cutest baby hat ever?

If there were such a contest, this might possibly be the winner.

It could really only be cuter if it were photographed on a real baby instead of an orange Happy Birthday balloon.

Did you know that blocking is extremely important to your knitting? And that when blocking a hat, Happy Birthday balloons are imperative?

If you're kntting a hat for a grown up, your blocking apperatus might look more like this:

In this case, I inflated the balloon to about the size that a newborn's head should be. Then I asked someone else in the studio who has also given birth to three children, "Is this the size of a newborn's head?" We inflated and deflated until we got it just about right.

Never mind that everyone else in the studio was thinking, "Yikes... that is actually... not small... considering..."

How's this? It does not feel small during the last two months of pregnancy. In fact, it feels like it's the size and weight of a bowling ball.

But after the baby is born, he or she seems so tiny and helpless. Much like this:

If you were so inclined, you could use a tape measure to choose the appropriate size for your balloon blocking.

The Craft Yarn Council has worked to standardize sizes and measurements used throughout the knitting world. The guidelines are voluntary, so don't count on all designers to follow them, but they're a really good starting point, if you're not sure what size head a three year usually has. (It's bigger than you think.) (You can see all the standard body measurements here.)

Knitting a newborn hat is one of the best projects in the world. Not only is it totally squeal inducing, but it's incredibly fast, and a great way to use up your yarn stash.

I used a great pattern for this hat that I will happily knit again, called the Small Things Bonnet, designed by Carina Spencer. It uses worsted weight yarn, and has both rounded bonnet or a pixie hood style. Totally recommend it and the sweater/romper that goes along with it.

As always, I made a couple of tiny modifications to the pattern, not because the pattern was lacking, but more because I must have some kind of block when it comes to doing something exactly as written. I did the front section in a contrasting color, and love how it looks. I made the pixie just a little bit pointier. Love it.

I chose a button in a third color that I think pops with the gray and pink. Although the baby is a newborn and not into mouthing things yet, I still sewed the button on really well to make sure it wouldn't be a choking hazard.

Can't you just picture it on sweet little Ceci?

I just checked again, and yep. It's still one of the cutest hats I've ever seen.

For more information on my Happy Birthday balloon blocking tutorial, you can visit this post.

Made any cute baby things lately?

tour of exclusive colorways, stop three

Today I drew three new colorways out of a coffee mug on my desk. (No, it didn't have coffee in it. Come on now... give me some credit.)

I drew out Loopalicious, this bright and fun colorway based around one of the blue colors repeated throughout the Loops South store in Tulsa:

I love the inside of this store for so many reasons.

For starters, it's well-organized and clean. And let's be honest friends, not all yarn shops are. I have seen many stores that feel disheveled, scattered, and hard to navigate. But not this one:

Loops South has a particularly modern look that suits them well.

If you own a yarn shop, I'm not telling you that you that customers must be able to belly up to the Mac bar to look up projects on Ravelry. You don't have to have white leather seating.

But you do need to dust and vacuum and take out the trash, particularly if someone microwaved leftover salmon in your back room for lunch.  Every day. You do need to reface your products continuously. 

You do need to make your store visually appealing, so that people want to come and browse around for an hour, particularly if they are new to knitting and don't have a clue what they're looking for. You want to attract new customers, right? Make the store a place that people want to come into.

I'm not singling anyone out here, and --knock wood-- we're lucky to work with awesome stores.

I feel like I need to start a web series called Yarn Shop Takeover, in which I get to take over a store for a couple of days and completely redecorate and reorganize things from a customer-centric shopping experience.  Good shop owners understand that they are high end, specialty retailers. I often say in my classes that it's important to love what you're knitting with -- the yarn, your tools -- and that you're knitting things you enjoy making, because no one is knitting because it's cheaper.

There are many reasons to knit. Cheaper is not one of them. Most of us don't spend $10-$30 per pair of socks in a store. But we are willing to spend that on one skein of sock yarn, and then we have to make the socks ourselves. We won't pay $30 for premade socks, but we will for socks we have to spend days or weeks working on.

If there were a store in the mall that sold $30 socks, I can guarantee you that the store would be clean, well lit, well organized, and pleasant to walk around in.

Yarn shops are high end retail. They sell the materials for a $300 sweater that you then have to make yourself.

Loops gets it right. There is more than one kind of right, but this is one of them.

I've been there twice -- you can see more about my visits here, here, and here.

Loops has a web store, which you can visit from anywhere in the world. And you can also call them at

1-877-LOOPSOK. The Loops Troops know what they're doing. They know their stock and they know how to help people.

(And hey, if you own a shop and want me to come take over for a couple of days -- use the contact form in the upper right. We'll see what we can work out, even if it's just a virtual consultation.)

*************************

On to our next stop on the tour! I knew there would be a high probability (Because I am really, really excellent at statistics. Which is to say that I know how to multiply and divide.) that I would choose at least one more colorway from The Net Loft in Alaska. The probability is high (again, my genius statistical mind did these calculations), because there are just so many custom colorways for this one shop. Each year for the past few years we've done a new crop of them, so the collection is now quite sizable.

This one has been popular with both male knitters (and Cordova has plenty of rugged, outdoorsy men who know how to knit), and with women knitting for the dudes in their life.

Please tell me you know what animal this looks like. Because gosh darn it if I didn't go the Great Lakes Aquarium to compare for myself.

Getting the gold -- and the right proportion of it -- was part of the challenge. The other part was creating that subtle variation throughout the dark brown and black feathers a bald eagle has.

Here's an earlier draft of this colorway, which has too much white, and the browns and grays are not dark enough. The feedback I got from The Net Loft was that it was "good" and "almost there," but that it needed to look "more like an eagle perched on the top of a tree with its wings folded."

I'll be honest, my first thought when I heard that the wings needed to be folded whilst the national bird perched atop a tree was along the lines of, "Umm..."

But I get it now. It needed more dark brown and black, because the proportion of the eagle that is actually white and gold and medium brown is actually quite small.

Bald Eagle actually looks pretty darn nifty knit up. I've seen some sweet hats, scarves, and fingerless gloves made from it.

And next up is The Net Loft's Lupine colorway.

We went through at least nine versions of this colorway before I finally found something that was both pleasing to the eye and that looked like the flowers that grows prolifically in the Alaska summer. You can see some of my drafts here. Lupines come in purple, pink, and periwinkle, and some have lots of white at the tips, while others don't. We worked to find a colorway that would incorporate what was pretty about all the varieties.

We tried some with green. Some with white space.

(Photo Source)

And this is what we decided on: a variegated deep purple with accents of pink and periwinkle. This picture doesn't do the depth of color justice.

You can see some more pictures of both Bald Eagle and Lupine on the Net Loft's blog, here.

If you'd like to grab Bald Eagle or Lupine from The Net Loft, drop them a line at thenetloft3 AT yahoo DOT com, or call them at (907) 424-7337. I promise they are friendly and helpful.

I hope you're enjoying these behind the scenes peeks into the genesis of exclusive colorways. And hey, if you're not, then you probably like meatloaf and football. And then there's no hope for you at all.

Tour of exclusive colorways, stop two

Yesterday, after giving myself a stern talking to, we set off on our tour of exclusive colorways. We visited Minneapolis and Washington, DC, and today, we're visiting two new places on opposite ends of the country.

Remember, I've chosen these at random, so as not to play favorites.

Wild Strawberries

Summer is short in Alaska, and so is the berry season. So it's no wonder that when the wild berries are ripe, locals head to their favorite secret spots to pick as many as they can before they're gone again. I created this colorway for The Net Loft in Cordova, inspired by a picture much like this one.

This colorway was a technical challenge for me, and I think represented a turning point for me in terms of my skill level. How to get tiny spots of bright red scattered randomly throughout a skein of variegated green yarn? Red and green together make brown, and I couldn't leave any white.

Dotty, the absolutely amazing owner of The Net Loft (and if you are from Cordova or have visited there, you know I'm speaking the truth) kept feeding me ideas and her unique manner of gentle encouragement. She kept describing what this place, Boswell Bay, looked like, kept sending me the photos that family and friends had taken, kept telling me what those strawberries tasted like, what a welcome sight they were every year, how delighted people would be if I could make this happen. I wanted to see and taste the strawberries. But how to engineer the final result? The best answer I can give you is "fall down 91 times, get up 92."

The answer to this yarn dyeing conundrum is probably not what you think. But I'm glad I kept with it, because I love this colorway. So much so that I used it in my blog header, above you. This is one of the few handpainted yarns I've ever met that knits up exactly like it looks in the skein. Gently textured greens with tiny flecks of strawberry red.

The people from Cordova are kind, generous, and community-oriented, and the town itself is one of the prettiest on earth.  I think about it all the time, and can't wait to go back. I talk about it at nearly every workshop or speaking engagement I have. I think I've dedicated more posts to my trip there than nearly any other topic -- except for colorways in general -- in four years of blogging. You can read more about this amazing place here, here, here, here, and here.

Has Cordova been on your local news lately, as it has mine? I must admit I was quite surprised to open my Northern Minnesota newspaper to a story about a tiny town in remote Alaska. And there has been one every day for the past few days as well.

In case you missed, Cordova has had the unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on your perspective) recipient of more than eighteen feet of snow since November. The city has had to declare a state of emergency, because they just cannot physically remove it all, and the National Guard has sent troops to help residents dig out. And the snow doesn't appear to be stopping, with another 7 inches in the forecast today. The problem is not just that people can't get out of their driveways. The real danger is in avalanches -- the town is immediately at the base of the mountains -- and roof collapse.

Here are a few pictures of Cordova now:

Meanwhile here in Duluth, MN, I have zero inches of snow in my yard. We've had record high temperatures for January (42 Fahrenheit? Unheard of!), and what tiny amount we did have has melted. Cordova, I would happily take a few feet of your snow off your hands. I have no use for dead grass, no leaves on trees, and no snow. If I have to watch the leaves crumble, they might as well be replaced with the white stuff. It's hard to send kids out to play in frozen mud.

The people at the Net Loft are amazingly helpful, and they quite possibly have the biggest selection of Three Irish Girls yarn of any shop in the world. They will arrange a time to do a phone consult with you, and are more than happy to do mail order. You can call them at (907) 424-7337, or email them at thenetloft3 AT yahoo DOT com.

And next: Gulf of Mexico

If mountains and snow aren't your style, maybe beaches are.

We work with an amazing store in Sarasota, FL, called A Good Yarn.

This was the first of an entire line of colorways we've collaborated on that are based on the beautiful photography of Murray Post, the husband of the owner, Susan. Susan and Murray are hilarious and gracious, and the studio is lucky enough to have several of Murray's prints, taken from his dives around the world.

We tried to capture the water of the Gulf of Mexico, as viewed from Sarasota: clear turquoises with hints of greens and deeper blues.

Shortly after the release of this colorway, the terrible oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico happened, and Susan and I decided to donate a portion of the sales of this colorway to the World Wildlife Federation to aid in cleanup efforts. This yarn ended up on the front page of the Sarasota newspaper, which I also have prominently displayed in the studio.

One of the things I love about this colorway is the sense of relaxation you get from looking at it and working with it, much like sitting on the beach, staring at the water. And I love the interesting color variation that perks up even the most dull of complexions.

I used Gulf of Mexico in this knitting project, and am totally enamored with it.

I also had the good fortune to visit Sarasota about a year ago, and fell in love with the beautiful beaches and sweet seaside town. You can read more about it here and here.

A Good Yarn has a nifty online store set up, where you can order Gulf of Mexico from if you'd like to add it to your collection. You can visit it here.

I think stop two on the tour has been a success. I've enjoyed this trip down memory lane, but I still have lots left to show you over the next few days. Stop three: coming right up!

tour of exclusive colorways!

Dude. I have a lot of colorways.

So many colors in the world, so little time.

I've been ruminating on this idea for a long time, all the while thinking and wishing and hoping that the project would magically complete itself. Strangely, it has not.

It appears as though the task has fallen to me.

Thus, I decided to give myself a little pep talk.

Dear Self,

Inertia = bad. Task paralysis = crippling.

We've talked before about your perfectionist tendencies, and how you feel that if you don't have time to do something correctly, then you might as well put it off until you do have time.

Get over it, lady.

The huge block of time is never going to magically present itself.

If you stay where you are right now, pretty soon the task paralysis will spread into other areas of your life, until you're left with nothing but a living room full of rats.

Self, I am going to let you in on the secret to avoiding task paralysis and inertia.

Start anywhere.

Take a tiny step in any direction at all. Who cares if it's wrong? What's the worst that could happen? You realize you're headed in the wrong direction? So then, guess what? You change directions. But you're moving. You're moving, and you're moving a heck of a lot faster than you were before.

Remember Monday, when you said, "The paperwork is taking over my entire office area."?

Just start anywhere. Pick up a paper. Put it where it belongs. Repeat as needed. So what if you don't get it all done in one afternoon?

Did you think that not cleaning your desk was going to have your office looking ship shape in record time?  Tomorrow, you can spend a few minutes putting away a few more papers. Starting anywhere gets you moving in a direction. It overcomes paralysis.

Also, about that giant knitting project. You don't feel like doing it, I know.

Since when is feeling like something a requirement for doing it?

Have you or have you not cleaned up after your sick child at 2:00 in the morning, when you really didn't feel like it? But you did it anyway.

How many years did you work more than one job, usually while attending college and/or caring for children? Ten? Was that all unicorns and puppies?

But you did it anyway.

Start knitting the giant project anyway. Knit a set number of rows a day. 10, 20, whatever. Set a goal for yourself and put it on your calendar. Or set up a reminder on your phone. Choose to move out of the paralysis and start moving in a direction, even if its wrong. The wrong direction will still teach you something.

You are now going to create a tour of exclusive colorways. Colorways people can only buy at the yarn shop they were created for. You are going to put one foot in front of the other and stop thinking about it and actually do it.

Go.

--Yarnista

Well. Thanks, self, for giving me a lecture in front of tens of thousands of people. I appreciate that.

You're right, though. I'm going to do it. I'm going to create a tour of our shop exclusive colorways, because I love these babies and the need attention.

So as not to play favorites, I will randomly draw a few per day and showcase them. Because I overcoming task paralysis! I am not inert! I am neither neon nor argon! (Sorry, had to squeeze the geek in there.)

Here's the first: Lovestruck

I created this colorway for Amazing Threads in Maple Grove, MN. (This store is packed with an amazing variety of yarns, by the way. And they have a huge book selection. Huge!)

I mean, this is not even half the store. And they have SO many samples and swatches. It's amazing. Hence the name.

Lovestruck is a warm violet with vermilion pinks and reds, chartreuse, and hints of brown. All swirled together.

If you want some and don't live nearby, I'm sure Amazing Threads would be happy to send some to you. You can call them at 763-391-7700, or you could drop them an email at using their handy dandy contact form.

Next up: Pansy, exclusive to The Yarn Spot in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC.

Deep purples and hints of yellow. In fact, I just shipped them a box containing this very colorway yesterday, so they're getting a fresh supply.

Stop by! I love The Yarn Spot. You can see pics of a few of my visits here, here, and and here.

And if you're not nearby, give them a call (301)933-9550, or email them at info AT theyarnspot DOT com.

So. There is my inertia-bending beginning of the tour.

With more to come soon, because look at me, I am moving in the right direction! I make myself very proud.

cecilia, you're breaking my heart

I think this sweet girl might hear the Simon and Garfunkel song once or twice in her life.

Which could be a lot worse. You could share a name with a Megadeth song or a Justin Bieber...song? Is that what he calls them?

Her mom and dad let me hold her and sniff her sweet head and marvel at her smallness. And then I talked them into letting me take a couple of pictures.

I harangued them, really. Pressured heavily. 

I couldn't help myself. Those newborn smiles are so irresistible. And I am the Official Baby Holder of Three Irish Girls. A title I hold with pride. 

What good is owning a company if you can't bestow a couple of figurehead titles on yourself? Did you know that I am also the Chief Procurement and Provisions Officer? That means I buy stuff like markers and snacks for everyone. And I am also the Head Birthday Concierge. That means that I ask people where they would like to go out to eat on their birthday, and then we go there as a group. I am also in charge of presents.

Only once did I exercise my power as Head Birthday Concierge to refuse a restaurant request. I just couldn't see what good would come from driving 20 miles to eat hot dogs in questionable surroundings. We went somewhere much, much better. Boy Aaron's birthday is in 10 days, and I am again refusing to eat at Hot Dogs of Unknown Origin. Sorry, man.

But my favorite honorary title is that of Baby Holder.  New babies are magical beings... the fingers, the lips, the eyes. So precious, and sadly, so fleeting. She'll never look this way again.

She is ravishing in turquoise. A trait I admire in anyone.

After all those months of wondering who she would be, now we know.

Little Ceci.

I think she's pleased to be here.

I'd say that you're shaking my confidence daily, but I'll save that for when you can actually be annoyed by it.

That's how we Official Baby Holders roll.