Meet Gigi!

Photo provided by designer Devin Ventre

Hi, Knitters,

I hope you are having a wonderful weekend. We went to the Madison Farmers' Market yesterday morning and it was fantastic as always. For dinner last night we used the produce we purchased to make tofu spring rolls. We have done this a couple of times now and although it's a lot of work we kind of have it down now where everyone has a certain job to make it go faster. I also made a rhubarb crisp for dessert and I just love that tart taste. Anyway, it was all so delicious that I'm still thinking about it as you can tell.

Yesterday we released a new cardigan kit over on Barrett Wool Co called the Gigi Cardigan Kit. You can read all about the background of this cardigan and kit on the BWC Journal by clicking right here. We are so excited about this charming short-sleeved cardigan which is knit up in our Wisconsin Woolen Spun Worsted yarn. The pattern and design are by new designer Devin Ventre. Devin has been so much fun to work with on this collaboration.

Click here to find out more about the Gigi Cardigan Kit!

We have five colorways from which to choose and custom artisan Black Walnut buttons to add if you like. These buttons are really special and are made by my favorite button maker, Jeff Wilson of Wooly Moss Roots. 

Read all about the buttons right here! It has been quite a process to get these buttons and they are exquisite. 

photo provided by Devin Ventre

Devin knit her Gigi in the Rain Shower colorway. I love the little details like the reverse stockinette on the shoulder and sleeve. 

Photo provided by Devin Ventre

The pocket is reverse stockinette stitch, too. 

Devin knit her Gigi in size 34 and my Gigi (below) is knit in size 38. Positive ease is written into the pattern so make sure you check out the finished measurements when determining your size.

Here is my Gigi worked up in the Sherwood colorway! I love it so much. I am already wearing it this summer. It is the perfect layering garment for all seasons. I am planning on wearing my Gigi with jeans and t-shirts both long and short sleeve, skirts, and over dresses. It can be dressed up and casual. This is one versatile garment. 

I made quite a few fun modifications and I am going to be blogging about those all week, including tutorials, over on the Barrett Wool Co. Journal if you'd like to follow along. 

I love sewing on buttons. It means things are almost finished. The buttons for the kit are simply amazing. They are handmade in Mapleton, Oregon, and honestly, they are the perfect finishing touch. 

This is the Sherwood colorway and it is an interesting color. It is teal but it is dyed over a darker wool so there is a heathered look to it that is hard to capture in photos. The Wisconsin Woolen Spun yarn is incredible to knit with on so many levels. The finished sweater is as light as air. 

Gigi is the perfect sweater for beginning sweater knitters or experienced knitters wanting to relax. The pattern is clear and concise. I worked my sweater on a US size 8 for the body and a US size 7 for the edgings. It goes really fast!

The Black Walnut buttons might be my favorite part of the kit. 

I have been wearing my Gigi everyday since it's been finished. Devin Ventre did such a wonderful job with this design and pattern. Congratulations, Devin!

Photo provided by Devin Ventre

I think this is my favorite photo from Devin. She knit a Gigi for her mother and it looks so cute. She used the Penny colorway and the cardigan is worked up in a size 42. It's a wonderful color for her.

Anyway, enjoy the Gigi Cardigan Kit if you get one. I'll have lots of tips and tricks for you along the way while you're knitting. As always, let me know if you have any questions or if we can be of any help over on Barrett Wool Co.

Much love to you all and happy Sunday!

xo ~ susan

Pattern Sale & Winner & March Mayhem!

Hi, Knitters,

I have randomly selected a winner for the Gale's Art 3-month Sock Blank Club. And the winner is.....

gathersnomoss (rav name) or Becky! Becky congratulations. I hope you enjoy knitting your socks. Thanks to everyone for leaving comments and I'll have another giveaway very soon. You can still sign up for Gale's Sock Blank Club! 

If you have sock blanks and you don't want to knit socks, don't forget that I have the perfect little shawl to knit up with one sock blank or one skein of sock yarn. It's called One Love and it is a really fun knit and a great spring/summer shawl. Click here to see the pattern for One Love!

Okay, now for the pattern sale. Over on Barrett Wool Co. we are celebrating the first day of spring (and it was 60 degrees outside yesterday!) by offering a 25% off coupon code for all of our patterns. 

The coupon code is: SPRING2017 and you enter it at checkout. You can use the code on Ravelry or on Barrettwoolco.com. 

Here are the Ravelry links to the patterns on sale (Code: SPRING2017)

Snowy Pine Shawl

Baa (includes exclusive video tutorials)

Wrap Me Up Toys

Wee Sheep (includes 7 exclusive video tutorials)

Hiking Hat

Skating Hat

Baker's Hat

Owen Hat

Waiting for Winter Bulky Mittens

Barrett Wool Co.wl (fisherman's rib ~ video tutorial included)

And one more quick thing, we have just restocked so much of our Wisconsin Woolen Spun yarns over in the Barrett Wool Mercantile! It is just beautiful yarn and you won't want to miss it.

Click here to check out our Wisconsin Woolen Spun yarns!

Over on the Mason-Dixon Knitting March Mayhem it appears my Sheep! pattern has made it through the first round of voting! Thank you so much if you voted. Round 2 voting ends at the end of the day today, March 21, 2017. So if you are voting, the Sheep! and I would love your vote for Round 2.

This is such a fun thing to get some knitting enthusiasm going. I love Ann and Kay of Mason-Dixon Knitting and if you aren't following their new website and shop, be sure to subscribe. They do a fantastic newsletter called Snippets every Saturday morning and I always look forward to it.

Click here to vote for Round 2 of March Mayhem! And thanks if you click on Sheep!

I just taught the Sheep! Workshop at the Madison Knitters Guild Knit In last weekend and it is such a fun class. It was wonderful teaching right in Madison at such a big event. 

Click here for the Sheep! pattern information or to purchase on Ravelry!

L to R: Mary Jane Mucklestone, me, Laura Nelkin, Lucy Neatby & Kate Atherley

I loved meeting all of the knitters in my classes and getting to hang out for a little bit with Lucy Neatby, Laura Nelkin, Kate Atherley and Mary Jane Mucklestone. My husband and I took the group out for dinner at the El Dorado Grill on Willy Street, and then we took them over to the Willy Street Co-op for a quick grocery shop. They were seeking out some healthy food to keep in their hotel rooms. 

It was a fun weekend. I hope you are all doing well. I have a fun Taproot Magazine giveaway coming up later this week so I'll be back very soon. 

Much love to you all.

xo ~ susan

p.s. I forgot to mention one last thing. Vickie Howell (of Knitty Gritty fame) is trying to start up a new knitting show and she has just started a Kickstarter. Click here to check it her campaign video! It sounds like a lot of fun. This would be a great thing for the knitting community! 

Gale's Art Sock Blank Subscription Giveaway and much more!

Bracket from Mason-Dixon Knitting

Hi, Knitters,

I've a few quick things before the giveaway information. First, the smart and clever ladies over at Mason-Dixon Knitting always surprise me with their fun ideas. Kay and Ann have come up with a knitting version of March Madness. Get your bracket now!

I am honored to be included in March Mayhem 2017 in the Home, Baby, Toy category with my Sheep! pattern. 

Voting for each category starts today, March 15, 2017 and they will have a winner by April 3, 2017. 

Everything Kay and Ann do is so well done and humor is always a major ingredient in their knitting.

Hop on over to vote, check out all of the patterns and to download their March Mayhem pdf bracket!

Click here for the Sheep! pattern information or to purchase. This is my pattern that is included in the March Mayhem Bracket. 

Yarn is Barrett Wool Co. Home Fingering Weight.

One more fun thing is that over on Barrett Wool Co. we are having a quick tiny scissors sale. We have marked down the scissors at $1.00 off the regular price through March 16th, 2017! That's tomorrow! No coupon code is necessary. All colors and styles are included. We are stocked up with Putford, Flower Power and Little Love styles in great colors.

Don't miss out on adding to your scissors collection! I love these snips and I think you will, too.

Click here to go to the Barrett Wool Co. scissors sale!

photo from Gale's Art

Now for the giveaway!

Gale of Gale's Art asked if I would like to offer a 3-month sock blank club membership to one of my lucky readers and of course I said yes. You can choose between the sparkle club and the regular sock yarn club. 

The prize is worth $100! You will love Gale's sock blanks. They are beautiful and a treat to knit. The finished socks are speckled and so beautiful. I have knit socks from her sock blanks and the finished socks are some of my favorites. Thanks to Gale for the opportunity.

Click here to read the information on what you could win!  I love Gale's inspiration.

Yarn information:

Fiber content for the sock blank yarn is 75% merino, 25% nylon. There are 463 yards per sock blank and they are 100 grams. The Recommended needle size is 1-3 US with 7 to 8 stitches per inch.

To enter to win leave one comment on this blog post. You must include your Ravelry username or an email address as a contact if you should win. Please only enter one time, there is a delay before you will see your comment appear. Only click on the Publish button one time.  I will randomly select a winner in a few days. I will then give Gale your contact information so you can work out the details of the prize.

Read Gale's information about each of the three blanks below:

photo from Gale's Art

“Fireworks over New York City”-The first month, April, will feature a stylized New York City Skyline at sunset. The fireworks overhead are a celebration for the summer! SHIPPING- APRIL 7, 2017

photo from Gale's Art

“Yellowstone with Bear” -The second installment will be a tribute to one of the greatest natural treasures in the United State. Verdant green mountains and valleys are the background for many happy campers and an occasional bear. SHIPPING - MAY 7, 2017

photo from Gale's Art

“Hawaii is hot,hot,hot” – is the third and final sock portion of the club offering. You can almost smell the tropical flower flowing on the trade winds of the islands! This is a super intensely colored sock has rainbow hues with purple hibiscus and bright green leaves dancing across it! SHIPPING June 2, 2017

I just have to share these cute photos from last weekend. My husband and TC and I went out for Sunday breakfast downtown and then we went to a fantastic art exhibit at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. There was also the St. Patty's Day Parade happening around the Capitol Square. My Miss Molly is from a big Irish family and they are in the parade every year. We walked over to see them and I was struck by all of our Waiting for Winter Mittens.

Miss Molly had knit her own pair and had knit some for her sister, Megan. I was wearing my own pair of Waiting for Winter Mittens out of some of my handspun yarn. My son snapped the photo above when we were comparing our mittens and I thought it was so cute. 

I am wearing my newest hat pattern called Owen. Click here for the Owen pattern!

Here are the mittens up close! 

Click here for the Waiting for Winter Mittens pattern on Ravelry!

Good luck if you enter the giveaway. I'll be back soon with more.

xo ~ susan

Snow Day

Hi, Knitters,

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Ours was filled with family time, fires in the fireplace, and good food. Before I start I want to give a quick reminder that today is the last day for my holiday pattern sale which is a discount of 20% off my entire Susan B. Anderson Ravelry Pattern Store (click here to see the pattern shop).

The discount code is: HOLIDAY2016

The sale includes all of the pattern and ebooks in my shop at the link above.

Now onto the topic of the day.

It finally snowed yesterday. It was exciting and extraordinarily beautiful outside. The snow came down most of the day. I couldn't wait to get out for a long hike with my husband and daughter and then later for a good run by myself. I stopped a lot to take photos during these two ventures out in the winter wonderland and I want to share them with you today. 

It was quiet and so was the color pallet. I soaked it all in.

 

I was struck by the birds flitting about so actively in the dried prairie grasses. I'm sure they were eating the seeds. Rarely do you see birds like this in December but they made the view incredibly pretty. You have to look kind of hard to see the birds but there were probably at least a dozen of them. 

The rest of the photos are from my snowy outings yesterday and I thought you might enjoy them. It was so quiet and gray outside that when you look around it makes you feel like you have a filter on your eyes. 

Have a great Monday and week ahead, friends. I'll be back soon with more. If you live in a snowy area, has it snowed yet? I look forward to this time of year and I hope you do, too.

One more question, how is your holiday knitting going? I am not able to devote a lot of time to gift knitting this year but I keep thinking about it so maybe I'll squeeze in a couple of gifts yet. 

I'd love to hear how you're doing out there. 

Take care and I'll be back soon with more.

xo ~ susan

Chunky Harvest Hats ~ free pattern!

Hi, Knitters,

I hope you are having a great Thanksgiving weekend, or a great weekend in general if you don't celebrate. We are having so much relaxing family time together and that is always a good thing although there has been far too much eating. We'll get back on track today with that!

I have a little present for you today. I released my first free blog pattern on the Barrett Wool Co. Journal. That is my blog over on my new website if you don't know yet. I wanted to start with a free pattern that is a real go-to pattern that everyone needs at one time or another so I thought of the Chunky Harvest Hats. After knitting a couple of these hats you will have it memorized.

Click here to see the Chunky Harvest Hats Free Pattern on the Barrett Wool Co. Journal!

Click here to see the Chunky Harvest Hats on Ravelry to favorite and queue!

The pattern has 6 sizes, to fit from newborn all the way to adult sized heads. I held two strands of the Barrett Wool Co. Home Worsted Weight together throughout the hat to make the fabric extra-squishy and also so it would work up incredibly fast. These hats are addicting for sure. The hats are knit at 3 stitches per inch on US size 10.5 needles. I'm telling you in an hour or two you will have a finished hat.

These make the perfect gift! And it's a great way to try out my new yarn if you're interested.

Pumpkin Hat in Marmalade and Grassland! 

Grape Hat in Bluff and Grassland.

Yellow Squash in Humble Gold and Ellie Gray.

Apple Hat in Red Flannel and Grassland.

Eggplant in Pepin and Grassland. 

I hope you enjoy knitting your Chunky Harvest Hats. 

Keep me posted if you do!

The holiday season has really snuck up on me this year in a way like I can't remember before. Maybe it has to do with the extremely warm weather. Although, it is finally getting colder. I think we are getting our tree at some point this weekend. How about you? 

I'll be back soon with more.

xo ~ susan

Snowflakes and Apples

Hi, Knitters,

I hope you are all having a good week. The fall weather has been on the warm side this year and we have been enjoying it as much as possible. We can't take the warmer weather for granted around here as winter is right around the corner.

I want to thank you for the support for the Mitten Knitting Season pattern sale I had over the last week. It was a hit and so I hope to see lots of your Waiting for Winter Mittens all over the place, stacks and stacks of them. My daughter gifted the mittens I knitted for her cross country sister at the last meet. I didn't hear much about it so I hope she likes them. And I have to say that if I don't hear anything about a gift, knitted or not, I never worry about it. It doesn't bother me at all not knowing if the person likes it because the fun for me is making the gift. After that I let it go. Although it is added fun if you do hear that the gift is enjoyed, of course.

Now, you may be wondering why I have the photo of a hat I designed in 2014 as the first photo. Yesterday or the day before that I noticed that my hat pattern, Split Back Snowflake, was getting some attention on Ravelry. It was rising back up in the Hot Right Now Patterns on Ravelry. Sometimes these things happen and I assume it's been mentioned somewhere or someone is knitting it and posting about it but I didn't know what was up this time.

I posted the original photo of my niece wearing the hat on my Instagram and people started letting me know that Staci Perry of Very Pink Knits had been posting about knitting her own Split Back Snowflake Hat. Staci is a prolific knitter, designer and knitting teacher and she has a very popular YouTube Channel called VeryPink Knits, where she does loads of tutorials and tutorial-style projects. You should definitely check her out. Thank you, Staci, for knitting the hat! 

Here is the back of the hat and thus the reason for the pattern title. The cable-rib brim is worked flat and then it is joined to begin working in the round for a short ribbed section and then moves into the colorwork section of the hat. When the hat is worn it should be tipped back a bit which makes the flat section hug the back of the neck (perfect for a low ponytail, too!) and the split creates earflaps to boot. There are so many good things about this hat. It is perfect for a new-to colorwork and new-to cable knitter because the patterns are simple and a hat is small with small sections of each. The hat also provides good variety for interest and moves quickly on the worsted weight yarn.

If the split back detail is not for you there is a more traditional option in the pattern, too.

The photos above show the traditional brim with a simple 1 by 1 rib to turn up or to wear down for a slouchier fit.

With two skeins each of two contrasting colors of Quince & Co. Owl you can get two hats including the pom poms. Three skeins of Owl will get you one hat, either version.

Anyway, it's been fun to revisit the Split Back Snowflake Hat pattern. My niece is the model and she is just so darn cute. 

Click here for more information or to purchase the Split Back Snowflake Hat on Ravelry!

Now for another subject, apples and apple picking. For the last ten years that I've been writing this blog I have talked about my love for apple picking and pumpkin picking in the fall. It has been a longstanding autumn tradition for us to head out and pick those apples. We like trying all sorts of kinds of apples and I am always fascinated by the variety and tastes and textures.

This year we focused on Northern Spy, Jonagold and Cortland for our picking. My son and his wife, and one of my daughters joined us so it was a small group by our standards but we had a blast and the weather was gorgeous.

I love how the rows of apple trees look so unassuming but when you get in there and look the apples are everywhere. We had the best weather. Oh, and I just remembered that as we were walking out of the rows of trees I ran into my buddy Jaala Spiro of Knit Circus with her kids. That was fun.

The apples this year were big, gigantic even. Some of the apples we picked were the largest I've ever seen.

In 2010 I posted about making applesauce in the oven and I shared my No Recipe Baked Applesauce recipe. Click here if you want to read about it!  I use this guide every time I bake applesauce and it never fails. In the old post it was fun to see TC playing her French horn in the background and my then newly remodeled kitchen. Seems like a long time ago. 

 Married life agrees with them!

I've made apple crisp and applesauce and I've eaten a lot of apples for snacks over the last week or two. I love it all. I've also blended a generous amount of cinnamon into plain cream cheese and added raisins for dipping with sliced apples. It's all so good and delicious.

I can't think of a better way to celebrate autumn each year. 

The colors are finally changing around here and it never gets old. The photo above was taken with my phone and I can't believe how good it turned out. My husband was with me on a hike and I told him how the landscape looked just like a painting. Then later when I looked at the photo I had taken it really looked like a painting in the photo. Sometimes it is hard to capture what you see in a photo. This time it worked.

The photo above was taken on my run in the late afternoon yesterday.  It was a pretty good view.

Right before I ended my run and headed home I stopped to take one last photo. You know, having a phone with a camera is one of the best things ever. I really enjoy being able to capture moments in time so randomly. (This makes me sound old but when you don't have a cell phone until you are in your mid-forties you can understand that it seems pretty wonderful.)

Have a great rest of your week, dear Knitters. I'll be back soon with more.
xo ~ susan