You may have noticed that we have posted our Tosh Vintage on the website, kind of. We’ve explained briefly in the product description, but here is a great place to elaborate. You all send us quite a lot of e-mails daily about this yarn, and yesterday we received a shipment notification for most of our order. This shipment is currently in transit to us and will arrive tomorrow, January 28th. Since we don’t have the yarn yet, we obviously can not photograph it, and we can not verify that what we have on our invoice is what is in the box, but as far as we know, those 91 colorways should be arriving to us in multiple sweater quantities tomorrow.

Right now, you can add any colors you want to your wishlist to receive e-mail notification as soon as we get them in. Once we get them physically in the store, you’ll be able to order them even if we haven’t been able to take a photo yet. We will be scurrying to upload the photos to the website, but with so many colors it will probably take a day or two to get them all up. We can not take pre-orders on these because, like I said, we don’t have it yet so we can’t be certain that these are in the box and don’t want you to lose out.

Speaking of all things vintage, I’ve been meaning to share one of my favorite Christmas knits with all of you. As a child, my mother crocheted a lot, but my sister and I only saw one thing that she ever knit – these animals vests. I had a version with kittens, and my sister had bunnies, and we both still treasure these and lament that we no longer fit into them.

Well, it turns out that my mom still had the pattern, which meant only one thing – adult-sized animal vests, of course. It took a grand amount of modification to make one that fit an adult woman and wasn’t totally ludicrous to wear, but I am ever so pleased with how it turned out, and my sister loves it! The yarn is Tosh DK in Composition Book Grey.

Okay, not really. What I have is a new scarf, and I couldn’t be more excited. Finishing up gloves, scarves, hats and sweaters for Christmas gifts in all the northerly snow reminded me over and over that the cobbler’s children have no shoes. Yes, it’s true – I did not own a scarf, or a pair of gloves (I do have a fabulous Hannah hat, though). My hands were so cold in New Jersey that I whipped up a quick pair of mittens with some leftover Tosh Worsted, but I continued to dream of one day owning a snuggly scarf.

This guy, whom I have affectionately dubbed Snuggles, was knit out of two skeins of Eyre in the Garden Party colorway that I snagged months ago due to a child-like infatuation with anything rainbow colored. This was the perfect use for them, as the yarn is so cuddly and soft that any excuse to have it near your face is more than welcome, and the cables are pretty without overpowering the colorway. I used a little more than half of the second skein before realizing the scarf was already a bit long (it’s more than 5 feet in length, which is about the same as my height!).

It is just modified from a couple of other stitch patterns I dug up, but if you want a Snuggles of your very own, I posted the instructions on my Ravelry project page.

Some answers to common questions from the last post:
Q: How do Malabrigo Club members get the downloads for free?
A: Log in using the account you used to order your Malabrigo Club subscription, and add the downloads to your cart. The price will display as $0.00.

Q: Do you have to enter a credit card to “purchase” the free scarf pattern download?
A: Unfortunately, yes, we have no way to checkout on our website without “payment” at this time. The charge is $0, but if this is a problem, we recommend using the free Ravelry download version instead.

All of the patterns that were designed for our 2009 Malabrigo Projects Club are now available for purchase, and as an added bonus, we’ve been able to offer these to you in two formats: instant download or traditional print copies. All of these patterns were designed exclusively for us using a variety of Malabrigo yarns and are available only on our website. Some of our favorites:

Vine Bolero by Emily Johnson

Knit in Malabrigo Silky Merino in Cape Cod Gray. Alternative yarn ideas: Lorna’s Laces Lion & Lamb, or even Madelinetosh Wren.

Brilliance Pullover by Katie Francheschi

Knit in Malabrigo Worsted Merino in Lettuce. Alternative yarn ideas: Yarn Love Anne Shirley, Madelinetosh Tosh Merino

Trifecta Scarf by Star Athena

Knit in Malabrigo Lace Merino in Cognac. Alternative yarn ideas: any lace yarn at all!

We’ve also made our final scarf pattern available as a free download for those of you looking for a quick new scarf!

Psst, club members: if you’d like PDF versions of any of these patterns, you can download them instantly free of charge.

Well, after completing my own personal knitting olympics for a holiday knitting list that was really, truly an ode to my poor sense of planning and grandiose intentions (I finished everything except one teensy tiny thing! That I had a back-up gift for, as I kind of planned to fail on that one.), we made our every-other-year pilgrimage to New Jersey where we spent a lovely wintry Christmas with Dan’s family.

After 8 years living in Georgia, I have been amazed to say that it has really been years since I have seen snow. We’ve gotten the occasional quarter inch, and I think once there was a really bad ice storm a few years back, but the kind of snow where you might throw a snowball, or go sledding, or even shovel the walk? We don’t get that here, and it hasn’t snowed once on our annual journeys north. So once we determined that everyone was safe, I was kind of delighted to hear about the record 23.2 inches of snowfall awaiting us in the Philadelphia area.

It didn’t even take that long – driving up, we stopped at a 7-11 in Woodstock, Virginia, and Diesel got to play in this:

We also got to introduce my dad to another Southern delight (though I first tried it in Pittsburgh in the interest of full disclosure) – New Jersey now has Chick-Fil-A, and I was shocked to find out that not only had he never had Chick-Fil-A but he hadn’t had a chicken biscuit at all, ever!

The verdict: he tried to get another the next morning, forgetting my promise that you will never want Chick-Fil-A more than Sunday morning, when they are closed. (Forgive the unflattering picture, but fair is fair. And look, I’m wearing a handknit! Low Tide Ripples in Tosh Worsted Posy.)

And on the drive back, we got a real treat – the restaurant we stopped at for lunch turned out to be directly underneath the giant peach water tower that welcomes you to Gaffney, South Carolina.

Dog and 6’7″ husband included to give you an idea of just how massive this thing is. Turns out it has a name – Peachoid! And it won the 1981 Steel Tank of the Year Award. So, new idea: US road trip to see various Steel Tanks of the Year?

Next post: knitting content, I promise.

Oh and: in case you missed it, the 2010 Yarnathon has begun. All yardage has reset from 2009 – you retain any store credit or prizes you may have earned last year!