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Join Me for a Giveaway of Olympic Proportions!

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olympic giveaway craft gossipI’ve been hinting at something special happening in conjunction with the Olympics, and now that the opening ceremonies are just a day away I can share with you what I’m planning. I really wanted to do something special to celebrate joining the Craft Gossip team as well as celebrating the Olympics.

The Games are such a fun event, bringing people from around the world to their television sets to watch great feats of sport (and, let’s hope, sportsmanship) and enjoy a moment of togetherness and commonality it’s rare to feel these days.

Odds are good, despite the recent unpleasantness, that a lot of knitters around the world will be watching the Games, and many of us will be knitting while we do. I know I’m going to be working on a bunch of projects for my book, and I hope the dedicated TV time will keep me on track (grin) to finish a few things.

So, on to the fun stuff: the giveaways! Starting tomorrow, and continuing each day through the Olympics (that’s through August 12) I’ll be giving something away — a book, magazine, yarn, I don’t know what all yet.

What I do know is they’ll be one giveaway a day and it will last a day. You’ll enter by posing a comment on that day’s post; the winner will be chosen at random. You’ll have to comment on each giveaway to be entered, so come back every day to see what’s on offer. And winning one giveaway won’t make you ineligible to win future giveaways, so keep coming back and enter as many as you like.

Because of that I’ll wait until the Olympics are over and all the winners have been notified to mail the goodies.

I’m really excited both to clean out some of my stash and to share some knitting goodies with you. Who’s ready to win some free stuff? I’ll see you tomorrow with the first giveaway!

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Comments

  1. Hooray for the US and all the families, friends and fans that encourage the players. Woot woot. I’m in!

Have you read?

Super Fun Colorwork Socks to Knit

When I knit socks (which sadly I have not done in a while; need to get a new pair on the needles soon!) I generally stick to pretty simple designs and colorwork that isn’t all that detailed. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love a fancy sock, I’m also just pretty lazy and I figure a project worked on size 0 or 1 US needles is going to take a long time even without the added work of intricate colorwork, so why make it more complicated?

But there are definitely socks out there I’d be willing to make an exception for, and I think Tangled Bliss by Annette Schleicher may just be one of them. 

If you can’t tell from looking, this is decidedly an advanced knitting pattern. There’s brioche for the cuffs, complex looking colorwork done with the ladderback jacquard technique, multiple charts, and colors changing everywhere. 

There are links to tutorials for all the special skills in the pattern, but still it would help to have a handle on these concepts before you get started. 

The pattern uses three colors of light fingering weight yarn at a whopping 31 stitches per 4 inches/10 cm (that’s 7.75 stitches per inch/2.5 cm). 

Would you believe me if I told you that this pattern was designed for a speed knitting contest? Speed would be the last thing on my mind. 

But again, I think all the work for these fancy socks would be worth it. I love hoe the colorwork looks like an old tile floor, and think of the bragging rights when you tell people you made them yourself. (Though of course you did; have you ever seen store-bought socks that look anything like this?)

Best of all, this pattern is available for free on Ravelry, so there’s no reason not to give it a try if you’ve got the skills. If you do, I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Annette Schleicher]

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