What Does the New Twisted Knitster colorway look like? Moving soon and I don't want to take it all with me Yarn Give-away

With so much going on lately I have moved the blogjeopardy game to late in the year and in it's place I'm going to do something simple and helpful to me. I'm having a one year blogiversary/moving giveaway and I don't-want-to-pack-all-the-yarn game. Very simple - I need a name and color combination for the Twisted Knitster yarn. No limits no restrictions, I want all suggestions. the winner will be chosen at random so you don't have to worry about your comments or color recommendations. single color solid or multi-shade, multi-color self stripping etc. I will have a sock version and a garment (DK-Worsted Weight) version too. You may be asking why? Well I want to creat a colorway that will become something that I will include with all my swaps from here on out. Anyone who comments with their suggestion will get an entry into the contest. The winner is random and I may or may not use the suggestions for my color way. If you can be shade specific, that's great. i.e. rose pink and cream, rather than pink and white. I need a little inspiration. Mrs. Twisted and I have a few ideas, but I want to hear yours! OK, while I do love the comments on the blog and feel free to vent but I have a special e-mail address to use for your submission. This makes it easier for you to include pictures and not to tip your color combo or style to another entrant.

twistedbloggame@sbcglobal.net

1. Color(s) and type (solid, variegated, etc.)
2. Color Name But helpful(Optional)
3. Picture, again not required, but you know a picture is worth a thousand words. Hey you can even use crayons or colored pencils on paper.

The entrants names will be tossed into a hat and the winner drawn by Mrs. Twisted. The process will be shown on You-Tube so nobody thinks it's fixed. Submissions will end Thursday 8-9-2007 @ 7:00 PM PST. Winners will be announced Friday night.

Oh yes the prize. Hmmm ..... well I will go into that on Friday but if you know me then you will know that it's going to be fun and probably excessive (silk cashmere etc). I may throw in a few items specifically for the winner if I know them or can gleam some info from their blog.

Only one entry per person and good luck.

Let the Games begin

Are you feeling lucky?

As a thank you to all the people who read my silly ramblings I want to do something a little special. Have you seen those celebrations where the one millionth visitor to a store gets a huge check and balloons fall from above and confetti and streamers come from nowhere? Well it won't be that fancy but I'm close to 3,000 visitors and some time next week, I will see the 3,000th hit to my blog. I know this may not seem like much to some more prolific bloggers but I never thought I would get so much traffic from all over the world. If you are a regular then you you know of our regular yarn crawls and that our "yarn store" cupboards runneth over. I am unable to know the identity of each visitor so I must select the 1st comment after the 3,000 visit. I turned off the counter so their is no cheating but I will give you a hint, it will happen next week. The winner will receive a very special gift of yarn from the stash o plenty (of my selection) and it will not be acrylic or fun fur. You can browse our stash on the flicker pad to your right.

The winner will be notified by email if I can. I will also post the winner here and a link to their blog as thanks for playing. Sorry Mrs Twisted but employees and family members are not eligible to win and their comments are excluded from consideration. If I notify you and you wish to decline free yarn, the winner will be the next commenter. Stash busting makes room for more yarn.

And the Winner is....

For best supporting extremity in a non-speaking role. And the winner is???????

Ok so I didn't win anything or even get a word on camera but I had a chance to use this silly picture of me holding the Oscar from last month when we took some relatives to see the Kodak Theater and they had an Oscar history exhibition. To bad I wasn't wearing my tuxedo, it would have been more believable, and yes I do have my own tuxedo. If you had a chance to see my TV debut last week you have seen my hands at their best or at least knitting. The link is on the last post.

Very busy shopping weekend, Secret Pal has started again so I did some online shopping and some LYS shopping.

I had something happen today that I must say took me by surprise. When I opened the door to La Petite Knitterie this afternoon I was met with “Hey, It’s Mr. Twisted.” I know Kat and Lori Lawson from the shop but I didn’t recognize the lady but she knew me. I was speechless. It was a little uncomfortable for me to be recognized by what I published on my blog but also honored that people take the time to read my musings. I was a little uncomfortable in that I wandered around looking at the yarn but not really looking at it. When we write in these online dialogs we only think a few of our friends and a few other knitters who comment are really paying attention until she started asking me about pictures I forgot I even posted. I just didn’t think anyone was really paying that much attention. I don’t think it’s going to change the way I write or the subject matter I blog about but I hope when she comments I will be able to enjoy her blog as well. It was fun to hear that she used my blog to show her husband he’s not the only male knitter out there.

Oh there is some knitting content here too
Mrs. Twisted finished her Bombshell top from Big Girl Knits
Made from Blue Sky Alpaca 100% Alpaca





And she finished a pair of socks in the book “Knitting on the road” by Nancy Bush.
The pattern is Conwy in Posh yarn Lucia (75% merino and 25% cashmere) in color way Twinkle.

My socks are coming along well. No major problems (knock on wood) for a little while. I’ll post a pic when the first one is complete. Soon I’m sure.a

And the Winner is.... Not yet but here are the spoils

We went a purging and here are the winners take of the contest. I'm still taking the picture and listing the 2nd prize. Yes you heard right their is a second prize. No the drawing hasn't happened yet. You can see the drawing tomorrow night around 7:00-8:30 but to keep you all on the edge of your seats here is a pic and the list of the 1st place prize. as promised Casmere and Noro and more. Lots of hand dyed and even some hand spun hand dyed, indie yanrs too.

1. 4 hanks of Classic Elite Yarns Miracle 50/50 Alpaca Tencel 108 yards each in a copper color.
   


2. 2 hanks of Blue Sky Alpaca 100% alpaca 109 yards each Black colorway
   


3. 2 hanks of Jade Sapphire 6 ply Mongolian Cashmere 150 yards each Sterling colorway.
   


4. 1 hank of hand dyed "Yarns To Dye for"merino/cashmere 123 yards blue purple pink
   


5. 5 hanks of Noro Cash Iroha silk 100 yards each in Denim
   


6. Vintage Lorna's Laces hand dyed Shepard Worsted 225 yards in a light blue green yellow. This is the Lorna's Laces before it was sold, while it was still a hand dyed yarn.
   


7. 10 hanks of Noro Silk Garden 110 yards each Colorway 232
   


8. 2 hanks of Louet Gems 100% merino sock yarn 185 yards each in Burgundy colorway
   


9. 1 Fleece Artist Sea Wool sock yarn 350 meters in bronze colorway.
   


10. 1 hank of hand spun wool 110 yards hand dyed in Lilac
    


11. one hank of hand dyed merino/cashmere boucle from one of our friends who hand spins and hand dyes in a beautiful monochomatic teal color
    


12. One skein of Mama Llama yarns original sock yarn 425 yards in Angelika colorway. My favorite colorway of Catherine Kerth.
    


13. 2 hanks of La Petite Knitterie Hand paints sock yarn hand dyed by Lori Lawson of Capistrano Fiber Arts Studio in a peach colorway
    

Ok I need to take the picture of the 2nd prize now and list the yarns so if your awake and have me on blog lines enjoy.

Bet we have more entries next time..... Oh the 2nd prize is almost as much as the 1st prize

New Yarn and New FO

As a belated birthday gift for the Mrs. we ordered some silk yarn that she had been wanting for a long time. We were looking for it during out trip to Stitches West, but didn't really didn't find enough or a good deal on price to pull the trigger. I found some at one of our favorite on line stores. They have a store front in Florida and seem to carry yarns we like to use. I know that buying on the Internet hurts the LYS but this is a local yarn store too. Just not local to me. I agree that buying only online is not the best for the industry but these stores are not going away. I think shops need to embrace the world market and realize that there are people willing to shop online for the product they want, if they can't find it locally. We don't buy based on price alone and we support SEVERAL local and not so local LYS also.



Here are some of the pictures of the yarn for Mrs. Twisted's newest project. Tilli Tomas Pure & Simple 100% silk.

How cool is the little project bag that comes with the order? Great marketing tool!

She is planning to make a top from the silk yarn and use the matching yarn (Rock Star) to make a removable Mobius.

Here are the completed socks Mrs. Twisted was working on from the new Favorite Socks book by Interweave Press. These are the ones on the cover; Waving Lace socks by Evelyn A Clark done in Koigu KPPPM colorway P803192.

My camera has troubles with Reds and Oranges or should I say I have troubles taking pictures of reds and oranges but arent they purdy!

Hint to all of you die hards who read to the end. We are gathering some surprises from the stash-o-plenty for the 3k game winner and we are less than a hundred hits away from anouncing a winner.

I'ts better to give than receive.....

How many of you out there participate in the secret pal exchanges and especiallySecret Pal 10? I really enjoy the whole secret part of the Pal. The stealthy lurking Oh and any reason to shop just make this much more fun. Some of you may already know my giftee for this round, Moma Llama. She was presented to me as Catherine as it's given on her blog. As I read through her blog I learned of her dedication and love of her family and then realized that she was Mama Llama an independent yarn dyer. I thought I was in trouble here. How can you send a yarn dyer more yarn. Well, I thought let me step this up a notch and see what I can do. I thought who were my favorite fiber artist and maybe she would appreciate what I saw in them too. Readers of my blog have seen these names Posh Yarn and Capistrano Fiber Arts by Lori Lawson and I thought if she loves making socks she would love their wonderful sock fiber too. Her E-mail response said it all as with "Wowzers" in the subject line. Here is her Post for all you lurkers who love to read or just look at yarn pics.

As all good things come to an end the SP came to a close and I contacted her as myself. We exchanged a few e-mails and what a wonderful lady, loving wife and dedicated mother. Much to my surprise she asked us to do some testing of her newest yarn "squishy".
(80% Lambswool /10% Angora/10% Cashmere) We love the name and the fiber is amazing. Mrs. Twisted wanted to sleep with it because it was so soft. She sent some silk/cashmere as well for my fiber fix... Thank you Thank you Thank you. Catherine even asked me what colorway I would like and I selected Angelika because it looked like soft lady socks just waiting to be knit up. When he yarn arrived it looked so much more vibrant than the pictures on the net. I think you have a winner here Catherine.





I did take some outside too for a more real look.



How else to swatch sock yarn but to make a round swatch.....

What an incredible honor it is for her to ask us to do a test of her new yarn. Thank you Catherine!

I know I go a bit overboard with the SP stuff but I tend to be over the top with most everything else so why would this be different? Read my 7 things post for more clarification. :)

You know what? If you go into this just hoping to bring a smile and never expected anything more than a thank you, the rest is just icing on the yarn cake. I think the greatest gift is gaining a new knitting friendship. I can't wait for SP11 to start.

To the victors go the spoils

Congratulations to Inky for the victory in our first blog contest! I didn't know what to expect when I proposed this fun little game. Well we had 52 hits on the site today. My normal traffic is about 17 so I guess the prospect of free yarn and some competition really stimulated the activity.



I hope this doesn't set a precedent to retain readership but I think we had as much fun as the record turnout. Mrs. Twisted isn't supposed to be on the net during work hour and she peeked in a few times to enjoy the action.

As I promised here are a few pictures of what is going out to the winner.

Clockwise from the top; Malabribo Emerald Blue 5 hanks, Malabrigo Violetta 3 hanks, Two balls of Regia Silk sock yarn for Mr. Inky and three hanks of Alpaca silk. I also included some beautiful stitch markers and two patterns from Knit & Tonic

Due to the closeness of the game and the spirit in which it was played we decided to also give a consolation prize.

4 hanks of Classic Elite Premier Cotton Tencel in Robins Egg Blue, 1 ball of Yarn place lace weight in purple 1100 yds, 10 hanks of Manos Del Uruguay Cotton Stria and a set of tiger eye stitch makers.

Three boxes ready for shipping tomorrow. 1st place, 2nd place, and my SP 10 box. Sorry I cant share with you what's in the SP package, but we don't follow the rules in the SP either.

Happy knitting from Casa De Twisted

Blogaversary coming!!!!!!!!

Ok all you readers of the Twisted Knitster blog. MARK YOUR CALENDARS..... Approx July 8th and July 9th we are celebrating the unofficial Blogaversary. If you were here for the 3K visitor game it was quite fun. Well this is a bit different. Mrs. Twisted and I both love Jeopardy and thought it would be fun to modify it for TwistedBlogJeopardy with YouTube answers read by yours truly, I may even dress up like Alex Trebek. I am going to try and create the game as it could be played from the comfort of your computer anywhere in the world. We are trying to work out the logistics, post the rules and game play soon. It will be a drawing from the correct answers to make it to the Final TwistedBlogJeopardy round where three contestants will get one question. The categories are quite fun and I hope this will be as entertaining for you as it will be for me. If you know me personally then you know this will be a three ring circus even if just to watch but I hope you all want to participate. All you lurkers out there this is your opportunity to jump in and have fun. The winner or winners will be rewarded very well. This is a stash reduction game for me and who knows what else will ship with it but trust me it will be worth your effort. Know your Twisted History and be prepared for a few Twists of my own.

We have a winner!!!!!

Inky was the 3k and 3K+1 and +2
Big Congrats to

Inky!!!!



I will be posting the statistics shortly
Thanks to all of you who had as much fun as we did..

Jerry & Debbie aka
Mr & Mrs Twisted

Update!

We will post the pictures of the prize tonight and it was just decided to send a second prize to

To Knit is Devine because this was more fun than any of us thought it was going to be and we want to share some love to the northern neighbor.

Thank you to all who participated.