I was remiss in my last post - HERE's a link to the complete Longfellow poem. It is really beautiful. I will get the pattern written up for the Lulu store soon - I only hope Knitpicks' doesn't discontinue any of the Palette colors by then.

Speaking of Christmas, last year DH didn't get me a gift as I instead asked for him to take me to Gallup, NM to buy me a piece of Indian jewelry. The trip finally happened and here's the bracelet I chose. It is Zuni and the artist's name is Quinton Quam. It features a blue jay, hummingbirds, and cardinals.




Here's downtown Gallup - it is the destination for people looking to buy Navajo, Hopi, or Zuni jewelry. Years ago I ordered from Virtual Yarns and I received a nice email from Alice Starmore recounting how she once purchased a bolo in Gallup. I've always wondered if that is the bolo she is wearing in her photo for her Fair Isle knitting book.



On the side of one of the buildings is a mural devoted to the Navajo code talkers - one guy is even holding a bunny!




We met up with my brother-in-law Dave from Phoenix and his partner Matt. Matt's family owns a cattle ranch in the Cibola National Forest where they camp in the Ponderosa pines. There is even a lake in the distance.

Here's a mama with her brand new baby hiding behind her.

Here's my latest project. I charted out the first stanza of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Christmas Bells" poem on a mitten. Longfellow had endured a tragic couple of years - first his wife died from a freak accident then his son was severely wounded in the Civil War. He wrote the poem on Christmas Day 1864 - here's the first stanza:

"I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old familar carols play

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, goodwill to men."

I'm using three colors of Knitpick's Palette - white, ivy and pimento (a really lovely red). This project is going pretty fast - I just love knitting letters.

Today's blog road trip highlights the beauty of Tesuque, NM which is a few miles north of Santa Fe. We were there last week and it was incredibly green.

The first 3 photos were taken at Shidoni Sculpture Gallery. Way back when I started the mitten booklet I had the idea to use Shidoni as the backdrop for some mitten photos but life intervened.










Shidoni has a foundry where you can watch metal being cast. All the sculptures are for sale if you happen to have an extra $20K or so in your pocket.









We ended up in a national forest area (Upper Pacheco Canyon??) and although I was too far to get a great photo, you could see the Santa Fe Opera house in the distance.








Someone was growing a garden at the bottom of this valley.






I have a new Christmas project (It is never too early to start!) to show you next.

No piggies today for you but here are some toes. I had to change the length of most of the toes to fit my feet - my little toe was much longer and my middle toe was much shorter. You can tell the middle toe is still too long in this photo.





My feet really don't like wearing toe socks so I'm in a quandary about these socks. I am planning to give everything I knit this year (except any socks I need and DH's Dale sweater) to the rabbit rescue people to sell at a garage sale but I'm not sure anyone will want piggy socks in non-machine washable yarn. Therefore I'm putting these socks aside until I figure out what to do.



Speaking of the rescue garage sale (the one I knit 10 zillion rabbit finger puppets for), I wanted to show you what the money they raised was used for. This is a fancy rabbit cage to fit six bunnies for the city animal shelter to use. You can see the cage at the Lucky Paws shelter in the Coronado Mall in Albuquerque.

I rarely get to downtown Albuquerque so when I went last weekend I took a few quick shots to show you.






This is San Felipe de Neri church in Old Town Albuquerque.





The world needs more bright blue doors, don't you think?



Old Town is quite popular with tourists and has lots of fun shops.

In the comments yesterday Nancy commented that what I was doing in the rainbow hat was knitted in I-Cord and PatB said her wonderful clock socks in Socks, Socks, Socks used a method of intarsia in the round. Check it out if you have that book or look her up as patknitter on Ravelry for more info. I'm almost to the heel on the first piggy toe sock and I decided to do duplicate stitch since I thought that would be the fastest. We'll see how long all that duplicate stitch takes me.

INTARSIA IN THE ROUND

The one and only time I did intarsia in the round was for this Chasing Rainbows Cap. (No pattern yet but I do hope to knit another cap and offer it as a free blog pattern this fall.) For each color I cut about 2 yards of yarn. I worked in the round with the black background color and each time I got to a new color, I did an interlock (i.e., twisting the yarns) and knit with that new color, then another interlock and back to the black which was stranded.




Here's the inside - this method will only work for narrow stripes though. As it is because the yarn for each color is pulled back to the beginning stitch every time you start a new row, it kind of puffs up the vertical stripes. I believe this is what PGR calls "zigzag intarsia" in the article referenced below. Interestingly she says to weave the background color in EVERY stitch when working the new color which I did not do for this hat. I bet her method will help the stripes from puffing up so much.



Here are some resources I've found for other methods of intarsia in the round. Some of these methods are called festive knitting or motif knitting. Some methods are considered true intarsia and some are a mixture of intarsia and stranding. Most seem to involve some sort of combo of short rows or moving counterclockwise either by purling back to a specific point or by knitting back backwards. If I've missed any good references, please let me know in the comments.

PRINT

"Traditional Techniques for Creating Ethnic Intarsia Designs," Interweave Knits, Fall 2003, Priscilla Gibson-Roberts - She outlines four methods - zigzag intarsia, motif knitting, intarsia with a seam line join, and seamless circular intarsia (which looks seriously complicated). There is also a pattern, the Love Stamp Socks, which uses all four methods. I checked and this back issue is no longer available so Ebay is your best bet.

Ethnic Socks and Stockings, Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, XRX 1995. She includes a section discussing motif knitting and zigzag intarsia.

"About Festive Knitting," Heel and Toes Gazette, Fall 2001, Dawn Brocco. A back issue is available at http://www.dawnbrocco.com . The issue includes a pattern for Cushy Socks which use this method.

According to the Dawn Brocco article a few other print resources on festive knitting are: Meg Swansen's Knitting, Anna Zilboorg's Socks for Sandals and Clogs, and Mary Thomas' Knitting Book.

ONLINE

Meredith Davey's free Ravelry pattern for Baseball Socks uses festive knitting.

Knitty's Intarsia Fun Hat is worked in the round.

Moth Heaven has a tutorial on one method of intarsia in the round with photos. There is no direct link - check the sidebar to the left.

Let Me ExplaiKnit discusses some methods of doing intarsia in the round.

Honeybee33 discusses four methods of circular intarsia.




This is Patch the sweetie pie. She's waiting to be adopted at Petco West Side on Old Airport Road in Albuquerque. The woman who grooms the dogs says Patch is very curious and just loves watching the dogs get haircuts. She'd be a great first-time house rabbit!

You can also meet Patch tomorrow, May 9th, at our next HRS Rabbit Adoptathon between 10 am and 2 pm at the Petco Lomas (10700 Lomas NE). Please stop by to meet our adoptable rabbits and talk to our knowledgeable rabbit people. You can also bring your bunnies in to get their claws clipped or to bond with another bunny.

Give me a day or two and I'll round up all the resources I can find about intarsia in the round and post them here. I need to hunt through my files.

The mitten booklet is finally done just in time for summer. It is available HERE on Ravelry and HERE on Lulu. It will be on Amazon also in a few weeks. I'm doing this one a bit differently - I will just give a straight 20% from the proceeds to our fledgling chapter of the New Mexico House Rabbit Society. I'm still committed to giving $1000 a year to the Colorado HRS from the other booklet sales.

Here are all the mitten patterns (four total) in the booklet again. I also included a little section on mitten knitting techniques.

Thanks everyone for reminding me I can also do the pigs on the piggy toe socks in intarsia in the round. I do have that old PGR article about how to do it - I'll dig it up and see what I think. I'm going to get started on the socks tonight during the 1st game of the Boston/Yankees series.

I've finally finished the knitting and photography for the mitten booklet. Here are the Sandia fingerless Mitts done in 2 colors of Palette. I'm happy with them but I'm even happier our lilac is blooming. The previous 2 years we received late frosts so we didn't get any lilacs.

All I have left is editing so I plan to drink lots of caffeine this week and finish up the booklet. Then it is on to a summer of fun socks.

The three colors of the Valencia mittens I showed in my last post are done by alternating the contrast color on each row (i.e., row 1 is blue and yellow, row 2 is blue and green, row 3 is blue and yellow again, etc.) - you do get some twisting of the yarns but I really like the finished look.

Once I'm done with the mitten booklet I'm going to start the piggy toe socks from Socks, Socks, Socks. After spending so long trying to find a sock yarn in the right shade of pink I finally decided to just make them in Palette using the colors below. After looking at the pattern it looks like duplicate stitch is the only choice for the pigs because they're not on the bottom of the foot. I suspect all that duplicate stitch will probably take as long as the actual knitting but I still think they'll be really fun to knit. I've never knit socks with individual toes either so that should be interesting.