Cold, Cold, COLD outside!

I arrived on a cold night, to see that I was early enough for a seat on the sofa!

Lis was knitting a mohair lace scarf for her Aunt, I set to on the third sleeve for the epic extra warm cabled pullover. Well, actually I set to a glass of wine first. (The third sleeve is just the first replacement for the other two which were too big, so don't worry too much.)

Linde had just time to show us her knitted bunny, and tell us that next was going to be an aardvark before heading off again.

Nuala was knitting a hat from the very first edition of Knitty. That's Fall02 - 4 years ago.

Liz arrived and proceeded to cast on for a doll's jumper on 1mm needles, with 1 ply yarn. Honestly, Liz, me with my super chunky, you with your *1 ply*.

Ana had no knitting, but she had brought chocolate chip cookes, and she did help Lis & Liz work out a tubular cast on for an ipod cozy. (I had to ask what a tubular cast on is.)

Martin had no knitting with him either, but he does own a hat hand-knitted by Carol Meldrum of HK Hanfknit, so I suppose that's ok. He doesn't knit *yet*. Oh yes.

We took advantage of Chai's "buy two large glasses and get the rest of the bottle" offer, and we need to remember that for future weeks, I know we've talked about Chai being a bit expensive - but if we all decide to drink the same thing a 250ml glass of wine comes down to about £3.15.

Oh and my bus home was early.

Settling in

It's our second permanent session in our new home Chai and things are looking nice and cozy as we managed to snag the corner with the nice sofa. There were plenty of knitters and plenty of cool projects to look at and talk about.

New this week were a lot of interesting projects: There was a sweet children's cardigan with a scallop edge and a little stitch pattern detail every 5th row, a green crochet flower, a crochet hat and a mauve and purple crochet flower to be added, a super cute garter stitch dolphin, purple white and dark blue socks and a black and white illusion scarf with a hidden piano keyboard design. An impressively unusual project was the entrelac christmas stocking which used 7 kinds of green 4 ply yarn and stuck out in all directions and in all textures and colours. I can't find a picure online at the moment, so the knitter responsible may be asked to volunteer one of the finished project. There was a swatch for the latest incarnation of the Snow White jumper - http://www.ysolda.me.uk/wordpress/index.php/archives/2006/10/14/snow-white/ and a first stocking stitch swatch. Also, there was a Janosch cross-stitch design complete with Tigerente!!! (Tigerduck!!!) and a childrens cardigan with an arrows design.

Ongoing projects included: a blue cotton wrap cardigan, a kidsilk haze 'something special' scarf, 'fetching fingerless' gloves from knitty.com, a moss green rib scarf and a grey cable vine with flowers. One finished moebius loop scarf made an appearance and another moebius scarf was cast on with a new knitter.

Interesting news for this week was 'Knitting with Balls' the knitting book for men - http://us.dk.com/static/cs/us/11/features/kwb/intro.html It's good to see some knitting patterns and books finally aimed at men and those who want to knit for/with them. More men and their knitting can be found at the Men Knit site - http://www.menknit.net/

Good luck with the festive preparations everyone!


Clare

Healthy Happy Women Day

City Knitty was invited to present itself at the "Healthy Happy Women Day" the NUS (more about the NUS here ) held in Edinburgh on 6. December 2006. This event included workshops on Women's Health, on Relaxation (Aroma Therapy) as well as different speakers highlighting the work the NUS does in Scotland.
Alison and I (Juliana) set up a table, highlighting different things we created such as knitted cardigans, hats, scarfs and Alison brought some beautiful crochet shawls and tops. There where flyer's handed out and interest displayed.

We where there from about 11AM to about 2PM. The event itself concluded at 4PM. Other stands included The Food Standard Agency and The Body Shop as well as a stand with Aroma Therapy materials, Oils etc.

A New Home

It was a cold, wet night for the first City Knitty at our new permanent venue at Chai teahouse. An impressive turnout managed to spread across a sizeable portion of the room, and brought a wide range of projects.
The cold weather seems to have inspired much warm fuzzy work, include a big cozy white cable scarf, a second iteration of a bright multicoloured chevron scarf, as well as a second test piece for a flowery cable scarf, two pairs of Knitty's very popular 'Fetching' gloves, both plain and stripy, a beautiful pair of mittens with fairisle flowers, a super-soft hat with an interlocking cable pattern in "SoftIce" merino and cashmere yarn, a long-running super-warm jumper, a wintery cardigan from "A season's tale", which has some very cool patterns for the rugged northern winters, and a shrug knitted on huge needles from three yarns(Rowan's 'holiday', Patons's 'splash' and a third merino yarn).
Also on display were a new cross-stitch project with beautiful sunset colours, an ipod cover double knitted as a tube, the continuation of a baby blanket, and a pair of baby mittens with delicate green highlights, and a cute dolphin stuffed toy.

Thanks to everyone who came, I had a really nice time and much enjoyed seeing everyone's projects :o)
Man-with-pointy-sticks Hugh.

We have a Counter for this Site! And more...

Hello Everyone,

I just wanted to let you all know (gleefully) that from now on (7. December 2006, 19:30 h) we can keep track of how many people are visiting this wonderful blog! So let's make it known: come, come and see what we are up to! Post, leave comments, enjoy and know how many others enjoy as well!

Another new feature is the option of featuring different groups of links. This is nothing written in stone, feedback would be greatly appreciated! The idea is that we establish a collection of different links which can be of benefit to all of us. So what would you love to add? Your Blog, your local Shop or/and your Favorite Links? Something different? So far we only have a few lonely ones sitting there waiting for more....

Juliana

Farewell City Cafe

After a month on tour City Knitty met at the City Café, Blair Street, for the last time and awaited the final results of the vote for our new weekly home which were announced as follows:

CHOICES AND RESULT
- Chai Teahouse, 17 votes, 77.27%
- Double Dutch, 1 votes, 4.55%
- Favorit, 0 votes, 0.00%
- Standing Order, 1 votes, 4.55%
- No preference, 3 votes, 13.64%

Chai was a clear winner so in future we will be meeting there on Wednesday evenings.

Onto the knitting, there were a number of projects make welcome returns, including a wrap cardigan, turquoise-green asymmetric armband and the little bunny whose legs were now complete, work progressing onto the body. There was also a test patch for a cabled scarf, and yet another version of the Debbie Bliss hooded moss-stitch baby blanket, this time in green, a white moss stitch baby hat (also by Debbie Bliss) and bright multi-coloured socks were all making good progress as was a lacy scarf.

Crochet flowers were being attempted in one corner alongside what was described as a “pink mess” and not far away the first attempt at knitting in the round saw the start of a pair of fingerless mittens. Another new start was a dark coloured pill box hat.

In line with the move to our new home at Chai, the City Knitty website will be getting a face lift and a temporary holding page will be unveiled very shortly.

Jan