The grand prize winner of the Classic Cable Knits & Springtree Road Yarns giveaway is:

evan

The SIX runners up that will each receive 2 PDF patterns are:

Meliabella, peacefulknitting.com, Diana, stephanie rj, purlverde, & Retrobaby

Congratulations! Please contact me at yarnonthehouse@gmail.com to collect your prizes.

Hi, folks! Hope everyone is doing well. I've been enjoying reading and logging all the fun questions that you left me last giveaway in your comments. There's quite a few of them to answer, so I've decided that over the course of the next few weeks I'll be doing some blog posts to answer all of your questions. This should be fun! And, thank you for all of your sweet comments.

Well, well... this week I have a luxurious giveaway for you! Our wonderful sponsor and guest is Sabrina of Anzula Luxury Fibers. I had fun interviewing her a few weeks back. Check out our chat together (I apologize for the sound feedback; unfortunately, our connection wasn't perfect):







Links and such from the videos:

- Anzula Luxury Fibers

- Purchase Anzula at Purl Soho & Sandra Singh

- TNNA trade shows

- Look at all the lovely colors and yarns on Ravelry!

- Mermaid, Sebastian, & Oasis

- Sabrina on Rav

- Cricket


Thank you, Sabrina, for visiting us and come back anytime!

Anzula's beautiful yarns and fibers can be found online at Purl Soho & Sandra Singh. Sabrina is so talented at dyeing up gorgeous semi solids! I would love to knit myself a sweater out of her For Better or Worsted in the Charcoal colorway, and knit up a lace shawl or stole out of the Wash My Lace in maybe the Toffee color. Honestly, any of the Anzula yarns and fibers would rock my world!

Sabrina is sponsoring THREE ridiculously wonderful prizes for three lucky followers to have a chance to win:

Grand Prize winner will receive 5 skeins of Cricket MCN (that stands for Merino, Cashmere, Nylon for those of you who don't know) in the lovely color Prince! Each skein boasts 250 yards and I got to thinking, hmmmmm... a 1,000 yards of sport weight yarn. That's enough for a Goodale sweater in almost all the sizes available! I quickly contacted Cecily, the uber-talented designer, and twisted her arm to toss in a PDF copy of her pattern for the grand prize winner. Wink, wink! I really want to knit this neat cardi myself in the very near future. I absolutely adore the genius construction of the pockets and I think it would be a super addition to my spring and summer wardrobe.


FIVE skeins of Cricket in Prince
Photos courtesy of Anzula Luxury Fibers



How awesome would a Goodale sweater be outta this yarn?!



Also, TWO runners up will receive one of the below luxury skeins of fingering weight yarn:

Squishy in Candied Apple



Sebastian Seacell/Merino in Charcoal




I would like you to do the following if you would like to be entered into this week's giveaway:


1. Read over the rules if you have not done so already.

2. Leave a comment on this blog post by the end of Sunday, 3/13/11. What's your favorite spring time color to knit with? Or, do you knit in the same color(s) all year long?

I tend to lighten or brighten my knitting color palette when the weather starts warming up. For me it's the smell and sight of flowers that inspires me to buy cheerful colors to knit with. Actually, some of my favorite colors are muted pastels and I just love knitting them when spring's around the corner!


I'll randomly pick the winners in 2 weeks and post the results along with the new giveaway, so be sure to check back. Good luck everyone.

Sincerely,

Ve

I have another wonderful project that I've finally gotten around to photographing. Look at this beautiful slouchy, bulky beret...

Carolinian pattern by Kate Oates
Modeled by: Ari Cash















Check out my project page here. This pattern was super quick and fun! Do you remember this giveaway? I was lucky enough to keep one the skeins of Rasta for myself. I finally found the perfect project to pair with the super bulky skein. Love the outcome! Plus, Kate's patterns are just wonderful - easy to read, clear and concise directions, great pictures to reference! Thanks, Kate, for such a fast and fabulous hat pattern!!

-Ve

I've been having a blast reading all of the questions being left in the comments this giveaway. I plan on answering all of them. I'm just not sure exactly how I'm going to do that yet. While you wait on my answers, enjoy this lovely project I have to share with you... FINALLY!

Autumn Vines Beret pattern by Alana Dakos

Modeled by: Ari Cash (my bro's adorable girlfriend!)














Project page here. I loved this project so much that every time I see sport weight yarn now, I think of what it might look like knit up into another Autumn Vines! I honestly plan to knit at least one more of these in the near future. Also, the Madelinetosh Pashmina skein I used to knit up this pattern, was enough to get two berets outta it!

Happy Sunday!

-Ve

Since the last giveaway was done a little differently, I have sent the winners a message along with posting their names here on the blog, and the winners are:

Michelle Johnson (Follower)

&

mamajoss (Rav group member)

Winners, you should have received either an email or a Ravelry message. Please reply back with your mailing information to claim your prizes.


Wow! Time flies when you're having fun! I've been busy knitting lots of projects. I can't seem to stop knitting to take any decent pictures though. Sorry! I should have a few modeled projects to share with you in the next week, so be on the look out if you want to see my bro's new girlfriend!! She's a doll!

I do however have a wonderful giveaway to share with you this time... in honor of Valentine's Day, Classic Cable Knits and Springtree Road have joined forces to give you a tremendously beautiful giveaway! I got a chance to catch Christina of Classic Cable Knits on Skype and do a short interview with her. Check it out:






Links and such from the videos:

- Christina Wall/Classic Cable Knits

- Patterns page

- I just cast on Christina's Lamb's Lace Cardi!

- Ginger Leaves Shawlette

- Garter Leaves

- With Love Shawl

- Springtree Road yarn

- Queen Anne's Cardigan

- Just had to look up what Queen Anne's Lace (the flower) actually looks like...

- 10% discount on Christina's patterns on Ravelry through the 20th. Use coupon code: YOTH10


Here's a shot of my bright reddish-hot-pink-magenta (not sure what this color really is) With Love Shawl that I got a chance to knit up before the giveaway:



Springtree Road is our oh-so-lovely and generous yarn sponsor today. You have to check out her yarns when you get a chance. Ummmmm, I think I'm in love! I'm a total sucker for semi-solids. They are my absolute favorite and her yarn is nothing less than UH-mazing in person. Take a look at the most gorgeous yarn, TWO skeins Superwash MCN DK weight in her Camilla colorway, that she has sent over for one lucky follower to win...


Isn't that just the most perfect pink you've ever seen?!



In addition to the stunning yarn, the Grand Prize Winner will also receive three printed patterns from Classic Cable Knits: With Love Shawl, Queen Anne's Cardigan, and Garter Leaves.

That's enough yarn and some for the winner to knit up a medium Garter Leaves shawl. Also, the pattern has instructions for 3 sizes and weights of yarn that you can use. How convenient!




That's not all! SIX runners up will also receive a PDF copy of Garter Leaves and the With Love Shawl patterns.

ALSO, Christina is offering a 10% discount on all her patterns on Ravelry for YOTH followers from today until the 20th. Use coupon code: YOTH10. Thank you, Classic Cable Knits & Springtree Road for putting together such a fabulous giveaway and we hope to see you back very soon!!


I would like you to do the following if you would like to be entered into this week's giveaway:


1. Read over the rules if you have not done so already.

2. Leave a comment on this blog post by the end of Sunday, 2/27/11. My, oh my! Christina put me on the spot here (watch the interview). ;) If you have a question for me, let me know. I'll pick a handful of questions to answer and post my replies in the near future. Be nice to your Hostess with the Mostest!


I'll randomly pick the winners on Sunday the 27th and post the results on the following Monday along with the new giveaway, so be sure to check back. Good luck everyone.

Sincerely,

Ve

Recently, I've taken up a lot of lace projects - especially since I'm knitting for myself this year. I just adore lace! It's entertaining, challenging, and not to mention beautiful when completed. My non-knitting friends always "oooooh and aaaaah" over my lace projects (once they're blocked of course)! So, in the midst of knitting and constantly browsing through triangle lace shawls, I've become attracted to lace stoles and scarves as well. I've always loved scarves and their wider sisters, stoles, but I seem to have never knit true lace ones before now.

So, I came across the Spring Leaves stole pattern AGAIN for the umpteenth time, and I just had to cast on immediately. You know that feeling! Well, guess what! This pattern has you cast on provisionally. That way you can knit in one direction and when you are finished with that side, you can pick up your cast on and knit the opposite direction. This allows the pretty lace pattern (in this case lacy leaves) to all face the same direction at the ends of your stole. ALRIGHT! I'm going to be honest here: I had never done a provisional cast on up until then or at least properly that is. I'd avoided it like the plague and found alternative methods of doing things when it was asked of me to accomplish. Now that you know my deep dark knitting secret, you can take a deep breath! I'm not really the Superwoman Knitter you thought I was!

This dilemma of NO provisional cast on's set me on a YouTube and internet search for the most perfect way to accomplish my first real attempt at using a provisional cast on. I defaulted to my tried-and-true favorite knitting specialist: techknitting.com. TechKnitter is so smart, helpful, talented and deserves lots of gold stars for her tutorials/pictorials that she offers for FREE on her blog. Hands down my favorite knitting technique blogger!

After lots of debating, I decided to use her COWYAK method (not sure why I can't link to the article directly, but you can find it under the "NEW Revised Unified Index" and then scroll down to "CAST ON: provisional"). COWYAK stands for "CAST ON (with) WASTE YARN AND KNIT." Simple enough, I thought...

Silly me! I finished my first half and went to pick up my 77 sts that were provisionally "waiting" for me on the other end. Now, I'm a woman who does have some patience (I knit lace for goodness sakes!), but I don't seem to have much patience for activities that stress me out and give me heart burn (like live stitches in my half finished lace stole). I probably spent 30 brutal minutes or more just picking up the stitches one by one, counting, examining, counting, staring, shaking, cursing... you get the idea. I vowed never to put myself through knitting hell like this again. Knitting is supposed to be my calm producing agent in all the chaos of life, not the instigator of my cortisol levels rising!

Obviously, my obsession with stoles and lace scarves had not diminished, but now only increased after my dramatic experience - probably because I knew deep down I had to conquer this ridiculous fear of provisional cast on's. Us, knitters, can be so stubborn sometimes. Why can't I just be satisfied with what I know and know well?! So, I found another smaller project with a provisional cast on that was less stressful if I needed to rip back, behold the Traveling Woman Scarf. This time I was determined to find a different method to use and remembered that Knitty had had an article a long while back about a magical provisional cast on. It had the word Magic in it, so it had to be good! I went searching through Knitty and quickly found this article. Ummmmm... this was definitely the article I had vaguely recalled, but I wasn't knitting socks though! Crap! I kept reading the instructions and going through the article over and over when the light bulb came on and I thought "Hey, I can use this same method, but just knit each side flat versus in the round."

I grabbed some scrap yarn, found a YouTube video to follow along with and set to work. BTW, Cat Bordhi is a riot to listen to! Once I got the hang of the cast on itself, I knitted 10 or so rows in one direction using only one of the needles/sides, set that down and then picked up my other circular needle I had used to cast on with (the one that was chillin' utter style as Cat would say) and started knitting the opposite direction. It totally worked!! I was so happy that I did a little dance! Note: you do need to have two of the same size circular needles to use for this method, or use interchangeables and swap out needle ends as needed.

The real test came when I used it on the scarf project itself. I cast on that same evening, knit one bottom lace end of the scarf, and then just picked up my waiting circular needle at the other end and knit in the opposite direction. It was MAGIC! My only alteration I made was to drop the first and last five stitches and reverse them from knit to purl stitches, because the edges of the scarf are done in garter stitch and I wanted the pattern to not be broken here. Wow, oh wow! I was as happy as clam in high water!

I'm sure I'm not the only one that's done this before and I am by no means claiming stakes to this trick. Just wanted to share my l'il knitting story with you and what helped me to over come one of my many knitting fears! Do you have a stress reducing knitting tip you wanna share? Come on, tell us all your secret tricks!!

Hugs and stitches!

-Ve