Knitting an Easy Lace Scarf

Today is "Show and Tell Friday" over at Kelli's Place: Check out her website and see what others are talking about at Kelli's House.




This is a new knitting project started this week. It will be a 62" long scarf from a pattern handout given by Knit One Chat Too.

The fiber is hand dyed by the Hand Maiden, a Vancouver dyer. It is 50% wool, 50% silk, with a nice hand to the fiber. It is a pleasure to hold and work with this yarn. The reddish and mauve colors are sweet and keep those stitches from getting monotonous!

This is my first attempt at knitting a simple lace pattern and is listed at the Ravelry web site and on the Flickr web site. The pattern consists of only four rows in a simple repeat, with three of the rows using only a straight knit row or straight purl row. Easy!

Hand Dyed Yarn and Canadian Knit Shops

My friend Darlene was kind enough to ferry me to several yarn stores in Calgary last week. We visited Knit One Chat Too where their motto is:

Stop by Knit One Chat Too to enjoy conversation, coffee or tea, and knitting! Come in for classes tailored to fit knitters of all ages and skill sets. Or just stop by and relax in the warm environment and view our latest products!

And it was so true that personal assistance was provided, along with encouragement for your knitting efforts, and a cup of coffee. It was a friendly shop with a comfy sofa and overstuffed chairs available in case you needed a sit down or a quick refresher lesson on a particular hand craft technique.

My purchases at Knit One Chat Too included three skeins of hand dyed wool/silk fiber hand dyed by the Hand Maiden. This company is located in Vancouver, BC.


(photo courtesy of the Hand Maiden)

When traveling away from home, I try to pick up something from the new area so that when I come across it again in my own territory, the object will remind me of the time and place visited.

One of the skeins I purchases was dyed in gorgeous shaded of pinks, oranges, light crimson and burgundies. I began knitting on a lace scarf yesterday and am looking forward to seeing how it turns out. The fiber is a pleasure to hold since it is 50% preshrunk wool and 50% silk.

Another shop we visited, Gina Brown's, provided additional sock yarn for my stash. And look what I picked up there as a knitting toy: a whimsical monkey tape measure.

The nose of the monkey is the retractable gadget that reels in the tape.

You can purchase one of many similar tapes at Create For Less. It is a handy accessory, and one that makes me smile when reaching for it.

Thanks, Darlene, for a fun shopping experience.

Scrabble Tournament Pictures and Chinatown

Here are a few pictures from the Western Canadian Championship Scrabble Tournament in Calgary last weekend:

On the left is player Gloriosa Agdeppa (California) and on the right is Eric Tran from the Calgary Scrabble Club. He executed an amazing game against me in the tournament and won that game with an impressive total game score of 597.

Eric racked up four bingos (using all seven letters on your rack in one play, resulting in an additional 50 points for the bingo) in our game. Four bingos played in one game was just super, and I was so proud that he beat me so thoroughly, that I took his picture with his score sheet just to prove what an awesome player he is! He is 21 years old and a student at the university in Calgary. Needless to say, I believe he won the overall game plays in the tournament and received a fairly large monetary prize.

The picture above is an interior shot of a spice and tea store in the downtown area of Chinatown in Calgary.


This picture is the dome of the Chinese Cultural Center in downtown Calgary. It is patterned from the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. The cultural center had a well stocked gift shop, and a few toonies were spent there.

We shopped at several lovely yarn stores in Calgary, and tomorrow the posting will be about the hand dyed yarns purchased from independent Vancouver, BC fiber dyers.