Some of my favorite knitting web sites so far

My absolute favorite right now (and probably forever) is the Yarn Harlot's Web site at www.yarnharlot.ca. Stephanie's full of charm and news and helpful tips, and those pictures of her spinning and knitting make me ache to hold a project in my hands. I don't think I would have given my crochet rug UFO as much as a guilty glance if I hadn't read some of her posts. I'm becoming such a huge fan of hers, I'm embarrassing myself in front of my coworkers (laughing jags, squirrel vs. human battles, and general guffaws).

One of the things I love most about her site is that she wants (and often gets) some perfection in her knitting, and she has no problem frogging whole sleeves to get there. (Frogging consists of unraveling things to reknit or reuse, called frogging because you rip it, rip it, rip it.) It gave me confidence to see her not stressing out about it, and when I frogged the last third of my first pair of socks, it came out a whole lot better looking the second time around. I was very pleased with them.

She has also knitted some beautiful shawls, socks and other items, and as of Aug. 28 is 1-2 against her all-time nemesis, a Canadian squirrel from hell. I'm not going to spoil it all for you. Check it out for yourself. While you're there, take a look at this one, which makes me thirst for Kauni yarn for my very own. I probably wouldn't make a sweater, but I'm definitely not above a sock or four!

Another favorite is Interweave Knits, a magazine Web site, at www.interweaveknits.com. They have some excellent patterns in their knitting magazine, one of which is a future project of mine, a sweater from Summer 2004 called Juliet. I love it. I want one. I want to ignore all my current UFO's just to bring Juliet into being. I think I'm going looking for yarn and beads for it on Saturday.

The Pink Lemon Twist blog has some beautiful shawl patterns. It is also the home of the famous mystery stole knitalongs (KALs). The site's owner, Melanie, publishes about 50-100 rows of the mystery shawl pattern per week, until the entire pattern is published. Five gazillion knitters can't be wrong, folks. A lot of the people who participated in the knitalongs published pics on their sites, and they are all gorgeous, even the unfinished ones!

There's a deadline for signup for each Mystery KAL, so you may want to join the mailing list until Mystery Stole 4 comes along.

The Hanami Stole (Pink Lemon Twist Patterns) is another pattern I'm trying to convince myself I could complete in record time, UFO's be darned. It was one of the previous knitalongs, I think.

Before I go completely off the Hanami deep end, though, I want to be absolutely sure I would have a use for it. I live in Florida, so I don't get cold a whole lot. I may need to stick to utilitarian stuff like socks, which I have mostly enjoyed so far.

I kind of have a jones for the pattern created by her mom also. Solace looks like an easy knit with a little extra warmth behind it. Maybe someday.