There is no chasing daylight when the tenth month rolls around. It’s time for the annual airing of the sweaters, for fixing things, arranging the house, and getting ready for winter projects. The pattern for the Red Edge can be found here. The Gaia Jacket is in this book.
Thanks to contributing writers Jasmin Canty, and Franklin Habit.
Plus, Cast On is three years old! Thank you, my knitsibs, for a most excellent ride.
Inspired by Heather, and Snowangels, I have pens at the ready. The beautiful lettering is based on the work of Adolf Bernd, and the book featuring his work, The Painted Letters of Adolph Bernd, I am already on the lookout for. (Also on my radar, English calligrapher, Peter Thorton, who teaches a class based on Bernd’s work. Maybe the next time I go to London…)
My new Singer Featherweight looks like this. Is cute, yes?
Knit and give to the Red Scarf Project and Fund
Knit a Mystery Hat with Woolly Wormhead (Ravelry account needed)
Go Passionately Pink for the Cure.
KniTunes were provided by and used with the permission of:
- Jonathan Coulton – Re: Your Brains
- Ghosts on the Radio – Halloween Girl
- Robin and Linda Williams – October Light
Additional music, Aunt Louise, by John Williams, courtesy of Magnatune, and The Dream Witch, by Brandon Moore.
Thank you, Maria McKee, where ever you are.
Fry with the sinners or knit with the saints in Brother Amos' Hellfire Lace Socks. Now available for purchase on 
"Bring the car around, Jeeves." Driving Miss Daisy finglerless glove pattern, in teal, black or white, available exclusively through 
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Thanks so much for your encouraging words about making time for creative hobbies other than knitting. Ever since I started designing full-time, I’ve hardly allowed myself time to do anything but knit for work. A year later, I find I really miss the feel of a brush in my hand and a clean canvas in front of me. I’ve also been so curious about spinning, but thought I couldn’t take the time away from knitting to learn. But even my mother, after a lifetime of knitting, has taken up spinning, starting right from a raw fleece! After listening to your podcast, I feel inspired to take more time for other things, no matter how much I love knitting.
your new website is so pretty and shiney! Great podcast as well, by the way.
Wow, the new layout is gorgeous, suddenly it looks much less like a blog and more like the refined, professional production that cast-on obviously is *grin* I’m stoked to see the baby hat book on your site, I hvae a copy and agree – it’s pretty awesome!
Loved the Zombie song! Great job with the podcast. You rock as always!
Thank you so much for the link. Getting to study for a few days with Peter Thornton (I have pics of the event on my Flickr page if you want to see all the amazing work created, not my work of course but the other participants) was such a treat and so inspirational. Best advice I can give you is buy good paper. The watercolors literally tripped off our brushes onto the sumptuous paper we were using. Best of luck!
Great episode Brenda! Just finished listening to it as I did my workout on the elliptical machine at the gym. Helped distract me from how much longer I had until I was done!
I’m so happy that you got Tonia’s mother’s Singer. My mother got one as a wedding gift from my father around the same time that Tonia’s mother got hers. My grandmother also had a Singer… not the featherweight, but also a nice model. My grandmother lived with us when I was small, so when she died, my mother had two machines.
She kept those two machines until two years ago when she FINALLY thought that I would like one. This, after years of me screaming at machines that wouldn’t work consistently and then tossing them out. Thank you, mom! I dreamed of bringing that featherweight home with me. They are SO CUTE!
Well… my mom gave me my grandmother’s machine. Yeah, not the featherweight. I should have been happier, but I was so, well, I was just so sad. When I told her that I thought that she would be giving me her featherweight because she hasn’t been quilting or sewing for quite awhile, she was shocked. “What?” she asked me, “are you nuts? I’m not giving that one up until I’m dead!”
When we took my grandmother’s machine in to be tuned up, I told the man at the shop just how mean my mother was because she wasn’t giving me that featherweight. He told us that we should NEVER sell that machine. It is worth more than US$500 and is considered a collector’s item as well as one of the best Singers ever made. He thought that she was smart to keep it for herself. Some help he was. “They don’t make them like that anymore. Those things run and run and run… and never break down.”
I hope that this is true so that when the emotional day comes that my mother dies, and I finally get my machine, it will still work
I hope that you enjoy your machine – said through clenched teeth– really. Enjoy.
I’m catching up on my Cast-On. I’ve been away for awhile because of life – I know that you get that. I hope that this message pops up after being posted so many months after the episode.
My mother has a Singer featherweight. I learned to sew on it. At one point, long after we grew up, Mom took a quilting class. The other students were giving her looks for her elderly sewing machine. All of them had very high tech models. When the instructor walked in she ooed and ahed over Mom’s machine, asked where she got it, and insisted it’s the best machine out there. She told the other students that if they ever saw one for sale they should grab it at any price.
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