Knitters ROCK!!!!

Wowie WOW WOW WOW!!!Thru Margene and Susan's Give a Little Campaign knitters have raised almost $55,000!!!!!! What an amazing and generous family the knitting community is! Thank you once again for organizing this campaign and all your hard work ladies and thank you knitters (and those that love us) everywhere!!!

To briefly remind everyone, to "sweeten the pot" Susan and Margene will be drawing names weekly to award thank you gifts for everyone who makes a donation to The American Red Cross

As well as monetary donations, knitters have donated some amazing and *coveted* items as thank you gifts! I thought I would post pics of what I am donating so everyone can see what they can win!

First up, here is the Caryl's Kerchief I've donated
It's a lovely golden, olive, cream and rust Koigu with pretty orange beads*....perfect over a warm sweater on a crisp autumn day! Wouldn't it look glam over a nice warm brown turtleneck? Go on, make a donation and it could be yours :)

Next we have 8 skeins of Rowanspun 4 ply in deep, rich, tweedy jewel tones: 2 in Sapphire, 4 in Burgundy and 2 in Jade. Single ply these would make a beautiful, rustic shawl or even a color block sweater and used doubled, they would make dense warm mittens, a scarf or hat. This yarn is sooooo lovely (and now discontinued!!!), knit up it looks like tweedy velvet! Interested? Make just a lil donation :)

There is knitting happening at Chez FKD.....here's a peek at my linen Shaped Triangle. The body is complete and I'm working on the border. I fear I will be working on the border for many moons to come because it's really slow going!! I've finished 15 out of about 70 repeats! WOOT!!!:::insert sarcasm here::: I have to turn the shawl for every row and it's a *PIA*....I can't "purl back backwards" like I did for my faroese shawl because altho the border is garter stitch just like the faroese was, this border has a K2tog at the beginning and that is next to impossible to do backwards! In fact, it takes longer than it does to flip the shawl and knit so it's not worth the trouble....grrrr!! So I should have a finished object sometime next spring, heheh.....

Doesn't the inelasticity of the linen make my shawl look like I've already blocked it? I wish!!! I cannot wait to wash this albatross lovely shawl and see what the final product looks like!!

Now I do have a query for the knitting masses....I *always* have socks on my needles and I *love* sock knitting but I'm trying to expand my horizons. I've tried the short row heel before and was unsatisfied. I've come back to it again and I'm still unsatisfied!! I've tried wrapped stitches a la Wendy and the backwards yarnover a la Alison and Priscilla Gibson-Roberts and I'm still getting huge, wonky holes!!! I tighten my stitches to within an inch of their little fibery lives yet I still have unappealing short row heels. I've tried both metal and bamboo needles, all without success....any tips/suggestions oh wise knitting community?? Please leave suggestions in the comments, I'm desperate!!

In my last post I used this pic to remind people of the animal friends that have been affected by Katrina. I love this pic of the P-Man so much, I'm shamelessly using it again, only this time you can click on the pic for the super, duper enlarged version of Pumpkin the Wonder Cat! And you can donate to help the animals here The Humane Society

Pumpkin says Thanks, and have a great week you amazing knitting friends!!

* altho I've made the Caryl's Kerchief before, this was my first attempt at adding the beads using the crochet method rather that the stringing on method the pattern suggests and I'm VERY happy with the result! I'll be using only the crochet method from now on!