Edie's Shoulder Wrap from The Knit Shop - Done...sort of

Feather and Fan and Frustration...

I’m guessing you knew how that was going to end up.

Restored--no, I won't let you't see the botched version

Yep, turned out I had to rip all the feather and fan out and start over. 

Good thing I wasn’t alone. My friend (and April 2012 Author Who Knits feature) Camy Tang was there at the writers conference where I was.  Not only is Camy a talented writer, but she is also ninja-level knitter and a master of the feather and fan.  If anyone could save this shawl, it’s Camy.  Conversely, if anyone knew it was beyond saving, it was Camy.  

The verdict was pronounced, and Camy and I began to rip.  And rip.  And rip.

We were sitting in the hotel lobby, and you could divide those who walked by into two distinct groups:  non knitters who wondered what the heck we were doing with all that tangled yarn, and knitters who stood in sad solidarity as we pulled irredeemable tangled mohair from its place.

To add to the pain, I didn’t have anywhere near the right number of stitches I should have had to start the feather and fan portion.  Again, Camy to the rescue!  That dear friend sat there and recalculated/rewrote the pattern for me so I could move ahead with the stitches I had.  Because that’s what a knitter does for a knitter in need.  When a fellow knitter comes to you heartbroken, moaning “fix this!,” you dig in your heels (and your needles) and lend a hand.

It’s not done.  It’s close, but I can’t bear to make you watch further.  Just trust that I made it out of the pit alive and am clawing my way toward the finish line.  

For everyone’s mental health, we’ve moving along to Austin for our next episode.  Don’t worry Edie, I promise I’ll stick it out until the end and post a photo one of these days!

April Authors Who Knit: Camy Tang

This month we meet Camy Tang.  We've been friends for years, and she has accompanied me on several of my DestiKNITions adventures.  Here she is:

Camy, what’s on your needles right now?

I’m still knitting a beautiful lace shawl for one of my Street Team members who won it in the last contest! It’s taking longer than I expected but I hope she’ll like it. She essentially said, “Surprise me!” so I’m making something extra special!

What feels like your favorite/greatest knitting accomplishment?

My parents’ family crest afghan. I had to make the intarsia pattern myself from photocopies of our families’ crests. It wasn’t hard, but it was a bit tedious, and my parents were really touched by the afghan present.

DestiKNITers, if you want to see Camy's stunning afghan (I know I did) click here on Ravelry or here for the pics on Flickr. 

What feels like the worst knitting mistake/foible/wrong choice you’ve ever made?

I bought this luscious alpaca chunky yarn and made this pretty sweater that looked awful on me because of my wide hips, which was where the pattern was on the sweater. I don’t know why I didn’t catch that before I had knit the entire thing. I still can’t bear to look at the yarn again after I unraveled it all. :P

Straight or circular needles?

Definitely circs! I’ve snapped so many wooden straight needles it’s not even funny. My butt unerringly will sit on it no matter where I am.

Metal or wood needles?

I used to be an all-wood gal, but lately I’ve been using more metal needles for socks and sweaters since I’m using more wool, and metal seems to make the knitting easier without sticking. I’m very partial to the Knitpicks.com needles.

White chocolate, milk chocolate, or dark chocolate?

Dark, but don’t hate me--I’m not a huge chocolate fan. I’ll eat it and enjoy it, but I tend to choose fruity desserts rather than chocolatey, even during those times of the month.

Coffee or tea?

TEATEATEATEATEA!!!! My favorite tea purveyor is Lupicia, which is based in Japan but they have shops in the US and a US website: lupiciausa.com Their chocolate strawberry puer tea is TO. DIE. FOR.

Have you written a knitting character? 

Normally no, because there’s not much place for knitting in my Love Inspired Suspenses, but in my humorous romantic suspense, Protection for Hire, the hero’s mother knits and teaches my heroine. :)

What’s the last thing anyone would suspect about your most recent book?

I actually had to use my husband for some of the fight scenes. He likes watching UFC and mixed martial arts, so I asked him how my heroine would take down a 250 pound man, and he explained a few moves she’d probably do, and showed me some video footage of televised fights to show the moves in real life. It was quite a bonding moment. :)

Your Raverly name: camytang

Give a shout out to your favorite local yarn store:

Green Planet Yarn

368 E Campbell Ave

Campbell, CA 95008

408-871-9196

greenplanetyarn.com

Super nice folks there and all the yarn is earth-friendly! They also have a free knitting doctor who has open hours there every week.

Be sure to drop by Camy's website to learn more about this fun author.

Up next, the final post for the amazing alligator!

Knit Along: Hand Spun Bouquet Scarf from Loopy Mango - Day 3

Peer pressure

So here I am, happily knitting along on my zippy little scarf, when my friend Camy shoots me a link to the same project on her Ravelry page.  She was with me when I visited Loopy Mango, and I knew she bought the same yarn in black with pink rosettes.  “Cute,” I think as I look at the photos of her scarf in progress.

  

I keep reading.  Camy starts talking about how she did her scarf.  How she decided she wanted longer and narrower, so she used bigger needles and cast on six stitches instead of eight.  Suddenly, my scarf looks fat and clunky.  Then she goes on about how she decided a serge edge--slipping the first stitch of each row--to give it a smoother line.  Now I look at the bumps on the edge of my scarf and convince myself they’d be itchy against my neck.  Did I see any of this before?  Of course not.  Would I have were it not for Camy?  I think we all know the answer to that.

When you can whip up the entire project in a single evening, it’s alarmingly easy to talk yourself into ripping the whole thing out and starting again.  “It won’t take long,” I coo to myself as I once again wind this into a fiber rosette volleyball.  “The thinner, longer scarf will give me more to play with,” I console my now empty needles (still size 35’s--I couldn’t totally copy Camy and switch to 50’s ‘cuz that’d be cheating).

You know what they say:  steal one idea, and it’s plagiarism.  Steal a couple of ideas, and it’s “research.”  Either way, I'm back to square one.  Or is that stitch one?