Need a fast gift knit?

This is Antidote. It takes one skein of bulky yarn, a button, and a couple of hours. I got my son to model it for me and now he wants one. Less fussy than a full length scarf, easier to get on/off than a cowl.

I may have lost my mind - I ordered yarn last night to make my son's plus 6 for my brother and his family...

40% off through December 22!

One last sweater for 2013!

Modeled with a skirt I got last year about this time at a thrift shop on the Upper West Side of NYC :)
This is Rhinecliff and the yarn is Miss Babs' Heartland Worsted which I just love! I am working on another design in it right now and planning a third. I also want to reknit this one with wide stripes and no cables. Too many things to knit, too little time.

Warning! Bulky cowl overload!

I seem to be over my garter stitch phase and have moved into bulky cowl phase :)

I released Glühwein last week and it is on sale for 40% off through tomorrow.

Today I released Eiswein and it is on sale through December 13.

I don't think you can get the discount on both at once though - you probably have to go through the checkout twice.

I have one more German beverage-inspired bulky cowl on the way. I like to do things in 3's :)

Both of these knit up fast in bulky yarn and make great gifts. Glühwein is knit in Dragonfly Fibers Super Traveller and Eiswein is in madelinetosh's A.S.A.P. Both lovely yarns!

A year of sweaters!

When I went to Rhinebeck last year, I had not yet written a sweater pattern. I'd stuck my toe into garment designing with a few vests, but just hadn't quite worked up the nerve to tackle sweaters. There are hundreds of beautiful hand-knits to be seen at Rhinebeck, shawls and scarves, hats and cowls, mitts and gloves. But let's face it - it's really all about the sweaters!  I came home determined to pull out the sweater design I had been working on nearly a year before and give it a go.

In the winter of 2011-2012 I was playing around with Barbara Walker's top-down simultaneous set-in sleeve method on what later became my first sweater pattern - Serra. I had some notes I had found online in 2006 that I'd saved for future reference - mostly to do with changing Ms. Walker's proportions a bit. At the time, I didn't know of anyone else using her method. Turns out that several of us were exploring it at around the same time and now there are quite a few designs out there now based on that method. This was my prototype:

I had played around with other seamless construction methods before and sort of designed my own sweaters, but none of them fit like this! I love the look of set-in sleeves but hate everything about sewing them in - getting the pieces to fit (which often meant re-knitting a sleeve cap), doing the actual seaming (getting the tension just right, getting everything to line up perfectly, sewing in the ends from the seaming yarn), and the bulkiness that the seams caused. Not to mention that there was no way to know until you were done if the sweater was going to end up fitting properly. Here's a close up of the sleeve 'seam' on the final version of Serra -

Needless to say I LOVE this method of sweater construction and have thoroughly enjoyed this past year of adding sweaters to my pattern shop! In a year's time I've published 10 sweater patterns, have one in testing right now, and ideas for half a dozen more! And because it sometimes takes me a time or two to get thing just right, in the past year I have knit 18 sweaters! In the year's time before, I knit one! There are lots of sweaters that I have knit over the years, but I have only held on to about half a dozen from the past. The others I consider practice pieces. Sometimes you learn the most from the ones that are the biggest failures.

Here's a sneak peek at the design I hope to release in a couple of weeks -

I even like the grading process! I guess it pleases my inner math geek - but my family has learned not to bother me when I am up to my elbows in schematics and measurements and spreadsheets :)

Stonehaven

Every new pattern is always my favorite. DH says this one is his -

Stonehaven is now up on Ravelry and is 25% off with the giftalong code!

Indie Designers Gift-A-Long on Ravelry!

Starting November 1 GMT (which is 8pm on October 31 EDT) dozens of independent designers on Ravelry will be having a joint 25% off sale which goes through November 15 GMT (ending at 7pm EST).

You can find which designers are participating here. Some designers have selected specific patterns for the sale. All of my currently available patterns will be 25% off.

Once you've gotten your discounted pattern(s), head over to the GAL forum to join in the various knit-a-longs where there will be oodles of prizes! They run through December 31.

Happy holiday knitting!

Shawls, shawls, shawls!

In August I started my Thunderstruck Mystery KAL but couldn't show a photo - here is the finished shawl at last!

In September, the secret pattern for Club Awesome was released featuring Dragonfly Fibers Pixie. It is still exclusive to the club but will become available to everyone in March 2014.

Finally, for October I've released Edge, and I can show it to you Right Away, LOL!

I know I know - garter stitch all over the place! But I have two more in the works for this year and neither one is in garter! Both were actually inspired by all the swatching I did for Pebble last spring. I had a panicky moment when I couldn't find that looooong swatch I did -

but I did find it and also the directions for the stitch pattern that I made up and want to use for one of those shawls. There are a few sweaters in the pipeline ahead of them, but I'm hoping to get them released before the end of the year. (Lots of downtime waiting for sweater test knits to be completed!)