Peephole -a long

It is time for a Spring knit-a-long and it seems that The Peephole Stole is ripe for -a longing! I would love it if y’all could join me in my Ravelry group and knit this pattern along with others (click the link for the Ravelry thread)!

While it was designed to work perfectly with a 6 skein gradient set from Miss Babs, it is also supremely easy to customize. There are people in the -a long who have dove into their stash and have found many wonderful color and yarn combinations to make the pattern unique to them.

One of the wonderful things about knitting a long is that if you want to modify the pattern we are all there to help you figure it out. This piece is easy to make wider and in the -a long thread we discuss how to do that. And there is always the motivating factor of seeing what others are doing and showing off what we have done.

If that doesn’t do it for you, there are also prizes!

During the course of the knit-a-long  there are progress mile markers where, if you have posted a picture of your progress, we use a random number generator to choose someone to receive a free pattern of their choice. So there are 6 opportunities for that. At the end of the -a long (which will be mid-June) we will also have a Grand Prize and hopefully a few other prizes. I am working on getting some together, but I already have the Grand Prize and I am super excited about it.

Miss Babs has been generous enough to donate one of the six skein gradient sets in the color of the winners choice! How amazing is that?

Miss Babs Grand Bazaar

If it tickles your fancy you could win the above piece of gorgeousness! All you have to do is finish the shawl and post a finished photo by Mid-June to be entered. I will post about other prizes as I figure them out, so check back. And please, if you are so inclined come and join us.

Sneak Preview – BitterBlue

There has been scheming going on. Scheming and plotting with a bit of nefarious activities on the side. All of it started around February of this year and I have been plugging away at it with my co-conspirators ever since.

A little peek at the shawls.

Have you heard of EarthFaire? It is a lovely online store that has a very tight focus on beaded knitting. The proprietor of EarthFaire is Ellen and I was lucky enough to get to know her when she contacted me regarding Caladan and I was pleased as punch that she wanted to carry the shawl as a kit. Kits are what she specializes in, being a private shopper for you and your knitting. She matches the perfect yarn and the perfect beads with a pattern so that you don’t have to guess what is going to work.

I could take “arty” pictures all day.

After working with her for several years I felt that she might not think I was completely crazy when I approached her with a slightly crazy idea and I was right. She was game and she brought the amazing Kelly from The Unique Sheep in on the plan and we were off like a shot! Using two images that I had earmarked as inspirational for their color palates, Kelly crafted two new and beautiful Gradiance Color-ways to be used in an new shawl pattern.

A slightly different angle gives slightly different hints.

Ellen worked with me to pick the perfect beads and then it was up to me to get the patterning and knitting done. With the help of a wonderful sample knitter to handle one of the shawls I am now at the point where I need to shoot the final photos and put the finishing touches on the pattern. But the reason I am posting this today is that if this idea excites you – you don’t have to wait. EarthFaire has put the kit up for pre-order on her site here! She has tons of info on there that I won’t be all redundant about, but it is worth looking at for details about club exclusives, pre-order discount, and a knit-a-long.

The most revealing shot.

As she mentions, the pattern will be available on Ravelry – but if you want the custom colors you can only get them from EarthFaire. I will be releasing the pattern in September to coincide with the yarn and kits being ready. This gives me a wee bit of time to get all of my ducks in a row. In the meantime, you can be sure that there will be some blog posts about how to put beads on your knitting.

Wrapping (up) Presents

OK, I have one more post to share about prizes for the Lace-a-long. I want to say something like “last but not least” or “saved the best for last” but really, I think all of the prizes are pretty awesome and totally want to keep them all. I hope y’all feel the same.

Anzula Squishy in Spruce – I forsee a beautiful green shawl.

At TNNA I met a whole bunch of great people who are doing amazing things in this yarn-y type industry. One of the wonderful surprises was meeting the Lady(ies) behind Anzula. Sabrina and her dynamic team create absolutely stunning yarn on a wide variety of bases, many of which I have never seen anywhere else. Being in Atlanta things like linen and silk really speak to me of cool, breezy knits that could be worn most of the year. Why is there so much to knit and I only have two hands?

Anyhoo … seeing that this is a lace-a-long and I mostly design shawls when offered the opportunity to claim a skein of yarn for y’all I decided to go with this decadent MCN fingering blend base. And this green, it is so soft and lovely. I hope I did good picking yarn for y’all? Honestly, if I were able to keep this yarn I would totally knit a Roller Coaster Cowl out of it; just so I could have all of its squishy softness up close to my skin.

Finally, a place to keep your doohickeys and thing-a-ma-bobs:

An Erin Lane notions wallet

To be honest, I purchased this for myself at Stitches South, but then decided it would make such a good prize that I would have to part with it. I was going to link to the Erin Lane website but it appears to currently be under construction. Regardless, they/she make really cool bags and things of holding to organize your knitting life. I fell in love with the pattern on this and its really innovative inside. To see the inside you will need to click through to the additional photo in the Prize thread on Ravelry.

That pretty much wraps things up on the prize front. I will be figuring out what will be “Grand Prize” and how to distribute the other prizes in the near future. I want to spread the love as much as possible.

In between

There are things going on. Really, there are – I promise. It is just that there isn’t much of anything done right now so I don’t have anything interesting to show you. I mean, I finally finished the pair of socks that I started last February but they aren’t blocked. And I have a new shawl that is almost ready for prime time – but also not blocked.

I have a hat that is shaping up pattern wise but it hasn’t been, you know, cast-on? 😉 There are a couple of cowls in the planning stage and a couple of shawls in the stewing stage … really not anything to blog about. I bought a new camera! That’s something right? A Nikon D610 and I cannot wait to shoot some pictures with it. I bought it at a local camera place instead of ordering it online. It was a bit more expensive than I could have managed but it comes with a 3 hour class specifically on how to use this camera. So I thought that was worth it.

The Lace knit-a-long is going beautifully … ooh, that is something that I can talk about. How about pictures of a couple of other prizes?

100% BFL 2 ply Laceweight

One of the awesome participants was gracious enough to donate not one, but two skeins of hand-spun yarn.

As the label says Silk BABY! Also lace-weight.

They are stunning and some lucky knitter will win them. I cannot imagine spinning these, it is pretty much a miracle-type thing to me. But I bet that they would be awesome to knit with! Thank you so much for your generosity Margaret!

If you are itching to get your hands on one of these skeins of yarn, come join in the -a long and try your chances! If you have thoughts on knitting with hand-spun, I would love to hear them in the comments. I have never tried to do it and wonder what the benefits & pitfalls are to the process? I can see designing something for hand-spun, but I would have to understand better first.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the chart

Well, not precisely but I like amusing myself with silly titles (as y’all well know).

Once I figured out charts I totally fell in love with them. They are such a concise method of conveying a huge amount of information in a small amount of space. Take Golden Lion Throne. To communicate the information needed to knit the pattern you can either use 2 pages of charts or 5 pages of written text. For me that is pretty much a non-decision.

But I know that some people aren’t fans of charts so I try to include written instructions whenever possible. And I know some people will never be fans of charts – and that’s OK. But if you want to be able to knit from charts then one of the prizes in the Lace-a-long might be for you!

This book could be yours!

How can you go wrong with a book named Charts Made Simple? I was lucky enough to win this book as a door prize at Small Knits Symposium and I was cackling with delight. But when I got home and was sorting my swag like Smaug I realized that while I wanted this book that there might be others out there that needed the book more than I. And really, what better prize for a Lace-a-long? So now it is a prize (it is even signed).

How cool!

There are many reviews of this book out there, so I don’t think I need to throw mine on the pile right now. You can check here, or here, or here or even here and scroll down for the Amazon reviews.  There is pretty much a general consensus that JC Briar has written a great book to help the knitter better grasp the concepts of how charts work.

So, even if you cannot currently knit from charts, you can pick out one of my lace pieces and knit from the written directions (except Atreides), win this book and then confidently knit everything else from charts! This is the second post about prizes for the -a long and there will be a couple more so I hope you are enjoying them. Even if you don’t want to knit a long it is fun to look at cool knitting related stuff, eh?

 

 

 

Blue Sky Day

As a resident of the (American) South and a knitter I have a love / hate relationship with wool. I love to knit will wool and revel in all of its wonderful wooly knitting attributes. There are many things where substituting another fiber simply will not work. But …

I live in the South. It gets hot.

Really hot for extended periods of time.

I think it is why I have such a fondness for lace when dreaming up a new pattern. But it also means that I have a special place in my heart (and my stash) for yarn companies who offer non-wool yarns and interesting wool/non-wool blends. One such company is Blue Sky Alpacas.

Yes, yes. I know, alpaca is considerably warmer than wool. You have totally busted me as a total hypocrite. But alpaca is so soft. I really have an alpaca problem. My best friend says I have “alpaca-radar” where I can walk into any yarn store and immediately find the yarns that contain alpaca and that is pretty much true. The soft halo and beautiful drape seduce me every time. So I guess I should modify my above statement. I am a huge fan of Blue Sky Alpacas because of their great non-wool options and the ridiculously soft and beautiful alpaca.

One of their yarns, Worsted Cotton, is my go-to yarn for anything and everything baby related. Before you get all ewwww cotton on me, this is not dishcloth cotton. This is a soft, fluffy two ply of organic cotton that knits up beautifully and comes in a large range of both soft and bright colors as well as multi-color. When someone close to me is fixin’ to have a baby – this is where I start in blanket planning.

Wee Kimono for what turned out to be gigantor baby.

When my nephew was “in the oven” I knit a baby blanket out of the colors Azul, Aloe and Honeydew. Unfortunately I have only pretty crappy pictures of the blanket because really, how interesting is what is essentially a giant washcloth. But with a skein of the natural cotton and the scraps from the blanket I also made the adorable jacket above. Light, soft, easy wearing. Perfect for our weather and a wider range of wearing possibilities.

Why am I babbling on about Blue Sky Alpacas you might ask? Did they pay you, you might ask? Well, no – they didn’t. But I was lucky enough to get my hands on a skein of their brand new yarn at TNNA.

This color is Cherry Blossom

And it is so very, very lovely. I just want to sit and hug it, and pet it, and name it George. As you can see by the tag it is a 50/50 blend of Alpaca and super soft merino. Just like the Worsted Cotton it is a super lofty 2 ply that creates a soft, fluffy yarn. I so desperately wanted to wind this up and start playing with swatches but I said to myself “Self, hands off!” It occurred to me that one of you getting your hands on this new yarn would be  a great prize in my Lace-a-long! (Also, on the BSA site they have this awesome, wee stitch sampler that you can scope out).

So that is why this bad boy is still pristine in its skein. It will be given away to a lucky knitter participating in my Lace-a-long. I figure that by the time the -a long is over that people might be wanting to knit up something maybe not so lacy. And this yarn fits that bill (although chunky lace is a-w-e-s-o-m-e).

As an Aran weight yarn I anticipate that this would knit up crazy fast and since the put up on it is 150 g (ove 200 yards!) one skein is more than enough to do a whole project. I could see it being a great, close to the neck squishy cowl. Or I bet you could get a chunky pair of fingerless mitts out of a skein. I have no doubt that you could manage a hat easily.

I was totally curious so here, I did a Ravelry search for you with the parameters of knitting>aran>accessories>under 218 yards. Man, there are a lot of things there I could make. I have the pattern for this hat and it would be fabulous in that pink. Can you imagine a giant, pink, fluffy alpaca/merino pom pom. Arrrrrgh, it is a good thing I have already published this skein on my list of prizes in the Rav group or this puppy would be going back into stash.

Obviously you need this yarn, so come over and join in the Lace-a-long. We just got started on May 15th and the -a long will be running until July 31st. You can jump in at any time and use any of my patterns that have lace as a design feature. Everyone is welcome and we hope to have a grand old time!

Summer Lace-a-long

It’s on like Donkey Kong!

The Summer Lace-a-long that is. After much chatting on Ravelry there has been enough interest to officially declare that we are having a lace-a-long. Right now we are in the planning stages and everyone is welcome to come over and join in. 

The actual event will begin on May 15th so that it is well and truly Summer. We haven’t decided on an end date yet, but it will be some time in July or August. This is a nice, long, leisurely  event – just as Summer should be.

Captive, just in case you want beads too.

To help knitters decide what pattern they might want to make I created a Pinterest board that has all of the qualifying patterns in one place. If you click through you can see all of the patterns quickly. There are 13 patterns that you can choose from!

Alia
and Curiouser
Atreides
Caladan
Captive
Drooping Elm Headband
Fairweather Hat
Golden Lion Throne
Gyre and Gimble
Irulan
Lady Jessica
Scarab Shawl

The 13th one is Mapes and it needs a little explanation. As written Mapes does not have enough lace in it, but the nature of the pattern is one that encourages improvisation and creativity. So, if you want to do Mapes and add in your own lace then it totally counts!

My Mapes in Dream in Color Smooshy with Cashmere

When I made a fingering weight Mapes for myself I couldn’t resist adding some lace along the bottom. It totally works.

As is customary in a knit-a-long, there will be prizes! I am working on rounding up some fun stuff for a “Grand Prize” but there will also be smaller prizes both at the end and as encouragement along the way. So not only will you have a cheering squad to help motivate you to finish a project, you could win prizes too.

We are also planning a stitch marker swap, but I will talk more about that later. If that sounds like fun to you check out the planning thread. Who doesn’t need more stitch markers?

It’s been a-long time.

Tee, hee, hee. Pardon my pun. I was just discussing with my partner that I feel that puns are the lowest form of comedy and here I go picking the low hanging fruit.

I have a plot cooking up in my wee little brain. It has been quite some time since our last knit-a-long and I thought it would be good to start throwing some ideas against the wall and seeing what might stick.

Caladan has great lace!

Last year we did a “bead-a-long” where you could knit any of my patterns as long as it had (or you added) beads. This year I was thinking that we could have a Lace-a-long because the Summer is totally for lace knitting. There is also a distinct bias because I love lace.

Scarab Shawl, all lace – all the time

I started this discussion over in my Ravelry Group but thought I would bring it up over here too just to get the idea rolling. This is currently in the planning stage and I thought that would be the plan for April – planning. My thought was for the KAL to run through the summer, starting some time in May.

We have already cooked up the idea of having two categories, one for new projects and one for WIPs. So if you have a partially completed piece that you have been meaning to get to, this could be your motivator.

Please feel free to add some input in the comments or come on over and join the conversation on the Rav group. I want to have some fun and I am sure y’all have some great ideas that I have not thought of.

A bit of this and that

Last week was eaten up by my inaugural Sinus Infection/Bronchitis for 2013. As much as I think y’all might be amused by me posting while on codeine laced cough medicine, I decided that it probably wasn’t a good idea. 😉

Remember Curiosity? You will not believe what happened! The fine knitters in the Malabrigo Junkies group on Ravelry selected Curiosity as one of the knit-a-long patterns for Malabrigo March. I am beside myself with happiness. Malabrigo March is a cast-on fest for all things Malabrigo. There are contests and KAL’s and all kinds of fun stuff going on over there. Would you believe that someone has already finished a version of the shawl in Twist? It is lovely and, judging by the notes on the project, HUGE. 80 inches long with 2 skeins.

If you like to play with yarn and are a Malabrigo lover, I highly recommend popping over. I will most likely be donating some prizes to the overall festivities and I am sure plenty of other prizes will be distributed.

Next up is the YEAR OF SOCK

We start at the very beginning.

I have started my first pair of socks for the year, and to be properly motivated I have joined a KAL. This one is in the Wollmeise Anon group on Ravelry. The idea behind this KAL is that it is a Cold-dead-hand along, in the vein of You will get this skein of yarn when you pry it from my cold dead hands. You are encouraged to wind up and knit with a skein of WM that you have been hoarding and petting and defending against all incursions.

Since pretty much all of my WM falls into that category I was able to pick out the color shown above. It is a We’re Different Rattenscharf. The regular version of this color has a great deal more red in it and the red goes into much brighter territory. I love this skein because it is all black and red, with the black almost predominant.

The flip side – you can really see the color.

Would you believe I had to go down to zeros to get gauge(ish). The pattern I chose is Scylla and so far so good. I am actually considerably further along than shown. I have made it though the heel flap and have one more repeat on the leg before I need to switch to cuff. But I haven’t gotten a picture of that.

Finally, I have revived my Facebook page. I still have … issues … with Facebook and their complete lack of regard for anyone’s privacy settings, but so many people use Facebook it seemed silly to continue to be a stubborn cuss. So if you want to check me out over there feel free to poke around. I don’t really know what people are looking for out of a FB page so if you have suggestions please pipe up. I believe I have it set up so that anything I post here automagically shows up there – but we will see in a few, eh?

Anyone got anything exciting going on for March?

 

 

 

 

Knit a long prizes

For the last few months we have been running a knit-a-long in my Ravelry group and it finished up on November 12th. And what is needed for the end of every KAL? Well, prizes of course. This was my very first attempt at running a KAL and I think it went pretty well.

I know that with many of these type activities the designer is able to secure “sponsors” for the game and those sponsors donate prizes. I am not that fancy yet, so I came up with prizes on my own. Initially I had just planned on a Grand Prize for those who finished the shawl, but then I decided to add in a Not So Grand Prize for the entire pool of people who participated. I am including the people who finished in both lists so they get two bites at the proverbial apple, but I think that is fair because they – you know – finished!

The Grand Prize!

For the Grand Prize I commissioned an awesome project bag from the soon to be loaded Rosemary Potter etsy shop. I received the prototype for this bag in the stitch marker swap and loved it, so I purchased one for the KAL. It doesn’t look like your typical project bag but is still supremely functional.

You have no idea how hard it was to take this picture.

The inside has pockets and stuff! But of course I could not sent it out to the recipient all empty and sad …

I love me a Chibi

So I put a few trinkets inside. The Chibi might seem like a small thing, but I wish I had one for every project bag I own. They are the most convenient little things and without that little tube I lose yarn needles like nobody’s business. And, you know, could I send it out without yarn? I thought that a skein of Wollmeise Twin in Petit Poison no. 5 would be a fun bonus. I assume that anyone who is doing this KAL is a shawl knitter, and Wollmeise makes awesome shawls.

And then, the Not So Grand Prize:

Slightly Less Grand – but still fun!

I got this little felted notions bag at a local Art & Craft Fair and thought it would be perfect for this. It is made out of a recycled Faire Isle sweater and makes me smile every time I look at it. Then I thought I could include something fun to celebrate the re-release of Atreides (more on that later). When I decided to add beads to Atreides the wonderful Ellen at Earthfaire.com (purveyor of fine yarn, beads & knitting patterns) helped me narrow down my bead choice to two colors – and then sent me both.

A little sneak peek at a blog post to come.

One of the colors barely edged out the other for the sample, and that left me with a second set of beads. Ellen graciously allowed me to send it on in this prize and now one of my KAL participants will get them. And of course if you have beads you need a way to apply them to your knitting, so I got a wee crochet hook for that purpose. Finally, if the winner doesn’t already have their very own copy of Atreides they will soon.

And that’s it! Lots of pictures to tide you over the holiday and so much fun coming down the pike.

I guess it is time to start plotting a new KAL. Any suggestions as to what we should do next? Maybe the beaded Atreides or the independent release of the Scarab Shawl? Or something new? Because I totally have some new stuff coming! Actually, something really fun is happening in January, here’s a hint.