And now, back to our regularly scheduled blogging. What do you have on your needles? It's the beginning of a new knitting season. An exciting time.

I'm starting with . . . drum roll please . . . a sweater for myself. Yes, for me, me, me. I usually knit myself a sweater specifically for myself about every 5 years. Boo, hoo, I know, it's sad isn't it? Most of the sweaters I knit go to shows all over North America and I stay home and wear the same sweaters for decades. I'm not looking for sympathy because I of course could wear any of the pile of sweaters we have in the shop but I get stuck on a couple of garments and wear them constantly. It probably makes me easy to pick out in a crowd. Right now I have 3 sweaters that I wear regularly. I have a Take It From The Top which I knit in 2000, a Guenevere sweater I knit in 2005 and a Lakeside Cardigan (Button Up Your Top Down book, centre row, electric blue sweater) I knit in 2007. I think it's about time to mix up my wardrobe a little.

I'm working on another Top Down Cardigan which I will close with a stick (hooray, no buttons to sew on). I have a general idea of what it will look like but it's not 100% decided yet. I think this lack of planning is why I'm not a weaver.

Anyway, I'm happily working.

-Deb

Commenters:  Thanks http://greyheronbits.blogspot.com/ and http://thepurplesock.blogspot.com/ for coming out to the KnitTrade Show. It was great to see you all. And next year I hope you can come http://chezlizzie.blogspot.com/ .  Thanks for your encouragement Ann. Hi anonymous, when we got going the KnitTrade floor was quite a busy little place. We have a site with a lot of room to grow and we're already looking forward to next year. For more information email us at info@cabinfever.ca.

KnitTrade

Where do I start. It was a great day.
This is the curling rink turned into trade show floor with just a few vendors putting the last finishing touches on their booths. The rest of us were up drinking coffee.

It was marvelous to see all the different facets of our industry getting together.

We had wholesale vendors talking to authors and tech editors,

store owners talking to vendors,

beautiful booths,

and wait, do I see some knitting being done!

At the end of the day we were still smiling.

Lynda, Sophy & Deb

So thanks to everyone who participated, the vendors, the store owners, designers, custom knitters, tech editors, volunteers, oh just everyone. Thanks for helping to pull us all together.

We'll have lots more photos on the KnitTrade site next week. We're a little fried right now. And if you are in Ontario you might just see some new product in your local yarn store.

-Deb & Lynda

Firsts

We finished one show and this week we're working on the next show which is on Sunday. And this is a first. The first knitting Trade Show in Ontario, maybe Canada! We haven't talked about it too much because it's not open to the general public, it's for people in the trade, in this case the knitting trade. We don't want to tease you with something you can't get into but it's all we have been doing for a couple weeks now. There is not much knitting to show you.

It will be so interesting to see store owners, wholesale vendors, designers, production knitters and teachers all in the same room. These are all the people who are behind the scenes of your knitting experience in a shop.

We are all ready to get going. We're ready to tape the floor for the vendors, have signs for everything you could think of, badges are made for everyone, packages are made up for the store owners with a description of each vendor present, we have door prizes, sandwich makers, coffee urns, the tables and chairs are ordered and now we're just waiting . . . It all gets started for us tomorrow morning. We're so excited. We can't wait to get going. We'll have photos of the show, before, during and after.

Wish us luck
-Deb & Lynda

Home and unpacking

We're home again and unpacking from the Kitchener Waterloo Guild's Knitter's Fair. We've been doing this show for, mmm, 10 years? Something like that. When Deb and I did the first show (which might have been one of our first ever shows) we packed up my Honda and drove over to find that the show was in a sports complex. We picked up our boxes and started up the stairs, and up more stairs, and UP more stairs! Yes, we were on the top tier of the hockey arena! It was a great view (kids playing hockey) and gave the right atmosphere for knitting (cold and hockey, how Canadian can you get?) but, oh boy, those stairs. Needless to say, the show has moved on to a convention centre location now with nearly 80 vendors. It's easily the largest knitting show in Canada.


 A little bigger than a Honda? I was pretty white knucked driving it at first, but got quite used to it (except on hwy 401 - scary). We thought we'd dress up the truck ... cute look?

What a great show! It was terrific to see many, many old friends and convert new customers to the ease of no-sewing. We had wonderful helpers: Dana, Judy, Carolyn and Zelda. And they worked like crazy Friday night, unpacking the boxes and setting everything up, then back at it at 7am Saturday morning for more setting up. We got done (more or less) at 9:29 am and the show opened at 9:30.

OK, back to the unpacking.

- Lynda

PS Deb got her adult version of the A-line Cardigan done in time and we sold out of those patterns, along with Sophy's new shawl (which, oddly enough, is called Sophy's Shawl : )

We're going to the Fair

It is the season for Fall Fairs. And although going on kiddie rides and eating cotton candy is fun we're passing all that up to go to the Kitchener-Waterloo Knitters Fair. Hoorah. It's going to be fun and busy and we'll get to see lots of friends there too.

Right now I am taking a blogging break before I do the final check on 2 new patterns we'll have ready for Saturday at the Fair.

I've done the Morgan's cardigan out of the Teens and Tweens book in adult sizes. The pattern now goes up to a 50" bust. Yay. I was tempted to call this pattern 'Me too' since so many knitters who have the teens book also wanted this for themselves. Now you can.

And Sophy (our cabinfever shipping goddess) designed a beautiful shawl which I am almost finished knitting in blue. I hope to have it done for Saturday but it will be close. The pattern is ready though. This is a combination of triangles and rectangles and really interesting to knit up.

It might look complicated but it's not. You begin at the centre neck and work 2 sets of Chart A just like a regular triangle shawl. Then, this is the interesting part, you begin Chart A again at the beginning, centre and end of the row and work Chart B in between them. This changes the shape altogether. Chart C is easy because it just extends Chart A so the triangle is bigger here. You can see that triangle in the centre of the shawl. And then you work the border (D). I am right at the last bit of Chart C & Chart B sections. Next the Border and I'm home-free.

It sits beautifully on your shoulders because of the shape. Is this cool or what. I need to get back to work on my blue one. Hope to see you at the Fair.

-Deb

Need A Sock?

Did you think our sock book had gone away? Nope! Here's the front cover as it stands today.

Deb and I are up at the cottage (camp) and we'll be working on edits and pictures this weekend. Still lots to do!

Want to see more pictures? 

Don't these look totally comfy?

Mmmm, don't you just want a pair?
The pumpkin pair are in our Cabin Fever Silk & Silver hand-dyed.

How about a manly pair?

OK, back to work on the pictures!

-Lynda

Make It Right

How many times does it take to make it right. Sometimes quite a few.
I started this gift wedding sock with the cable pattern running up the top of the foot but decided that it was too lumpy and ripped back to the toe. I then worked some ribbing on the top of the foot, a short row heel and one repeat of the pattern on the leg. After my husband tried it on we decided that even though the groom had smaller feet it was a little tight. I ripped it back to the beginning of the heel and worked the heel over more stitches and changed to one size bigger needle to work the first repeat of the pattern. The increased needle size has made the pattern much easier to knit. That's probably a clue that I stumbled on the right size. Now we're cooking.

I am really comfortable with ripping out as you can see. This was not a frustrating experience, OK maybe a little tiny bit. It's always much worse if I have a deadline which I don't this time. I think the couple will stay married long enough for me to finish both pairs of wedding socks. Most of the time the ripping and reworking is worth it.
On the other hand there are small glitches which I can happily ignore. I screwed up a little on one corner of the short row heel but it didn't make a hole so I'm good with that. Not all of my cable stitches are even but washing is going to even them out. Every once in a while I think I might have forgotten to purl one of the background cross-over stitches. I'm very familiar with the stitch pattern now so I think this rendition is good enough.

Where is the 'good enough' line for you? When do you rip back to correct and what can you happily ignore?

-Deb