Like it? It turns out that the Something Else is a little, tiny lace jacket adapted from a vintage pattern. I love it. I really do. Really. I didn’t even mind the set-in sleeves this time, the lace is so charming that it seems like it would be wrong to pepper the process with colourful language or a foul temper. The little scalloped edges amuse me to no end. (That makes me disappointingly simple doesn’t it?) All it needs now is a picot edged ribbon sewn at the neck to close it with.
The yarn is highly recommended, Lana Gatto “Mignon”, 100% wool. I liked this yarn so much that I’ll be hopping over to Kim Brody Salazar’s WiseNeedle site, to post a review about it. It was cheap, it’s incredibly soft, and it held up really well to a couple of times when I mistreated it. If you don’t know about the yarn reviews at WiseNeedle, scadaddle over there and have a look. I often check a yarn before I buy it. Excellent resource.
Since Chris was the first one to nail down the Something Else as a cardigan, she wins my little contest. Hey Chris…c’mon down! (Is “The Price Is Right” still on? You’re supposed to imagine that voice over guy here…) You’ve won a really neat little kit to make a felted bowl! This kit was purchased by your local Yarn Harlot on her trip to Baadeck Yarns and transported back across several provinces for your knitting pleasure. The yarn is handspun by a girl named Chris Thomson in Cape Breton, and its a one of a kind treat!
By popular demand (ok, three people asked, but they all sounded like they missed it) “Tuesdays are for spinning” is back….but complicated.
Sometimes I wonder if the planet is really this complicated for everybody. A while ago I was surfing the blogs and the blog in question had a picture of some blue/pink/purple morning glories on it. The blogger said that they wished that they could find yarn that looked like that. I sympathized, inwardly. I didn’t leave a comment. That’s right, I surf the blogs all the time and I don’t comment. I want people to comment on my blog all the time, I love comments and moreover, I know that other bloggers feel exactly the same way. Still, I did not comment. I am trying to be a better person, but that’s not the point.
The point (and I do have one) is that even though I failed to comment, I did think fondly of this blogger and her wanting morning glory yarn. I was thinking about it the other day when I was rooting through the stash and I saw this roving that Laurie gave me. (Example #28 of why Laurie should be your friend too) It was blue and pink and purple. Sound familiar! Why yes it does! I had in my hands exactly the yarn that the blogger wanted. Well, not exactly the yarn, but you know what I mean. It was potential yarn, and it was perfect. I got this altruistic feeling, sort of a warm fuzzy glow. I realized that I could spin this roving for her, turn it into perfect morning glory yarn and then mail it to her and How Cool Would That Be. I fished out the roving, put it by the wheel and waited for Tuesday.
I’m pretty happy with it, and even though my morning glories are not the same as hers, I feel like it’s going to make her happy. It’s about 105 metres of 2 ply, 14wpi.
Enter complication.
I surf a lot of blogs. (I do it while I knit) Even if you think nobody is going to your blog, I bet I go there once in a while. Really, I get around. Even though I go to lots of blogs, and even though I recognize that I am pretty much stunned when it comes to remembering anything, especially names, and even though I didn’t do anything at all to set this blog apart from the other hundred or so that I cruised through that day…I am somehow shocked and appalled that now I need to admit that I can’t find the blog again. (Surprised? Sure.)
I have been making myself a deranged lunatic for days and days trying to find the blog again. I’ve been through the ROAK ring, I’ve cruised my history on my browsers (Yes. I use two. Yes, that seems really freaking stupid right now) I’ve looked at 8 million links and I’ve gone through about 17 million blog rolls. There are two possibilities at this point.
1. I’ve been back to it, probably a couple of times, but can’t find the picture of the morning glories because that post has been archived so the page looks different when I go there. That means that even though I’ve probably found the blog, I’m not going to know unless I go back and not only look at hundreds of blogs, but look at all their archives for the last two weeks. (Oh, sorry, is the noise of my life being sucked into a ravenous unrelenting vortex of obsessive blog cruising too loud for you?)
2. I dreamed it, or I’m beginning to have some sort of knitting blog hallucinations.
Either way, I’ve got some problems. Since I have sort of a tendency to lean toward the obsessive a little bit, (shut up. I hear you) I’ve been working on possibility #1. I’ve been working my way through the ring, (you know, the one with 500 blogs in it) checking the main page and the archives. This is slow work. Also, considering that all I’m trying to do is mail a complete stranger 105 metres of a yarn that matches her garden….well. We’re getting back to the obsessive thing.
Something has to happen. Someone needs to release me from leaping up during dinner and running to the computer because I thought of another blog that it might be. I’m driving Joe insane. I’m losing sleep. I wake up in the morning full of hope that today I will find it, and by the end of the day I’m all skinny and weird, hunched over the computer muttering things like “I saw it, I know I saw it. I did. It was there..don’t look at me”.
For the love of wool, I beg you. If you have been to a blog (or if you own a blog) with a picture of morning glories and a wish for yarn the same colour, release me from this search. I think the background was pink. Help me.
Edited to add: Thank you! It is Lolly!
(Rams, you can stop looking)
Yarn Harlot
Holy Batcave, Harlot! How *fast* do you knit??? I’m in awe. *g*
It’s gawgeous!
WOW…WOW…speechless…
No, it’s not that I don’t have a life that I am visiting your blog for the second time today and hoping for a new entry. That little cardigan is so beautiful it makes me want to have more kids just so I can knit it up myself. Actually not really, but I do love babies and especially babies in really, really gorgeous outfits. ESPECIALLY when someone else gets to change their poopie diapers! But I do have a candidate for such a beauty and I was wondering if you would be willing to share the pattern. Oh yes, I do recall coming across someone blog with the darned morning glories. I don’t remember who’s. It had something to do with ponchos. I found through links from your blog to someone else’s to someone else’s… Yeah, a lot of help I am. But for the price of the cardi pattern I am more than willing to help look! Good luck, Steph. For crying out loud, don’t lose sleep over it–school’s back in after all!!
well in a somewhat scary obsessive move of my own, i just spent the last 15 minutes doing various google searches as i became convinced that i would be the person to find it for you. morning glories glory knitting blog yarn wish i could find blah blah blah blah. best of luck!!
A fellow knitter from out S n B group had a picture of Morning Glories on her page in August. See if
http://stoneview.typepad.com/stoneview/
is the blog you were looking for.
Okay – Because I never forget anything…and because I also commented on those little beauties since I have some similar in my own garden…and since I have nothing better to do than to surf those blogs and recreate my own steps….here it is: http://lollyknitting.blogspot.com/2004/08/schule-hat-begonnen.html
And, thanks for commenting on my yarn…It made me really happy…really! And, I also wanted you to know that your daisy sweater is my absolute favorite little thing to knit up…I’ve made it about three times…
Okay – enough gushing…
OK, same as Carolyn. I think I need to ask that you don’t use the “o” word, it’s a trigger or something. Saw some nice pictures of morning glories, read a lot of what my daughter calls “touchy feely” stuff along the lines of knitting up the raveled sleeve. . . (she calls me hippy dippy, it’s not a compliment). Then I tried to get a grip, I spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with my own obsessions, must leave you to yours, but best of luck. Maybe she’ll write you.
And the pattern is…? Your own? Or can I buy it somewhere. I’m not normally one for lacy or frilly baby stuff but that, I like. Very much.
OMG! What a beautiful sweater! So beautiful that I am blatantly taking a coffee break here at work to drool! Pretty please share where you got the pattern, I think my new grand-niecelets (one here already and one to be born next month) need matching ones! (I must be insane, check my list of wip’s) Alas, I can’t help you with the morning glories, but what a great match! You ROCK girl!
Hi there, I read your blog all the time too, but I believe this is my first comment! Hope you find the morning glory blog – good luck making another knitter’s wish come true.
Hi I think I know the blogger you want:
http://www.lollyknitting.blogspot.com
See Entry 8/31/04. (boy, I wish I was her!!!)
Good luck
I’ve also been searching since you posted, with no luck. I’m sure with your network of commenters the blogger will be found, but I have to join those who give up. Saw lots of great morning glories, though.
I’m amazed (yet again) at how generous you are.
I love the little baby sweater. It is sooo beautiful!
What a beautiful tiny sweater! And I think the scalloped edges are a love ly effect, making it more interesting and much more vintage-looking. Thanks for the hint on WiseNeedles; if only I had known sooner, oh the troubles I could have avoided.
At first I thought it was Greta. She posted a picture of Morning Glories last week, but after following the link in Mattie’s comment I see it was Lolly. Lucky, lucky Lolly. To have yarn spun by the hands of the Harlot. I’m pea green with envy.
Oh. My. Gosh. The baby sweater is beautiful!! And the morning glory yarn-to die for. Lucky Girl who gets it. I too am guilty of reading many blogs but never commenting, but I will change my ways. I am a faithful reader who finds that your blog is my favorite. With two young children (3 and 6), I only hope to keep my sense of humor as they get older-you are not only one hell of a knitter but write some of the funniest stuff around. By the way, looooove that Harlot Poncho-can’t even keep up with the demand from those who want me to knit it.
Yo, if it’s =not= Lolly, would you say, please? Some of see this as a challenge (and one we’re glad to avoid, if it’s been risen to by others, so that we can sink back into blissful sloth.)
Oh Harlot, that sweater is beautiful!! I too would love you to share the pattern. I think if I organize my time (ha) and prioritize my list of WIPs and projects in queue (ha ha!!) then I *should* be able to get one done in time for my next babe. Thank goodness it’s not yet on the way! 🙂
Oh, and for the record… I think Lolly should know she’ll have a whole host of blog readers wanting to see what she’ll do with the yarn! Lucky thing!
lacy vintage baby cardis, hand dyed bowl kits, hand spun morning glory gifts — WOW
I’ve been lucky enough to get a comment from you before. I wish I could say it was me who posted the morning glory yarn. The lacy cardigan is beautiful.
That baby jacket is very beautiful. But lets get to the truly incredible here – you finished it, with scalloped edging sewn on and everything – in 6 days!( I checked all the dates when you posted about starting Something Else and finishing it – now if you go and tell me you actually finished it yesterday, but didn’t do the picture until today, well then, we’re down to 5 days……unless, of course, you realize that you have to also count the day you started, the 2nd, and then we’re at either 7 or 6 days. Obsessive about simple math?, me? Never.) Now although I’ll never admit to being a speedy knitter, I am faster than many, and I can imagine what it would be like to be really fast. However, this is insane. By all accounts you also started another sock (and made good headway) and did a bunch of spinning, no doubt wrote a couple of novels in there, birthed a few babes and nurtured your family. You also wrote entertaining blogs, took pictures and spent hours surfing for those morning glories. All in 6 (or 7, or 5,) days. Sigh. And how, exactly, do you surf while knitting – do you use your toes on the mouse or are you endlessly almost jabbing yourself with a needle as you click the mouse. I totally understand reading while knitting, its just using the keyboard/mouse alot that has me feeling perhaps you have extra appendages!
All that aside, I’ll add my voice in requesting the source for that beautiful pattern. I’m beyond adding to my family, but I have alot of sisters…..
Oooooh, I won a prize from the Harlot!! I am so excited!!! Thanks, Steph! And the little cardigan is gorgeous, BTW.
And I’m glad to read in the comments that it looks as if your morning glory yarn lady search might be over – whew!
I knitted that same ‘vintage’ somethingelse in pink some 34 years ago, for my daughter. Scarey when you find out stuff you knitted is now considered vintage!
I recall that it was a Patons book, smaller than the usual format, with a colour photo of a baby sideways on the cover.
And speaking of ponchos – and I have already knitted one, for the same daughter when she was six – they may have a best-before-date of a few months, but even Talbots is selling them:
http://www1.talbots.com/talbotsonline/item.asp?item=D58489&h=A&a=V&BID=S2004246143029F3CA575F8AF94545A861BB.
IMHO, the Very Harlot Very Poncho is very superior – I’ll have to see if that daughter wants another!
Lucky Lolly! I saw that post, too but couldn’t remember where until I read the comments. You are so sweet to make her wish come true!
Well, I normally just read without commenting (sorry!), but I’ve just got to post on this one: wow, how incredibly thoughtful of you!
Wow. *That* is the definition of a random act of kindness. You are so nice!
… and your baby cardi is divine!
Dognammit, you were pulling and tugging at the TOTALLY DISHONEST and thievingly dark recesses of my soul, and I was contemplating putting up a picture of morning glories and fabricating a whole post, then coming back and saying, “it was me! it was me!” and then you just burst my damn bubble at the end there. Blaaaah! (but what a loverly person you are and indeed that IS a true RAOK, and lucky lucky Lolly!!)
Dear Harlot with the flowing mane,
I thought of you this weekend in Seward, Alaska. (I never go anywhere. Chicago and its suburbs is all I usually see. This was a fling. But I digress.)
Anyhow…out of the many souvenir t-shirts advertising local watering holes and local wildlife, there was a shirt with two moose on the front, and in the back, in HUGE lettering, “NICE RACK.”
But I left it there. And I was so grateful that the words were on the back of the shirt.
Somehow, I think the rack discussion should not lead to such gifting.
Love the baby sweater, and hoping that you might be insane enough and feel that there have been changes enough that you could post a pattern, or make one available for sale.
Rack On!
Wow. Look how many wonderful readers you have! Somewhere in our knitting memory recesses, we have cached blogs. Come to think of it, as a collective, your readers are almost better than google.
Nice to know I’m not the only one wandering about random blogs and going huh! then wandering away, only to wander back at some later date and say, hey, I think I’ve been here before! It’s that pink blog!
BTW, I saw the “Who’s the Boss” button on chicknits blog and instantly thought of you. “Show your knitting Who’s the Boss”
I find the knitting/spinning world SUCH a wonderful place. I can actually think of nothing better than giving someone roving which they then spin and give to someone else. And maybe Lolly will knit it into something for yet another person. It all warms my heart while I wrestle with my new adminstrative duties (for which I am not fit — couldn’t I just knit them all socks?).
Of course, in Canada, circulation and revision of fiber products might get caught in some kind of value added thing (a.k.a. VAT) 😉
Stephanie,
I received so many notices to come and look at your blog… and I get here and I am completely speechless. You are so incredibly generous and thoughtful. I cannot believe it! Thank you so very much! I have no idea what I will do with such an amazing present. I am sure you and your readers will want to know… Please give me some ideas! I want to do it justice!
(On the same note, I have received SOOO many hits on my little ol’ blog today that it is running very slow, so if you wanna see it, you may have to wait for a few minutes!)
Once again, THANK YOU SO MUCH! *tear*
The baby sweater is simply exquisite. The morning glory yarn is beautiful, and is made all the more wonderful by your act of kindness.
The Something Else Cardie is gorgeous. I join the chorus: where’s the pattern?
Glad you found Lolly!
Ok, so, how do I get you to get obsessed about my happiness, so that *I* can get something in the mail? Huh? All I got in the mail today was a credit card bill, and a news magazine. See, what would really make me happy is a poncho that was lace, but was not Meg Swansen’s Mananita, and was not merely Big Needles and Yarn Overs, but was something I could concentrate on, considering that I have two small children….. oh, Harlot, I am beaming my need for this pattern to materialize, be linked to, be pointed my way…..Yah, I’m nuts, but in a good way.
The yarn is beautiful! If you have any more just lying around, and you’re dying to give it away, let me know!
I dug the pattern book for the Something Else cardigan out of my archives – Patons Baby Book SC97. The price shown is 2/6, and there is no ‘translation’ sticker from the store. I bought both the book and the yarn at Eatons – I think it was Vanity Fair Baby Yarn – in 1971.
I recall having knit several projects from that book. This was in the days before ultrasound.
Ay, mama! This is truly a day (OK, really, really late in it) brightener. I remembered your daughter when I looked out this morning and gazed upon what the remnants of Frances was doing to my fair (cough) city. My mood remained the color of the sky the rest of the day. And then, when I finally collapse from work for a bit of respite and “fun reading” time, I read this entry. Brought a little tear to this cynic’s eye. Thank you for reminding me that every day human kindness still exists!
Oh my goodness is that little sweater beautiful. The baby who receives that will be wearing a true heirloom.
Looks like between the little sweater and the handspun morning glory yarn you’ve created some very good karma for yourself today!
Is it possible that this is the post you were looking for?
http://colorjoy.com/weblog/archives/000690.html
beautiful sweater set…btw…i’m 75% finished with my daughter’s harlot poncho..i started it this morning…fabu pattern! Thanks!(she’s 19 and insisting on going on her trip to the carribean this friday…OY! it makes for faster knitting! at least she’s going to look cute spending her vacation in a shelter?)
cathy
Dear Harlot,
With this post you have shamed me into admiting I have a problem. I have become a blog voyeur. Lurking in the anonimity of cyberspace, I read your blog each day but never comment. It is time to come out of the shadows and tell you the truth.
I love your blog. I read it everyday, and find it to be a little bit of sanity and humor in the midst of my crazy work days. I think you are a vary talented writer, and have shared your posts with all sorts of nerdy folks here in the famed Silicon Valley. They agree. Non-knitting software engineers have been known to read your blog and report back to me on your charm.
I have not had this sort of realtionship to episodic writing since those terrific days of Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City” column in the San Francisco Chronicle, where I couldn’t wait to read the newspaper each morning.
Really, I think you are a terrific writer. You inspire me to knit on, to indulge in my love of fiber, and laugh at the wonderfully mad moments that comprise a life.
Thanks!
-leslie
::speechless::
that baby lace thing. is. amazing.
The baby jacket is superb.
Rowan’s “Georgia” cardi is a version for grownups. I am now inspired to finish mine.
The Harlot poncho becomes luxurious when knitted in a very soft yarn, and worn while reading in bed. Especially at the cottage.
Judith
Hiya,
Where can I buy the pattern for that little jacket? It’s beautiful, (and I’m expecting – and yes, I would too put it on a newborn boy).
Kate
I’m commenting, since you like comments, and to let you know that yours is my favorite knitting blog. You are the most amusing. And I love the baby sweater.
Your baby cardigan is beautiful. I would love to know where I could get the pattern. I will need to knit a baby sweater for early December for my cousin’s baby to be and this would be great.
Thanks for the beautiful pictures.