No knitting content today, but I AM still alive.    Hopefully a knitting post in the next couple of days - I have to get pics taken and uploaded.  I"ve been knitting and crocheting a string market bag and a bunch of dishcloths and washcloths to donate to the family reunion next weekend towards its silent auction.  We use that to raise funds for the NEXT reunion.

I've seen this photo mosiac meme several places and thought I'd try it myself and I LOVE how it came out.  I especially like Gerard Butler staring out at me from the center of it:

 If you'd like to do one yourself, here's how:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your Flickr name.

If you do one - link me to it in ithe comments or via email - I'd like to see!

Way back when, I particpated in the International Scarf Exchange 4 and had a blast - both knitting the scarf for my pal - and being the receipient of a lovely lacey cashmere scarf.  I missed v.5, but was able to squeak in on v.6.

This time for me, instead of both my upstream and downstream pals being US gals, they were BOTH truly international.  My downstream pal - the one for whom I knit a scarf - lives in Canada.  She is blogless but seems like a wonderful, gracious person and I would love to meet her someday.  And I say "gracious" because I was late getting my package to her in the mail.  I just hope that what I sent her makes up for its lateness.

My UPSTREAM pal lives in Australia and is a mother to FIVE boys.   Her name is Cathie and she sent me the BEST package.  Check it:

Australia's YARN magazine:

Some Arnott's Tim Tam - Gosh these are so GOOD - I wish I'd stashed them in the fridge more carefully - because my 13-year old found then and ate the rest of this package, leaving none for me:

A beautiful foiled card with a lovely note:

A beautiful chunk of amethyst - which is my birthstone:

Three skeins of Cleckheaton Country 8 ply.  The color isn't hot pink but more of a nice true red.  It will go beautiful with some gray that I already have in this yarn for some stranded colorwork:

And, finally, the scarf - it's soft, it's bamboo, it's a gorgeous shade of lilac - and it's just beautiful:

Thank you, Cathie - you ROCK!

I swear, I must be a magnet for defective skeins of yarn.  Well, not "defective" in the sense that the yarn is BAD or anything.  But "defective" in the sense that these are self-patterning (Opal) or striping (Kureyon Sock) skeins that are SUPPOSED to match up.  And seem to for everyone but ME.

The latest woes are with my Kureyon sock socks.  Behold:

See the abrupt change from the yellow to the purple?  VERY un-Noro-like.  This is on the first, now-finished sock.  I'd already wound off quite a bit of orange ahead of the yellow in order to get to a clean spot between the two colors where I could, in theory, start the second sock and have the color-change stripes match.  Sigh.

And they don't:

A few comments about this fairly new yarn.  It's VERY Noro-like.  It's rough, very unspun in some places, and very OVER spun in others.  And it's rough.  But the colors are glorious.

Despite its defects, I love Noro nonetheless.

A couple of posts ago I blogged about finishing my 21-mo-old niece's "Unmentionables."  They've now been shipped to her and I have action shots.  I'm not sure there was ever a cuter child with cuter knitwear:

Awesomely cute - and the pattern's cute too!

I'm good with that.

As you'll recall from a couple of posts ago, I was quite enamoured of the Charmed Floral Fantasy Shawl.  And it's a gorgeous thing, indeed.  But I am NOT a lace knitter; not for large-scale shawl-like projects, anyway.

I've had some gorgeous pinkish Araucania Nature Wool worsted hanging out in my stash for the longest time.  I originally purchased it along with some gray to be a Ribby Cardi, but I think it's just not a heavy enough yarn for the Ribby.  The Nature Wool was the right gauge, I think, for the Floral Fantasy Shawl - but it's just not working for me.  It's just not doing it for me.  I just can't knit lace.  I can't follow charts well; I always have to check on the meaning of symbols.  It's just not intuitive to me.  And, let's face it - I'm not a lacy person, and I'm definitely not a shawl person.  Here's as far as I got before I ripped it all out:

Look down there in the lower right - can you see those loops - just . . . hanging there.  That's part of what made me say - aww, eff it.  Big huge loops that were supposed to have been a purl 15 - and I missed about five of 'em.  Sigh.

So - let's go ANTI-LACE and pick something 180% different - Giselle.  Tons and tons of stockinette, which I thankfully LOVE.  And I'm going to PROPERLY swatch this one. 

Normally my swatching consists of knitting a few rows of stockinette, checking it while still on the needle.  Close?  Good - take off the swatch and let's go.  This time, however, I'm going to do it right.  At the moment I'm knitting a swatch on the recommended needles, US6.  I cast on 35 stitches, knit 4 rows of garter stitch (knit every row) and then started in stockinette stitch (knit one row, purl one row) keeping the first four stitches of each row in garter stitch.  Checking gauge NOW, with the swtach still on the needles, I get 23 sts/4" when I need 21.  BUT - I'm not going to just change needle sizes at the moment - I'm going to continue to knit the swatch so it's long enough that I can accuratelyl check row gauge over 4" and then before I make any final decision - I'll wash and block the swatch.  I want this sweater to be REALLY really wearable and, as such, it needs to fit perfectly.

I *heart* this yarn.

Oh, and I have a finished object to present.  Unmentionables, for my 21-month-old niece who lives in Las Vegas.  My mom is visiting my sister in a couple of weeks and will be taking these out and my sister's promised me pictures of the kiddo wearing them.  Until then, let's admire from afar - because they're just THAT cute:

I think I have discovered that I love stockinette stitch, because this project had miles and miles of it - and so does Giselle.  Ahh . . . stockinette.