Like many of the Esty knit shops, Knit It Up sells hand-dyed yarn and knitting accessories.  Unlike the rest of the Esty shops, the Knit It Up products each have unique bits personality that can appeal to a wide-range of purchasers.

Let’s start with the yarn.  Beautiful, yummy, lush yarn.  It is, after all, why most of us are here.  Knit It Up sells lace yarn, sock yarn and chunky yarn.  In honor of Soctoberfest, feast your eyes on these:

Harvest Posh Cashmere

Yum.  That is what I think when I see this yarn.  And with 10% cashmere mixed with 80% superwash merino and 10% nylon it is both luxurious and practical!  LOVE IT.  WANT IT. At $24.00 a skein I may be making my second purchase pretty soon here.

Clear Water Sea Wool

At 70% superwash merino wool and 30% sea cell, this is not your ordinary sock yarn!  Choose from a number of fabulous colors.  At $22/100g skein, you can treat yourself to something unique without breaking the bank.

But it was the creative crafting accessories that really made Knit It Up stand out to me and led to my mid-afternoon self-gift-giving.

Check out this loot:

With phrases like “Sock yarn doesn’t count,” “Yarnlust” and “I’m writing you a note . . . but thinking about sock yarn” these are irresistible notes to use when sending a hello to a fellow Knitter.  I am a big fan of snail mail, especially in the electronic era (which I am very much a part of ).  Snail mail is a perfect way to simply let someone know they mean something to you, without you having to really say much.  Think about how awesome it is to open your mailbox and find a handwritten envelope in there among the ads and bills.  Now go get yourself some snail mail supplies!

Sock Yarn Notecards

For the gifting Knitter (or crocheter or crafter) in all of us, Knit It Up has a wide collection of gift tags to attach to the gift you spent hours planning and stitching.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but I love to give knitted gifts, but I always feel somewhat shy about how to reveal that I made the gift–whether I place a note in the card, or wait until they open it and then shout “I made that!” I have not yet found the right approach . . . until now.  There are a number of styles to fit all of our quirky personalities, and for only $10 you get a cute tin with 25 tags, or you can spend an extra $2 to get a Variety Pack with 30 tags.

Splat Knitting Gift Tags

The back of the tags even have a place for you to indicate the fiber content and care instructions!

Selfish Knitting Gift Tags: The front of these tags are also pretty great –they say “This project took hours of my precious time to make.  You may now ooh and aah and wear it every single day for the rest of your life.”  What a subtle way to convey the message many of us want to instill in our recipient’s minds.  Because let’s face it, sometimes a recipient’s reaction is a let down after all those hours with your needles.

Gothic Knitting Gift Tags:  With the phrase “That’s right, made it with my own two hands.  So love it, understand?”  I can’t help but laugh, and completely understand the sentiment.  We spend a lot of time making these presents!  LOVE THEM.

For good measure, here is a subtle classy way to protect your stash from the dreaded moth.

Stash Protecting Cedar Sachet

And these items are just the beginning.  There is fiber, Fiber friendly hand balm and more.  So check it out.  Then knit me a present.  I promise to ohh and ahh appropriately, and of course, love it.

The challenge with Etsy is wading through the thousands of sellers and products to find those that speak to your style.  I often have the most luck by following recommendations from other bloggers, Twitter users, or through Ravelry advertisements, rather than blind searching on the site.  Once I find a seller whose products I lust for, however, I visit their shop time and again and pass on particular products to friends who may be interested.  I want that seller to do well so they keep their shop open so I can keep buying stuff!

With all that in mind, I have decided to start an Etsy Shop Spotlight feature to showcase those fabulous shops that, in my mind, deserve a shout-out, a couple of clicks, and recognition for what they bring to the knitting world that is unique in its own right.

I will post my first official spotlight tomorrow morning.  This shop actually inspired me to start Esty Shop Spotlights, so it deserves double recognition.  Until tomorrow, it shall remain a mystery, so stay tuned.

The end of the events has signaled the temporary end to my gift-knitting as well.  This past weekend I had two gift deadlines and, true to form, completed one at 1:00am the morning before the deadline.

My sister-in-law is pregnant with my first niece, and back when she and I formed a Stich-n-Bitch, before I learned the mind-numbingness of blanket knitting and before she moved to Texas, I promised that when she had a baby, I would fulfill my Auntie role and knit a blanket.  When she announced her pregnancy, I scoured Ravelry for the perfect pattern that would not make me want to stab myself with a knitting needle and I must say, I was rather successful.

Check it out:

Pattern:  Maude Honeycomb Blanket

Source: Vintage Baby Knits by Kristen Rengren

Yarn: Knit Picks Comfy Bulky in Flamingo and Fedora–2.5 skeins of Fedora and 2.1 skeins of Flamingo

Needles:  Size 10 circular

Final measurements:  32″ x 30, casting on the number of stitches called for the in the pattern.

If I could go back in time, I would add one or two repeats to the length, but at the time, I was worried about running out of brown yarn, and I didn’t have time to order more.  FYI:  Turns out that I would have had enough to do the extra repeats.

My second project began as test knitting and ended as my nephew’s first birthday gift.  I truly became a Knitter shortly after he was born so he never received a significant knitting gift from me.  And there was no way I could deny this face knitty wonderfulness:

So he became the new recipient of a very cozy, slightly modified hoodie that I made as a test knitter.

Check it out:

Pattern:  Wild Thing by Homero Luna

Yarn:  Plymouth Encore Yarn Worsted color 1415

Needles:  Size 7

I started with the intent on making this hoodie the full Wild Thing hoodie with the ears and the tail–after all, that is the purpose of a test knitter, right?  Well, I failed that role mainly because my hood turned out kind of funny (due to user error, not pattern error) and I didn’t want to call attention to it with ears, and then without ears a tail would be a little strange, so I left it as a plain hoodie.  I love the Wild Thing pattern however, and may have to make the full ensemble one of these days soon.  But as a plain hoodie, it is pretty fabulous.

My nephew is still too small for it, so there are no pictures of him in it, but I have to say, when the gift was opened, a three-year-old party attendee shouted “WOW, that is SO COOL!”  which I thought was pretty awesome.

This October I have become obsessed with knitting socks–just in time for Socktoberfest! I just finished my first pair of Cookie A’s Monkey socks:

and I cannot stop wearing them, which inspired me to immediately cast on two more pairs of socks:  The Socktoberfest Mystery Sock KAL for me, myself and I (I am a selfish sock knitter until I have more than one pair) and a squishy, cozy pair of 2 x 1 every-other-row rib socks for HH using Claudia Hanpainted Fingering Yarn in Walk in the Woods colorway:

I promised HH that I would trade off knitting socks for him and for me after I knit him his first pair and he cannot get enough of them.  He tells everyone that will listen that they need hand-knit socks.  While he has giant feet (size 16!) I find that knitting him socks has its benefits.  For example, when he complains that I am knitting instead of talking to him (apparently inserting “uh huh” and “wow” randomly as he talks does not count as conversation) I can respond with “But I am making you socks!” and then he is happy again.