Today was my grandfather's birthday. He died a decade ago, but I still remember his birthday each year. I have an old sweater of his that I saved. I wore it a couple of times, but it's much too long for me (he was a big man). So I've started to sketch out ideas for designing my own version of his sweater. No pictures yet, since I don't know if it will work, and if it does, I may send the pattern off somewhere, but I just thought I'd share that with you today anyway.

This week I've been busy working out a few new pattern ideas. It's so fun picking out a some new yarns and giving them a try. I hope to have at least three new designs in this bag. And if things go well, I might even have new free pattern for you in a week or so!

The only problem with steeking is that the things that get steeked are usually the most beautiful knits you've ever made or seen.

Like this Koigu vest knit by fellow Knitsmith, Nancy. Nancy is an artist, doesn't follow patterns, and makes the most incredible knits. But she doesn't have a sewing machine. So, it was my job to sew in the steeks on her vest.

see where the steeks go?

basted and ready

sewing several rows inside the basting line

The boys watched. They are fascinated by the sewing machine. Click here and here for the boys' eye view!

et voila, columns of little orange stitches

Nancy wants to do the cutting herself. It's a special moment between a knitter and her knit. I wasn't about to take that moment away from her, so I handed back the vest just like that.

I will get to cut Claudia's fair-isle however.

Claudia was giving this away. (I'll pause for a moment for you to take that in. Yes, she was giving it away!) She'd worked on this giant 80's style fair-isle back in the day and was never going to finish it. She said that someone unafraid of steeking should take it and cut it up and make something (pillow cover, felted bag...) out of it. How could I pass that up?! Just look at that incredible corrugated ribbing. I'm so excited about cutting this baby!

They may be the most beautiful knits I ever seen, but when it comes to steeking, it sure does help that I didn't knit them!

There's going to be a noticeable slowdown in my knitting here over the next few weeks, because I'll be working on a few designs of my own in the background. All hush, hush and no peeking, of course. But here are a few of the yarns I'm considering. Got any feedback on these for me?

Berroco Ultra Alpaca
Peace Fleece
Debbie Bliss Merino DK
Knitpicks Palette
Dale Stork
Kathmandu Aran Tweed

Top priority for my own knitting (when I give myself a break from designing) will be my sock pal sock and maybe another t-shirt sweater when I finish the synchronicity top. So stay tuned for little knitting progress and lots of posts about the boys!

I'm squeezing in (literally!) a little knitting design between the boys' Lego projects. They're always needing help putting axles together and taking bricks apart, so it's best if I don't go too far when I'm working.

The fruits of our labors? Well, all the main pieces of the sub set have been built and shown to friends and neighbors. B put together the big submarine and a little submersible that can fit inside it. Then he let his brother build a wicked cool robot sub, thereby earning himself another point for sharing. Clever boy!

And I snipped off a repeat of my hand-dyed Kool-Aid yarn (before giving it to my best knitbud, Lisa, for her birthday) to see how it knits up. Stripey goodness!

I can't show you what I'm designing right now, but if you look very quickly you might catch a glimpse of some ends I've just finished weaving in.

Another sneak peek at a design in progress. But this one has a serious problem. Can you see it?

I couldn't see it myself until I finished the first piece late at night and held it up to the light to admire it and congratulate myself. Disaster!

Yup, two different dye lots of white. I work at a yarn store for goodness sake, you'd think I would have checked the dye lots! Nope. I've got 8 balls of the yarn, only two are from a different dye lot and wouldn't you know it, I picked up one of those to start the whole dang thing.

I'm not ripping. There's way too much knitting already done. I've loved knitting it, but I can't go back and reknit it all. Nope, it's gonna be cut and graft for this little design. For now it's in time out until I can forgive it for foiling me and myself for being so dumb.

Hoping to correct my colossal mistake as quickly as possible, I immediately cast on for the second piece of my recent disaster by dye lot design. I double and triple checked the dye lots, knit one ball and then set about separating the two sections of the first piece. First step, pick out the first row where I'd changed to the new ball.

come on, you can see the dye lot difference, can't you?

Next step, line up the two sections with matching dye lots.

yes, now those two match!

Last step, graft. It was just that easy - no more challenging than closing up the toe on a sock - until I got to the purl ridges. None of my books explain how to switch from knits to purls when grafting. And as I'm not an intuitive knitter, or gifted with great spatial reasoning, I had to use trial and error to figure out the right rhythm.

This is as far as I got before I conked out on the sofa.

I made it through the grafting on the front of my design project. It was a nightmare! Somehow I managed to get through the first three rib repeats by trying something out, ripping and retrying but without learning the sequence. I had to start saying what I was doing aloud to really get the sequence down. It reminded me of that part of Galaxy Quest where they have to go through the chompers and Brandon is giving them the sequence over the vox thingy:

"You wanna take a left and then just straight on through the chompers... Okay, the sequence is - two-two-four-two-..."

And I'm totally feeling like Tawny: "Well screw that! We shouldn't have to DO this! It makes NO LOGICAL SENSE! Well forget it! I am not doing it! This episode was badly written."

"Whoever wrote this episode should die."

I've been seaming and finishing my dye lot disaster, grafting rescue design and in all the try-ons, I didn't once notice the grafting line or even remember to look for signs of it. All's well that ends up well grafted, I say.

check the upcoming July Magknits to see more!

I guess you never know what you can do until you screw something up really bad.

Five designs-worth of yarn is sitting in boxes in the office waiting for me. I've received so much yarn recently that the mailman now has a special honk he uses to call me to the door! It's exciting, it's overwhelming, it's horrifying all at the same time.

I'd love to get some feedback from anyone about the following yarns:

Knitpicks Shine - I almost scored some of this at the last Knitsmiths yarn swap, but Johanna snatched it up!

Classic Elite Renaissance - they had a TON of this at the latest (and still on-going) semi-annual clearance sale at Wild & Wooly and I loved it! Even though I hadn't planned to buy anything, I couldn't pass up this bag.

Cascade 220 Superwash - it's even better than the original, isn't it? And the colors!

Oh man, I love yarn.

Sunscreen, chalk, dpn's. What more do you need for an afternoon in the park?

(Sorry, I can't show you what I was knitting, because then I'd have to kill you.)

Nothing to see here. I'm working on pattern writing. As S would say: "boooooooooring." So go watch a little World Cup instead.

I'm back online and just in time - look, the new Magknits is up! Remember how I always wanted to make a design based on my grandfather's old tennis shirt?

Here's his shirt in all its oversized, holey, wide-collared glory.

Remember all those white stitches I've been working on the last couple of months? It was a labor of love - believe me, nothing else would have gotten me through that grafting!

I can't show you the project I'm designing right now, but look, the yarn turned my Bryspuns red!

How funny!

I've got design deadlines breathing down my neck, which means I'm working off various body parts trying to get other body parts knitted. So if I owe you an email, I apologize. Me and what's left of my ass and elbows will get on that as soon as we finish this knitting!

I received a bunch of yarn from a yarn company yesterday and look at the box they sent it in!

not for resale, I get, but best before Jul 06??

Do you see it at the top left? It's a Reeses Pieces box! I'm thinking that either means that they're buying old boxes from somewhere or the folks who work at Plymouth Yarn stay well supplied with delicious treats. Luckies!

Nope, no more babies on the way, but the design projects are multiplying!

Artyarns Supermerino for a design for Kerrie's upcoming book

Malabrigo Angora for....

something cabley and red that I'm just finishing up

Sorry, that's all you can see for now. And now back to work for me!

I've scoured my stash and managed to come up with yarn to recreate the hat that B designed for wee one on the way! I couldn't get over how much the hat looked like a hat that Lola from Charlie and Lola would wear. And Lola looks so cute all the time, I couldn't help but go searching for the yarn to make it. And, heh, heh, because my stash is obscenely large, I found everything I needed.

Here's the rundown: red - Frog Tree Merino; purple: Anny Blatt Merinos; gray - NatureSpun Sport; brown: uuuh, maybe Elsebeth Lavold Chunky AL?; orange - Classic Elite Princess; yellow - Cascade 220 Superwash; black - Classic Elite Bazic; green: Nashua Julia; blue: Manos del Uruguay. The gauges are a bit different but the colors are so perfect that I've gotta make it work. This is going to be fun!

School's back in session, phew! Now to get back to work. Design project overload! Wanna peek?

I can't say any more, except, I gotta get knitting!

With all the baby preparations, I've fallen behind in my design commitments. I absolutely had to take a couple days off to get the baby room ready though - if wee one came early, I'd be behind on my work and she'd have no bed! But now that her room at least looks like her room (no more office, no more computers, but I still have to unpack several boxes of baby stuff and then move my yarn stash!), I could get back to design work. Which meant finishing a sweater in a week. Thankfully, I'd had the pattern all worked out. And my knitting friends came to my rescue with knitting and notions!

I hope you'll be seeing more of this sweater sometime later this year. We'll see!

No not the baby, the book!

the cover's still in final design stages,
but the final version should look similar to this

Yes, I've been working on a book - Charmed Knits: Projects for Fans of Harry Potter - (when boys and baby on the way have allowed me) for the last year and it's almost time! And what a time it is - the book should come out in May and the next Harry Potter movie and book are both coming out right afterwards in July. The book is chock full of fun HP patterns by me and other designers I'm sure you know, as well as many knitter/fans turned designers you might not know. Stay tuned to this blog for details and some sneak peeks of the projects (and maybe even a pattern preview)! And you know we're going to do some Potter-knitalonging 'round here, right?

I guess I'll find out, as I have been asked to knit a second version of the design project I knit up and finished just two weeks ago. I'm one week and four pieces in to the reknitting. Will I make it before wee one comes?

(sorry, no pics on this one!)

The knitting job is perfect for me during this resting and waiting phase of the pregnancy. We finally have a new car that we can all fit in and all the final touches are done in baby's room, so I am completely in rest mode until wee one decides to show up. Knit one, breathe two... for as long as she lets me.

Well, I'm cruising on that sweater design reknit I've got to do. So much so that I'm ready to put in the zipper!

Ooooh, which one will I use?

(And just for the record, I too am amazed at how much knitting I am getting done here. Two sweaters and one and a half blankies in a couple of weeks - can it really be that much? Of course, if I were more able-bodied, I'd be doing more housework and activities with the boys, but sitting on the sofa knitting is really all I can muster for a good portion of the day. It makes me think about just how much work I'd really been doing in the last few months if this is what I can get done in that same time. Wow.)

Okay, so I'll admit it, I haven't knit but for a few minutes since baby L arrived. There just hasn't been much time where I was both awake and had my hands free. But I'm hoping that this new arrival will help motivate me to find some time.

It's a whole box full of gorgeous Shelridge Farms yarn from The Sweet Sheep (one of the cutest little online yarn stores there is!). I'll be working on a design for them and am really excited about it. This yarn is soooo soft and the colors are soooo awesome. And I desperately need to do some knitting again!

Presenting the emli bonnet: a baby bonnet with embossed leaves ("emli" for short)! As I was working on my sock pal's socks and starting my own, I kept picturing a lovely embossed leaves hat for wee one. I could not get the idea out of my head - I had to make one!

I knit the hat from the top down, just like the embossed leaves socks (from Interweave Knits Winter 2006 and Favorite Socks), so the leaf pattern has the same direction and same beautiful shape, and I chose a relatively fine-gauged yarn to maintain the delicate look of the leaves. Since it is an openwork lace pattern, I decided it should be a summer hat in cotton and widened the brim for some shade for baby's face. I also added little picots to the bind off edge to accent the leaf motif. The top ribbing is cinched in, pulling the leaf stems together bouquet-style into a tidy bundle.

I love how this bonnet came out! It makes me wish I'd picked a prettier yarn to knit it in. This Jaeger Trinity was the only sport-weight green-ish cotton I had in my stash. But the color is truly almost fluorescent yellow-green. The Trinity is nice though and I would recommend it. It's a silk tweed blend like Rowan's summer tweed, which, for the record, I dislike, but the fine gauge seems to keep it from bothering my hands as the summer tweed does. The slight tweedy texture and bright baby colors are perfectly matched to the idea of a baby bonnet, so I do feel that it was a good choice. I just wish I'd used the ball of pink I have in my stash instead of this funny green. But wee one is still a picture of loveliness, even in chartreuse.

Since magknits.com disappeared, I've received many concerned emails from knitters wanting to know where they'll be able to find the patterns that I published there. It took me a few weeks to piece the patterns together from the wayback machine and get them reformatted, but I am happy to announce that they are now all available (still for free!) in my free patterns section.

wimbledon tank

techguy socks

nbat 4 kids

nothing but a t-shirt

tricot

Get back, patterns.

Some yarn I'm playing around with for a new design and fancy new needles to go with it. What will it be?