Here’s a 20 second, silly bit o’ movie I took with my camera at the Pitti Filati exhibition in February.

That’s me giggling. Work can be fun.

For the few of you who may not know, Margery Winter is the creative director at Berroco. After years of a mentor/student relationship, we now work as parts of a team here at Berroco. Margery writes about another very important member of our team:

Deana Gavioli keeps the design department running like a top.  Her responsibilities range from assisting our art director, gathering and updating all information for our website, proofing all stages of Knitbits, monitoring info@berroco.com, creating and trafficking trunk shows, editing all written pieces generated by this department, tagging and labeling all samples, acting as the liaison between designers and sample knitters, managing all production of store models, processing invoices.  Deana is our clearing house of facts and keeper of information.  She works at her desk and computer everyday, calmly coordinating all packages to and from the sample knitters so that Norah and I can maintain our rigorous design and photography schedule.  With her finger on the pulse of our department, she calmly goes about her business quietly making sure that all runs as smoothly as possible while at the same time our dear Deana, beautiful inside and out will not allow a single Knitbits to be released until every ”t” is crossed and every “i” is dotted. Often I wonder how Deana can remain so calm and so steady.  I have worked with her for many years and I continue to be in awe of her endless reserve of patience. Thanks so much Deana.  We can’t do it without you!

Photography courtesty of Photo by Cregg Annarino Photography (Deana’s talented brother)

Berroco’s Johnny Boy sweater in action:

In a clever multitasking move, Margery knit the original Johnny Boy sweater to fit her grandson, Noah. Reports have it that the sweater has seen heavy action ever since, has been washed (and dried) numerous times, and it still looks great. It’s knit in Berroco Sox, our all wool sock yarn in an ever increasing array of multicolor patterns.

Photo credit: Olivia Sauerwein (Noah’s mom)

I love checking my RSS feed to see what’s up with my favorite knitting and craft blogs. (Sometimes it does get a little ahead of me - like when I have 1200 items to look at from my Ravelry friend’s favorites list - oh well). This week I was so happy to see Stephanie Japel’s finished version of the Berroco design Sanpoku from booklet 262 Yin & Yang. 

Stephanie Japel’s Sanpoku in Berroco Comfort.

Stephanie, of Glampyre Knits fame, is a designer herself and a new mom. I’m wondering how she finds the time to work on her own designs and blog and knit from our patterns as well. While she was pregnant she designed this lovely sweater in Berroco Touché:

Click on the photo to get to the pattern info on the Glampyre Knits site.

I’ve been hoping for this, waiting quietly, yet anxiously, for this honor. We should all be proud, all of us knitters. Knitting made it into my alumni magazine!!!!! Check out this article in the Brown Alumni Monthly or BAM as it affectionately refers to itself

It’s a small article and the online version lacks the photo my cat (and me) which was included in the printed version, but still it’s a thrill. Congratulations also, to my fellow knitters, also Brown alums, Sabrina Gschwandtner and David Cole!

P.S. You can find the photo of  my kitchen (pre-renovation) me and my cat Jake - here. Just click on my name and wait a moment.

P.P.S.  I haven’t forgotten all of your requests for instructions to make Margery’s afghan. I’m planning to post what Elizabeth Zimmerman used to call “pithy” instructions.  M and I have been up completely consumed with photography for the Fall ‘08 season.  More about that soon too….

I am thrilled that Stash and Burn chose to interview me for their 50th podcast episode. Jenny and Nicole’s relaxed style made me feel right at home. I think I really sound like “me”. Check it out. 

http://www.stashandburn.com/2008/03/episode-50-turn.html 

I like blog posts with pictures, so here’s a photo of a tiny bit of my stash.  Who knew I was so color co-ordinated?  I must be on a kick.

There’s Keltic and Memoirs and Ultra Alpaca Light  (my current favorite) and Ultra Alpaca.  I am very proud of my yard sale, danish modern candle holder. I also love, love, love the cool vase my brother gave me for Christmas,  hand made in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

A few months back Margery was coming up on a “birthday worth noting” and a few of us who love her wanted to mark the occasion by knitting a little something. Thus the idea for this afghan was born. Granted, it was a rather insane thing to take on in December, right before Christmas, and with our rather full schedules, but Adina Klein, Carla Scott and I each slaved over our 16″ x 60″ strips for weeks. Margery loves African textiles, so we made that the theme. I picked out the palette in ultra alpaca and then we were each on our own.

Taking the project very seriously, Adina carefully composed her strip of mitered squares and stripes:
 

Carla wowed us all with her interpretation of African textiles: 
 

Meanwhile, I was going on the theory that the best tribute to Margery was to try to think like she would. M loves black and white stripes so I threw them in my strip with abandon. I changed colors when I felt like it and I changed the pattern stitch when I felt like it. When I ran out of black, I substituted dark grey…
  

I rather think Adina and Carla out did me, but I love the finished results and so does Margery. If only I had a movie of the look on her face when we gave it to her!  

We are very lucky to have Becky as an intern in our design office for the Spring semester. We work her hard. She runs from winding yarn into balls and keeping our sample drawers in order, to swatching our stitch ideas to answering consumer e-mail. On top of all that, I asked her to write the bulk of this week’s newsletter AND she’s even got a secret design project going. You’ll get to see the results in a few months. Thanks Becky!

It’s Becky Snow’s  senior year in college, studying design.

John in his finished sweater:

The boyfriend sweater is finished. Yippee!!!  Even his sisters may have to admit that he looks pretty darn good in it.  

3/28/08 - John’s sweater pattern is available now free on line:http://www.berroco.com/exclusives/john_sweater/john_sweater.html

I thought you might want you see a little of the back story for the pullover mobius from the objet d’art story of norah gaughan vol 2.

My original sketch:

My first idea for this story was “twisted twins”, with pairs of sweaters or sweaters paired with other pieces. In this case my expanded definition for a twin set was going to be pullover and necklace. I thought I’d knit or crochet a necklace in Seduce, incorporating lace stretched onto thin metal bracelets. As the knitting progressed, the story changed and the necklace never got made. The concept for the necklace later became part of our free pattern aurum:

You may recognize the circles, I lifted them from astrid, the red shawl in norah gaughan vol 1.
 

Ok, back to mobius. The perfect shot came early in photography, but I insisted on torturing everyone by shooting this set up:

I really like this photo, but I had to agree that the photo we used in the book was just “it”.