A Few Designers I Follow

All this rain has kept me housebound with a good excuse to do a lot of knitting and web browsing.  Here's my latest Quarters Cap with my new knitting bag in my favorite colors:

There are so many wonderful designers out there, many with interesting and creative web sites, that I have decided to make a list of my current favorites on this blog so that I can keep track of what they are up to.  Here are some of them:

  Kirsten Kapur has a nice web site with lots of hats, mittens and shawls.  Anne Hanson is probably on a lot of lists; her designs are beautiful and her patterns are always well done.  Knititude is Angela Hahn's site.  I like her  summer sweaters and would like to make the  Sorelle Lace-Edged Pullover  for myself.  There's a California designer by the name of Alana  Dakos with a site called, Never Not Knitting, and I stopped by her very busy booth at Stitches. Her designs are really attractive and she has a nice line of children's designs and her patterns have to be the most beautifully designed that I have ever seen. I happened to meet a woman wearing her Cream and Sugar Cowl made with yarn from Wool Candy:

                                                                                      

  My plan is keep updating my list as I come across new designers.  Anyone know of a designer that I should know about?                                                                                 

Bite Me New England

A few years ago, there was a cute yarn shop in Alameda called, Yarn!  The owner, Janis Tester, had great taste and I loved her window display which was a giant basket of yarn with two very large straight knitting needles.  I used to drive by there alot while working and always had to resist the temptation to stop by.   One year she even joined us at our South Bay Knitters Retreat  up in the Santa Cruz mountains. Janis closed the shop and she and her husband moved to Massachusetts where she is spending alot of time   cooking and started a blog called, Bite Me New England.  It's  a funny blog about her experiences cooking in her new home state and the accompanying culture shock of someone from California searching for fresh vegetables in winter, and elusive spices and other ingredients . She also includes some nice recipes and lots of photos:

   Janis' recipe for Tater Tots:                                                                          

     A Tuna Parfait:                                                                                                            

                                                                                     
                                                    So I have heard of Potato Chip Knitting and now I am in the middle of it.  For anyone not familiar with the phrase, it's like eating potato chips; it's hard to stop and you just want to knit more of the same because it it so much fun.  I made the Quarters Cap by Kristin Nicholas because I wanted a quick knit hat for my husband that would use up some of my stash, deflect the looks I am getting from him for my Stitches haul and remind him what a valuable thing it is to have a wife that can turn out such wonderful and useful stuff.  Here is the first hat:

This was fun to do and I finished it in about 2 days.  I started thinking of other color combinations and started a second one for myself in more stash yarn:

                                                                                                                                                                        
It's knit in four quarters (thus the name) and here is the second one half way done:

                                                                                                                                                                           Similar colors to my new knitting bag!                                                            

Snow Scenes in March

The Lake Tahoe area has really been hit with record snowstorms this winter, which is a bummer if you are trying to drive up here, but is so great for those of us who like snow sports and for the local economy.  The snow plows are running out of space to throw the snow and we are having the same problem at our house.  Here is a picture of our driveway:

And here's Jim with our well used snow blower:

Went snowshoeing at Sugar Pine State Park at Lake Tahoe today and it was so quiet.  I had the place to myself:

                                                                                                                                                                        There's a snowshoe track that winds along the water and ends back at the Ehrman mansion at the Park

                                                                           
                                            A lonely snowman on the dock.
                                                                        

                                                                              
Finished my socks that I made from the Opal sock yarn I bought at Stitches.  This is a record for me, but I loved the colors and couldn't wait to finish them.