Look! Bicraftual stuff

Since I started knitting I've occasionally dabbled in crochet mostly for slip stitch edging or seams. Attempting anything more complicated has flummoxed me completely and I've never been able to get my head around the the fabric or stitch construction.

But look - a tiny little bit of successful treble crochet with increases and decreases to create a ripple.

I am so impressed with myself

Upcoming patterns

At the moment I'm mostly working on patterns for print publication which means I need to keep them confidential and can't blog about them. However you can all my published designs on Ravelry here (login required) and you can find out about upcoming self published patterns in my Ravelry group here.

I have a couple of patterns in testing at the moment:

Negroni in Fyberspates Scrumptious Sock

 And Rosehip in Admiral Ombre sock yarn

Public Service Announcement

I seem to spend most of the my blog posts apologising for the lack of blog posts. Must do better...however there is a good reason - I've been very, very busy at the day job, my design work, and keeping up with the shenanigans of the knitting world.

I want to use this post to talk a bit about that last part. I've been extremely lucky in that I've only published patterns through a magazine that's run and funded properly and where the people concerned know what they're doing - that's Knit Now in case you weren't aware. They are run by the lovely Kate Heppell who has a crack team of glamorous assistants in Kath and Olivia, and an awesome tech editor in Joeli Caparco. They communicate properly via multiple channels, they deal with yarn support, payment and everything else promptly and accurately. In short, they are everything you'd want a magazine to be from a contributor point of view. Collectively they are Glinda the Good, the Good Witch of the North, with added cake.

However there are also wicked witches in Knitting Oz and in the past few weeks a great many alarming things have come to light about the magazine empire of AllCraft Media. I'm not going to go into detail because I've not been personally affected and because other people have spoken out articulately and fairly already. But here's a warning to everyone - research who you plan to do business with, read your contracts carefully and be very, very cautious. For the full story check out some of these links:

PomPom
Dull Roar
Confessions of a Yarn Addict
Rock and Purl

And for the definitive collection of information and links: Friends of the group once known as...(Ravelry group)

And note these issues affect people involved in ALL the magazines not just Knit (Yarnwise) and Inside Crochet. It's absolutely appalling.

In other things that are appalling I had to submit my first DMCA notice to Google as a blogspot user was hosting free and unauthorised translations of my patterns. I can't decide whether this means I've arrived as a designer or people think I'm too small to notice!

Swatching

I'm currently working on some magazine samples which I can't really blog about so I've not had a lot to say here. I am full of ideas for self-published patterns but I'm struggling to carve out time to work on them whilst balancing my day job and my magazine work (and the need to sleep from time to time). I definitely need to slow down in at least one part of my work and at the moment self-publishing new patterns is taking a back seat.

Where I have been able to find some time I have been doing the occasional swatch. I've been playing around with texture a lot at the moment and have been starting to bring colours and textures together as I learn new techniques. These swatches are in some no-name very bright wool and are adaptations of the Quilted Lattice stitch on Knitting Fool.

I have an idea in mind for a new pattern using 2 colours of heavy laceweight with at least some colour/texture work. I don't think I'll be using the lattice work above, although I do like it a lot. Instead I've been looking at smocking stitches on the Knitting Daily video tutorials. I have a strong mental image of what I want to make and have the yarn already (two shades of Brown Sheep Legacy Lace from a Magpie Yarns special order) - just need to find the time!

Diamond of the First Water now available

Diamond of the First Water is now available to buy as a single pattern here

The prototype of this pattern was designed for my sister's birthday present last July. She's a writer of historical romance so this is named after late 18th/early 19th century slang for a woman of exceptional beauty and elegance. You can find out more about my sister's writing at From Darcy to Dionysus 

And here are some of the 'in the wild' pictures my husband took at Dunham Massey

We found this really cool fallen tree. The shawl is displayed on the upended root system in most of these photos. The one where it's wrapped around the tree was achieved by me hiding behind the tree holding the edges - it was a very wide tree so I had my nose pressed to the bark and my arms fully stretched. I got more than a few puzzled looks!

A very quiet blog

I've not been blogging much (at all...) recently for a couple of reasons.

1. Most of my knitting has been publication samples and I can't talk about them much
2. I discovered Twitter
3. I have had precisely no time to do anything much of late

Still I should get back in the habit as I've a number of self-published patterns coming out over the next few months and a few more magazine patterns.

As you might have seen I've been lucky enough to have quite a few patterns in Knit Now which launched in the UK in October. My shawl "Diamond of the First Water" featured in Issue 1 and I've just had the sample returned to me so I've been doing a bit of a photo shoot in Dunham Massey deer park with my husband taking the photos.

Here's a sneak peak