New Loida pattern photos!

Yesterday we did a little photo shoot for my next shawl design, which I’m hoping to publish this week (wooohoo!!) and while we were out there, we shot new photos for the Loida shawl. The one you see above is very favorite, but this one shows the shawl better:

The weather’s been crazy lately, with one hot, sunny day then one wet, gray day seemingly alternating every other day. The outfit I’m wearing in the photo is very accurate for how I dress on these rainy summer days: sleeveless top, jeans, and flip flops, then something warmer around my shoulders! This little shawl is very lightweight so it doesn’t feel at all stuffy or sticky even though it’s 100% wool.

It’s pretty awesome to be able to wear my woolen handknits in the summer!

New design swatching

New yarn came in the mail yesterday! Woohoo!

I got 5 skeins of Cascade Eco Wool from Webs’ Anniversary Sale and immediately wound one up and started swatching. I’ve got a design all sketched up and planned and I’m super excited about it. Now that the swatches are dry, I can figure out my gauge and cast on.

It won’t be done anytime soon and it’s a heavy winter sweater, so I definitely won’t be wearing it anytime soon, but I really can’t wait to see it finished. I’m planning to submit this one to Knitty though, so won’t be showing any other progress photos. You’ll have to use your imagination . . . at least for now!

FO: Transitions Socks

 

Ever since I got laid off (about a month ago now) I’ve been back on the knitting bandwagon for sure. I’ve been picking up old projects and getting them finished left and right!

I started these socks over a year ago now. I knit almost the entire pair and then put them aside at some point, and don’t even remember why anymore. When I pulled them back out a few weeks ago they had maybe 4 hours’ worth of work left in them to be finished. How shameful! Why do I always put projects aside when they’re this close to being done?!?! Sometimes I really don’t understand myself.

Although, as I type this I realized that there is one positive from this habit: quick-to-finish old projects abound around here! I picked the second sock up and finished it in just a day, and earned an FO for it! That’s kind of a nice bonus.

I’m super pleased with these socks and even managed to wear them once or twice before the weather switched this week. The fit on them is really great, and after I washed and blocked the leg a little looser, they became pretty much perfect in that regard. These are knit top-down with a standard slip-stitch heel flap, which is the sock shape that fits my feet the best.

I made these a bit longer in the leg than I usually do because the yarn is so gorgeous that I wanted to showcase it as best as possible. I wrote a post last year about how I figure out the longest I can make the sock leg, check it out if you’re interested.

Project specs:
Pattern: Basic top-down sock with slip stitch heel, 60 sts around.
Yarn: 2 skeins Gypsy Girl Creations Transitions in color Viola Bouquet
Needles: US size 1
Started: January 26, 2012
Finished: April 1, 2013

 

 

 

Happy One Year Anniversary!

This week I shipped out the April shipment of my Koigu Mini Skeins Club and celebrated because that was the 12th shipment! That means it’s the one-year anniversary of my little club!

By my best estimate, I’ve made about four thousand minis so far. Is that crazy or what!?!?

It’s been super fun to make (and play with!) the minis each month and see what you’ve all made with them. I’m looking forward to going into Year 2 of the club.

For next year, the club will continue in the same format as for the first year, except that the price is going up. On May 1st, the base price will go up from $20/month to $22/month.

But don’t worry! If you’re a current member, you’re grandfathered into the original price and will continue to pay the same amount you’ve been paying.

Have you been considering joining? If so you should do so before the price goes up on May 1st! Lock in last year’s price by signing up now.

Wollmeise!

Look at what I managed to score from The Loopy Ewe! Wollmeise!

This is possibly the only useful thing about following businesses on Facebook: The Loopy Ewe puts on their FB page that they upload Wollmeise stock, and I happened to be on FB within a half hour of the update, so when I clicked through there were still a few skeins left! Score!

What you see above is Wollmeise Pure (the 100% wool sock base) in color Aspen Tree. It’s super pretty and bright the way Wollmeise always is, and I know exactly what sock design I’m going to knit it up into! And as of last week I’ve been on a knitting/finishing kick, so it may even turn into a pair of socks sometime very very soon . . .

In other news, Arnold isn’t remotely impressed by the Wollmeise score.

Tip: Bind off with a bigger DPN

Yesterday I finished my new shawl (woohoo! Pattern coming soon!), which involved binding off a ton of stitches along the bottom border. You know, like most shawls do.

When I bind off a lot of stitches on a project that will be blocked larger than its off-the-needles size, I always bind off with a needle one or two sizes larger. You’ve probably seen patterns telling you to do this. The reason is so that there will be more yarn in the bindoff, which will make the bindoff able to stretch as much as the rest of the fabric is stretching.

But have you ever tried to actually do it?

Since you’re likely on a long circular to hold all those stitches, it would be only natural to grab another circular to use for binding off. I know I used to do that by default, since I don’t even own straights anymore and knit everything on circs anyway.

Well if you have, you know that it is SO annoying.

Your larger circ’s cable is flopping all over the place unused the whole time, and you end up juggling two unweildy, almost-empty circulars by the end of it.

So, don’t do that. Learn from my countless frustrated hours of binding off a zillion stitches and:

Use a double-pointed needle instead.

A DPN lets you use only the part of the needle you need. It is easy to control, concise, and the best part is, there’s no floppy cable! You’ll still have your original circular to maneuver, but it’s way easier to deal with one floppy circular than it is to deal with two. It’ll probably feel weird to you at first when you start, but if you’re like me, you’ll quickly get used to it and start zipping along that seemingly never-ending bindoff.

I estimate that I can bind off 2 to 3 times faster using a DPN than using a second circular. That’s time well-saved to knit more interesting things!

By the way, my DPNs are mostly all 7-inchers, so that’s what I used here, but if you have 6″ or 5″ needles those would work too. I wouldn’t want to use a super-long DPN if I had a choice, but if that was the only needle on hand you could, of course, make it work. (Please read that that like Tim Gunn for full effect)

Um, it’s March.

How the heck did that happen? Again!?

February was a blur. I remember a bunch of work stress. Missing planned events/meetings. Pouting over not getting to go to Quiltcon. And reading half of the 5-book Game of Thrones series (which I’m loving, although book 3 is annoyingly repetitive). That’s not much to show for an entire month!

But you know what else I did in February? I knit! For realsies! Look:

That’s the new shawl design I started in late January from the Cephalopod I got at VK Live. On Monday I finished the short-rowed half-circle main body and started to do the edging. You might notice that what you see above is off the needles . . . that’s because I’ve since ripped out that edging and will be redoing it. The big spaces are a bit too big for what I have in mind so I’m going to redo that to make them about half as big as they are here.

Here’s a closeup of the now-ripped-out edging:

(this photo’s way better in terms of color by the way)

The technique I’m using for this edging is pretty much made up on the fly, except for the fact that I thought about it and planned it out for a while before actually trying it.

After knitting the main body, the edging is started by first crocheting a sc-and-chain row along the long edge of the shawl, and then stitches are picked up along that crochet row. It’s a lot like doing a provisional cast on, except you never rip the crochet out. In fact the provisional cast on is where this idea came from! I can’t even tell you how long I’ve had this concept swirling around in my brain waiting for the perfect design to use it on. It’s perfect for this design and I can’t wait to see the shawl with its edging on!

I’m honestly really excited about this shawl. I love handpainted yarn knit up in garter or stockinette, especially when you’re changing  directions throughout the piece. In this one I’ve got short rows mixing up the colors and will soon have a border knit in the other direction with a “barely attached” look that lets in some much-needed negative space . . . I seriously cannot wait to see how this one finishes up!

Here’s to a more vocal and productive March. I’m aiming to have at least one new pattern for you this month, so stay tuned!