I’m thrilled to share that the reason I haven’t been blogging much lately is I’ve been knitting secret stuff that will be photographed for a design book…..a design book by a super awesome designer. I’m more than a little excited. I may have squealed a bit when she asked me to do it. Who am I kidding? I almost died of glee. For now, I can show you yarn (Barking Dogs Yarn – Chestnuts on the Flame).

Now, when I first opened the package and saw what looked like taupe with hints of purple, I was a bit hesitant. I thought hmmm, wonder what that is going to look like? I’m not sure khaki and purple should go together?….so I do what I do and I googled.
And I found this.

and I loved it. So, between that and the fact that this designer has pretty unbelievable taste, I decided to trust her and cast on.

Ladies and Gentlemen, she was not wrong. I was surprised at how lovely this yarn and pattern were. There was depth. There was texture. and I’m not going to lie, I felt like my horizons had been broadened….like the time I thought Martha Stewart was crazy and red/aqua should never be a pair and then I saw things like this

and this.

There’s something kind of amazing about looking at something, thinking you’re not a huge fan, keeping an open mind, knitting, and realizing that you love Ugly Ducklings.

Ain’t knitting grand?

How we got here….
I was a fan of Handmade Ryan Gosling.
Then, I saw the news parody article about how James Franco thought there should be a site about him.


Ps. If this is your photo and you would like for me to remove it, pls just let me know.

In a land pretty near here, a friend of mine was trying to knit some socks.
The yarn is Ella Rae Lace and the pattern was Gratitude. Evidently, you can’t use magic loop for that pattern or they turn out sized for elves, so she frogged several repeasts and decided to try something else.

Enter Gush. This pattern didn’t appeal to her in 3D as much as it had in 2D. And so, she decided that she didn’t really like Gush and started to look for another pattern.

Then, she ran across Inlay by the one and only Hunter Hammersen. This is the project that inspired her.

As you expect, I had to wonder why she didn’t just start with a Hunter pattern, but I just quietly grinned to myself and decided that with two babies at home, she wasn’t going to have time to rip Gush and get the yarn back in order. And since, I, as you may have noticed, have not had much to blog about, I offered to rip and wind for her if I could blog about her knitting journey. She agreed and so I give you:
Ella Rae Lace Merino (before and after).

In the end, it turned out that she wasn’t happy with Inlay either and I’ve decided that the yarn is cursed. I’ve heard that if you stick cursed yarn in the freezer for a bit, sometimes that helps.
Ps. And if you don’t believe in cursed yarn, here’s proof that she’s a badass knitter, so it must be the yarn.

Entrelac Blanket by Sirdar Spinning Ltd.