jeanie that she made to wear to Turtle’s wedding. One lady inquired, “Did you make your wrap? It’s pretty.” and Katie replied, “Thank you, yes” and then she said “I made mine too. Isn’t it nice?” and Katie said, “Yes….” and then she interrupted with, “I’m lying, I didnt make it!” She was somewhat intoxicated, but it was very funny.” :-) What a night!

A while back, two friends and I decided it would be great fun to go to NYC and attend Vogue Knitting Live (a knitting conference). Then, one of the three fell pregnant….with twins. So, it seemed she was not meant to join in the great adventure. The other two friends decided to go and made arrangements. The third friend knitted up booties (one for each twin) so that the booties could visit NYC even if she could not. Eventually, there will be two pairs of booties, but for now, there are just these two. Here is their story.
They got on the plane in Austin and were flying direct to Newark. Katie’s tv wasn’t working on the plane, but the person sitting next to her seemed willing to chat a bit and thankfully, was interesting. She also spent time knitting on her “Set Fire to the Rain” test knit sock for Hunter Hammersen. In retrospect, given the deadline and lack of tv, she should have made much more progress than she did.

After arriving in NYC, they checked in at the Hiton (and checked for bed bugs) before unpacking us.


Then it was off to register and the Vogue Knitting Market. While at the market, Katie and Lisa saw many beautiful things and bought a few. They met one of the owners of Blue Heron yarn (of Rayon Metallic fame) and Katie shamelessly asked him to autograph a business card. His friend, Dennis, said that he would never be allowed to forget it while the gentleman in question asked if he was being punked. Lisa rather enjoyed the shenanigans and was not at all surprised.

Katie and Lisa also ran across a whole group of gnome and snowmen villages and met Anna Hrachovec who graciously agreed to sign a Teeny-Tiny Mochimochi book. Katie was unable to resist the charm of the tiny gnomes! Lisa was, on the other hand, able to resist sitting down to try knitting with size US THIRTY-FOUR needles!

By this time, the girls were getting hungry so they decided to find somewhere to eat. After a little snafu with the phone GPS…..pro tip: if you are going to use your GPS, make sure to have it set for walking directions rather than driving directions because you do not care about one-way streets whilst you are walking….they found a pub. There did not seem to be a waiter, so they left and went out into the cold and at Lisa’s suggestion went to the Jekyll and Hyde club. While at the bar, an animatronic zombie came out of a coffin and asked how they were. They didn’t answer. Assuming animatronic zombies do not have feeilngs to be hurt seemed like a safe assumption. However, the zombie got a little miffed and asked why they were not answering. They were stunned. Lisa had been to a J & H club before and was not expecting live zombie interaction but got her witts about her and began to chat with the zombie, whose name turned out to be Max. After asking their names, he repeatedly to call them Lisar & Julie. He seemed pretty interested in whether they were “just friends”. When he caught Lisa whispering to Katie that she was not expecting interactive zombies, he called her out and wanted to know what she was saying. She replied, “nothing”. Lisa was the clear favorite and Katie will forever refer to this as the time Lisa got hit on by a zombie.

Katie, on the other hand was too busy drinking a Blue Brain (their idea of a blue hawaii) to bother with amorous zombies. pro tip: If you haven’t eaten dinner and it is circa 9pm AND you just took a Claritin D, it is not a great idea to drink half of a delicious adult beverage and then try to navigate stairs to the basement restroom (a set of stairs, mind you, that makes one think of the basement stairs near the beginning of the movie Goonies). Evidently, Claritin D + empty stomach = cheap date. Luckily, there was no huge concern because Katie did not finish the Brains, ate dinner, and they were only two blocks from the hotel.

They also met a live customer heckler at J & H. A Madam something or other asked what they liked to do for fun. Katie responded with “knitting” and the madam suggest she check with the gift shop to see if they’d let her knit with human skin and sell it there. Lisa responded with “I like beer and I don’t have one.” hoping the Madam with the bad British accent could hook her up. Madam asked what kind of beer she was drinking. “Bass” Next thing you know, Madam is waundering off screaming “Bass” like she’s calling a fish. She was no help in the beer department, but on the upside, Katie now has an idea what she’d like to do after she retires……heckle people and comment on why they are drinking “Windex”.

We all happily arrived back in our hotel safe and sound.

Ps. Happy Birthday to Katie’s Little Brother!!