October designs

I got a couple of things out this month. I think my most recent one is my new favorite shawl pattern of mine -

I had the beginnings of this idea late last winter while I was working on Fabergé and trying to find a stitch pattern for the bottom edge. I found nothing and ended up coming up with my own idea, but I did find a stitch pattern for 'fluted rib' and thought it would make a nice edge on a textured shawl. I ended up not using that stitch, but the whole idea of a textured shawl with a fluted/ruffled edge had taken root. I have an old cotton sweater (commercial) that I saved simply because I loved the diamond stitch pattern and thought I would use it for the body. I didn't end up using that either, but kept the diamond idea. (Designing is a strange process sometimes.) The biggest challenge was to do a crescent shape without using short rows, which would have made the allover texture pattern impossible. While working on a small prototype for this, I learned that kfb and kbf are NOT mirror images. Kbf actually twists the stitch, resulting in a much tighter edge. I learned this because I had used kbf on one side of my small prototype and kfb on the other, resulting in one side being noticably longer. That caused a bit of head scratching on my part :)

My other October pattern is this colorwork cowl -

This was my inpiration -

Initially I wanted to do reverse stockinette, but found out it is much more difficult than regular stockinette. Here's an early attempt - you can also see the cashmere blend lining that is knitted in:

Now we just need some serious winter weather this year so I can wear them!

Contest!!!

I'm having a Beauty Contest in my Ravelry group. You can see the rules here, but the short version is that at the end of the month, there will be a thread where people post their recent FOs from my patterns and everyone votes for the winners. And there are prizes :)

Finally my son gets a chance :)

Lately I think he's been feeling a bit left out. As I mentioned in my last post, I specifically chose guy-friendly colors for the scarf version of Oak Park. We had a lot of fun yesterday morning with our photo shoot downtown.

Lucky break

After promising a scarf/cowl version of All the Shades of Truth back in May, I picked out the yarn and colors for the cowl, which I wanted to knit first, pretty quickly. Since I wanted it to be soft and drapey, I stuck with the tosh merino light that I used for the stole. I found color inspiration in a stained glass skylight that Frank Lloyd Wright had in his studio.

I worked on this project on and off for 3 months, just occasionally pondering the scarf version. I had found a picture of a FLW house that I thought echoed the shapes in the design, and used that as a place holder on my Ravelry project page. Two or three weeks ago, I decided to do the scarf in tosh alpaca sport. It would be cozier and have more body than the tml, which I thought would be good for a scarf. Immediately after having that idea, I popped over to the tosh website to see if any was in their Ravelry store, since this is not a retail base and can only be found on the tosh site and through destashes. I found a half dozen or so and picked out 2 colors that I thought would potentially work with the grey and red already in my stash. A week or so later, I checked Ravelry destashes and found a couple more. There was no real plan, I was just trying to stay with 'guy' colors so I could get my son to model. The last 2 colors arrived today. I ended up deciding against the grey, so here is the palette I will be using -

I like it okay - I think it will be great for a guy, but I wasn't overly excited about it until I put the photo above on my project page, right below the house picture placeholder:

Isn't it amazing how close the colors are? Totally unplanned!

I've already cast on and am really enjoying knitting with this yarn!

Mission Impossible Indeed

I thought it was a cute idea to call the test knit for my new pattern 'Mission Impossible' because I was going to give my testers specific 'missions' based on their answers to a quesionnaire and the different options I needed tested. Little did I know that the process would live up to its name! My own life got crazy, and some of my testers had their own issues. The original deadline has been bumped twice and I barely met it myself :)

This is what gave me the idea for this new design - it's the beginning of Derecho.

I liked the minimalist look of a few stripes at one end, and thought it would be pretty paired with the edging I used on Merrywood.

This was the result of the merging of those two ideas:

While knitting what I called the 'Porch Shawl', I was thinking about other striping options for the center and other border options. This led to the 'Deck Shawl' -

and the 'Sailing Shawl' -

I was trying to think of a name while driving to Williamsburg to pick up my daughter. There's a huge drawbridge we cross that is a favorite spot for our family. The bridge's southern end is located at a tiny community called Jordan Point. Between all the houses on the river with porches and decks and the sailboats at the marina beside the bridge, Jordan Point seemed like a good name.

I'm still waiting to hear back from some testers on yardage, but hopefully this impossible mission will finally be completed!

A New Pattern and Some Thoughts on the Design Process

This is Derecho. I had originally named it ‘Fishbone’, but once again I changed it at the last minute. We experienced a Derecho here in Virginia last week while I was working on the 2nd knit of this pattern. I thought the lines were consistent with the definition of this type of storm – a line of sustained, straight-line winds at hurricane speeds.

I’ve had people ask how I come up with new designs, and sometimes I wonder myself, but I do have a theory. I am one of those people who immerse themselves in a new hobby. I call it serial obsession. First it was horses, then gardening, then quilting, and now knitting. For the last 10 years I have read everything I could find about knitting. I have knit All The Things (©Hyperbole and a Half). I have played with techniques and put my own spin on patterns. I have basically filled my brain with So Much Stuff and now I feel like I am reaping the benefits. All the information that I have crammed in my head has been shuffling around, grouping and re-grouping, and every now and then an idea just pops out. Three of my recent shawls – Fabergé, All the Shades of Truth, and Derecho - all seemed to come out of nowhere. Designing Fabergé was a process that took a few days, but the other two pretty much popped into my head fully formed. I just had to draw a picture and do the math. I probably spent 5 or 10 minutes on the sketch for each and worked from that. Very often one design is the starting point for another. Fabergé led to Enamored. City Block inspired All the Shades of Truth which sparked Derecho. Derecho inspired the design I am working on now. I have a long enough list of patterns I want to write to keep me busy for another year or so. Hopefully the ideas will keep coming and keep me going longer, but you never know! You have to make hay while the sun shines :)

Much thanks to my friend Vicki for helping me recover my lost post! Take that Blogger!

The final chapter of the great aunt trilogy

My grandmother had 5 sisters - Obeira, Emma, Frances, Aileen and Ardys. Her name was Della. Her brother's name was Aubrey. I was told their mother read a lot of novels hence all the cool names  :) My grandmother was born in 1889, just to give some context., Her middle name was Laura, and I am named after her. It's pretty easy to find odd-sounding names if you go back to those times, but I like that these names are different without being weird. Aileen, Ardys, and Obeira are pretty as well as being a bit unusual, so those are the names I chose for the 3 vests I designed. You know. In case you were wondering.  Today I listed the last of the trilogy on Ravelry - this is Obeira.

This is my favorite of the 3. I have worn it and the grey one I made a lot already. My daughter, who is also named after one of the aunts, has expressed interest in claiming the grey one herself. Maybe.