Snow day update

The snow is falling into the trees outside my window; school is canceled; I'm sitting here in my nightgown and grandfather's old sweater knitting a sock heel and reading Judith Butler for orals. It's just a lovely day.


A few quick updates:

1. Thanks so much for buying my patterns this past month! I was able to donate $125 to the American Red Cross for Haiti relief because of pattern sales during my pledge period.

2. The giant doily blanket is coming along well. I don't know how to crochet so I am finishing the edges with an easy knitted-on lace; picture above. It's an eight-row repeat that goes on sideways and eats up 1 doily stitch every other row (so four rows total each pattern repeat). It's slow going, but I like the way it looks. I've done about 1/4 of the blanket edge so far.

3. The elephant sweater is all finished and awaiting buttons. It's heart-squeezingly cute. Still working on the pattern. The elephants are an 18-stitch repeat, so it's kind of hard to figure out whether it's even possible to write it for different sizes than the one I made it in.

Thanks!

A big thank you to everyone who's bought my patterns since I pledged to donate to Haiti relief -- already I've been able to donate more than I otherwise would have, thanks to you, and I will continue to do so until 2/14. If you're still looking to help, please do check out the "Help for Haiti" pattern sales on Ravelry. Knitters have been making a big difference: Yarn Harlot reports that her readers have donated an astounding amount so far!

Meanwhile, some knitting pictures.

The Stor Lysedug is making good progress, but unfortunately it's impossible to photograph in any way that doesn't look like a giant gray blob.


Having never knit a giant doily with aran-weight yarn, I have found this quite a pleasing project so far. It's a pretty quick knit, despite the fact that as I near the end the rounds are taking longer and longer to finish. I'm not sure how big this will be by the time I finish. I was hoping for something like 6' in diameter, but I think it will more likely be 5' -- still big enough for a lap blanket, but just barely.

I am usually a fan of knitting from charts, but that's kind of impossible to do with a circular pattern like this, and there's something cool about the element of surprise in reading written-out directions. This pattern uses all k2tog's and directional double decreases; I've been knitting it as written, but I'd like to try it again with ssk's for symmetry and symmetrical double decreases.

Meanwhile, I'm working on a new pattern, for a friend's baby boy to be born soon. There was a request for elephants:

A little help

On Ravelry, lots of pattern designers have pledged to donate a percentage of their pattern sales to Haitian relief efforts of their choice. I'm joining the effort: I'll donate 50% of proceeds from my pattern sales from now until 2/14 to the American Red Cross for their Haitian relief efforts.

My patterns for sale, just to recap, are Radcliffe Cardigan, Steps to Stranded (sweaters A, B, C, and the set), and Sock Yarn Stranded.

Ravelry now includes a "Help for Haiti" tag search that lets you see all the designers who are donating to Haiti relief -- there are tons of great patterns on there, and some designers report being able to donate pretty large amounts of money after just a day of listing their Help for Haiti patterns. So if you were thinking of buying a pattern but were waiting, or felt like it was too decadent to buy a pattern, now you can buy all the stuff you've been waiting around on, while feeling good about helping out in the process!