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

And the winner is...changing - maybe

I've not heard from Anastacia yet so if I don't hear anything by Monday 19th I'll use the random number generator to select someone else to win the Diamond of the First Water kit

ETA: the new winner was Marthamay0_0 and her parcel will hopefully be with her by Christmas

New Pattern: Flapjack Mitts

I have been AWOL for far too long - pressures of work and publication deadlines. Also I've not had much to share as I've mostly been knitting magazine samples. I do intend to do some yarn reviews over the next few weeks as I've had the chance to knit with lots of different yarns - almost all wools or wool blends though.

One of the publications that I've been working on with the lovely folks at Knit Now magazine is a pattern supporting Roald Dahl's Marvellous Children Charity. Knit Now are co-ordinating Marvellous Mittens which will is a collection of patterns for mittens, gloves, arm warmers etc which will be released over the forthcoming months. I am lucky enough to be the designer of the first release:

The Flapjack Mitts are simple and quick with a cabled pattern that splits to form the thumb. They are knit with 1 skein of Colinette Cadenza (shade shown: Cumin) but other standard wool yarns at approximately 130yds/50g would also work. My original prototype was in Rowan Silky Tweed which is a very light aran (really a dk) and gave a more rustic look.

You can download the pattern via Ravelry here and there is a link on the pattern page to a JustGiving site for honesty box donations to the Roald Dahl Marvellous Children Charity. You can also go straight to the JustGiving page by clicking here.

These gorgeous photos were taken on a beautiful late Autumn day using one of our last dahlias as a prop. I can only take credit for the hands - the photos are the work of my very talented husband.

And the winner of the shawl kit is...

Anastasiaknits

This will be in the post once I have an address and I hope you enjoy working with the gorgeous yarn from Eden Cottage

To do lists

I posted on Twitter a few days ago about my knitting 'to do' list which needs to be completed before the end of the year. Here's what I had:

Finish my Fugue hat in handspun wool/silk
Knit another Fugue in Koigu KPPPM
Find my pattern notes for Audrey in Unst and finish it
Knit a February Fitted Pullover
Knit 4 samples and write 4 patterns

And here's my progress:

Finish my Fugue hat in handspun wool/silk (no progress)
Knit another Fugue in Koigu KPPPM (no progress)
Find my pattern notes for Audrey in Unst and finish it (still can't find my notes)
Knit a February Fitted Pullover (started)
Knit 4 samples and write 4 patterns (1 sample finished, 2 patterns written, waiting on yarn for 2 of the samples)

However despite these well laid plans I had forgotten I was supposed to be finishing repairing my Mum's cardigan which is a size 22 slightly felted (not by design) pure wool cable rib loose fit item with damage to one elbow. The damage is such that I need to reknit that sleeve from just above the elbow down to the cuff. I have frogged the section and bought the yarn but have been procrastinating because it's going to be an absolute pig of a job.

I've also started sketching and swatching for six new designs which doesn't help with the procrastinating (3 pairs of fingerless mitts, 2 cowls and a hat)

I may have been over ambitious in my plan for the end of the year!

Embellishments

Having shown you my button collection I thought you might like to see the rest of the shiny things in my craft stash. Although I'm not a very bling person I do quite like beaded knitting and from time to time I add some beads to my stash. Unlike the buttons these are normally bought with a plan in mind although I don't always get round to putting the plan into action and sometimes the plan doesn't work out anyway. Here's my small bead collection:

As you can see some of tubes are nearly empty - the gold ones on my Pergola shawl and the silver ones on a hat that I still haven't finished writing up. Of these I think I actually have a vague plan for the multi-coloured tube at the front - I'm thinking of a shawl in a silver grey or a grey/lilac smoky colour yarn. I have the yarn and the beads but I've not got further than that as I keep getting distracted. I also think they would look lovely on long lace cuffs on a lightweight cardigan, possibly with the body in 4ply and the cuffs in laceweight...decisions, decisions

Never the right buttons to hand

I have a small(ish) button collection. It only runs to three tins...

Accumulating buttons is something of a family tradition. My mum had a battered cream tin that I think she got from her mum filled to bursting with all sorts of buttons. And a separate collection of buttons on cards which lived in her sewing box (a repurposed plastic 1960s baby changing box). This tin lived in the top of the coat cupboard and was used for a variety of purposes including gambling chips for playing Pontoon and 21, learning about colours and venn diagrams, and very occasionally for sewing onto things as fastening devices. I think all my sisters have some sort of button stash ranging - in at least one case the button stash would put any specialist button retailer to shame.

This is my collection (from left to right) - general odds and ends, sets, and vintage

And here are some highlights:

The little metal whales were part of a set and the rest are on my niece's Through the Woods hood, the black and white ones are a set bought at my very first Knitting and Stitching Show (the last one held at the NEC), the three candy coloured ones also came from the show and I think might inspire some colourwork on a hat in the near future, and finally the mice also came from a show and are just adorable. I have no idea what I will use them from but I had to have them when I saw them.

So this is my button stash. It's not massive but it's not tiny either and you'd think that if I needed to find 9 cream/pearl buttons at about 13mm diameter that don't even need to match then I wouldn't have a problem. Turns out that's not the case. A search  through the tins yesterday brings me to the conclusion that I have a great many buttons that are tiny, quite a few that are huge and all the ones in-between are impractical or the wrong colour for the project at hand. There are a lot that I don't imagine will ever reach their potential as fastening devices (or even as embellishments) but I can't bring myself to cull them. Even these buttons can one day become gambling chips!

PS: I bought the buttons I needed from JosyRose which has a lovely button selection

WIPs and the frog pond

This little collection is my current pile of WIPs and half worked ideas - not including himself's socks which have half a sock to go and have been that way for about 8 months:

A sketch and yarn for a new design, already frogged due to the joining in the round looking weird

Another version of a design that's being published. I started knitting a third mitt to check gauge before submitting the pattern and then never finished it. I did confirm the gauge though. To the frog pond and then to become a hat possibly

My endless Audrey in Unst which needs half a sleeve, button bands and finishing. And I need this for work really. To be finished

An idea in progress for fingerless gloves. The pattern works but I'm not enjoying it much and my colour dominance isn't quite right. To the frog pond and then to become a colour work shawl although I will go back to this pattern idea.

Frogging WIPs is quite cathartic, freeing yourself from failed or failing projects that look at you unhappily from your knitting box, use up your needles, and stop you knitting other things. It also has a side benefit of returning lovely yarn to your stash for use in other projects. So that's my task for this morning after so I can clear the decks before starting samples for publication since I have quite a few to do.

Still celebrating

Now Knit Now is in the shops and seems to be doing quite well I thought I'd spread the love a little further with another giveaway. This time I'm giving away a pristine copy of Knit Now Issue 1 which has my Diamond of the First Water shawl pattern in it, a skein of the recommended yarn from Wild Fire Fibres (soon to become Eden Farm Yarns I hear) and a set of stitch markers that have come all the way from Sweden.

To win this yarn leave a comment recommending a pattern that you think I might like. I'll use a random number generator to pick a winner on November 23 at about midday GMT

And the winner is...

AmyBamy for her suggestion of Irene Adler. I like the Irene Adler character in the Sherlock Holmes story - a woman of honour and cunning without that being contradictory. I can see some long fingerless gloves with delicate lace and possibly ribbon laces from wrist to elbow.

Amy - I'll pm you on Ravelry for your address

I also really liked Squiggi's suggestion of Howard Roark with all those art deco shapes and individual drive so Squiggi wins a runner's up prize of one of my Ravelry patterns (if you'd like one) - I'll pm you

There will be a new competition soon to win a kit to make Diamond of the First Water (the pattern I was celebrating with this competition) but I need to take some pictures and decide on some rules

Don't forget...

Two things:

1. It's the end of British Summer Time this weekend and therefore the clocks change and we all get a bit confused. Remember it's Autumn so the clocks go BACK by an hour. If you're in other parts of the world that mess with time then I think you've already done this for the year
2. This blog giveaway ends on November 1st at 12pm BST. Yes, I did say BST because I forgot about the clocks when I set the time. So that's 11am GMT. I just checked that with my husband who gave me SUCH a look of disdain for my complete inability to get my head around time changes and zones and so on

And a sort of third thing...I do have another blog giveaway to follow this one. It's a shawl kit with stitch markers, pattern and truly stunning yarn so watch this space

Sometime you have to frog

I started making a hat a while back in beautiful Knitting Goddess sock yarn (Silver and Jace shades) using a colourwork pattern I'd designed myself (inspired by Etruscan metalwork) and that worked really well and it was all going really well until I fell over the maths. Knitting from the brim up and wanting to do decreases based on Pi, whilst maintaining the colourwork is easier said than done especially when the doer is numerically challenged me.

My head is not cone shaped ergo the hat should not be cone shaped. Even with the addition of a bobble (and yes I did consider a bobble and I am not a bobbly person) it would have looked lumpy, misshapen and weird. Not stylish, slightly Deco and generally fab. Definitely not that.

And so it sat on top of the stereo speaker (where my hats live until photographed) finished, with the ends woven in, some of my best and more even stranded colourwork on display knowing that it wouldn't fulfil it's destiny to warm a head this winter.

At least it sat there until this morning when I realised that if I frogged the hat I would have enough yarn easily for fingerless gloves and the beautiful Etruscan inspired colourwork would work on gloves too. And so, on my morning commute I frogged the hat (whilst standing by the bike storage area and probaly getting some funny looks). This is what is looks like now, ready to take the next step in towards becoming a fully functioning piece of knitwear:

The importance of swatches

Guilty confession time...I know I should swatch every time I knit something but I tend to have even tension and usually hit the gauge without needing to change up or down so when I'm knitting from a pattern I tend to wing it. I will swatch if it has a weird gauge for the type of yarn, or it's in an unusual stitch pattern but even then only if it's for something that needs to fit. I don't think I've ever swatched for a shawl pattern even though I know there are lots of reasons why it's useful to spend that time swatching and blocking. Here are some of the reasons:

1. It lets you know if the stitch pattern will make you lose the will to live (with frustration or boredom)
2. It lets you know if your tension is wonky or if you need to make adjustments to the pattern or pick a different size to meet your gauge
3. It can be an outward sign of inward stress that you've been ignoring
4. It's an opportunity to practice the stitch pattern/s, see how they flow together, and find out if they block differently
5. It lets you know if your yarn will work with the pattern which is particularly helpful when you're substituting yarns which I normally am

All that being said I still rarely swatch. The only time I remember swatching was as a relatively new knitter making a cardigan in Jaeger Roma. I swatched, came out bang on gauge, and then I picked up the wrong needle and before you know it I had a gauge square with perfect tension and a cardigan that was a size too small (also I learnt my lesson about knitting in pieces and not being able to try as you go). That cardigan has looked at me reproachfully for the last couple of years until I sent it to a new life with a smaller knitter in Sweden.

Even when I started designing I would do all the maths, sketches, pattern write-up and then knit the whole piece with much frogging, note making, and re-knitting. This state of affairs continued until the last few weeks when trying to put together multiple pattern submissions meant there was simply not enough time in the day to knit the whole piece and I rediscovered the joy of the swatch. As you can see I now have a small and growing collection:

The yarns here are (clockwise from top left) Wollmeise 100% Superwash, some generic 4ply wool of unknown provenance, I think DB Rialto 4ply striped with Noro Kureyon Sock, Rowan Creative Focus Worsted, RYC Cashsoft Aran and on the top Yarn Yarn Crannog

This little heap tells me a few things:

1. I don't have an extensive palette of colours
2. I need to find something to do with the swatches
3. I seem to be on a texture binge at the moment
4. I really don't like knitting with alpaca

Closer examination of two of the swatches reveals more about my 4th point. 

I had in my head a very clear idea of a design - shape, pattern, what to wear it with (even the shoes) and colour. For some reason, even though alpaca makes me sneeze and sheds so much that my knitting chair looks like it's been attacked by a moulting Fraggle, I thought and alpaca blend would be perfect. I'm not sure what I was think but it definitely had something to do with the alpaca sales pitch of warm, light and soft yarn. So I hunted on the great plains of the internet for an alpaca blend in the perfect colour and found the yarn on the right which is Rowan Creative Focus Worsted in New Fern. Now it turns out that I have knit with this yarn before under a previous name (Nashua Creative Focus) but I didn't realise it at the time. So I knit a swatch full of lovely cables and moss stitch and it didn't look too bad...and then I blocked it and like my hair on a humid day it fluffed up and obscured the pattern. It is soft and light and looks like a bowling green with a moss problem but it's not going to work for this pattern. Back to the hunt which took me all the way to a part ball of RYC Cashsoft Aran - smooth, plied, bouncy, round, soft and full of woolly goodness and look at the difference in the pattern definition - perfect! The colour is all wrong for my mental image but since I also don't own the right shoes I can come to terms with that. 

And the lesson of the day is...know your yarns and pick the right yarn for the right job, and don't forget to swatch and check. I'm not sure what the Creative Focus is right for but there must be something...any suggestions?

I am...in print!

Those of you who have subscribed to Knit Now, the newest knitting magazine in the UK market, will have seen this blog featured as well as my very first 'in print' pattern. I am bouncing off the ceiling having seen what an amazing job Kate Heppell, Joeli Caparco and the rest of the team at Knit Now have done with this issue and I'm incredibly proud that this magazine hosts my first 'in print' pattern - not least because I'm in company with some amazing designers showcasing their talents and skills.

The magazine will be in the shops on Thursday and I understand it's being stocked at Tesco, WHSmith and Morrisons amongst others and can be ordered through local newsagents.

So to celebrate my first 'in print' pattern being in print I thought I'd do a competition with this being the prize:

This is a skein of Fyberspates Sparkle Lace in greens and purples (75% Merino, 25% Silk, 5% Metallic and 875 yards) in shades of green and purple


To win this lovely skein all you need to do is comment on this post suggesting a literary or historical character that could inspire a pattern and give me a few words that you associate with that character before November 1st (12pm BST which is GMT+1). I will pick the one that I think I can turn into a pattern and the person who suggested it will win the skein (and if I actually do sort out the pattern I'll send you a copy). I will post worldwide and feel free to enter as many times as you like

I've been talking about...

...all these things


 Isn't Wordle clever? If you click on the image it will take you to Wordle to see a larger version