Blog

Day 4, Colo(u)r Review: 4KCBWDAY4

Today’s prompt asks: What are your favorite colors for knitted or crocheted projects?

I thought it might be fun to compare this year’s post to one I did for last year’s Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, which was on a similar topic. Last year, I said I usually gravitated toward saturated, jewel-toned colors. I did, however, notice that I had started branching out a bit into neutrals and darks–something I hadn’t done much before I began designing.

Here are the projects I’ve finished since then (I excluded designs where I didn’t get to choose the yarn):

Not much has changed! Still a big preference for jewel-toned, saturated colors. My favorites, blue and green, are well-represented, although I think there might be more purple in there than anything else.

Just for fun, how about an infographic to see if my theories hold true? I’ll stick to projects completed since I started designing in 2011, just for simplicity’s sake, and also exclude projects where I didn’t get to choose the yarn color:

Looks like my assessment was pretty accurate. More than half of my projects have been in green, blue, blue-green, or purple. Gray makes a surprisingly strong showing, but other than that, the other colors get pushed by the wayside to some degree.

Maybe I’ll branch out a little more in the coming year. I do have some delicious yellow yarn in my stash right now that would make a lovely sweater….

Day 3, Infographic: 4KCBWDAY3

Today’s prompt calls for an infographic, which is something new for me! (Luckily I’m a Monkey and this doesn’t faze me much.)

I found a neat site where you can make your own timelines, Dipity.com, and decided to do a walkthrough of a sweater design from inspiration to publication.

Below is the result. You can click on the timeline entries to see the details, or for a different and very neat effect, click on “flipbook” in the top corner and you can scroll through them that way!

Note: if for some reason the timeline won’t load on your computer, you can click “Sweater Design Timeline” at the bottom of the image to view it on Dipity.com.

Sweater Design Timeline on Dipity.

Day 2, Mascot Project: 4KCBWDAY2

The second day’s prompt is to think of or research a project that embodies the house chosen in the first day. There’s no need to actually make the project (which is good, because my extra knitting time is nonexistent at the moment!).

For this prompt, I decided to choose an assortment of patterns from other designers I’d make if I had the time. I specifically chose ones that would stretch my abilities and knowledge, because I’m a proud member of the House of Monkey!

First up, the Dahlia Cardigan by Heather Zoppetti. (Note: link goes to Ravelry. They will all go to Ravelry. If you’re not on Ravelry yet, you should be!)

Seriously, how insanely gorgeous is that lace panel?? Plus the whole “business in the front, party in the back” thing really appeals to me. It would be a challenge, because the construction method is different and it would be important to get gauge (something I’ve historically had trouble doing in a lace pattern–my YOs always seem to come out too big or too small).

Next up: the Charvet Pullover by Maria Leigh.

I find the biased stripes in this sweater absolutely fascinating. The construction, again, is very different. It’s so different, in fact, that there’s a whole sweater workshop on Knitting Daily to help the knitter wrap her head around the diagonal direction of the work.

Then there’s the stunning Butterfly Dress or Vest by Jennie Atkinson:

This would challenge me enormously because of one simple fact (okay, two simple facts, hehe): I have waaaayy more boobage than the model. The lace pattern looks moderately stretchy, but I’d still have to figure out some kind of bust shaping. In the lace pattern. Um.

And finally, Orca by Chrystal Orel (Creations by Gems):

I find orcas completely fascinating, and I’d love to make myself my own little orca pal someday. But the challenge here is pretty obvious: I don’t know how to crochet, beyond a little single-crochet-edging action. I did find a few knitted orca patterns on Ravelry, but they all involve loads of intarsia, a technique that quite frankly makes me want to chew my own foot off. Plus, they aren’t as cute. So yeah, I think I’ll have to learn to crochet.

I’m not gonna lie–finding these patterns was SO. MUCH. FUN. Maybe one day I’ll have the time to actually make one or more of these….

Day 1, The House Cup: 4KCBWDAY1

The first prompt in Knitting and Crochet Blog Week asks us to examine four different houses (a la Hogwarts) and choose which one best identifies with our own crafting style.

I chose The House of Monkey, which is described as follows: Intelligent and with a fun loving side, Monkeys like to be challenged with every project presenting them with something new and interesting.

(You can see the rest of the house choices and their descriptions here.)

It’s not so much that I have to have adventure and excitement in my knitting, it’s more than I tend to fall in love with projects or design ideas, regardless of difficulty level. Pretty much from the moment I started knitting, I identified myself as an adventurous beginner. If I wanted to make a project badly enough, I’d jump in with both feet and learn how to do any new techniques as I went along.

I got tired of scarves and basic hats really quickly, so about a month in I decided to try some socks. I muddled my way through learning how to use DPNs, how to do a heel turn, and how to do kitchener stitch:

Clearly I didn’t learn how to alternate skeins quite yet…

I tried a couple of garments that failed spectacularly, so after about six months of knitting I bought some yummy Berroco Ultra Alpaca and decided to cobble together a bunch of elements from different patterns to create my own unique sweater.

It actually turned out better than I had any right to expect–that is, until I realized the uncontrollably itchy nose I’d had the whole time I was knitting the thing wasn’t an oncoming cold, but in fact an alpaca allergy. Sigh. But I digress.

I’m still doing this jump-in-with-both-feet thing in the present day, too. For my newest design, the Concord Grape vest, I fell in love with the idea of knitting the armhole and neck edgings along with the body, so there wouldn’t be any need to pick up stitches afterward. To do this, I had to figure out how to do all shaping without interrupting the edging pattern, which meant double and single decreases on the RS and WS of the work–some of which I’d never done before. I’d never knit anything with this construction, but I jumped in anyway!

As you can see, it worked out rather well. :-)

I’m pretty happy with my status as a member of the House of Monkey. Knitting and designing like this keeps the whole thing fresh and exciting–which is important when you take into account how many hours a week I spend knitting!

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week!

For the second year in a row, I’m participating in the lovely Eskimimi’s Knitting and Crochet Blog Week! If you’re not familiar with this event, you can check out all the details here. Basically, participants take her thoughtful and insightful prompts and use them to blog every day for a whole week. It’s a lot of fun to see how different people interpret the same prompts, and it’s a great way to find new blogs to read.

I’ll see you here for the first day tomorrow!

FO Friday: Concord Grape Vest

Here’s the official FO Friday post for the new vest! I put it up for testing yesterday and have several people signed up already, woohoo!

I’m soooooooo happy with the pictures we got. My husband is learning the ins and outs of our Canon and does amazing things with the 50mm lens.

The specs:

Pattern: my own, tentatively scheduled for release mid-May. Oh, and I decided to go with “Concord Grape Vest” as the name. Concord by itself was making me think of the Concorde–not exactly the vibe I’m going for.

Yarn: Cephalopod Yarns Traveller in Finger Lakes, 2 skeins purchased at Rhinebeck last year and about a tenth of a skein from a nice Raveler who destashed to me when it looked like I would definitely run out.

This yarn is delicious. It’s springy and nice to knit with, and the colors… well, those pictures are unretouched. That’s really what the colors look like in person.

I do highly recommend alternating skeins, however. My three skeins were all completely different, to the point where I know I would have had big blotches of color if I hadn’t alternated every two rows.

Notes: Although I usually try to avoid sewing seams, I wanted to knit something a little more portable than my recent projects (gray sweater, I’m looking at you…). A vest in pieces was perfect. And the seams are short enough that it wasn’t too bad. I’m starting to actually like mattress stitch, can you believe it? It’s fun to see the pieces come together like magic.

Knitting the front and back separately helped me concentrate on the slightly unorthodox shaping, too. Since I wanted the armhole and neck edgings to be knit along with the main piece, I couldn’t do any traditional binding off at the beginning of rows–so the whole thing is shaped with double and single decreases, just inside the twisted rib edging. It was challenging to get the right ratios for the curves I wanted (there are sections with double decreases every row, then double decreases every other row, then single decreases, etc.), but I figured it out!

I really like the way the back decreases pull the fabric up, too. It’s a result of decreasing many stitches quickly over not very many rows–but I think it worked out very serendipitously!

All in all, I’m pretty dang happy with this vest. It came out just like I envisioned it. :-)

WIP Wednesday: Grape Vest and Tosh-y Hat

The purple vest is almost ready for public viewing! We did a very successful photoshoot in our new backyard. It has this great wooden fence, which makes an excellent photo backdrop. Here’s a sneak peek from the photoshoot:

I’m done with the Excel sizing (XXS to 4X for this pattern), so the next steps are to lay out the pattern, finalize the chart, and proofread. Then I’ll put the pattern up for testing on Ravelry (likely in the Testing Pool group–if you think you might be interested in testing, drop me a line!).

I also need to think up a name for the pattern. Since it reminds me so much of grapes, I’m thinking maybe Concord Vest? Like these concord grapes:

And I’ve started another project! While looking through my Madelinetosh stash to get ideas for Madelinetosh May projects, I was struck with a colorwork hat idea. I tried to be good and wait for May so I could do the knitalong with everyone else, but I couldn’t stand waiting, so…

The main colorwork pattern is in Tosh Sock in French Gray and Norway Spruce. The lining (to be tacked up when the rest of the hat is complete) is Tosh too, but laceweight so it’ll tuck under without much bulk. I love how the design is going so far!

I don’t know what my deal is, though: usually I’m strictly a DK and up gal, but my last three projects have been on size 2-5 needles. Guess I’m branching out a little…

Moving on!

Thanks for all the commiseration on my gray sweater debacle! Kirstin asked if Photoshop would be helpful in editing out the pooling spots. I’ve gotten pretty good at editing out the stray hair or tree branch, but I’m afraid making the middle part of the sweater look like the top would be well beyond my abilities. See all the light bits on the top?

Yeah, I wouldn’t even know where to start. Plus, I like to keep my samples in photo-ready condition, since there’s always the possibility of trunk shows, the need for photo reshoots, etc.–and wouldn’t it be a cheat if I managed to fix the photo so it looked good and then showed up with the pooling monstrosity?

Anyway, I’m moving on! Due to a sudden and all-consuming love affair with this purple Cephalopod yarn (and, okay, a desire for some damn color and texture after all that endless gray stockinette!), I have the purple vest blocking already:

Yum. It really looks good enough to eat, doesn’t it? Its working title is the Grape Vest, because it reminds me of the luscious spectrum of purple grapes you get at the beginning of the fall season. I’ll probably change the name, but it’ll always be Grape Vest to me….

Tough Decisions

(This is one of a series of design posts. The earlier posts can be found here.)

Remember I said we had a failed photoshoot for the gray sweater? Well, I was going through the pictures we got and realized something. Something not so fun.

I think I want to rip out and re-knit 30-50% of the sweater.

This is a really tough decision, particularly because it has nothing to do with the fit of the sweater. The fit is perfect, actually. See below:

What’s not so perfect (and even easier to see in these pictures than in life!) is the really terrible pooling of the hand-dyed yarn at the waist and below. This is particularly irritating because the upper body was knit with the exact same skein, but the smaller width below the armholes didn’t agree with the length of the color changes. What’s worse, I was working on this sweater mostly in the evenings in front of the TV and didn’t notice until the whole body was finished.

It’s also easy to see that the second skein I used for the sleeves and front pocket, while appearing virtually identical in the skein, included lots of dark bits not found anywhere in the first skein.

To tell you the truth, this is the kind of thing I’d ignore completely if I were knitting the sweater only for myself. The fit is perfect! The sweater is snuggly and cozy, just like I wanted! Who cares about some color differences?

But since I’m planning to sell the pattern, I know I won’t be happy with anything less than great pictures. And that is going to require ripping, rewinding, and alternating skeins.

Sigh.

Another factor is the season. This sweater is definitely more of a fall/winter piece. By the time I get it re-knit (sport-weight yarn, remember), we’ll be well into the spring/summer knitting season. So I think this is going into the WIP bin for a few months. I’ll probably revisit it in July and get everything ready for test-knitting during August, which will put me on track for a fall 2013 pattern release.

But it’s not all doom and gloom on the pattern-writing front! I started a new vest design with more Rhinebeck yarn, these two beautiful skeins of Cephalopod Traveller:

Learning from my mistakes, I’ve been alternating skeins the whole way. I’m pretty sure I’ll run out of yarn before I reach the end, but I found a Raveler willing to sell me a skein of this colorway and it’s already on the way, so no worries there. The vest is really, really cute so far. A great cure for the meh of the gray sweater.

Easter and Gray Sweater Update

Hope everyone out there had a happy Easter! (Or a happy Sunday, if you don’t celebrate.) My husband and I like to exchange little Easter baskets. This year, I left my shopping until the last minute–and to my horror, the store was out of Easter grass! So I improvised with a skein of truly horrific Day-Glo acrylic:

Wrapping the yarn before cutting…

Filling the basket… Esme’s trying to distract me by being adorable, but it’s not working…

Tah-Dah!

My husband was properly appreciative of my ingenuity.

I was hoping to have pictures of the gray sweater for you today, since it’s all done and blocked, but our impromptu photo shoot this weekend didn’t go so well. I wanted to take pictures of the sweater in the library of our new house, since that works with the sweater’s cozy feel. It turns out our library is just too dark for good photos, though, even with every light we have in the house.

Ah well. We’re scouting out potential locations for an outdoor shoot this week.

In the meantime, there’s a lot of this going on behind the scenes:

I’ve finally switched entirely over to using Excel for pattern writing. I used to do everything by hand, but I recently took Faina Goberstein’s excellent Craftsy class on pattern writing, and I’m a total Excel convert now. It saves me so much time!

Page 16 of 27« First...10 «14 151617 18 »20...Last »