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.

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!

Knit and Crochet Personal Color Service From Yarn Love

Have you ever stared at a display of yarn looking for the perfect color combination for your Fair Isle yoke?

Or wondered if the colors you’ve chosen for your striped socks will look as amazing as the pattern photo?

Second guessed a color combination that you picked out from an online vendor….will the colors look good together in person?

I know picking out colors can be hard. There are so many pretty ones to choose from and there is also the inevitable wondering about what your project will look like if you stray from the suggested and photographed sample. These difficulties are compounded if you are purchasing your yarn online – due to photography and monitor display settings it’s impossible to know exactly what your yarn will look like prior to its arrival on your doorstep. Which means that your color selection might be brilliant or it might look a little flat.

I am here to help! No, I can’t change the issues of photography and monitor display. (Wouldn’t that be amazing?)  No, I can’t knit your Fair Isle sweater for you. (I have a baby, my knitting time is disgustingly little at the moment.) But what I can do is make sure the colors you purchase provide the most bling for your buck! “How?!?!”, you say?

Simple. I put the colors together before I shipped them off to EatSleepKnit. (Simple + brilliant! Why didn’t I think of this before?) All you need to do is grab your favorite Rainbow Pack and pair it with a pattern.

I named them Rainbow Packs – not because they all contain the traditional rainbow of colors, (Think back to grade school ROYGBIV: red,  orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.) but because I had a rainbow of colors to choose from when I put them together. 14 colors in fact; which is more than double the selection of your traditional rainbow.

Each Rainbow Pack has a different feel and contains a different combination of colors. I carefully selected colors both for overall visual impact and also so that they would provide enough contrast to work well in intricate colorwork.

If you’ve ever worked complex color patterns, you’ll know it’s not an easy thing to do. You must include enough contrast so that the each stitch is clearly visible but with an eye to how all the colors will appear together. If there’s too much contrast you’re garment ends up looking like you randomly selected the component colors without a thought to how the final sweater would turn out. Too little contrast (Hey, all my colors match!) and all the hard work you put into working the intricate pattern fades into the fabric because the individual stitches don’t have enough contrast to draw the eye.

You have two choices in Rainbow Packs from EatSleepKnit: small and large. I like to think of the small one as the “Stripey Sock Pack” because it contains four 1oz skeins, each with lots of contrast. That way you can make the most amazing pair of striped socks you’ve ever seen.

Your second choice is the Large Rainbow Pack; each contains between 5 and 8 full skeins (50 grams each) of Elizabeth Bennet. These are intended for Fair Isle sweaters, hats, or any larger project where 1oz just isn’t enough. The large packs have different moods – some are very bright and cheerful while others are really saturated and regal. All of them are beautiful.

Stop worrying whether your color combination will “turn out” in the end and get yourself a Rainbow Pack. It’s got my dyer (and knitter!) seal of approval.  Your project will look amazing and you will astound your knitting friends and muggles alike with your color genius!

P.S. – Here’s a peek at some of my preliminary color combinations, just in case you’re curious.

Yarn Love: the sock club!

Yep. Finally. It’s been about 5 years, but Yarn Love finally has a sock club. I’m excited, and if chatter on the Ravelry group is any indication, you are too! We’re keeping it as streamlined as possible. You choose your favorite of two colors per month (Yes, you can buy an extra skein or two if you need!) and we send it out 2-3 weeks later. Extra notions, treats and patterns won’t be a regular part of the club. Why? Well, while I absolutely love to shop etsy for fun knit/crochet related goodies, my boss cracks the whip when I spend too long on there. Something about needing to dye yarn. And two, my house is cluttered. No, seriously. Even though I love the extra goodies when I get them, I hardly ever use them….and it’s too wasteful to throw them away….and so they live somewhere in the jumble of my craft closet. So I’m saving you from the same fate. The best part is when you run across that perfect yarn notion on Etsy (because I know you’re going to shop!) you can buy it without guilt since you didn’t already spend that money via the yarn club.

Sign up via Etsy – there are only 15 spots left. We’ll continue to sell memberships until we hit our cap, but I wouldn’t delay too long…..we sold 14 spots yesterday.

P.S. – Do you like that pretty green? So did nearly everyone else who saw it! It’s one of the color choices for March.

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!

Yarn Love Sale!

It’s Cyber Monday, and since everything else is on sale, I’ve decided to offer an additional 20% discount on our overstock yarn. Now you might now realize that last week I put up an overstock/seconds/one of a kind store on Etsy. My studio storage space is way overcrowded. Most of what’s there is beautiful yarn leftover from a canceled wholesale order more than a year ago. The yarn is perfect and lovely, but I can’t use 30 lbs of yarn for my own knitting, and I’d much rather you gave it a good home. The “overstock” discount runs about $3-5 per skein off retail.

Today, November 29th until midnight use the code CYBERCRAFT for an additional 20% off.

Why? Because getting a good deal on a quality, handmade item makes me feel good…and I want to pass that onto you. I’m not going to offer this price on an ongoing basis, because a lot of discounting undervalues my work. But a special sale every once in a while – that’s a good thing.

I hope you find something you love in the etsy overstock shop!

Yarn Love shawlette just off my needles!

I’m so excited! I just cast off a beautiful shawlette last night. It’s my first shawl ever, and even though it’s small, I love it. I wasn’t aiming for a full sized shawl – more of a shoulder and neck wrap for the cold drafts of fall & winter. (Which is really ironic considering we have heat alerts in our area today for heat index above 105 degrees.)

The main color is Solstice – and the contrasting colors, in order from left to right are Art Deco, Pizzaz, Stallion, and Martini.

I still need to finish weaving in the ends, and then get to go on my first ever lace blocking expedition. I hope it’s as fun as most lace knitters claim.

Specs: triangle shaped shawl with a simple 8 stitch central lace pattern ending in a modified feather and fan garter st border.

Yarn: 90 grams of MC used, plus about 20 grams of each CC color. Shown on Juliet. Easy to incorporate sock leftovers in a beautiful new garment.

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!

Miss Margaret Socks – newly released!

Introducing:

little Miss Margaret!

Miss Margaret is my latest pattern. She was released yesterday for Three Irish Girls’ Sock Yarnista club. She’ll be available for purchase for non-club members shortly at Three Irish Girls.

She is a cuff down sock with an easy to remember spiral stitch pattern. I’ve added beads for a little “bling” but she’s just as pretty without. The spiral pattern melts into a cabled heel flap and is framed by prettily cabled gussets for a great fit.

The pink sample is shown in Scarlett O’Hara by Yarn Love, colorway: Petal.

Intermediate difficulty: pattern assumes familiarity with cables and charts. Bead work is done using a small crochet hook, so you don’t have to pre-string the beads.

Materials:
• 4 oz/410 yards fingering weight yarn. Shown in Yarn Love’s Scarlett O’ Hara. Color – Petal.
• US size1 or 2.25 mm needles (2 circulars, 5 DPNS or 1 long circular for magic loop.)
• Taspestry needle
• Stitch markers (optional)

Extra notions:
• Small gauge steel crochet hook – size 14
• Seed beads size 6 or 8 (You will need 60-80 per sock depending upon how long you knit the cuff.)
• 2 small cable needles (You may cable without cable needles if you prefer.)

Techniques:
• Beading (explained in the pattern)
• Cables
• Short rows

Notes:
• The heel flap, gusset, and instep st patterns are given as charts only for clarity.
• You may pre-string the beads if you prefer.

Where are they now?

KnitCroBlo Day 6: Document the current state and use of an object you have knitted or crocheted.

Fiddlehead Mittens

I actually don’t know exactly what these mittens are up to now. They were for a swap partner, and I hope she is getting lots of use out of them!

I knit them from the Fiddlehead Mitten pattern. The yarn is Andee dk from Henry’s Attic, that I hand dyed for this project.

They were so much fun to make, and are super dense. I had to go down to a 000/1.25mm needle to get gauge, so I opted not to line this pair. I need to make some for myself but like most things, I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Bowl Full of Cherries Socks

I designed these socks for the Sock Knitter’s Anonymous July 2009 challenge. Right now the original pattern (released in 4 parts for the challenge) is available for free.

I loved designing these socks, but they were a challenge. I had a total of 3 weeks to design and publish the pattern. (The designer they had lined up had to decline unexpectedly.) They were my first colorwork design. There are two versions – a 2 strand and a 3 strand – and they’re available in two sizes.

By the time I got done knitting both socks, I was pretty much (happily!) exhausted. It was a whirlwind tour and I had a million ends to weave in. My mom fell in love with the socks and offered a trade. She would weave in all the ends if she could have the socks. Done! I love seeing the fraternal twin socks on her feet. It’s as satisfying as completing the pattern and finishing the knitting.