winner of the spring rainbow mini skein set!

We had 314 entrants in our contest. Yay! Here's proof:

I asked Random.org to choose a number between 1-314.

It picked #20!

Who's the lucky winner?

It's Cathy!

Cathy, I fully expect to see the most adorable sweater and sock set in the universe in short order!

Thank you all for entering. I know it's disappointing if you're not the winner, but rest assured that this is not our last giveaway!

 Go forth and knit things that are full of awesome!

*time's up!* I want you to have this.

*Time's up!* Winner will be announced shortly...

Really, I want each and every one of you to have this.

Unfortunately, I don't have 30,000 of them, I only have one.

It's a rainbow mini skein set. One ounce each of our nine new spring colorways: Brandy Alexander, Cosmo, Mimosa, Creamsicle, Mojito, Agua Vida, Curaçao, Ice Blue Raspberry, and Passion Punch. That's 2-1/4 skeins of yarn.

These sets are pretty irresistible, and the possibilities are endless. You can use them to make stripes, you can use just a couple of colorways together at a time, you can use them for trim, for contrasting heels and toes, or for a project that requires small blocks of color.

I would LOVE to see a log cabin pillow top, or a chevron scarf with skinny color changes. I would ADORE seeing a sweet striped sweater for a little one. It would THRILL me if someone made these into knee socks or a stocking cap.

The set I'm giving away is dyed on Springvale Sport, which can be knit like a heavy fingering weight for socks, or as a true sport weight for sweaters and scarves and such. It's delishy and squishy.

Don't mind me and my made up adjectives.

These sets are currently available only through retailers, but here's your chance to win one. 

To enter, please leave a comment describing what you would do with this set if you won. I will use a random number generator to select a winner tomorrow, Wednesday, May 26th, at 1:00 pm, Central Time. The winner will be posted here. One entry per person, please. 

Good luck!

I have lots to tell you.

1. I like numbered lists.

2. I have this on my banged up filing cabinet here at the studio. And I like you. Thank you for being here.

3. We have a new retailer to welcome to the fold. If y'all are ever down Texas Way, be sure and check out The Sassy Spinster in Lancaster, on Historic Town Square. You can also reach them via telephone at 972-218-5335. Welcome, welcome!

4. This colorway is like a little piece of heaven peeking through the clouds. Not unlike a silver lining.

When you see it initially, you may think, "Wow, I love that!" or you may think, "Hmmm... I'm not a bright yellow person." Yellow tends to have that effect on people. But I'll tell you what: this colorway knits up like nobody's business.

It has very short color repeats, with multiple shades of yellow, ranging from butter to daffodil, ivory, and several shades of grey. If you get a skein of it, your feet will thank you.

This colorway is available exclusively at  The Backwards Loop, another one of our Awesome Retailers. (You can request it from them on other yarn bases: I love this as a gender neutral baby option -- it's delightful on Springvale!)

5. Speaking of awesome, The Backwards Loop has our new spring rainbow instock on Kells, and a big selection of instock fabulosity Wexford Merino Silk.

6. Last week it was 86 degrees. Today it is 52. (For you Celsiophiles, it went from hot to cold.) There was so much fog this morning that you couldn't even see Lake Superior. The biggest lake in the world. Couldn't see it.

7. Minnesotans love to talk about the weather. Especially Duluthians. Lake Superior causes the weather to change quickly -- rarely do we get a long stretch of the same thing. I think the meteorologists earn their living here.

8. The Minnesota state bird is the Common Loon.

If you're from Canada or Alaska, you don't need me to tell you any more about this bird, as it lives nearly everywhere in your fair land. But it only lives in a few places here in the contiguous US, and even then, you don't see them that often. Last night I went to dinner with a friend and we saw two loons on Lake Superior -- my first sighting since returning to my hometown.

Loons can dive 250 feet and stay underwater for five minutes, and they can fly 75 miles an hour. (For you kilomophiles, that's fast.) They have red eyes because it helps them see underwater, not because they're scary.

I think you should click on this link and listen to the loon call. (Right underneath the appearance information.) It's very unique.

But hey, I'm just a yarnista, don't listen to me if you don't want to.

Don't click the link, that's fine. It's your choice, really.

Click it or don't. It's no skin off my back.

But you should click it.

9. Remember this colorway, the one I loved so much? Gulf of Mexico?

It was created before the horrible oil spill in the Gulf. But rather than just wring our hands, we've teamed up with A Good Yarn Sarasota to donate a portion of the proceeds of the sales of this colorway to the National Wildlife Federation, which will help rescue animals impacted by the spill and assist in cleanup efforts. It feels good to do something instead of just reading news stories about who's to blame and how horrible it is. If you buy Gulf of Mexico, the benefits will be threefold:

• You'll get an awesome colorway (It's currently instock on a huge variety of bases, including Springvale Bulky, Adorn Sock, fabulosity Wexford Merino Silk, Galenas Merino, Springvale DK, and Springvale Worsted.)
• You'll be supporting two small businesses: Three Irish Girls and A Good Yarn. Our businesses in turn support our families, our employees, and their families.
• You'll be doing something to help the wildlife that's been so terribly affected by the oil spill.

You can order it by emailing info@agoodyarnsarasota, calling 941.487.7914, or by visiting the store in person. Directions are on their website.

10. Don't forget about our open call for original knitting and crochet designs! Submissions are due June 13th, and more information can be found here.

11. And just for good measure:

The end.

Dueling ipods

One of these iPods is not like the others.

One of these iPods has all the good music.

The others are full of things I merely tolerate or actively dislike. Can you guess which one of the above is mine?

We take turns using the docking station in the studio to choose music to listen to for an hour, which ends up being a bit schizophrenic. Yesterday morning I had a hankerin' for some good ol' fashioned classical, complete with violas and French horns. That lasted for about thirty minutes before someone came to me and said, "Umm, Sharon, would it be OK if I put on something else?" I looked at this person, who was standing before me with a nervous smile on their face. I raised an eyebrow. They laughed and said, "I'm sorry, but classical music makes me feel really anxious."

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????? (This was my internal response.)

"Sure, feel free to switch it," I said. We then listened to electronic house music for about ten minutes before I went to this person and said, "Um, would it be OK if we switched the music? This electronic stuff makes me really anxious." (Sorry, sometimes pay back is too fun to resist.)

Today's music check (so far): 35 mn Napoleon Dynamite soundtrack

30 mn (so far) Lady Gaga

More to come, I shall update you throughout the day.

Update on Friday, May 21, 2010 at 11:00AM by Yarnista

30 minutes of an unknown artist, experimental electronica (Sigh.)

Update on Friday, May 21, 2010 at 11:58AM by Yarnista

45 mn listening to new She & Him album (my pick)

Update on Friday, May 21, 2010 at 1:40PM by Yarnista

Lenny Kravitz

Beck

Rob Zombie

It's Boy Aaron's turn.

Update on Friday, May 21, 2010 at 1:51PM by Yarnista

Passion Pit.

Update on Friday, May 21, 2010 at 3:41PM by Yarnista

For the past couple of hours, we've had one of the iPods below on shuffle. Here's what it came up with:

Chicago soundtrack

Soul Asylum (who was a teenager in the 1990s and remembers them? They were from MN.)

Sara Bareilles

Jack Johnson

Matt Nathanson

The Eagles

Gaelic Storm

Michael Jackson

Barry White

Feist

P!nk

Lady Antebellum

Sarah McLachlan

I made something, part three

I am of the humble opinion that blocking is not optional. Blocking is a requirement. Blocking is a must-do. Blocking should be on your bucket list. You should dream about blocking.

And honey, if you're reading this, blocking is not about sports. We're not talking blocked shots here.

Blocking is what you do after you knit something, plain and simple. It's like, brushing your teeth is what you do before bed. Blocking is what you do after knitting.

Everyone say it with me: Blocking is what you do after knitting.

Blocking makes everything look at least 50% better, and today I will prove my assertion definitively.

I knit my little B. a sweater. B. is my middle daughter, and we call her B. because when her older brother was a toddler he couldn't say the word baby, so he called her B. The name stuck.

This is the sweater before I blocked it. (And also before I put on the buttons.)

It's like a sweater-of-many-colors, an amalgamation of colorways striped together to make one whimsical cardigan.

See how it looks kind of... scrumbly, for lack of a better term?

I do like to make up adjectives. Earlier this week I made up twange. It means "a hint of something." Like, "This butter pecan ice cream has a twange of chocolate peanut butter. Who was eating out of two cartons with the same spoon again?"

Twange is pronounced like "twange."

First I washed the sweater. Then I either demonstrated my recklessness or my intelligence, depending on your point of view.

I put the sweater into the washing maching to spin the water out. This is a front loader -- not all of them have the spin cycle only options. If this is the case with your washer, do not try this at home. You don't want rinse and spin. I repeat: you do NOT want the rinse and spin option. I learned that to the tune of $800 worth of yarn once.

Putting it through the spin cycle gets about 90% of the water out, so your sweater is damp and not dripping when it comes out of the washer, like this. Many people use salad spinners for this purpose, especially since there's no risk of the spin cycle accidentally turning itself on and ruining your hard work.

When the sweater was done being washed, I spread it out on a clean white towel on the floor of a closet -- a place unlikely to get walked on by doggies and kitties and children. I prefer not to use colored towels for this purpose, just on the off chance that the towel bleeds color onto your hard work.

It still looks pretty scrumbly. What it needs is to be blocked. According to the Yarnista Dictionary, blocking means, "To make your knitting look way way better by washing it, smoothing out the garment, and allowing it to dry in its perfect state, thereby making your knitting look way way better."

So I smoothed it and tweaked it.

I know, shut up, right? Right?

This sweater was knit seamlessly from the top down with a yoke. I noticed that the button band was pulling apart slightly at the top, probably because the circumference of the sweater is so much smaller there, while the button band is the same width.

So I adjusted the button band to slightly overlap itself. Knowing that things have a tendency to shrink back once dry, the overlap helped it shrink back to the correct position of meeting nicely in the middle.

See? It's no longer scrumbly.

It ain't perfect, but it's not meant to be. It was a way for me to use up odd balls of Lindon Merino, and it's a play sweater for my B. that will match everything in her wardrobe.

There. Proof positive that blocking is absolutely, positively, unequivocally necessary. I lubs the blocking, and you should too.

Project Specs: Drive-Thru Cardigan by Wendy Bernard

Yarn: Lindon Merino, twelve colors (1 oz or so of each color, some a bit more, some less): Colleen, Ciara, Isla, Deirdre green, Deirdre, Nora, Cole Blue, Cole, Arctic Circle, Alice, Alice Pink, Emer

Needle size: US 8

Size: 4

Modifcations: 4" of length added in body and sleeves (my daughter is tall and skinny, and I wanted the sweater to fit for more than one season)

Buttons: From my grandmother's button box.

Notes: I loved this pattern, and would definitely make it again. It's a simple, easy sweater with both pullover and cardigan versions that would work well for either gender. Plus, it's graded for size 2-16, so you'll be able to make one for your kids every year if needed.