Short Row Heel with NO Wraps

I have been a sock knitter for 3.5 years and still get panicky when I have to knit a short row heel. There's something about the wraps that confound me. I guess I haven't found a good enough video on YouTube to explain it. However, today I stumbled upon a way to do short row heels that doesn't involve wraps. It's awesome and easy! It is Pricilla Wild's method (find it here) explained by Charisa Martin Cairn. I do like the 'eye of partridge' heel that I usually do but now I'm going to try this heel.

Last night at our knitting guild, we received information and directions about our upcoming knitting retreat from April 28 - 29 at Elim Lodge on Pigeon Lake. It's about 2 hours from Whitby. I'll be doing at least one demonstration - knitting Latvian Braid.

Here are a couple of lovely completed projects that we saw last night.

This is Sharion's poncho that started out as a sweater 2 years ago. She changed colours of yarn every other row and figures she used 64 different colourways. Some of them included very fine yarns knit together as three. Sharion talked about the challenges she had with her design and how she solved them.

This is the front.

She was kind enough to model it for us.

And the back was even more stunning.

Margaret spent some time in chilly Florida this winter but did manage to get a couple of quilts pieced. She calls herself a 'topper'. Her sisters will be the lucky recipients.

She has found a place in Panama City that will do the actual quilting by machine with only about a two week turn-around.

 She did manage to get a snuggly, worsted weight cardigan knit as well.

I'm seeing a lot in the press about the new iPad and how it will be a few months before it will be released in Canada. At our Mac User's group last week, we actually got to see one 'in the flesh' as our guru, Aaron Vegh, had made the trek to Buffalo the weekend before on the release date and picked one up. He is a software developer and just had to have one in order to start writing apps. I'd be happy to get the 32GB iPod Touch. My Tungsten T3 Palm isn't holding a battery charge like it once did and it looks very 'clunky' compared to the recent PDA/phone/mp3 players. Wouldn't it be nice if Skip and I won the lottery right about now?

One more thing - if you're looking for some of that wacky Shoppel Wolle Zauberball, I believe it is being sold in Bowmanville at Soper Creek Yarn. The owner blogged about it today.