I've never been to Minnesota, so it's pretty surreal that the twenty-four hours I'll spend there this weekend will mostly be spent in a hotel and a huge mall. Tens of thousands of folks are expected to come to the huge event, and if you're among them I hope to meet you!

I'll only be there Sunday (the 17th), and this is where you'll be able to find me:

11:00: I'll be doing a demo on how to make Babette-Blanket-like granny squares at Table A.

12:30: I'll be signing books in the Rotunda.

Come say hello! I'll also spend some time at the Interweave booth and I'm looking forward to walking around and checking out what's going on.

At the end of the day Sunday I'll be catching a flight to Colorado to put the spring issue of the magazine to bed, so I might be incommunicado for the next couple of weeks. Wish us luck!

south park afghan finished:sukigirl74

What's open in my Firefox tabs today? Here's what's open in my Firefox tabs today:

• This hilarious Tunisian crochet South Park afghan (above). I wish they were looking at each other, a la The Brady Bunch.
• There's a great article in the Etsy Storque about photo styling. It's geared toward product photography (for sellers), but it's just as relevant to plain-old project photography (for crafters like us). (Big news from Etsy yesterday. Also, I second Robert's recommendation of Deep Economy. It's a great read, despite it's less-than-enticing title. If you look closely, I think you might be able to spot my copy of the book in the winter issue of Interweave Crochet.)
• Annette has opened her pattern shop! (En francais, aussi.)
• Check out this way cool postcard project [via Murketing].
• Finally, Natalie at CRAFT blogged about the enormous crochet art on the walls of Urban Outfitters HQ.

We're starting to really gear up to go to press on the spring issue of the magazine. Putting my head back to PDFs now. (It's nice to be thinking of spring.)

Yesterday, the folks over at the Lion Brand YarnCraft podcast interviewed The Friday Night Knitting Club author Kate Jacobs. To follow up on the theme of social crafting, they gave a shout-out to several online yarn communities, including this here one (thanks, ladies!). If you're looking to connect with local crocheters, check out our Act Locally forums.

Slate's Green Lantern column yesterday tackled the question of the relative e-friendliness of purchasing a wool sweater vs. a cotton t-shirt. His coverage is just as relevant to the question of yarn. He glosses over a lot, but this piece is a great example of how pondering such questions is pretty much guaranteed to make your head spin.

Two things that jumped out at me right away: He doesn't really mention how organically raised and processed fibers rate. He also seems to assume that wool garments need to be dry-cleaned. Those of us who understand wool know that a gentle hand-washing is fine, and has a far lower environmental impact than must-drive-to, chemical-driven dry cleaning. A bonus third thing that jumped out at me: I had never considered the methane factor of sheep-raising, and also didn't know they still only produce 10% of bovine emissions.

Just a glimpse of my pre-coffee morning reading today. Happy Wednesday!

breakout pillow 01:jackrabbit.etsy.com

My favourite video game, ever. Christine of jackrabbit.etsy.com rocks my world!

Oh, man am I on a finishing kick!

Back in April of last year I was overwhelmed with excitement for the Crochet Me book. As such, I printed out a heavily marked-up copy of Chloe Nightingale's Icelandic Turtleneck pattern, ordered a bag of Rowan 4 Ply Soft (on closeout; hence the colour I wouldn't ordinarily approach without hazmat gear) from Webs, and started on it while visiting my parents in upstate New York. Because my gauge was way off, I started out following the instructions for size L, aiming to end up with a small.

By... October, I finally started to motor. I brought the project with me on the road for the now-released Crochet Me book tour, and was sitting in an Interweave meeting when I finished the section of working even after the yoke increases. I tossed the in-progress sweater over my head, and couldn't stifle my exclamation of what I'm sure was an expletive on account of it being way. too. big. Especially in the back.

I knew what I had to do to fix it (it wasn't just that my gauge had relaxed a bit), and started right away.

I ripped back to the last round of yoke increases and redid it. Now, I cut one corner in executing this fix. If I had it to do over again, I would not cut this corner. (And no, just because I could rip it all back again doesn't mean I consider that to be a viable option.) I was impatient and mad at myself for not anticipating this issue*, and, well. The corner I cut was that I didn't rip back further; I could have started adjusting the sizing before I did, and because I didn't the sweater is still a little loose at my chest (but not very noticeably so; I can live with it).

*The issue is that I have a very large bust. I wear a 32-D. My back is around an XS and my front a S. I had to cut more than four inches of width from the back of this sweater and about an inch from the front (that was due to my gauge having relaxed).

I figured out where I needed the center of each shoulder to be so I could treat the front and back separately for my calculations. This way, I could alter the back of the sweater to be smaller than the front while ensuring the sleeves would be where they needed to be.

In redoing the final round of yoke increases (Round 8), I cut 7 increases from the front, and most of the increases from the back. I figured out how many to cut by measuring my gauge from the working sweater. I needed to cut 4.5 inches from the back, so I eliminated increases equal to the number of stitches I was getting in 4.5 inches. I ended up having twenty-one more stitches in front than in back.

I also cut four stitches from each armhole, since the armholes were too big my first time.

To compensate for the front still not being small enough to fit snugly, I worked bust darts to cinch the fabric under my bust. That's the perspective, at least, when working from the top down. If I'd been working from the bottom up, I would have used darts to add fabric. Make sense? Anyway, since I could, I simply marked where the decreases should be while I was wearing the sweater, then, in those two spots, I worked a double decrease (in this case, dc3tog) in the same spot on two consecutive rounds. Here's a badly drawn-on image of where I placed the darts.

Here's how the sweater fit after these major adjustments (click for larger images):

The pattern calls for waist and hip shaping, and I did that too, adjusting for having shifted the balance of the sweater. Here's another badly drawn-on image of where the shaping is on the front of the finished sweater. I didn't mark on the photo that I also did a bit of shaping at the sides of the sweater (where seams would be if it had been worked in pieces), since on a few occasions I wanted to decrease or increase by six stitches in a round rather than by the four called for.

Et voila!

Started: April 2007
Finished: 26th January 2008
Pattern: Icelandic Turtleneck by Chloe Nightingale from Crochet Me: Designs to Fuel the Crochet Revolution
Yarn: Rowan 4 Ply Soft from Webs
Hook: 3.75mm Addi Turbo

The 4 Ply Soft is simply perfect for this pattern. The fabric is soft, stretchy, and warm. On account of all that pink, I will not be making the armwarmers. And I will likely wear the top layered over something, like shown here. I definitely want to make another one of these, in a colour I like better. Good thing I wrote all this out here, because the notes I had stuffed in my project bag barely made sense to me even now.

Finally, if it wasn't made apparent by this post, this is an excellent pattern for modifying! I recommend it as a first sweater pattern, since it's so straightforward, and certainly as a first modification pattern, again because it's so straightforward. Rock.

Boteh Scarf:kpwerker

The high from finishing my ripple blanket last week coupled with several consecutive days of sunshine has put me on a project-finishing spree.

Behold, my finished Boteh Scarf [Ravelry]. In my continuing quest to champion crochet at its best, this design blows my mind. It's simple (s-i-m-p-l-e). It takes advantage of some of crochet's unique qualities — the ease of shaping, that you can stick your hook anywhere to make cool shapes. I memorized the pattern after the first motif, and I'm pretty dim when it comes to achieving such feats.

Ok. Enough gushing. Here are the deets:

Started: 4th January 2008
Finished: 22nd January 2008
Pattern: Boteh Scarf, by Kathy Merrick (Interweave Crochet Spring 2007)
Yarn: Koigu KPPPM (unknown colour; larger-than-normal skein)
Hook: 4mm
Modifications: I only had enough yarn to make 13 motifs and edge in single crochet instead of half double.

In the end, the scarf really isn't my style, and I'll be finding it a good home. I certainly see more of these in my crafty future.

Fin.:kpwerker

Started: 27th February 2007
Finished: 16th January 2008

All odd balls from my stash (or, yeah, added to my stash in the last year).

5mm hook.

It's slightly wider than a double bed, and long enough to cover me comfortably from neck to toes.

So, TNNA. As always, Clara Parkes has written up a great recap over at Knitters Review. My take can be summed up in four points:

1. Yarns are trending lighter-weight, which is great news for crocheters. Lots of new DK and sport weight yarns are coming out, and some companies are even introducing lighter-weight versions of their worsted and bulky weight yarns.
2. Yarn blends are all the rage. Lots of companies are experimenting with some really cool blends. It's a very, very good time to learn about traits of various fibers and fiber types, and to experiment with how these blends will behave. Way, way cool.
3. Green is also in. Some new certified organic yarns are coming out.
4. People were happy to talk about crochet. 'Nuf said.

I've had a bunch of links open in my browser for days, waiting for this moment at the end of the week when I have a few minutes to blather about them. It will feel good to close those tabs.

Wicked crochet in home decor! Check out these crocheted bowls from the-home-project, made strong by salt crystals [via Craft]. And Raveler elleemmiss pointed out these starched Crochet Pendant Lamps from RianRae.

Speaking of Ravelry, have you heard about the Bobby awards? I was psyched to see my Float Away scarf design nominated (*hint*), along with Amy O'Neill Houck's Sweet sweater (*cough*) as Best Free Pattern. The Crochet Me CAL was nominated for Best Crochet-Along, which is way cool. If you're a member, go vote! One member's Babette Blanket was nominated as Most Colorful Project, too. Now that I've finished my ripple, I'd better get back to Babette. Poor baby; it's been languishing in little piles of squares.

I'm thoroughly enchanted by the idea of Misio. Adopt (ok, buy) a crocheted cat (so cute) and document the character's development online. Character and personality are what I find so great about designing toys in the first place. What a cool combination of adorable crochet and online community/personality-building.

I've been really bad with blog-reading lately, but one I try to pop over to whenever I can is futuregirl. Her photos alone are so pretty and inspiring. A couple of weeks ago she posted a crocheted pentagon ball pattern. Neat!

Continuing on this neato-website kick, Lion Brand's teaming up with Instructables for their Slideshow Challenge is a pretty awesome example of online collaboration. It looks like pretty much anybody can enter, using any yarn (not just LB).

Did you notice up there that I mentioned finishing my ripple blanket? No fanfare yet, as Vancouver in January doesn't exactly = lots of great light shining in through windows making for great completed-ripple photography. But it's done. It even has a border. I'll spare you more details until I have some eye candy to go with it. But man, does it feel good.

Have a great weekend!

Did you see it? I missed it.

Want to make one? The so-called BICO baby/toddler cardigan is a very popular first-garment project since it's so simple and small, and I know for sure it's an adorable and quick project cuz I've made one and loved every minute of it. Julie Holetz designed it, and she just rocks.

If you've made one, post a pic in the comments. So cool! 

I went to check out the episode online.

But luckily the wee wrap-up gave me all I needed. (Also, seriously? They're breaking up again? In the voice of my ancestors I ask, Why should this night be different from any other?)