Unwind Getaway April 2017

Every year a group of knitters get together in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina for a weekend of knitting, learning, and fun! This event is called the Unwind Getaway and I am beyond excited to be able to announce that I will be one of the instructors for 2017. The event will be from April 28 through May 1 and registration opens today.

I am one of four awesome instructors that will be teaching classes over the weekend, you can see all of our bios here. If you are interested in the full list of class options you can find them here. I will be teaching three classes over the weekend and the rest of the time will be for hanging out, knitting, and making friends. I cannot wait!

The classes I will be teaching are Elongated, Lifted, and Cinched, Mosaic & Lace, and Tips & Tricks for Knitting with Variegated Yarn. While the last one is pretty self explanatory the first two might require a little elaboration. Elongated, Lifted and Cinched will be a technique class where we will explore the world of weird stitches that are found in Japanese stitch dictionaries. There are a variety of unusual techniques that crop up that really have to be seen (and knitted) to be believed.

Golden Lion Throne

Mosiac & Lace will be focused on teaching the technique I have been developing combining mosaic style slipped-stitch color work with lace. More of a project based class, we will be learning all of the techniques you will need to successfully go home and cast on for Golden Lion Throne. Golden Lion Throne is the shawl that started me down the path that has lead to my book Mosaic and Lace, which will be coming out on March 1st, 2017.

Oh, have I not mentioned that? 😉 Yes indeed. Beginning in February of 2015 I have had a secret project that I have been working on, a book! It is now available for pre-order through Amazon and the official title is Mosaic and Lace Knits: 20 Innovative Patterns Combining Slip-Stitch Colorwork and Lace Techniques. As I said, the publication date is March 1st and if you would like your Local Yarn Store to carry it you should give them a heads up. My publisher is Stackpole Books and most distributors of knitting books should be carrying it! You know that there will be much, much more showing up on this here blog about this – you might even get sick of it. But for now I can share with you what the cover will look like!

I hope y’all are as excited about this as I am, but I’m not sure it’s possible. But, if you are the kind of person who learns better in person and you want to hone your skills to be able to take on all of the patterns in this book – well you can come join me in North Carolina at the Unwind Getaway.

An Interview with … Me!

As with (I am guessing) many knitters, I have read a lot of knitting blogs. I meant a lot. My feedly feed is full of them. And I have been reading many of them for years. Ever since I had the inkling that I might want to pursue knitting design as a calling I have been following one called “How to Become a Professional Knitter” by Robin Hunter. She posts weekly interviews with professionals in the knitting industry and I have probably read a couple hundred by now.

Imagine my surprise when I received a request to do one of these interviews?! You could have knocked me over with a feather. But interview I did and it was posted today. If you would like to know more about my design process and maybe peep into how my brain works please click over and check it out.

Secondly, I am super behind in blog posting. I have found that I am much better at talking to a camera than getting my thoughts out with the keyboard. The best way to keep up with me is to check out my YouTube channel Watch Barbara Knit. But that is not to say I am giving up on blogging. I just need to get better. Mostly it’s the fact that the Fall festival season is upon us and time has just flown!

I went to Wisconsin Sheep and Wool and had a grand time!

And I went to New York Sheep and Wool and had even more fibery fun.

I have released some new patterns along the way and will be writing up posts about them soon!

Road Trip – Wisconsin Sheep and Wool style

It’s true! I’m going on a road trip. Early tomorrow Gale from Gale’s Art will be coming by with her vehicle packed to the gills. We will wedge me in and head off into the wilds of the MidWest to attend Wisconsin Sheep and Wool. I am going to be helping in her booth and she has given me a little space to display my samples and patterns. So very excited about it!

If you are in the area or traveling to this fiber event please stop by and say Hi! I have heard wonderful things about this festival and cannot wait to take pictures and video and everything. If you are interested in my trip you should watch my Instagram for the pictorial story. I am sure there will be yarn, sheep, and silliness. I also talked about the trip on my most recent video blog if you want to check that out.

But before I hit the road I have a few things I have to share here!

First – the Fix-a-Stitch Give away has come to a close and I posted the video announcing the winner this morning!

In the video I ask for a little feedback about give-aways. Specifically, do you want more? If so, what should I give away? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter. Going to the Post Office this morning and mailing off the package left me with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. Which is a feeling I would like to have more, so I am on the side of more give-aways.

When I get back from Wisconsin I have sooooo much going on. I cannot wait to share all of the awesome with you. I have no fewer than SIX patterns slated for release in September. Can you believe that? Hopefully it will make up for the slow summer. At least it is proof that I was knitting all summer.

Finally, I need to make plans for the winter. Do y’all have any thoughts on what kind of new patterns you might like to see? We started up a great chat in my Ravelry forum about what kind of shawl shapes people like and if you want a little peek into what might be coming down the pike you might want to mosey on over there. And the conversation can continue, please feel free to jump in!

 

 

Vacation with me?

Two weeks! I was in Florida for two whole weeks and while it was awesome, I am really glad to be home. Home with my yarn and my work and this glowing box that allows me to communicate with the entire world!

We went to the beach and played putt-putt. We went to pools galore and ate all of the shrimp we could get our hands on. And it was awesome! But you know what? I was still knitting. Of course I took knitting. And I took my video camera so I would have stuff to show y’all when I came back.

I made a vlog while I was down there.

And of course I visited a yarn store

or two

Stash – A Place for Yarn

Actually three

Roxy’s Yarn

In order top to bottom I visited A Good Yarn in Sarasota, Stash – A Place For Yarn in St. Petersburg, and Roxy’s Yarn in Tampa. Each one was a completely different feel but each one was fabulous in it’s own way. A Good Yarn carries an almost overwhelming array of yarns (almost, I can totally take it). Stash is a meticulously curated selection of lovely yarns in a funky, arty part of town. And Roxy’s impressed me with their diverse range of yarns and impressive list of classes classes chalked up behind the register. I would be wonderfully happy if I lived in any of these cities and was able to call the store “my” LYS.

Local Yarn Stores are the heart and soul of the knitting community. There is no denying that I frolic in the knitting cybersphere but there really isn’t anything that can replace the importance of the brick & mortar store. Do you have a local yarn store that you love? I hope you do.

I really want to make more store/shopping videos like the one above at A Good Yarn. Hopefully I will be able to travel more and see stores everywhere. If you have a great yarn store near you that I need to check out please let me know in the comments. Maybe I can convince my family to plan our vacations around yarn stores? 😉

 

TNNA 2016 – it happened!

I know y’all have been waiting in anticipation to find out if I said anything ridiculous. OF COURSE I DID! We’ll let it be a mystery what that might have been specifically – but it wasn’t a fatal blow.

It seems like forever ago and just yesterday that I got back. Things have been complicated by the fact that I brought back a combo sinus infection/bronchitis which pretty much knocked me out last week.  I would have blogged last week but OMG was I wiped out. And there was the yarn hangover.

What’s a yarn hangover you might ask? It’s when I have seen so many beautiful yarns in so many beautiful colors … and when I have been talking with other talented designers about their amazing ideas … my brain gets so very full of ideas zipping about that I get a little yarn drunk. I cannot focus on one thing because of ALL OF THE THINGS clamoring for my attention. And after the drunk comes the hangover, as usual.

But it was totally worth it. Worth it to get the opportunity to chat with the many, many yarn store owners who came by my booth and allowed me to explain what all of my craziness is about. Worth it to hear of the exciting things that are going on in their shops and how I might be a part of them. Worth it to spend 4 glorious days surrounded by people who love knitting and yarn as much as I do. If you were one of the awesome people who stopped by and chatted with me – thank you.

Deeply and sincerely, thank you. It is why I do this thing called designing.

Of course I took my trusty video making apparatus! I made video at TNNA to share with y’all, so that you can see a small fraction of what I saw.

And I also made a vlog showing some of the fun items I brought home with me.

If you are not of the video inclined I have a whole passel of links that you can check out!

I received a cool doo-hickey called a Fix-a-Stitch that you can keep in your knitting tool arsenal to help you fix boo-boos in your knitting. Beroco Yarn has several really cool new yarns including a cotton/wool blend that I think might just have to become my first baby blanket pattern (what do y’all think of baby blankets?)  And I have a beautiful color combo from Baah! Yarn that will be becoming a shawl in the not to distant future.
And in the screen shot above you can see a new version of  my Scarab Shawl that was knit up in a beautiful new sport weight yarn from Anzula Luxury Fibers. Expect to hear more about this in the very near future after I get my camera out and shooting!

Do y’all have any questions about TNNA? I would be happy to babble more if there is more you’d like to hear! Let me know in the comments.

I’m headed to DC

On Thursday I will be getting up very early in the morning and heading out to TNNA which is located in our nation’s capital this year. It has been a while since I’ve been to DC, but I will be spending 95% of my time in a convention center, so it isn’t like I will get to see the city.

I am pretty excited and nervous about the trip. Well, not the trip itself but the convention. I adore meeting all the wonderful knitters but I am always worried that I am going to say something ridiculous. Actually I am pretty much guaranteed that I am going to say something ridiculous. Hopefully most people will think it is part of my “charm”. And if you want to increase your chances of me saying something ridiculous come later in the day. The more I have been talking the more I am likely to say.

If you have ever wanted to see any of my pieces in person, now’s your chance! I have plans and chains and sticks and tables and all kinds of stuff to set up my booth, which I am sharing with the awesome Andrea Rangel so be sure to stop by if you are there.

On the YouTube front I finally worked out the tech aspect of doing a Skype interview and had a lovely chat with Stephannie Tallent who has a new Craftsy class on designing your own color work fingerless mitts.

I split the interview up into two parts to keep the videos relatively short. First, an interview that is mostly about the Craftsy class ( I say mostly because staying on topic is not my strong suit):

And then we have what I call the “outtakes” which is where we went more in-depth into some Craftsy stuff and then seriously derailed into talking about knitting while binge watching TV.

I had a ton of fun making this video and I hope that y’all enjoy watching it. If you do please let me know in the comments so I can do more. If you have any suggestions on who I could talk to, please let me know!

Finally a little reminder. I now have a monthly e-newsletter that I would love for you to sign up for if you haven’t already. The first Thursday of each month I will be sending out a recap of what happened in the previous month, what’s on my needles, and a sneak peek of things to come. For at least the first few months I will also include a one time use coupon code for 25% off any of my independently published patterns on Ravelry. Click Here to sign up.

Conversations with yarn

My design process is slightly non-standard. I rarely start with a fully formed vision, sketch the design, and set about finding yarn that will work. I tend to start with the yarn. I have a conversation with the yarn. I try to find out what it likes and dislikes. Where its strengths lie and where it might prefer not to go.

Or.

I start with the stitches. My mind asks me “what if” I did something weird and then I swatch to see what will happen. Sometimes I begin with one stitch and end up swatching a length of fabric where subtle changes in the pattern evolves into something completely different (and coincidentally a gigantic swatch). Often this process begins with yarn that I have laying around. So then I have the fun of trying out the newly born stitch with other yarns to see what kind of yarn the stitch likes.

One commonality you might note in this is that the yarn and the stitches seem to be the boss of me. And they kinda are. Sometimes I manage to bully yarn into doing what *I* want, but most of the time it is me learning from them.

The Ross Farm wool

All of this is lead in to some beautiful yarn that I have been having an ongoing Serious Conversation with. It is a unique and amazing yarn that has been taking me to school.  The Ross Farm raises rare heritage breed sheep with care and love and use their wool to create beautiful yarn. Leicester Longwool to be specific. It is such a different beast from the wools that I typically work with that it has been a very steep learning curve.

It is minimally processed, lightly spun, and undyed. Each label has a picture of the sheep from whence the wool came and the color of the yarn is the color of the sheep. And I wanted to do color-work. Yadda, yadda, yadda

A swatch is a Proto Pattern

I think I might have finally found a stitch for this yarn. This is a combination of my two design techniques. The above pattern was the result of an experimental stitch swatch combined with extensive swatching with the yarn to find what it loved. What do y’all think? Is this worth pursuing? If yes – what type of FO would you see for this? I have one skein each of the two colors with ~ 250 yards of Sport weight.

Maybe a small shawlish thing? Cowl? Scarf? If you can visualize this as something I would love to hear about it in the comments!

Great Mail Week

Have you ever had a great mail week? Where you open the mailbox and find something awesome? Walk up to your door and find a package? Answer the knock and it is your friendly parcel delivery person? I hope you have because it is fantastic! I had a great mail week this week. I received two knitting related packages and opened them both as “Unboxings” for my YouTube channel.

The first was something that I ordered for my booth at the Summer TNNA show. Its use is the only thing that really makes it knitting related.

The second was my Secret Shopper for this month. Have I mentioned how much I love doing this? There are so many amazing products out there for knitters and I know that I will never find them all. Having one of you kind souls share with me some thing that you have discovered is absolutely amazing.

A huge shout out of thanks to CathyG (it’s a Ravelry handle) to being my intrepid shopper this month! If you have an idea for Secret Shopper, something you think I need to have, please drop me a note and we can see if we can schedule you.

Me plus Your Inbox Equals Going Steady

I made the plunge this week. I started an e-newsletter. When I started sending out the sign up link I felt kinda like a high schooler with a class ring asking the entire knitting internet to go steady with me. Because to me it is a commitment. A commitment to send out what I hope is an attractive, informative, and possibly at times entertaining document to everyone every month.

This is a little bit of the first issue.

It’s the every month thing that is a bit daunting. You mean I have to come up with something to say, something to show, every month? Yes sir that is what I am saying (I have conversations with myself frequently).

There was a bit to think about. What should I include? What will people find interesting? I asked my Ravelry group and someone was kind enough to mention that they would like to see sneak peeks of what’s coming. Which piqued my interest. Revealing what I am working on has been something I have wrestled with for years. There is the element of surprise when I release a new pattern fully formed that I think is kind of magical. Do teasers enhance or detract from that experience?

And then there is my timeline. From concept to execution can be as long as 6 – 8 months and do people want to wait that long? Well, the suggestion spurred me to get off of the fence on this issue and decide. There will be teaser/sneak peek photos of things that I am working on in the newsletter.

And only in the newsletter.

I am still hesitant to put them on the internet but I will send them privately to you. Like a secret that we can all share. So if you are interested in sneak peeks – sign up.

Another issue I pondered was incentives. Many designers, when starting a newsletter, offer a free pattern. And that is a fantastic incentive and I am grateful for each one that I have received (I get a lot of newsletters, love them). But you know me, I want to do something different because that’s just how I roll. So what I have decided to do is put a 25% off coupon code into each issue of the newsletter. It will be a one time use code generated specific to your newsletter for you to use. Good for 25% off one of my Ravelry Patterns. It will not be something that will continue forever but is a little something extra for early adopters. I figure it will last at least 4 – 5 months (because 25% x 4 = 100% and that is like a getting a free pattern).

This decision caused me some headaches figuring out how to make MailChimp put a different code in each email but I managed to bully it into submission. Me and technology, we have an uneasy relationship.

The next issue will go out on the first Thursday of June and then the first Thursday of every month after June. If you have any thoughts or suggestions as to what you would like to see in a newsletter I am all ears! Please feel free to comment below or on Ravelry or on FaceBook or Tweet it at me …. you get the idea.

So, do you want to go steady with me?

Book Look – Warm Days, Cool Knits

In the list I have come up with of “things that I think could work better as a video” sharing books floated up to the top. I love a good book, and a good knitting book is no exception. I have been thinking about the idea of doing reviews, but the idea of reviewing and the assumed critique that comes with it makes me … uncomfortable.

I was raised in the if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all tradition and I cannot see a good reason for diverging from that philosophy. So my plan is to share books that I like! This first book is right up my alley because it was written by someone who lives in the South to address the issue of knitting in the South.

Which is not to say that there shouldn’t be something in here for almost every knitter. The pieces in the book that I consider appropriate for Winter would work great for Spring or Summer for someone in a colder climate. It’s a win/win situation. If you want to check out photos of the projects that you can see better you should click through to the Ravelry page for the book.

I’d love to hear some feedback on what you think of this format, either here or on the YouTube page. If nothing else, I hope it was a wee bit entertaining!