A post in Instagram photos (and one non)

Totally unrelated to knitting, I really like Instagram. You can take fun little square photos with your smartphone, apply various pictures, tag them with a location and post them to your twitter / Facebook / whatever.

I haven't been posting much because I've been hard at work designing and knitting secret things, but here's a bit of an update.

My new pattern, Isaz on Ravelry (linked) and Knit Picks IDP.



Last weekend I met my friend Nicole for brunch (and sadly not much knitting) but while I was waiting I got a hot chocolate and worked on the Ishbel that I'm knitting in ivory Handmaiden Sea Silk for my friend Christina's wedding that I'll be attending in mid-June.



Never fear, I am now well into the lace on this shawl, and I have until June 9th.

Today Nicole and Mimi and I went on a bit of the Puget Sound LYS Tour. Last year I did the whole thing (I believe last year it was 27 shops!) so this year I felt like I didn't need to try to do it all again. Instead we just hit some of the new shops we hadn't been to and a couple old favorites that aren't close to home, like this one in West Seattle.



One of the new shops, Serial Knitters in Kirkland, was really great! And they had star cookies, which is always a plus for me. ;)



So there you have it!

Mysteries Over, and Madrona

The last few days have been spent at Madrona along with all the west coast knitters who aren't at Stitches West. (OK, maybe not *all*.)

I've shopped a bit - mostly Gothsocks with a bit of Toots LeBlanc, Rain City Fiber Arts and Abstract Fiber Arts to top off the bag. Overall a small but quality yarn accumulation. The rest of the time was spent knitting, spinning, and chatting with other fiber folks.

I also finished some socks in my newest pattern, Isaz:



Pattern: Isaz
Yarn: Three Fates Yarns Terra Sock in Fenrir
Started: 12/27/10
Finished: 2/18/11

This was the mystery KAL in the Three Fates Yarns group on Ravelry, but it will be available soon.

A little bit of love

And now for my annual pair of (Black)hearted:



Pattern: (Black)hearted - one of mine, free and on Ravelry
Yarn: Macek Designs Sock Yarn in Dark Milky Way
Started: 2/1/11
Finished: 2/9/11

I still haven't made the ones to match MJ's here:



Somehow, even though I don't like colors other than blue, purple, grey and black... I occasionally like pink.

And hearts.



... but I don't really want to wait until next year for the twin ones. Maybe they'll just be late for Valentine's Day.

1/1/11

Happy New Year!



These Monkey socks will likely be my first FO of the new year. :)

This year was a pretty good one for knitting. I had a few patterns released:

Diverged as part of Knit Picks IDP
Jera in Knitcircus, and now through my Ravelry Pattern Store
Intercalate in Yarn Forward Magazine #33
Isaz currently only to participants in a mystery KAL, but in the pattern store later

I finished:

Socks (22 pairs)
Leyburn
Mini Mochi
Redhearted
Intercalate
Diverged
Greenlicious
Birthday Socks
Twists and Turns Twins
Blue Moon Rare Gems
Jera
Solstice Twins
Trekking Socks
Lucy Monkeys
Intercalate II
Summer Sox
Gothic Summer KAL
Artichoke Socks
Handspun Socks
More Monkeys
Candy Corn
Garnish
Melanie's Birthday Socks

Non-socks (7 projects)
Pea Pod Baby Sweater
a soaker
Milkweed Shawl
Odessa Hat
Cinnamon Grace
Pretty Thing
Undercover

As far as my knitting goals, I stuck to my 1/3 yarn diet - buying only 1/3 as much yarn as I knit / destashed.

My 2011 Goals

1. Continue the 1/3 stash goal, but this year be better about not buying new yarn until *after* I have the "credit" for it (instead of buying and then catching up*).

2. Knit at least 24 pairs of socks, plus other things.

3. Finish items until I only have 6 WIPs left, and keep it that way. Casting on a bunch of new things at once is fun, but it means that some projects get set aside and take forever to finish.

* I'd gotten off to a pretty good start by not joining any sock clubs for 2011, but then I made an exception for Cookie's new club. I have already subtracted the 600g (approximate for 6 skeins of sock yarn) from my stash total for this year and will "pay it off" before buying anything new.

Socks, Steeks, Blankets, and Elijah

I got my contributor's copy of Yarn Forward No. 33, and got to see my very own socks in it!



It was a very exciting moment. :) I'm not sure if the magazine is out in print in the US yet, though.

I sewed some steeks that I didn't knit or cut!

Since my friend Erin was so kind as to lend me her sewing machine, she needed me to sew the steeks for a little sweater she was knitting for her daughter. I was a bit worried as my sewing skills are minimal, but I managed.



You can see the finished sweater here.

I presented a non-knitted knitted gift!

This year I didn't knit for the holidaze. Instead I prepared a choice of elephants for my sister - a powerpoint slide with pictures of three different elephant patterns for her to choose from. She picked Elijah, and I will be knitting him soon.

I met a baby, and gave her a blanket!

I knit Undercover with some Three Fates Yarn that Stephania contributed - it was our joint gift to the baby.



The blanket turned out very nice, but the pattern has several errors that I put in the notes on my project, just in case you want to knit it.

I started my first Mystery KAL for Isaz!

It seems to be going well so far!



Next time I probably shouldn't wait so long to post. ;)

Intercalate

I had an idea for some crazy cabled socks.



And so I made them, and I had a fun photoshoot with my fabulous photographer Louise.



We went to Gasworks park, and even though it was cloudy and a bit cold, we had lots of fun.



...Maybe a little too much fun. ;)

The design was submitted to Knitty for the First Fall issue this year, but it wasn't accepted. I struggled on what to do with it, but when I saw a call for Yarn Forward magazine, I decided to give it a try.



Since the socks were originally knit with yarn from a US indie dyer, (my good friend Stephania over at Three Fates Yarns) I reknit them with yarn from a UK indie dyer (Wild Fire Fibres) for Yarn Forward.

You can buy the issue online here currently only through Yudu but hopefully soon as a PDF, or in magazine form if somewhere stocks it near you. I've heard people have found it at Borders.



Details
Pattern: Intercalate by me!
Yarns: Three Fates Yarns BFL Platinum Sock (green), and Wild Fire Fibres Manyana (yellow)

It's a Mystery!

Right about now a lot of us are pretty busy knitting gifts... even me. But come the end of December, most of that will hopefully be behind us, and we can knit for ourselves again.

Well, here's a suggestion:

Why don't you come and join the Mystery Sock Knitalong that I'm putting on with my friend Stephania of Three Fates Yarns.

So, are you with us? The KAL will take place on the Three Fates Ravelry group, found here. I've designed a pattern especially for the knitalong, and the pattern clues will be delivered by email starting December 26. You can sign up in this Google spreadsheet.

I've got my yarn at the ready!



You can join the KAL with any yarn, but if you want to pick up some fabulous Three Fates Yarns, you can do it on the etsy shop. She's even got some on sale right now!

People who finish by February 14, 2011 will be entered to win a prize, and people who do so using Three Fates Yarns will get an extra entry.

Got it? Good! Now go sign up and get ready to knit along. :)

Jera, again

Yarn: Stricken Smitten Smitten Merino Twist in Rune

My pattern Jera was in Knitcircus in the Fall 2010 issue. Now that the winter issue is live, it's available for sale on Ravelry.



Yarn: Three Fates Yarns Eponymous in Olivia

My fabulous photographer Louise and I had a little photo shoot earlier this week. Then my fabulous layout-designer MJ made me a cute logo and a layout and then stayed on Skype chatting with me as I tweaked it into its final shape. Over the next while I'll convert my older patterns to the new fancy layout.



More knitting to come soon. :)

A new pattern - Jera

I had a new pattern come out on Wednesday in Knitcircus... meet Jera:



Pattern: Jera
Yarn: Stricken Smitten Smitten Merino Twist in Rune
Started: 5/22/10
Finished: 6/11/10

It's in the Fall Issue of Knitcircus



This ended up being one of my quicker designs... I started it in April and had it accepted in May, then knit up the samples and sent them off. And the wait for publication isn't even that long - it's good for impatient me.



These socks are inspired by the rune Jera (pronounced yer-ah). It's the 12th rune of the Elder Futhark, representing the year or the harvest - a good match for fall.

* The pictures are courtesy of Knitcircus *

Diverged

Here is a blog post I've been waiting to write for a long time...



Once upon a time I had an idea. It was an idea for a sock pattern, inspired by the poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. A sock with paths that split apart and came together again. But it took me a long time to make it. Finally, about a year ago, I did.



A little less than a year ago I submitted the pattern to knitty, and then I waited. It was really hard. I guess I'm impatient, but when I have an exciting new pattern, I really want to share it and see others knit it. But 2 1/2 months later I got a very nice rejection. (I understand, knitty gets a lot of pattern submissions and of course they can't take everything!)

And then my pattern just sat. After all that waiting I had other exciting things going on, and I still wanted to do something special with my little pattern.

Then I recently heard about the Knit Picks Independent Designer Partnership Program and thought it sounded like an interesting idea. The real reason I design, other than to get those pesky patterns out of my head, is to see other people knit things I made up.

I think Knit Picks will probably bring this pattern to a wider audience than just my fabulous blog readers and the people who happen to stumble upon it on ravelry. Hopefully some of these people who like Diverged will also want to knit other things I've designed. It's definitely worth trying, so I decided to go for it. The pattern should be up in the IDP section in a couple of days - just a little over a month after my first email to them. That even includes reknitting the sample and coordinating with Louise for photos.

The whole process was not only quick (an advantage to putting patterns up all the time instead of in issues) but very pleasant. I even got to try a brand new yarn, Stroll Tonal, that was released a few days after I started my sample.



Pattern: Diverged
Yarn: Knit Picks Stroll Tonal in Springtime
Started: 3/17/10
Finished: 3/27/10



Pattern: Diverged
Yarn: Socks That Rock Lightweight in 24 Karat
Started: 5/6/09
Finished: 5/26/09

You can buy the pattern for $1.99 through Knit Picks or on ravelry.

All photographs in this post were taken by the lovely Louise.

Garnish

I have a new pattern up on Ravelry - Garnish.



So this post is a little bit about that, and a lot about my fabulous non-knitting friend Brian...

The idea of this pattern was a bit long in the making, but the final inspiration was a little pop of color in an otherwise dreary winter. And when I saw Brian's grey and white apartment, I knew I wanted to do the photos there. And I was a little surprised when he went along with the idea, and even volunteered to be the photographer for my little photo shoot.



We had a lot of fun, and he really got into the spirit of it. Some ideas were maybe even a little too crazy. ;)



I was so glad to be able to get such nice pictures of the socks, but also really impressed that my friend, although he isn't a knitter, didn't think I was totally crazy. He definitely stepped up to the challenge.



Hopefully everyone else will have just as much fun with these socks. :D

Listening to: My Gift of Silence ~ Blackfield

Adventures at Sock Summit

Well, last weekend was one full of sock knitting adventures.

Friday afternoon I drove down to Portland with one of my Seattle knitting friends. We met up with a few other knitters for dinner - there was a wait for tapas so we headed up to The Secret Society while we waited, which ended up being my dinner. My mom picked me up and took me back to Salem, but I hear the tapas place was really good.

Saturday morning I got up bright and early and met some of the Salem knitters for the trip up to Sock Summit. We hit the marketplace and attempted to proceed in an orderly fashion, somewhat hampered by the fact that we kept pausing in different booths and I kept stopping every three minutes to say hi to yet another person that I know. I actually never really thought about how many knitters I know, but it is a lot and they were well-represented at Sock Summit.

After lunch at Burgerville (where they are so nice as to put the calorie count on your receipt and totally spoil your lunch!) we made a quick detour to go see our friend's lovely yarn and the samples we knit from it!



And my pattern was there too!



And then... there was more shopping. And a bit of knitting, and dinner, and Ravelry partying. I didn't take any pictures.

Sunday I did a quick last look at the marketplace before heading home. I wish I had more time, but I guess I'll just remember that for next time. It was amazing, even without the classes and events!

Falling Up

Remember this?



Well, a while back I designed a sock with my friend Stephania's yarn, and now her yarn and my pattern are going to be hanging out together at Sock Summit. :) (Her etsy shop is Three Fates Yarns and she has some lovely semi-solids up now!)

So it's time to introduce Falling Up!



The idea for this pattern was based on a sweater I saw at the mall while visiting my mom in Salem. In fact, I was walking out of the mall with my mom when I suddenly saw a sweater with some lace panels and snapped a quick picture with my iPhone. It took a while, but eventually Stephania gave me this yarn to design with and the idea came together. After some swatching I finally figured out a similar pattern (I think it's slightly better, my decreases make more defined vertical columns) but there was one little problem...

It had to be knit toe-up.

Now, it's not that I dislike toe-up socks, it's just that it's hard to find a heel that fits me well. There's one, and it's the one I used in this sock. But doing a gusset in a toe up sock requires a lot more thinking and calculation to figure out when you need to start the increases to have your pattern line up with a certain row for the leg. There's the number of increases, which you use to find the number of rows, which you then plug into the pattern to figure out which pattern row you'll end on... it's much easier to just *end* on a certain row (like in a cuff-down sock).



But I persevered, and came out with some lovely socks that have all that annoying stuff figured out for you already!

It will be making it's in-person debut at the Knit A Bit booth #808 at Sock Summit, with a sample sock and Stephania's beautiful yarns, but the pattern itself is up for sale on Ravelry right now.




Listening to: Dark Waters ~ Brave, Digital Bath ~ Deftones

Wow, I have a fan club?

In the wee hours of this morning, my dear friend MJ sent me a message on Ravelry to inform me of something I never would have dreamed...

Apparently I have a fan club. I totally thought she started it, but she didn't. A person I don't even know in real life started a fan club for me! Quite the ego boost. But I didn't join because, well, that just seems conceited.

Well, my fan club and maybe even the rest of you will be happy to hear that I have a few new patterns in the works, and hopefully a couple of them will be out in the next couple of months. And there's another one that's all done in theory, but I really need to get around to knitting up one of these days...

Since I can't show pictures of any of that, here's one of my current socks in progress:



The pattern is Nebula and the yarn is Three Fates Knitting. It's a sample sock for Sock Summit, and I think it's turning out beautifully.

Listening to: Hollow ~ Remy Zero, Die With Me ~ Type O Negative

Secrets

I've been quiet lately because I've been knitting a lot. I've started a few new projects and finished one, but that's a secret design project that I can't show. But I can show a tiny peek, which is really more of a picture of the stitch marker.



I'm not posting the full sock details yet, but it was .26 miles towards my Sock Marathon, which puts me at .91 miles. I'm getting there!

See that cute stitch marker? One of the Salem knitters, Patch, made it for me. I thought it looked like a little goth spike so just because I was so enamored she gave me a pair of them. I'm thrilled!

And the yarn is from a Salem knitter too... Stephania. She has an etsy shop and this is the Cauldron sock. It's a newer base for her so there isn't a lot, but there is another one in this color.

Speaking of those awesome Salem knitters, they had a little goodbye knitting night for me last night. I've been selfishly declaring "supplementary" knitting nights to accommodate my crazy back and forth schedule between Seattle and Salem lately, and they've been really nice about showing up for them. This time, though, my trip to Seattle is a little more permanent.

Salem is only a train ride away, and my mom lives there, so I'm sure I'll be back to visit now and then. Still, I'll miss them. And apparently they'll miss me since they gave me some lovely blue Cascade Heritage and a Starbucks gift card last night, along with a super cute card with a yarny star on it and really nice notes to me inside. I'm so happy I got to meet all of them even though I wasn't in Salem for long. :)

OK, that's almost enough of me being sappy about the Salem knitting group, except I have two new pairs of twin socks with two of the Salem knitters... (Sorry MJ!) I'm making Horcrux socks with Harry Potter Opal yarn in Draco with Eloise and a pair of fraternal twins with Snarfy - we got some yarn at the Superbowl sale that was the same type. Hers is lime green and yellow, mine is shades of blue, mostly a brightish turquoise. We each wound off a bit of our skein for the other person and we'll have contrasting cuffs and toes, and maybe heels.

Hey, that's me!

Today I went by Borders on my way home and saw it - How to Knit In the Woods with my sock patterns in it! The thing about designing patterns for a book is this: you design the stuff, you knit the stuff, you furiously mail the stuff, and then you wait. You wait so long you've practically forgotten that you even made it and of course during this whole time you can't show it to anyone and then FINALLY the book is out and you're like "Wow, there it is!"

Today it finally became real, and so I proudly present some socks:



Pattern: Twists and Turns Socks
Yarn: Socks That Rock Lightweight in Jade

These, affectionately know as "the girly socks", are actually the second pair I designed. MJ was nice enough to crank out a pair on very little notice in her own yarn, and those are the purple ones also pictured in the book. In fact the picture on the pattern page shows a more "artsy" version of mine and a more detailed version of hers. They're gorgeous.

And now for the "manly socks":



Pattern: Cougar Mountain Socks
Yarn: Trekking Pro Natura in #1600

Unfortunately the picture of the second pair is not very good. I think my photo taking skills have improved in the last 10 months. ;)

So there they are, my socks. Now onward!

(Black)hearted

Feeling a little down this Valentine's Day?

Well cheer yourself up with the long-awaited (Black)hearted pattern!



Pattern: (Black)hearted - the PDF is available on Ravelry download now
Yarn: Cider Moon Flurry in Midnight Special
Started: 2/2/08
Finished: 2/13/08

Sometimes I like to take a bit of a goth approach to Valentine's Day. I pretend that I'm bitter and single, but really I'm not. (Bitter, that is, other than CTHGSY I'm single.)

These socks have been stuck in my head for quite a while, as I mentioned before. The initial idea came with these ones which I knit for Marymac since her birthday is on Valentine's Day. (Happy Birthday!) The whole Sockapaloooza thing is a lie and was crafted to throw off my real pal who even commented on that post. ;)

Look at that goth-ruffly goodness!



I revamped the pattern a bit by rewriting the heart chart with decreases I like better. However my idea included a "choose your own adventure" aspect that I also incorporated into the pattern. There are a few choices for different tops, heels, and toes. MJ went for a slightly more traditional Valentine's approach:



Knit by MJ in ShibuiKnits Sock in Blossom, and on a very tight deadline might I mention. She also did the fabulous PDF design. It's so nice to have friends who cater to your knitting whims...

Tomorrow I'll be wearing my socks and indulging in my Anti-Valentine playlist. But however you spend your Valentine's Day I hope it's a good one!

Listening to: A Fine Day To Exit ~ Anathema, Ask For Answers ~ Placebo

Some progress

Last time I reported on all of the half done socks hanging around my house. What I didn't tell you was that at the time that entry was written all except the Class Socks were on my desk. I like to keep half socks on my desk, that way when I get bored I can grab a different pair.

So since that post I've done a few rounds on the BFF socks. I also finished the heel flaps, turns, and picked up the gusset on the STR club socks, and the Secret Valentine Design socks are looking like this:



Yes, that is the bottom of the foot of a sock. But it's the bottom of the foot of an almost done sock (which is connected to a second almost done sock)! I know you're excited. ;)

Also the variation in the yarn is only that visible under very bright light like, say, a camera flash. In normal light it looks like subtly variegated blue-black.

And here's the handspun I was talking about:



I'm not totally sure what the fiber was since Rachel gave it to me without any sort of label, but I think it was an angora blend. It was pretty difficult to spin because the fibers were sticking together like crazy so I first had to split the batt into very thin strands so I could draft it at all. Consequently the finished yarn is a bit more thick-and-thin than my usual, but I think it turned out well.

Listening to: Head Like A Hole ~ A.F.I., In My Waking Life ~ Saves the Day

When everything is half done...

On the designing front, writing charts at 12:30am is not the wisest thing to do - when you go to knit them you just may realize that while you have made a bunch of YOs in the correct formation you have neglected to add any decreases to compensate.

That is, however, one of the best things about writing up a pattern before knitting it - I can be my own test knitter and follow the instructions so I know they're at least *mostly* working before I send them to my real test knitter. In this case it's pretty much simultaneous, except MJ was waiting on her yarn so I got a bit of a head start and sent her corrected charts before she started trying to knit my sleep-deprived pattern.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In knitting news, I am plagued with a bunch of half-finished projects. Last weekend I knit entrelac with some knitting buddies and thus was forced to start Quant in some beautiful blue Teseo. I'm modifying the pattern to be a round headband because I really don't like I-cord so I'm just making a little narrow stockinette section for the back and grafting it instead of tying. I think it will work.

The sock world is just swarming with socks right around the halfway point. I have the Class Socks just past the gusset decreases, the BFF socks about an inch before the heel flap, the new STR club socks in the heel flaps, the California socks also about an inch before the heel flaps and the Valentine's socks are also about ready for the heel flaps. Hence no finished objects and (sadly) no pictures.

I've also been spinning a bit - I've decided that Lime & Violet listening time is the time for spinning so the more episodes they record the more productive my spinning will be. I know they care. ;) Tonight I listened to the latest and spun up some roving that Rachel gave me a while back - she bought it at one of the sheep & wool festivals and never got into spinning so I obliged and spun it up for her. I'm letting the singles rest and I'll probably ply it tomorrow and give it to her next time I see her.

A bit about designing

I'm designing another sock pattern and I decided that instead of leaving it a total mystery/surprise I'd blog about the designing process.

Here's how it goes, at least for me:

I get an idea for a pattern and kick it around in my head for a period of time. Weeks, months, whatever. Occasionally I'll knit something relatively on the fly, but most of the time there's a lot of planning even if it's only in my head. The problem is that it's easy to get stuck in the thought stage. That's where MJ comes in.

In chemistry there is something called activation energy (yes, I'm always a dorky scientist). Basically it's the energetic "push" that a reaction needs to start... reacting. For me that's MJ. I can have a great idea but reality always interferes. Like this idea I had for a pattern for Valentine's Day - but that's so soon, and do I really have time to get it done? I was deciding not to do it but then last night MJ IMed me and the combination of the late hour and the MJ-effect caused me to decide that yes, this would work. So I started writing and approximately an hour later I had the first draft of the pattern that had been invading my brain.

(I should also note that she was the catalyst that led to me posting the PDF of Diamondy and she also was IMing with me while I wrote up another pattern late one night. But more about that later.)

The pattern was also inspired by a yarn idea that I had in my head. I tried a few times to find this yarn and had a couple ones that came close. When deciding which one to use I decided I'd multi task by picking a type of yarn I hadn't tried yet. That way it will also count towards my goal of using more of the new yarns from my stash.



There's the Cider Moon Flurry in Midnight Special all wound up. It looks a little more blue in the picture than it actually is.

Now off to cast on...