Grab a cuppa. I have a lot to tell you. First of all, have you mailed out your Red Scarf? I sent mine out on Saturday and this is what my lucky college kiddo will receive. Click to see up close. The details of the scarf can be found here. I also sent along a Camo GoKnit Pouch, a tin of Heal My Hands and some Heal My Lips from my shop. If you haven’t knit a scarf there’s still time! Do it dammit! You have until the end of January to mail them out. Send them here:

c/o “Care Package”
Orphan Foundation of America
21351 Gentry Drive, Suite 130
Sterling, Virginia 20166

I’ve talked about Poppy before. It’s the first knitted sweater I’ve seen in awhile that I would consider making for myself. I mean look at this one! After talking about it again the other day, Amanda commented about wanting to make it to and wished there was a knit-along for it. Need I say more? I checked in with Shobhana who had just read Amanda’s comment on my blog and she was excited for us to do this. If you would like to knit this sweater along with us come on over to the Poppy Along Blog I just put up. Amanda just got her gorgeous yarn but mine will still be my reward once I hit 100 miles for Runagogo. Who’s in with us!? There’s a button on the blog as well.

I updated the shop with Haiku Bags. There is a new beautiful color - Midnight Black. I’m trying so hard to be good and not keep one for myself. Since I already have two Haiku Bags and one Namaste Messenger I do not need it. Hurry up and buy that one so I don’t have a choice. I’m such a sucker for a black bag though! I also got back in the Bamboo Green, Amethyst & Chocolate.

Finally I want you to see these amazing dolls. Have you seen these dolls that Splink! makes? Oh my goodness. I saw one on my friend Small Hand’s blog the other day and knew that Supergirl needed one for her 5th birthday in March. Splink and I are going to do a trade and she is going to make a custom Supergirl doll. You all need to go to her shop and buy these. I almost bought this one for myself. I still might. I just love her. Say hello to Fran. Isn’t she fantastic? She’s still for sale….

I just keep going back and looking at all of her dolls because I think her work is just incredible. *sigh* Someone go and buy that too so I don’t. Or buy it for me if you want! HA!! Well my birthday is in March! Anyway, go there and buy something from her. She rocks.

A big thank you to everyone who wished Superboy a Happy Birthday. He has had the best time reading them. He keeps running to whatever room I’m in, “Mama! Is Chris a boy or a girl?! Did you see what Cookie wrote!? Did you see the funny poem mamatulip wrote?! Awww I miss Beverly can I email her!?” You all made my little guy super happy and feel free to keep leaving comments as I’m sure he’ll keep checking them.

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I love dyeing yarn. Really, it hit me yesterday when I finished re-skeining this custom order and just looked at how pretty they were. I’ve been so busy trying to play catch up I kind of forgot how much I love the creative aspect all of this. Looking at this order made me fall in love with dyeing yarn all over again. It’s pretty easy to lose sight of things when you’re up to your eyeballs in it. Stepping back and just looking at this sparked my energy and got me really excited to work again. I think catching up a bit helps too.

I think it’s also really cool how some of my earliest colorways like Bluetini and Appletini are still loved by so many people. The other ones in this picture are Fruit Salad, Harlot’s Mums & Snakes on a Skein (the Lime & Violet one). See my new tags? I love how they turned out. With the help of Adam, 3 new colorways are up in the gallery; Hedgehogs, Death Eaters & Cerrillos Mine.

I had to get a better picture of a few of my fingers so you could see what I was talking about. Really, they do not look nice at all. Click on the picture to see what I’m talking about. And dang, that’s only 3 fingers you can see! I pretty much have cuts on all of them. The good news is that the polish is staying on really well. I’m going for the harsh looking hands means I work hard look. Thanks to those of you who said that. Thaaaaat’s the ticket! And these nicks and cuts are not from me biting my cuticles. I’ve been really good over the past week.

I can’t believe I will be in Burbank, CA in two weeks. TWO weeks people. Serenity now. I also completely forgot that I’m teaching a little Hanukkah lesson at Superboy’s school next week so I just paid a ridiculous amount to get the dreidels and chocolate gelt here in 2 days. Oh well, it will be really cool to be able to do this for him and he’ll be happy to be able to give the kids little gift bags. I need to get my arse in gear and get some dyeing done. I guess it’s not even going to be 40′ here on Thursday. WTH?! That might slow down the outside dyeing a bit. Uh yeah. You think?

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Also, Shobhana is selling a beautiful new scarf pattern on her blog wanted everyone to know about. Through December 31st, she will contribute $1.75 per pattern (the majority of the profits) to F.I.R.E., the non-profit organization that ships all the Dulaan goodies to Mongolia. They need $40,000 for each shipment! So please go over and buy a pattern for a good cause. And heck, you get a pretty scarf out of it too! Thank you in advance if you buy one.

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My Red Scarf Project scarf is done. Superboy decided to do a little modeling for me. He chose the book as well. Nothing like a little Shakespeare. I really love how it came out.

Here it is up close. I used almost every last drop of my misshawklet’s handspun, the Berger du Nord that was my mom’s and two rows of a pretty light blue wool that I couldn’t tell you anything more about. I have no clue what it is. I was afraid it wouldn’t be wide enough so I threw that in there. I have to admit it’s my favorite part of the scarf. Please pick up some red yarn and knit a scarf or two for this great cause. You have until January to get it done for Pete’s sake!

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I bring you both today. My eye candy is this handspun skein of misshawklet’s I bought to make a scarf for the Red Scarf Project. Isn’t it beautiful? I’m going to make a lengthwise scarf with the other handspun I have from her so it will be red with some blue. I will make it shorter and wider so either a girl or guy can wear it. A guy can have a teensy bit of nylon sparkle can’t he?

And Saturday sky at 7:45am on 9.30.06. Balloon Fiesta starts next weekend!

Taos Wool Festival is next weekend as well, which I’m going to miss again this year. I’m really bummed but there is no way I can do it. I’m organizing a neighborhood breakfast, both kids have soccer games and then I have one on Sunday. I can’t miss any of that. Maybe next year?

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

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*peeks head out from under a pile of wet, rained on, yarn*

If you haven’t already seen this, the Red Scarf Project 2007 is about to start so go on over to Norma’s blog and read about it for the details. It’s near and dear to her heart so use up some of that pretty red yarn you have in your stash and take part in this wonderful charity knitting project. Everyone who knits a scarf and posts a picture on the blog could be the lucky winner of a skein of Scout’s hand painted yarn. It will be a beautiful skein of 400 yards of 100% worsted weight merino in shades of red and a touch of denim blue. Again, just head on over to Norma’s for all of the details.

Here is a button I made. You know the rules. Stealing other people’s bandwidth is super bad Karma. Save it to your own server, slap it up on your blog and get knitting.

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How To Add A Button To Your Blog Tutorial!

For those of you who don’t know how to add buttons here is a quick tutorial. If you need help just let me know. I’m no HTML expert by any means so if anyone who is sees something that needs to be changed or can think of a better way to explain it let me know and I’ll fix it.

1) right-click the button you want and save it to your OWN computer.

2) (this is the trickest part for some of you) You now need to upload the button back up to your own space somewhere online. Depending on your ISP (internet service provider) you should have space online where you can upload pictures. Go to your main account and see where they have ftp access information or directions as to how to do this. Otherwise, you could upload to a flickr account and that could work too.

3) once you have successfully uploaded the image you need to figure out the image URL. For example this image above is - *http://scoutj.com/images/red_scarf_project.jpg*

4) depending on your blog host, you then have to find where your sidebar HTML code is so you can add the button HTML. For example, in Wordpress you go into presentation>themes>theme editor>sidebar.

5) The first thing you should do is copy the entire HTML code and save it on your computer in case what you do messes it up. Always backup your HTML code!!

6) decide where you want your button to go and all you have to do is use this HTML code and take out the spaces before and after the < arrows> and because Wordpress is being a pain you need to delete the X they are sticking before the src and href.
< img xsrc="place your button URL here">

7) sometimes you have to play with your HTML and add some additional code to center/right/left/justify it so you like how it looks. There are a cajillion HTML tutorials online to help with all of the code you may need. Just remember to back up FIRST so you can always just copy and paste your original code back in if you mess it up.

8) for those Mensa students, you can then make your button a hyperlink (where you click it and it takes you to another site) by simply adding one more piece of code. Remember to take out all spaces after & before the < arrows > and the x’s.

< a xhref="the url link where you want the button to take you" >< img xsrc="place your button URL here">< /a>

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For those of you who get completely stuck I have added one more option.  Go to this HTML help page and you can simply copy and pasted the code I’ve provided.  After talking with my we guru Bruce, he said it’s okay for you to hotlink this one image.

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