k*tog Oklahoma Tornado Relief

"On May 20, 2013, a huge tornado wreaked havoc on Moore, Oklahoma, tearing right through the town. It was rated an EF5, the highest possible, with 340 km/hr (210 mile/hour) winds. Two dozen people lost their lives, hundreds were injured, and thousands of buildings sustained damage—from minor problems to complete razing."*

In the days after the devastation, Holly Barcelo and Lars Rains of the design collective, Suburban Knits, felt the need to help in some way. They thought of creating an ebook of designs for charity, and they invited other designers to contribute as well.

Holly and Lars wanted to get the collection together as quickly as possible, so they requested patterns that were already up on Ravelry.  I contributed my Jemma Cowl pattern to this ebook, which remarkably,was ready for purchase by June 3rd.  K*tog is a collection of 20 patterns by 19 designers and will be available from now through August 31 for only $20.  All proceeds from the sale of this ebook will be donated to Other Options, Inc. a food pantry in Oklahoma City that is shuttling supplies to the affected areas in Oklahoma.

The k*tog ebook can be downloaded here where you will also find a table of contents and thumbnail photos of all of the designs in the collection.  k*tog has a pattern page on Ravelry, where, as of today, nine of the patterns are linked.  There is such a great variety of patterns in the collection which includes socks, hats, shawls, cowls, a vest, a cardigan, a pair of mitts and even a baby cocoon.  Truly, something for everyone!

* Plait, Phil. "The Scar of a deadly Tornado."  June 28, 2013 <http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/06/09/satellite_view_of_a_tornado_the_moore_ok_devastation_seen_from_space.html>

Midweek Meditation

"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."  ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Great sentiment, but I would have to add some yarn and some needles. ☺

Random Weekends

Over the past month or two I have had some very fine weekends.  Pennsylvania is a very good place to be in the Spring.

We were in Philadelphia several weeks ago.  In the first photo, you can see the office building where someone very close to me works.

Both of the sculptures were nearby.  The last one is in front of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.  (I think that I should actually go there one day.  Another someone who is very close to me is a student at Drexel.)

But on that day in "Philly", we went to the Franklin Institute, and we saw their exhibition of actual artifacts from the Titanic.  Very interesting.

On another weekend, we revisited The Lands at Hillside Farms in Shavertown.

I really enjoyed the expansion in the number of restored green houses.  There was a weird kind of randomness to what was growing in there.  These are mostly succulants.

I took photos of some of the animals as we ate our ice cream.

Then came Father's Day weekend.  We had lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant and dinner at our new favorite Italian one.  In between there was a boat ride at Harvey's Lake and a "Rattlesnake Roundup" in Noxen.  (Hard to believe that this was my second time to that particular event.  It is both weird and interesting... a little creepy... but a good time for people watching.)

This was a very hard post to write, to re-write, to edit (to finish, once it was started).  I do have a hard time deciding how much to reveal about my loved ones.  And I am not yet a total blogger because lots of things are happening all around me and I am not always taking photos! 


Photo Credit Franklin Institute:  https://plus.google.com/106251580418573776406/photos?hl=en
Photo Credit barn at Hillside Farms:  http://www.thelandsathillsidefarms.org/about-us/  

Colorwork Meditation #7

Josef Albers, Homage to Square, collection

Independent of harmony rules, any color 'goes' or 'works' with any other color, presupposing that their quantities are appropriate.   ~ Josef Albers

Photo credit: http://igetitart.com/tag/josef-albers/

Previous Colorwork Meditation: #6 (Ruskin)
 

Reds

Would you put these two reds together?

I plan to.

The colors are Crimson Red (left) and Garnet Red (right).

Two of the skeins are Reynolds Lite Lopi (which has been discontinued), and the other two are Ístex Létt-Lopi.  The Lite Lopi (one of each color) was leftover from this Fair Isle Zipper Sweater I made for my daughter more than three years ago.

I actually had a whole skein of each of these two colors left.  Though I do not think that I would ever have thought to put them together (just the two of them) I kind of like the total redness of the pair.  This fact came to me when I pulled them out for my Taiga #1 and #2.  (See them in my recent posts here and here.)  I used the crimson for my temporary crochet on Taiga #1 and the garnet for my actual crochet on Taiga #2.  My appreciation of their paired redness lead to my ordering another skein of each color from Webs.  They are all different dye lots, and in the case of the crimson, they are even two different color numbers.

I don't think that will matter.

I plan to make a simple vest, bottom up, using each skein of the garnet followed by each skein of the crimson.  I enjoy planning projects like this even when I do not know when I will get to them.  (It will not be any time soon.)

I am happy to have this redness to look forward to.
I love the honest purity and light woolen goodness of Lite Lopi.
These colors have really grown on me.

"If one says 'red' - the name of color - and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different."   ~ Josef Albers

Super Sweet Blogger Award

I often feel like blogging is just a job that I must do.  As an aspiring knitwear designer, I feel that I must have at least this little bit of a presence (my own little corner) on the world wide web.  At other times, when I write a post that I am happy about, I have to admit that I do really enjoy it... blogging can be a very rewarding activity.  The second anniversary of my humble little blog is now approaching, and for the very first time I have been nominated for a blogger award.  I was very surprised to be nominated for something called the "Super Sweet Blogger Award" in a recent post by Linda Marveng.

Linda Marveng is an extremely talented and accomplished Norwegian knitwear designer.  (My link here is to her Ravelry designer page which is in English.  Please go see it!)  Her knitting book, To rett en vrang. Designstrikk, was published in January 2012, and is currently available only in Norwegian.  If I remember correctly, Linda and I first became acquainted, not so very long ago, when I favorited or commented on this design from her book.

© Kim Müller, from
To rett en vrang. Designstrikk

 I do very much love this design, Morbearsilkejakke,

 and I do hope to see it in English one day.

On being nominated, my thoughts were... what do I do now?  I know that I can answer the five questions, but I also know that I cannot, at this time, nominate twelve other blogs.  I regularly read many more than twelve blogs, but not so very many bloggers read mine.

I began by reading some of the blogs of the other nominees.  Some were in Norwegian (or other languages).  Most of the English language ones, even now, have not responded to being nominated.  But one blog in particular, "My Retiring Life", not only responded, but amazed me, with this post: "Everything goes so quickly for us..."  She, Tracy, included a complete description of the Grandfather Knitting Clock from a recent post by Linda Marveng.

To repeat, my Two (New) Great Blog recomendations:
Linda Marveng
My Retiring Life

Now onto the five questions.  Let me be brief.

1.  Cookies or cake?  I really do not eat very much of either.  But when I am at a wedding, a baptism or first communion celebration, a graduation, or even a birthday party, I always eat a couple bites of the cake.  I feel like it is just good manners.  Cake it is.
2.  Chocolate or vanilla?  Chocolate!
3.  Favorite sweet treat?  I do eat chocolate.  My current favorites are Ghirardelli Intense Dark Sea Salt Soiree Bar (with sea salt and roasted almonds) and Lindt Excellence A Touch of Sea Salt Dark Chocolate Bar.
4.  When do you get hit with cravings?  Mid to late afternoon.
5.  Sweet nickname?  I do not have one.  My father had the nickname "Sweets" at work, so I guess I am "Sweets' Daughter".

Tracy, of My Retiring Life, nominated only four blogs.  She said that she had the option of nominating up to a baker's dozen.  I was glad that I read that, because I knew that I could not nominate twelve.

I will nominate six.  I enjoy reading them all.  I know that only some of these bloggers read my blog.  I do hope that anyone I nominate will participate only if they really want to!

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Spinning First

Swatch Diaries

The Rainey Sisters