Howdy Stranger!

For those of you who have followed The Chicks since way back when, you may recognize Elaine (sitting on the far left) as one of our original members. She came back for a visit today and you can tell by the expression on Kathleen's face it was a surprise for all! {{{I knew, but I kept it a secret}}} It was nice catching up with her and having another knitter in the flock. I hope she will feel inspired to start knitting again and rejoin the group!

 She did bring us two sweet hats to add to our inventory.

 Barbara got back on track with her Mistake Stitch Scarf and finished it beautifully along with...

a lofty, soft cowl. She told us it was a very easy pattern. That remains to be seen with the way I've been knitting lately. More on that later. 

 Barbara started another hat using Manos Maxima yarn. It's such a creamy red and soft yarn.

 Another scarflette finished too.

 Tied with the point in the front makes a nice bandana cowl.

Kathleen is making the same pattern with a different weight yarn. It's called the Amsterdam Lace Scarf  and can be knit in any weight yarn as long as you use the needle appropriate for the yarn. It can look like a tight knit pattern or a wide open lace, depending on how you block it.

 And Kathleen also finished the variegated gray vest she worked on last week.

 Liz is working on this slouchy hat.

 It's almost finished.

 Cinzia added a cute crocheted flower to her hat and again without using a pattern. Sheer genius!

 Maureen's cowl looks great. The variegated yarn shows off the knit 3, purl 3 pattern knitted in the round better in person.

 This is the Sanibel Cowl that Carole is knitting with the yarn from last week's cowl that she had to frog.

 This cowl is working up much more easily than the other one.

Remember the hat Dorah was knitting last week? This is it! We started recounting our experiences with so-called "easy patterns" and all the problems we encountered with them. We've decided that none of us can multi-task anymore. Remembering when our children were little and we could carry on 2 conversations at once while cooking dinner made us melancholy. We laughed about how Maureen made a beautiful buttonhole in a sweater but was called away by some distraction and when she returned to her knitting was horrified to see a big hole in her knitting which she proceeded to repair, only to discover 12 rows later when she was making another buttonhole that uh-oh! that hole wasn't a mistake! Bummer! 

 This is the Barber Pole Cowl designed and knitted by the lovely Staci Perry of Verypink.com in the photograph. I was knitting this last week, operative word here is "was".

 It is a very easy pattern knitted in the round to create a double thick cowl, but leave it to me to mess it up! I had knitted about 8 inches when I discovered 3 different blips in my knitting. The stripes were moving in crazy directions because I got off track. So I tinked back about 2 inches to start in a spot that was following the pattern. But again there were blips. Darn! Frog the whole thing! So now it's a straight forward striped scarf. 

I think I need to use 2 yarns that have a sharper contrast to each other next time I try the Barber Pole. So even as experienced as we all are, mistakes are made and corrected or sometimes ripped out and on to something totally different. Besides, it feels good to rrrriiiipppp it out!