Category Archives: pattern design

Podcast: Entrelac. Forecast: Sunny

Posted on February 18, 2011 | 3 comments

I’m on the Knit Picks podcast, Entrelac-tastic! Stacey asked if I’d be a part of an entrelac episode, and I was happy to say yes. The episode begins with an interview with Rosemary Drysdale, author of Entrelac: The Essential Guide to Interlace Knitting, which I reviewed here. The episode also has an interview with in-house designer Kerin, and a review of Gwen Bortner’s book, Entree to Entrelac.

It was fun to chat with Stacey in my current role as entrelac evangelist. She asked me how I started designing, and I gave a roundabout answer, but the real answer is this. Sometimes I want to knit something, and can’t find a pattern that’s exactly what I want. So I have to come up with a way to match the picture in my head. It’s that simple.

Knit Picks is giving away a copy of Rosemary Drysdale’s book. Leave a comment on their blog to enter!

The funny thing about this interview is that Stacey and I live in the same city, but I was a continent away when I spoke with her. Another college visit, this time to University of Central Florida in Orlando. This is a huge school, 46,000 undergrad. But the 1700 student Honors College appears to be stellar; we were quite won over by the director’s presentation.

The teams are called the Knights; the school logo is Pegasus. There are a lot of constellation names on this campus (Gemini, Apollo, Orion), which makes sense because the school started out as Florida Technological University, a support system for the nearby Kennedy Space Center. The campus is laid out in concentric circles, with the student union at the center, classroom buildings on the next circle, housing at the outer edge. It feels a little theme-parkish (very Orlando!), but it makes perfect sense to keep traffic out of the main pedestrian campus.

Speaking of theme parks, we had an extra day in Orlando, so we went to Epcot. It was ok, but I’m not much of a theme park person.

This fellow came to lunch.

Here are a couple other birds; I made them in a needle-felting class last week. My friend Carole signed us up for this class at Collage as a Christmas present. It was great!

I’m scheduled to teach at Twisted next Thursday evening; coincidentally, it’s entrelac! We’ll be doing my Infinity Entrelac Infinity Scarf, and the Lacy Entrelac Infinity Scarf will be a bonus option included in the pattern that comes with the class. If you want to learn a spiffy provisional cast on and the basics of entrelac, this class is for you! You can even learn to purl back backwards (without turning your work). Contact Twisted to register.

3 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Knit, pattern design

Tagged entrelac, knit picks, needle felting, orlando, podcast

Lacy Entrelac

Posted on February 11, 2011 | 18 comments

When I saw the new Chroma yarns from Knit Picks, I knew that it would be perfect for entrelac. It’s a 70/30 merino/nylon single ply yarn with a very long, slow color repeat. It comes in 16 color combinations; this one is called Midwinter.

I liked the look of this yarn so much that I designed a simpler version of my Infinity Entrelac Infinity Scarf for Chroma Worsted. It’s big, soft and squishy, and I absolutely love it.

This is my new Lacy Entrelac Infinity Scarf, and the pattern is now available for purchase through the Knit Picks Independent Designer Program. It’s priced at $3.99.

I’ve also added instructions for this lace as a bonus to the original Infinity pattern. If you purchased Infinity online, you should have received a message that the pattern has been updated.

I had some Chroma Worsted left over, so I am knitting Athena again. I’ve knit so many of these, but they’ve all gone out as gifts. Maybe this one will be mine?

Oh, one more thing: I’m having a drawing for some greeting cards and tape measures over at the Lantern Moon blog. Stop on by for a chance to win!

18 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged chroma, Knit, knitpicks idp

Potpourri post

Posted on February 4, 2011 | 11 comments

A little of this, a little of that.

We’re in college visit season, as you could see from my last post. We have another trip coming up, to another warm place. I think theTeen wants to escape the rain!

Too bad theTeen no longer knits. He used to knit, a long time ago. He even knit one red worm. (Naomi Dagen Bloom’s worm; she used to live in NYC, as did we, and now she blogs here in PDX as A Little Red Hen. Small world!) Anyway, I found out about this scholarship opportunity recently.

Five $3,000 scholarships are now available to hardworking students who can knit or crochet (that’s $15,000 total)! Jimmy Beans Wool has teamed up with many people in the fiber arts industry to provide the Beans For Brains Scholarship for deserving knitters and crocheters! This merit-based award is for students who will be attending an accredited institution in the Fall of 2011. You can get more information and an application by visiting the Beans For Brains Scholarship page (the deadline for submissions is April 1st). Not attending college but know someone who is or will be? Spread the word and help the next generation of fiber artists fund their dreams of higher education!

Maybe I should get him started again. I’m a knitting evangelist! What else? I finished the project I was working on at last week’s knit nite, but I’ll blog about it next week. This week? I finished the first sleeve on my Heather Hoodie cardi, and started the second. It goes really quickly, when I actually knit on it!

Oh, you want to see the *knitting*?

I also started on a project for Sock Summit. I’m using Knitted Wit’s lovely Bling (sparkly) yarn; she dyed both of these for me and I am having a hard time choosing which color to knit first! I think I’ll eventually use both of these, separately. The one on the left has blue overtones, and the one on the right is more gray.

My tiny start here isn’t quite what I want, so this will get ripped out and I’ll start again. This is my favorite part of designing: the dreaming about what it’s going to be, and starting and re-starting until it matches the dream. Frustrating sometimes, but that’s okay.

What are you knitting now?

11 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged heather hoodie, Knit, scholarship, sock summit

Infinity and beyond

Posted on December 3, 2010 | 3 comments

I wore the Mini Mochi Infinity scarf yesterday, doubled as a cowl. It was perfect for the chilly, rainy day: a soft warm cloud of coziness.

TheTeen took some more pictures for me, because I didn’t love the ones we took before. I had been in a hurry to catch the last bits of daylight on the last non-rainy day this week, and although I didn’t love the pictures, they were all I had. I like these better, so I swapped them into the pattern, and into my previous post.

And I also played with the cowl/hood look. I like it!

I haven’t knit a stitch since I finished on Monday. I’m not ready to start the two design projects I have in my head; I’m too busy this week to put that much thinking into it. I just want to knit something. It’s too strange having empty needles. I think I want to knit another Infinity! I love entrelac; each little square or triangle is like a mini-project. They go so fast, and you can really see your progress. I’ll knit a shorter version of the Noro Infinity in the same yarn. I already have the yarn; I bought a bag of 10 balls at Sock Summit last year. I used four in the original, three are going to a contest winner, and that means the last three can be mine!

Knit on…

3 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged infinity scarf, Knit

Infinity, revealed

Posted on December 1, 2010 | 28 comments

We were away for Thanksgiving weekend, and I had some time to knit. There was even a little snow.

It was cold enough that a tiny snowman might need a scarf.

The snowman is wearing the fingering weight version of my new Infinity infinity scarf, in progress. No, I’m not repeating myself. It’s named Infinity for the infinity symbols on the center rectangles, and it’s an infinity, or loop scarf. Here’s the first version, in DK weight Noro Silk Garden Lite.

It’s really long!

It doubles up to make a wonderfully cozy, drapey cowl.

I finished the fingering weight version; it’s knit in Crystal Palace Mini Mochi. I knit it shorter than the Noro version, and I love the length. It doubles to make an airy, light as a cloud cowl.

I’ve been dying to show these to you, ever since I finished the first one! The pattern is available through the Infinity pattern page.

To celebrate my new design, I’m giving away two copies of the pattern, along with yarn to make your own Infinity. One will come with 2 balls of Crystal Palace Mini Mochi (in the green and purple colorway shown) and the other will have 3 balls of Noro Silk Garden Lite (as shown above). The Mini Mochi is enough to make the scarf as shown, and the Noro will make a shorter (but still plenty long) scarf (I used 4 balls for the sample, but I think it’s longer than it needs to be). Do you want one? Leave me a comment and let me know which one!

Don’t wait to buy the pattern if you want it now. If you’re a winner, you can choose a different pattern from my collection, and I’ll send it when I send the yarn for Infinity. Of course, you can knit anything you want with the yarn; I won’t send the knitting police after you if you choose to knit something else!

Contest closes next Tuesday, December 7, at midnight. Go!

28 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged entrelac, infinity, infinity scarf, Knit

knitting like crazy

Posted on November 22, 2010 | 12 comments

…but I can’t really show you yet. Here’s a little peek.

Look at this gorgeous yarn I got from Lorajean (Knitted Wit) last week!

A perfect cloudy gray…

with sparkles! We have a little project in the works…

Have a great Thanksgiving. I’m not cooking…but I’m in charge of gravy, comme d’habitude. I can handle that. It’s been a rough month, but I have a lot to be thankful for. I’m lucky to have my family, an interesting and rewarding job, and to be able to knit for fun, design a bit, teach knitting, and blog both here and for Lantern Moon. I’m having a little giveaway on the Lantern Moon blog; click over and enter.

Are you knitting for the holidays? I’m not! Too much pressure. There may be gifts, but I’m not obligated to knit for anyone. Gifts happen sometimes, but mostly incidentally or by inspiration. That’s how I roll…

12 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged Knit, thanksgiving, yarn

Athena, redux

Posted on October 29, 2010 | 11 comments

I’m scheduled to teach a class on my Athena entrelac neck warmer next Wednesday evening at Twisted. I designed this cowl as a Christmas gift for my friend Carole in 2008.

The original was knit with Crystal Palace Taos, a lofty worsted weight wool with a very gradual color shift. Perfect for entrelac! And it’s like wearing a cloud. Twisted isn’t going to be carrying Taos any more (although it still exists out there), so I knit up a shop sample in Crystal Palace Mochi Plus, an aran weight 80/20 merino/nylon blend.

Mochi Plus also has a very gradual color shift. It’s a single ply yarn. It feels different than the Taos in that it denser and heavier. It’s also very soft. And it knits up gorgeously in entrelac, too.

If you’re local and interested in the class, contact Twisted to register!

Another cool thing going on at Twisted? The new Socks are for Suckers Club. This club will feature patterns for shawlettes, scarves and cowls made from sock yarn. It pairs an indie dyer with a Pacific Northwest designer six times over the course of a year, beginning in March next year. Perfect! I love sock yarns, but don’t knit socks with fingering weight yarn because I have to go down to size zero needles to get gauge, and that doesn’t make me happy. I’ll be interested to see what fun things come out of this club.

11 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged Athena entrelac, socks are for suckers club

summer to fall

Posted on October 23, 2010 | 18 comments

It’s transition week here in Portland. We have summer flowers and fall leaves.

The Japanese anemone is going strong. I planted a few of these several years ago, and now they are taking over my yard. I took out most of it this spring, but it’s all back.

My cosmos died this summer, but I think it re-seeded itself and came back up through the anemone. The first batch wasn’t nearly as spectacular as these are.

Here’s what’s happening in the neighborhood:

There won’t be any fall color on my flowering plum tree, though. It’s dead. Half of it bloomed this spring, and then the whole thing died. This bird (flicker?) was enjoying it the other day.

Oh! I never showed you the October Single Skein Club package. Here it is:

A sweet pattern for fingerless mitts by Shannon Squire, a ball of Crystal Palace Mini Mochi in one of my favorite colorways (I have 5 balls of this in the same color, different dye lot in my stash from a design idea that didn’t pan out)…

and some really cute stitch markers.

I can’t work on these right now. I’m completely obsessed with one of the things I showed you in the last post. But I can’t show you yet…

18 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged fall leaves, Knit, single skein club

Two steps forward…

Posted on October 19, 2010 | 7 comments

Fall has arrived. I love the crisp cool days we’re having here in Portland. The leaves are beginning to turn, and the days usually start with a bit of fog. This is the morning view from my bedroom window.

The cooler weather has inspired me to knit. I’ve got several ideas spinning in my head, and it’s a little overwhelming trying to decide which one comes first. Everything is in the swatching stage.

I’m playing around with an entrelac idea with some Noro Silk Garden Lite and my Lantern Moon US 7 ebony circulars.

After this picture, I knit on it through a meeting last night. I made it far enough to know that it’s not quite what I want, but now I know what I want. I have to start over. That’s progress!

I’m playing around with a different idea on another ebony circular (also size 7). This yarn is worsted from Pico Accuardi Dyeworks. I’m far enough to know that I’ve messed up the stitch pattern! But not far enough to know if my sizing is right.

And swatching another idea in sport weight wool, also from Pico Accuardi, and ebony Sox Stix in size 4. I’m far enough to know that the sizing is definitely not right.

Two steps forward, one step back. Eventually, I’ll get there. I’m usually a monogamous knitter, so it’s pretty strange to have all this going on. I also have an idea for some yarn I’m getting from Lorajean (Knitted Wit), but that yarn isn’t in my hands yet. It’s a good thing that I have a lot of needles!

What’s on *your* needles this fall? Or spring, for my friends down under?

7 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

Tagged entrelac, fall knitting, Knit

urban fiber arts

Posted on October 8, 2010 | 7 comments

There’s a new yarn shop in Portland’s Pearl District, Urban Fiber Arts. Cindy Abernethy, the shop’s owner, carries yarn, spinning fibers, patterns, and accessories from regional dyers, spinners, and other fiber artists, many of whom are local to the Pacific Northwest. Cindy is one of the PDXKnit-bloggers, and she is realizing a life-long dream of having her own shop.

I missed the grand opening last week, but I finally had a chance to visit on Wednesday. I saw fiber from Abstract Fiber and Dicentra, and yarn from StitchJones. The shop will also carry hand-dyed yarn from Knitted Wit and Pico Accuardi. Urban Fiber Art’s focus is “quality yarns and fibers from the Northwest and beyond.” It’s almost like going to OFFF without having to wait. And they now carry most of my PDXKnitterati patterns, too. Thank you, Cindy!

Here’s some fun handspun from Trtlgrl Crafts.

While I was visiting, I bought this drop spindle learn to spin kit from Krafti-Kit.

I love the carved scrollwork on the spindle’s whorl. Pretty! And the alpaca fiber is really soft, like a cloud. It spins pretty easily, too.

In other news, I’m scheduled to teach a class on the Pippi Hat at Twisted the next couple of Thursday evenings. If you’d like an introduction to color work, this hat is a great way to learn. Contact Twisted to register.