zportz hat that I knitted for my grandson :)

 


Looks fabulous!!!  Thank you to Susanna IC on Ravelry for the Zports pattern!!   It was alot of fun knitting this hat :)  Working on another one right now, it will be red & black.

Just starting Frosted Ferns, a free Herbert Niebling knitted doily design !

Firstly, I'm back!  It's been almost two months since I last posted here. These past two years seems like sometimes my interest is full force and other times it'll be days without ever even turning the computer on.

 I think the honeymoon period is finally waning. lol  That's not a bad thing mind you. Least wise it doesn't feel bad. Actually just realizing that I've finally broken out from underneath the OCD addictive technology spell that madly had it's grip on me.

After a decade of being enamored with the world wide web no longer do I feel pressured to hop on here and scope it all out daily to see what all I'm missing... as if it would all disappear and not ever be available again. hahahaha!

Lacefreak's Niebling Frosted Fern.
Visit her wonderful site for fabulous
inspiration!

Now on to more important things. Herbert Niebling's knitted lace doily designs.

Breathtaking beauty that leaves me Gobsmacked.

 I'll admit I've been too intimidated by my own lack of courage in skill ability to jump on the band wagon and tackle this desire. But no more. Yup, I'm finally going to do this.  Frosted Ferns is what I'm starting with for practice using crochet cotton and size 2 circ's. Many say this is one of Niebling's simpler intricate lace designs.

Ravelry has the free pattern for Frosted Fern on the internet at
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/frosted-ferns-7633
If your not a ravelry member... you should be. It is just an awesome place for fiber addicts. But if not, you can also find the pattern at  http://www.angelfire.com/folk/celtwich/KnitFrostedFern.html


UPDATED NOTE* as of Sept 2014 the angelfire url where I originally found this pattern is no longer available :(  it is apparently & sadly lost in 404 error land. boo!   BUT the good news IS that is still available for free download at Ravelry..which leads you to this URL  https://sites.google.com/site/nieblinglacelovers/frostedferns

ok, back to my journey... the first 36 rows were pleasantly easy to do. Than row 37 had me confounded. Not because it was difficult or anything like that, but suddenly I couldn't count correctly OR consistently! lol.   Of course it didn't help that I was under the influence of hydrocodone and just had a bi-lateral facet injection done on my lower back. You'd think commonsense would take over and allow me to put this pattern down for a few days and work on something mindless like a trusty sock pattern, but oh no, my hands wouldn't hear of it. They have a persistent mind all their own.  So I spent two days frogging and re-doing this row at least seven times.  Finally 99 sts just as it should be.

Than on to rows 39 thru 42. Jeepers. Apparently I don't take hints well. Instead of putting this project aside until a clearer mind was present I fumbled through the next four rows re-doing each at least twice. lol. I remember thinking Thankfully the even # rows are just plain knit. So I was merrily knitting away to the ends of each those rows only to find that my count was still off. And it was always on these even number rows where I'd mess up. But because I'm so new at this and unsure of myself I'd always frog back the previous odd number row also just to make sure there was no hidden operator error there.

Than today I discovered something while doing row 42 for the second time. I don't know why or how, but I suddenly realized that while I'm knitting my even # rows.. if I kept glancing at the pattern for the previous odd # row while I'm knitting the even # row and do that simultaneously it all came out perfectly.  How's that for clear as mud?  Basically for me, I need to do my straight even # row knits to the rhythm of the pattern 'phrases' in each previous row.  I'm so excited that I made this discovery about myself. So that's where I'm at for the moment.  Until later, toodles!

UPDATE*  here it is my frosted fern herbert neibling doily !! all finished on August 2011
and guess what ?!? it took first place blue ribbon @ our local fair.  That sure made me feel really good :)

sock pattern explodes into new design! Kudos to fellow ravelry'r lisseut !

Look what I stumbled across while surf'in knitty blogs....

and than it led me to .... knitted bliss ....

which of course I suspect is 2011's new years beginning to an incredible ingenious design talent !

check out this 'back' element ?!

The Pomatoma-shrug by lisseut

lisseut was inspired by Cookie A.'s  Pomatomus sock pattern from Knitty, Winter 2005 issue.


and her photography skills are really cool too.


what a motivator!

What of the new milleniums' first decade are you most appreciative for?

I must have to say that the internet experience of the new milleniums' first decade is one of the things that I have found the most useful and am the most thankful for.  It's been a hugh difficult adjustment these last several years not being able to hop in the car and go drive to other towns to go do my shopping... especially since the town I live being only 6 blocks wide & a mile long is surrounded by corn fields for like 10-15 miles in any direction with no taxi cabs or bus service, no library... and well, virtually no nothing but peaceful quietness ~ other towns is where all the shopping is.  LOL  It must have been incredibly frustrating, depressing and boring to be a shut-in back in the old'n days. But now what with Ravelry, Etsy.com, Amazon.com and Ebay what more could a person ask for!

Here's where I like to spend time looking at lovely work and learning how things will look in certain yarns/colors.. I find this a great way to window shop b4 I go and buy project necessities.
Lace Knitting Ring ~ such awesome & talented knitters!  



Ravelry ~ now this is a right gi-hugic knitting group folks!
As of december 2009 ravelry's newsletter said they calculated that there exists 277,000 knitting and crochet projects on Ravelry have been made from the 7,000 free patterns and 13,000 for-sale patterns that have been published on Rav! AND that 98.7% of the money from those sales have gone to the designers of those patterns themselves. Now that's pride of support. Their newsletter also says that during busy times of day, people buy 4 patterns every minute using the Ravelry pattern sales service, and with about 50 new patterns available as Ravelry downloads each day, it's clear that this support is going to keep on growing!


And a person can do Pattern gifting too! Personally I like this idea better than walmart gift cards ;)
all a person has to do is look for the little gift icon on the pattern page, just underneath the "buy it now" and "add to cart" links. 

And talk about groups... this is just as great as surfing by rings to find a knitters friendship. You can find people in your city, your state, by topic of interest, by craft and you can even look for events. It's really the coolest thing!