Considering Customization

So I’ve been wanting to lend a more personal touch to Yarn Love. It’s true that all my yarn is crafted by hand – from the skeining, through the dyeing, washing, drying, twisting and banding. My skeins are hand-wrapped in tissue, a lovely Yarn Love sticker is popped on and off they go to you. Each skein is special and important.

 

But lately I’ve wanted to make something even more personal.

 

I have a sock of the month club where I get the pleasure of creating two new colorways every month. It’s so exciting. I love color. I love combining them into something fresh and beautiful. I love hunting up inspiration from life and photography. And I confess, I love the responses that my club members give me when they see the new colors for the first time.

 

But right now I’m the only one impetus behind the Yarn Love color palettes. That’s something I’ll never give up, but lately I’ve longed for some collaboration. But I want your help. I want to know what you want.

 

I’ve come up with two options which sound fun to me, and I’d love it if you’d leave me a comment stating your preference.

 

Option 1: Personal Palette – a single personal palette spot will be available on a regular basis via my Etsy shop. You purchase it, fill out the accompanying color questionnaire and I send you some wonderful yarn, and a palette image similar to this to help you plan out your project:

 

 

Option 2 : Mood Board Monday – instead of offering a single personal palette to one customer, all customers will have the opportunity to submit a “mood board” or inspiring picture. I’ll collect the responses, post them to the blog for you all to enjoy, then choose a single inspiration to make into a new colorway. The new colorway will be available for anyone to purchase (on the base yarn of your choice) via the Etsy shop. Mood Board Monday would be a recurring event, say the first Monday of every month.

 

So let me know what you’d prefer by commenting. Inquiring minds want to know!

When tragedy strikes: coping with a failed gusset

I’ve been working on a new pattern all week. I started it last weekend, and since then my work has resulted in:

• 3 complete restarts. Everything ripped followed by a new cast on.
• 4 partial rips: most of these rips removed 50% of the current progress. I could have had the whole thing done if only I’d avoided this.
• 1 new technique incorporated. Ironically, this has been the smoothest part of the whole design. Go figure.
• Lots of questioning of my previously very solidly held belief that this design was, indeed, very clever.

In the course of the entire week – we’re talking daily work in this rather diminutive garment – I’ve not even used up all the yarn freed from previous ripping sessions. I have mixed feelings about ripping out knitting. In days past, I would do anything to avoid ripping out my work. It was tragic. It was soul-wrenching. All that work disappearing into the ether…..never to been seen, used or loved.

In more recent days – or in the days since I’ve started designing I’ve embraced ripping out my work. When you’re publishing, things have to be as near to perfect as possible. Missed stitches, wrongly crossed cables, and questionable design decisions all have to come out.

While rambling down the road to knitterly perfection, I’ve learned that no matter how precious my knitting is to me, I feel better when I’ve recognized and fixed my errors. I like that my work is quality, and value that more than the mere production of knitted fabric. I feel that I’ve grown as a knitter. That by pushing myself to work outside my comfort zone I’ve improved my skills, patience, and the quality of my finished knitwear. I like that.

This week’s challenge has been the gussets on this sock. They just will.not.work. I’ve designed, redesigned and reredesigned. Colors have been changed, the stitch pattern has been rethought and reworked. Last night I came to a conclusion. It may have been inevitable. It may have been fate.

These socks aren’t going to have gussets.

So despite my very firmly held belief that all socks should have gussets, I’m giving in to the impulse of the design and leaving them out. It’s the best thing for the pattern. It still fits the foot for which it was designed. Since I’ve stepped outside my comfort zone (I love gussets! They’re my favorite part of any sock pattern!) I’m going big and going to do an afterthought heel. Ooh, the drama of design!

So if you are fighting with your knitting, stop. Listen. Be un-afraid to quit fruitless attempts to mash a project into your ideal and find it’s hidden potential….even if that means doing something new.

Yarn Baby is cute – or the heart of being indie

You know, working out of your home – even when you have dedicated studio space – while balancing the needs of your family is a challenge. Many indie artists face this challenge everyday. For me some days are quite hard – the business must wait because my children need me. This can cause me stress and frustration as my deadlines and daily strategies are altered or disappear all together. Other days we all work in harmony and I make great yarny accomplishments! They are satisfied with their work and play, and I accomplish what must be done and more. As an indie artisan, I feel the tug of many tasks that need my attention. I make lots of lists in order to a.) remember everything and b.) prioritize my tasks c.) ensure both the household and the business is running smoothly.

To me, this is the heart of being an indie artisan. Bringing my career, and money making pursuits, into harmony with my life and my family. I feel this indie life is a great blessing to myself and to my family even while it is one of the most challenging pursuits of my life to date.

Case in point: I am currently working on a tight deadline for publishing two patterns. Contracts have been signed, and my professional image as a designer is riding on me getting my patterns and samples in on time. Due to the crazy forces of mid-winter holiday madness, I had 5 pattern deadlines changed by the publishers during the month of December. Even though I have been working days, nights and weekends on these two particular patterns, I had to write for an extension.

I felt terrible. I felt unprofessional. Luckily, the project is not as time-sensitive as most & the publisher granted me a bit of extra time to get everything in order. It was a huge weight off my shoulders, but I’m still working like mad.

Yesterday, I looked downstairs as I was cleaning up from breakfast to see my youngest son (16 months) playing with my yarn cakes for this pattern sample. We’re talking custom spun yarn that I’ve hand-dyed and hand-wound and are integral to this project which I’ve been trying not to stress over.

And I smiled. Because my yarn was ok. My pattern and sample are progressing daily. And my baby found joy in something I created.This is why I am indie.

My boy.

And his yarn.

 

Meet Ruth of Rock + Purl – now with a pattern giveaway!

Meet Ruth from Rock + Purl. This is Ruth here, isn’t she lovely?

She’s awesome, and so are her designs. I got to know Ruth via Twitter and Ravelry. I immediately loved her design aesthetic and her quirky personality. She’s full of good information; I’ve heard her discuss everything from the proper way to cook a paella to how short rows make a sweater awesome. If you follow me at all, you know I love all things food and knitting related. You can easily see how Ruth quickly made her way into my heart.

 

For November’s sock club colors, Ruth provided me with a photograph as a starting point for a brand new colorway:

Then I translated it into yarn form:

Since I try not to double up on colors for the sock club members (just in case they don’t like a particular hue) I created a second color choice that follows the same theme, in a different palette.  Just Before Dawn follows the sunrise/sunset theme, and mimics the way the sky looks out my window at dawn:

Now a little more about Ruth. She has many beautiful designs. In particular, I fell in love with her She Wore Blue Socks, and knew I just had to interview her for the blog. If you’re a member of the Sock Club, you’ll be receiving a free copy as your November goody!

 

If you’re not a sock club member, no problem. Ruth has generously provided a copy of the pattern to one lucky blog reader. Simply comment below to enter!

 

My questions are bolded, and Ruth’s answers follow. Without further ado, here’s more about Ruth and how she designs!

K: Where in the world are you located?

R: I was originally born in Spain but have spent my adult life in the UK – I live in West Sussex, a mostly country-side county in the South of England.

 

K: How long have you been designing, and what inspired you to start?

R: From the start, I added my tweaks and preferences to other people’s designs (I was one of those knitters who know how to manipulate measurements to make things fit me), and with a father in fashion, it’s always been in the back of my mind. When I found myself out of a full time job and wanting to take more control over my life, I chose to start small (all my first designs are accessories) while I “honed” my skills at grading/pattern writing!

 

K: What inspired you to design She Wore Blue?

R: I was playing with yarn – initially it was only lace, and browsing through stitch dictionaries, I found a way to include the cable in my lace!

 

K: What is your favorite color?

R: Oh, that’s too difficult to say!! I love anything bright – I don’t like dull colors or colors that don’t inspire a smile!! I guess if I had to choose it’d be red or yellow.

 

K: What’s your favorite knitting technique?

R: Cabling without a cable needle. Many of my designs feature cables, and it’s the fastest trick in the book!!

 

K: How can we keep up with you & your designs?

R: I love hearing from people on twitter (@rockandpurl) but I recently opened my Facebook page (http://on.fb.me/rockpurl) and can’t wait to see more knitters joining!

 

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A huge thank-you to Ruth for teaming up with me on this month’s yarn, taking the time to participate in the interview, and providing a great pattern giveaway. If you haven’t yet, comment below for your chance to win!

 

 

November – a special Yarn Love edition

It’s November! I’m quite excited as November is my birthday month & no matter how old I get, I always love having my birthday. After the flub-up with October’s yarn delay, I’ve chosen a staple sock yarn. I have it in the studio right now, so I am positive that I can ship it out in a timely manner. Scarlett O’Hara is one of my favorite sock yarns to work with. She’s just a little shiny, a little cushy and lasts forever. Scarlett has been a part of Yarn Love from the beginning, but she’s really hard to beat in terms of knitting into a brilliant fabric that lasts through a lot of wear. My girls even have a sweater knit from her (held doubled) that has been in their wardrobe for 3 years, and shows almost no wear….despite being flung into the washing machine weekly during the fall and winter.

 

Scarlett O’Hara

410 yards / 375 meters  per 4 oz / 115 g skein. 60% superwash merino, 30% bamboo rayon, 10% nylon. Fingering weight. $21 per additional skein.

 

November’s colors are special! They are the collaborative effort of myself and Ruth of Rock + Purl. I’ve come to be friends with Ruth via Ravelry & Twitter & love her designs. She sent me this Shutterstock photo to start things off:

and here are the colors inspired by it!

Sunset

Brilliant blue, steel blue, sunny yellow, marigold, and black cocoa. Hand painted variegated. Blue and black are the dominant colors.

 

 

Just Before Dawn

Rosy pink, mauve, lavender, duskybrown, royal purple. Semi-solid. The colors are swirled into the dyepot and allowed to meander and set randomly.

 

Later this week, I’ll be doing a blog post featuring Ruth in detail, so be sure to come back to find out lots more about this fascinating designer! Plus, there will be a special “birthday present” this month, too!

free sock pattern + hand dyed yarn by Yarn Love

Winner Update!

And we have a winner! Nan who wrote “LOVE the new colors, especially “New” Allure!” gets the prize package! Congratulations – I’ll be in touch shortly.

If you didn’t win this time, don’t be too disappointed, I’m planning on doing drawings about once a month on the blog. I love all the comments! In the meantime, perhaps you all could bribe the random number generator I used for the drawing……

If you didn’t win, but would still like the pattern, stop by Never Not Knitting. There’s a 25% off coupon for all my patterns and overstock yarns there.

After a brief interlude for delicious baking (oreos = yum!) we now return to our regularly scheduled knitting! I’ve just released a new sock pattern: Grecian Goddess socks! They’re a lovely combination of diamonds and eyelets adorning the instep and cuff, plus a lilting cable twirling along the gusset. I seem to have a “thing” for cabled gussets….they’re just so pretty! Grecian Goddess is shown here in Celestial Rose (on Juliet hand dyed by Yarn Love).

This pattern is suitable for intermediate knitters (or an adventurous beginner). All the stitch patterns are given in chart form, because that really is the easiest way to covey the large stitch design. Though you will need to work from multiple charts at once, the good news is that the instep and cuff charts are nearly identical so working them up is actually easier than you might think at first glance. Plus – cabled gussets! You need these daintily cabled gussets!

14 New Semi Solid colors from Yarn Love
Yep – I just finished uploading 14 brilliant new shades to the Yarn Love website. That means they’re officially released. Check them out here – they’re beautiful. I’ll be telling you more about how they’re dyed and why you want them in a future post….but for now ogling them is sure to brighten your day!

You can win free yarn!
I’m celebrating my recent productivity by giving away two skeins of Elizabeth Bennet yarn plus a PDF copy of my Grecian Goddess socks! Awesome – free hand dyed yarn! Free sock pattern! Please leave a comment below telling me which if the 14 new colors is your favorite. (Hint, the new colors are the ones labeled *new* right here.)

If you link to this post via Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr or your blog, comment with the url to your post and we’ll enter you a second time. I’ll choose the winner Friday, February 4th – so please enter before noon 2/4/2011. Good luck!

New, exciting! Interesting tidbits for knitters

Fit to Flatter – a series of tutorials for knitters

If you haven’t already run across this series, go check it out now! Currently it’s on installment 4 of 10 and already has the makings of a well put together and extremely informative tutorial. It begins by showing you different body types and how clothes flatter (or don’t) based on body type and the construction of the garment. The second installment starts with more information on basic shapes and finishes up with many details specific to each body type mentioned. The third installment builds on the information by moving from general principals into how to make good project choices based on your body type. Now, the fourth installment is the most thorough tutorial on taking measurements to ensure perfect garment fit.

This series is the most detailed information I’ve found on fit, which is quite remarkable as I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking in order to enhance my knitwear designs. Today is a sick day for me, and I’m going to run myself through the fourth installment pictorial and measurements guide despite being 23 weeks pregnant, just for the experience.

Interweave Press Spring 2011 Moodboards are out

There’s been quite a bit of discussion on the Designers board over at Ravelry on when Interweave would be publishing their new knitting moodboards. If you’ve been waiting, head on over there and check them out. You could be the next great Kate Gilbert or Ysolda.

I am undecided if I’m going to submit for the Knits spring issue. I have several submissions out currently (for winter 2010) and am in the midst of putting together another, also for winter 2010. Plus, rumors are that I will have to have the pattern & project completed around the end of September – which is when I’m due to have #4. It’s probably smartest to hold off….at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

That’s it for today. I’m off for another cup of Throat Coat while I attempt to recover from a nasty cold I came down with yesterday!

What would you like to learn: knitcroblo 4

KnitCroBlo Day Four: Is there a skill related to your hobby that you hope to learn one day?

I want to learn how to chart crochet! I’m fairly proficient with knit charting. I even have a really nifty program that helps me out. (KnitVisualizer is what I’m running. There’s a new program, much less expensive from Intwined Studio that’s getting rave reviews. It checks in at $44, instead of $185 for KnitVisualizer.) Since I love charts for knitting as I can see immediately how stitches line up with each other, I’d like to be able to do the same thing with crochet.

When I learned to crochet charts were not commonly available in crochet patterns. Which meant that you crocheted along, checking the picture and sometimes you could be rows past a mistake before you realized it. With charting, it’s harder to do that because stitches are lined up and you can look down a column and see the previous stitches which are the foundation for your current work.

I recently found the StichinCrochet font by the talented Adriprint. If you download the True Type font (TT font) and own KnitVisualizer, you can import the Stitchin Crochet font into Knit Visualizer & use the crochet symbols within the charting software. All you need to do is use the Create Custom Stitch function, select the symbol you want to use, enter in directions for completing the stitch, save and you’re ready to go.

I’m so excited about the possibilities. I have a lot to learn about charting crochet, but I’m chomping at the bit to chart out a lovely crocheted edging along the cuff of a sock….or the edge of a sleeve.

An Influential Knitter – Norah Gaughan

KnitCroBlo – Day 3: Write about a knitter whose work you enjoy.

I have to say Norah Gaughan is amazing. Her designs are both stylish and unique. By unique I mean off-beat and slightly quirky but loveable *not* weird. It’s as if Norah designs for a world that’s so pretty, I’d like to live there. She now works for Berroco, and every time they release a new Norah pattern collection I’m consistently drawn to the patterns. Her asymmetrical motifs and unique construction never fail to draw me in. One day when I grow up, I hope to make patterns as pretty as Norah.

Find more Norah Gaughan’s designs at www.Berroco.com.

Norah blogs at: http://blog.berroco.com/

Go check out her work. It’s beautiful & worth your time. Ideally, I’d post pictures of her designs here, but I don’t want to infringe upon Berroco’s rights by using their photos on my blog……

Killer Poppies

The socks are turning out to be a bit of a nightmare. Not a full blown one, mind you. Just the kind where you knit half a sock, run into an issue and spend the next 5 days redesigning it. You may already have guessed it, but the Poppy/Sunflower socks are turning out to be Killer Poppy Socks.

I hit the first snag on Wednesday night. I’d forgotten to take into account the increasing that needs to happen between the heel of the sock and the calf. Now you might not realize it, but there is a significant increase in leg circumference over the length of a typical sock cuff. Since stranded color work has so much less stretch than regular knitting, you can no longer rely on the intrinsic stretch of the fabric to bail you out.  You must design them in.

The second snag I should have anticipated, since I ran into something really similar on my Grecian Goddess socks, but I didn’t. Anticipate the problem, that is. I certainly ran head long into it. This problem being that I am anal, and I want my pattern to reach a certain place on the colorwork chart at a certain place on the foot. Which isn’t a big deal, right? I mean seriously, you just start at the toe and stop knitting when the sock is long enough. Well, that works very well with a minor amount of wrangling when the designer is knitting for their own foot. Considering that not the entire world has the exact same foot size as I do means that the pattern would essentially be usuable (in it’s best form) by only me. So all of you reading this would be out of luck pattern wise. I am a nice person, and I want you to enjoy the pattern, too. So back to the drawing board.

Once I discovered these issues all knitting came to a screeching halt. I didn’t even have an auxiliary project on the needles to help me out. Sure, I was 50% of the way through another pair of socks, but one sock was fully done and the other wasn’t even cast on. Casting on was just way too much work. So I sat around restlessly for two hours that night trying to figure out what to do. So I thought….and thought…….and thought………….for 5 days before I worked it out.

The good news is that the pattern should work. I’ve completely redone the charts – so now the stitch count is correct and it should fit me at the calf area. The bad news is that I’ve changed the starting point of the sock. It originally was a toe up and now we’re going cuff down. That means the 50% of a sock that I have done right now is going to be ripped out. Completely.

So I just ripped out 2 weeks of design/knitting work in favor of the last 5 days worth of brain wrangling.  And just in case you think that I have magic fingers, and knitting charts just flow out of them without effort I’ll leave you with this. It’s essentially an unedited chart “doodle” which was created during several design brainstorm sessions. Doesn’t it make you truly appreciate the clarity and cleanliness of a finished pattern? (And these are just the most recent changes/charts/doodles….several iterations were already erased/doodled over.)

Just so those of you who are waiting for the pattern don’t lose hope – here’s a picture of all the component yarns for the new redeisign: (Colors are: Marigold, Violet Vale, Ancient Forest)