mittens

Friday Roundup: Another FO and Tasty Soups

What I’m Knitting

I have another FO from the Indie Design Gift-A-Long this week!

These felted mittens are to match Ronan’s aviator hat I showed off last week. Here’s what they looked like pre-felting (along with the yarn I had left—that was some serious yarn chicken with a hand-dyed, irreplaceable yarn):

Here are the specs on the mittens:

Pattern: Snow Day Mittens by Melissa Metzbower

Yarn: Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Worsted, hand-dyed by my husband!

Notes: This pattern was clear and easy to follow, and I love that it includes sizes from teeny baby to large adult! I made the 24 month size for Ronan. They’re too big even after I felted them to within an inch of their lives, but that’s okay—with luck, he should be able to wear them next year, too. And he doesn’t mind that they’re big:

A few days ago, I received the yarn for three(!) secret deadline projects, so I’m afraid that’s probably going to be all of my Gift-A-Long knitting for this year. But I really enjoyed knitting other people’s patterns for a change. I can’t wait for next year!

PSA: if you aren’t sure what the Gift-A-Long is, come check it out in the Ravelry group! It runs all the way through New Year’s Eve, so there’s plenty of time to get in on the fun.

What I’m Cooking

I knocked out two cookbook challenge recipes this week. First up was this chef’s salad, featuring baked tofu, breaded cauliflower, and eggplant bacon. The salad itself was good (if a little too labor-intensive and fiddly for a salad), but the vegan “ranch” dressing recipe that went with it—OMFG. It tastes virtually identical to dairy-filled ranch! My husband and I practically drank it out of the bowl. Definitely a new favorite!

For my weekly dinner for a crowd, I tried the smoky split pea soup from the cookbook. The smoked paprika that gives it the sort of ham-like flavor turned the soup brown rather than green, but it tasted great.

I also made my favorite beefless-beef stew recipe. This stew often gets “Whoa!” comments from carnivores who aren’t expecting something that tastes so much like the beef stew they’re used to. I used the wine called for in the recipe this time instead of my usual veggie broth substitution, which made it that much richer and better.

I’ve decided to make a huge amount of cookies for a holiday party I’m attending this weekend—so tune in for next week’s Friday Roundup for the results of that!

What I’m Reading

I picked up the first book in a long-running YA series, Margaret Peterson Haddix’s The Missing. It skews a little young, maybe, but it has a bunch of elements I like in my books—adventure, mystery, sci-fi, and good writing.

New Pattern Releases: Transposed Hat and Mittens

Here’s the next installment of patterns in my Babe in the Woods collection, the Transposed Hat and Mittens:

The inspiration for this design came from the highly variegated skein of Malabrigo Rios in Fresco y Seco. I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so variegated, so I knew I had to come up with something that really showed off the color changes. I’ve always liked the look of “faux Isle” knits, where it appears that there are many different colors used when there are really just two. I sketched out this chevron design and got to work.

I’m especially happy with the way the crown decreases worked out in the hat:Like the Aureate set I showed off last week, I wrote the matching mittens pattern for baby, toddler, and child sizes–thumbless in baby size, thumbs for the rest. I knit up a child-sized sample to show the thumb:

The hat, baby mittens, and single child mitten were all made with a skein each of Malabrigo Rios in Natural and Fresco y Seco. There’s a ton of yarn left, too–definitely enough for another baby hat or a second set of mittens. So it ends up being pretty economical!

You can find the pattern (and the rest of the Babe in the Woods collection) here on Ravelry.

My next design project is going to be an adult version of the hat in a different colorway, since I’ve gotten such good feedback on the baby version. I think lots of people (myself included!) are looking for ways to make beautiful variegated colorways really shine.

Ronan was very cooperative through the whole photoshoot, but he did seem to think the mittens were rather tasty:

New Pattern Releases: Aureate Collection!

Remember all those secret projects I’ve been talking about?

I released a collection last week!

Ravelry link to purchase is here.

This is my first collection ever that isn’t just a bundle of a few related accessories, and it’s really exciting to have so many new patterns out there at once. The e-book includes five accessories, sized from Baby to Child, and the vest shown above (sized from 0-6 months to 4-6 years).

I thought I’d introduce the collection in parts, so today I’m showing you the first three accessories. Here’s the Aureate set, modeled by my very obliging son:

These were all knit with two skeins of Malabrigo Mecha, a wonderfully soft and squishy yarn (and you longtime readers know how much I like the squishy). Although the yarn is labeled as a bulky weight, I did find out that skeins of this yarn can vary in thickness. This particular batch knit up at more like a heavy Aran weight on size 9 needles.

Ronan has been wearing his Aureate Hat out and about constantly since the photoshoot, and it gets compliments everywhere he goes. Part of that is because he’s ridiculously adorable, but I like to think the hat should get a little bit of the credit.

He’s also wearing the Aureate Scarf in that shot. Long scarves aren’t practical for babies or small children (and can be a choking hazard), but I wanted to design something to keep the chill off his neck. I toyed with the idea of a cowl, but eventually decided on a short scarf that’s fastened in the front with snaps, ascot style. This way it’s easy to put on but will come off easily too if there’s an issue.

Here’s a detail of the scarf and its fastenings:

And finally, the Aureate Mittens complete the set. They’re thumbless in the baby size and knit up in no time flat. The toddler and child sizes take a little bit longer, but are still very quick projects.

The cables on these mittens are shorter than on the hat and scarf, but definitely still along the same theme. Here are the baby mittens:

And here’s one I knit up in the child size to show the thumb:

I love chunky knits on chunky babies, don’t you?

Interview with Designer Gillian Grimm of Birch Hollow Cottage!

I have another fun interview with a fellow Indie Design Gift-A-Long designer today! Gillian has some adorable patterns in her Ravelry shop, and I’ve already seen several pop up in the KAL/CAL threads in the Gift-A-Long Ravelry group. I asked her a few questions about her design background and inspirations.

Triona Murphy: What inspired you to start designing?
Gillian Grimm: I’ve always been a tinkerer when it comes to patterns, in both sewing and knitting. I spent several years making adjustments to existing patterns to better suit my needs and that led to designing things from scratch. Once I started down that road there was no going back :)

TM: Your mitten patterns for kids are adorable! I especially like the Gnome Mittens and Little Hedgehog Mittens. What inspired you to start making them? Which one is your favorite?

GG: Well thank you! My animal mittens were inspired both by the creatures that lived in the woods around us and also characters from children’s books. I was especially inspired by Jan Brett’s The Mitten and some of her other picture books for my first round of animal mittens and I have some new picture book inspired mittens in the works that I hope to release during the GAL! I also draw inspiration from my children and their friends. I’m always looking for ways to create items that they will wear and love and have fun with!

TM: The name Birch Hollow is very evocative. Do you really live near birch trees, or are they just favorites of yours?
GG: Birch Hollow Cottage is, indeed, a real place. Until this spring we lived high up in the mountains in Vermont in a house surrounded by birch and maple trees, plenty of wild animals and two creeks. It was the perfect place to curl up in front of the wood stove with piles of wool and knit and dream away. We’re now living in an old house in Portland, Oregon, which we also love, although I’m not sure anyplace will every compare to our time in the Birch Hollow. :)

TM: Are you planning to participate in the Gift-A-Long as a crafter as well as a designer? If so, what do you plan to make?
GG: Definitely! We try to make Christmas each year as much about handmade and homemade gifts as we can. I’ll be picking out some hat and scarf patterns to make as gifts but I’m also on the hunt for a great sweater pattern that I can make for myself in the new year.

TM: What are your design goals for the next year?
GG: I’ll be releasing most of my animal mittens in adult sizes as well as introducing some more animals into the group. I’ve also got some fun hat projects in the works, plus I’d like to branch out more in the shawl area. I’ve got lots of sketches and ideas and I can’t wait to get knitting.

I hope you enjoyed getting to know Gillian as much as I did! As for my own GAL knitting, I finished a present for my son’s first Christmas. Stay tuned for that soon!

Blog Week Day 3: Experimental Photography 5KCBWDAY3

Experimental Photography And Image Handling For Bloggers: Refresh your skills at creating attention-grabbing pictures.

For today’s Blog Week topic, I decided to tackle some photo editing.

Below is one of the original, unedited pictures I took of my Morgandy Mittens pattern. I love, love, love the mittens, but I never really felt like the pictures showed them off to their best advantage.

Original

As you can see, the color of the mittens looks kind of washed out and flat, and the yellow table background is distracting. The actual yarn (Manos Silk Blend in Bing Cherry) is a luminous, multi-toned purple-red color. Not flat at all!

I went looking for an accurate depiction of it somewhere online and had a lot of trouble finding one. Looks like I’m not the only one whose camera has trouble with reds! This picture, from retailer Eat.Sleep.Knit., is the closest one I found:

First, I tried my quick and dirty method of photo editing: using the tools in iPhoto to tweak exposure, colors, and contrast. After a few minutes, it looked slightly better:

with iPhoto treatment

Also kind of fluorescent. Not the best look. So I imported the photo into Photoshop to try some more powerful tools. I’m not great with Photoshop, and I only know how to use about 5% of the things it can do, but sometimes I can get good results by messing around for a while to see what looks good.

Here’s the result of tweaking levels and selective color on the original photo:

with Photoshop treatment

Maybe a little better… but still not great (although we’re getting closer to the actual color, so that’s good).

Now I decided to pull out the big guns. One of the best things I discovered a few years ago was Photoshop Actions. These are sequences of layers and filters that people put together to create certain effects and then put up online for free or sale. You click one button and everything gets applied to your original photo, and then you can adjust the layers to get the exact look you want. (I gushed about Actions in this blog post if you want to read more about them.)

Some of the actions I have obviously weren’t going to work for this picture (like the ones to bump up the reds), but I found several that I liked! All the actions below are from the Timecapsule Set by Nelly Nero.

with “Woodstock” action – I like the vintage-y look!

With “Milk” action

And my favorite of the bunch:

with “Mandolin” action

The colors are very close to the actual mittens and the yarn no longer looks flat and dull. Plus, I think the cables show up a lot better than they did in the original.

I’m calling this one a win!