Category Archives: pattern design

Reclaiming my yarn

Posted on August 14, 2024 | 2 comments
Bellini Bubbles in Bellina

This colorway, Bellina from Yarn Snob/Knits All Done, is one of my favorites, ever. It made me want to try to combine assigned pooling with my favorite technique brioche.

Trailing Leaves, kinda

The assigned pooling doesn’t really show up in Trailing Leaves (currently in test knitting phase). The brioche leaves are beautiful, but where’s the assigned pooling? I thought the issue was because the leaves are front and center, and the pooling is on the side, so I knit a small cowl with the same theme.

Still can’t see the pooling, really

I know I’ll never wear the little cowl shown above, so why not reclaim the yarn?

frogged!

The yarn was pretty kinky since I had wet blocked the cowl, so I wanted to smooth it out. (The last time I knit with previously blocked yarn, it really showed in the finished object. Lesson learned.)

I wound it on my niddy-noddy (had to google how to use it; it’s been a while). Look at that kink! I tied it off and soaked it, then squished it in a towel and gave it a nice snap to straighten it up.

Much better! It’s currently drying (not on the mannequin; that’s just for a nice picture). And then I’ll move on to attempt number 365 or so to see if I can successfully combine brioche and assigned pooling, without bobbles (not my fave look). Wish me luck!

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Posted in Knit, pattern design, yarn

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Another weekend, away

Posted on August 11, 2024 | 3 comments
Mosquito Bites (vodka/coconut rum/cranberry & pineapple juices)

I spent last weekend at a friend’s family house on the Alsea River, near Waldport on the Oregon Coast. There were four of us hanging out and having fun.

Trailing Leaves sample

I finished one of my Trailing Leaves samples, and started another. I need two of them for yardage requirement information, since the first one isn’t knit according to the current version of the pattern.

I beaded a new ankle bracelet, and re-strung an older one with shiny new metal bits.

Salad is always more delish with fried halibut on top!
Looks sea-worthy, yes?

I started a second sample for Trailing Leaves, and found a clumsy join in the yarn (two unrelated colors together), so I started over.

The top one is the first clumsy join. I found the second (middle) one when i was casting on again. And the third (bottom) one? I was about at the same point I had been before. What are the chances of 3 joins in the same ball? And with a gradient, it really matters.

I decided that I wasn’t going to start over again; it didn’t look like the color was that different.

But it was; see where the dark blue starts again after the first pale bit at the bottom? It all works, but it could have been a bit more graceful. Hoping I don’t find any more joins! Next time I use a gradient like this, I think I’ll just rewind the whole ball before starting.

Alsea River

It was so nice to just be away with no to-do list!

I was supposed to be away this weekend, too, but my classes at Sitka Center at the coast didn’t fill. When we scheduled it, I didn’t know that it would be the same weekend as Flock Fiber Festival in Seattle, which is a big draw. I thought about going to Flock this weekend, but I really just needed a weekend at home.

Currently knitting in the backyard, with Cheetos. Perfect.

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Posted in beading, Knit, pattern design, travel

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Trailing Leaves test knit call

Posted on July 23, 2024 | 20 comments
Trailing Leaves

Trailing Leaves is back from my tech editor, and it’s ready for test knitting. This is a brioche bandana cowl knit in the round beginning at the neck. It gently increases down to the bottom edge. A central leaf pattern is created with syncopated brioche; syncopated brioche also makes the bottom edge pop. Trailing Leaves is knit with two skeins of fingering weight yarn in contrasting colors.

If you’re interested in test knitting, please let me know in the comments, and I’ll contact you. (Your email is visible to me, but not public.)

current sample knit in Dream in Color Smooshy

I’m currently knitting a second sample; it was perfect airplane and deck knitting this past weekend! We visited friends in Chicago and had a fabulous time.

The Bean (Cloud Gate) in Millennium Park
Live taping of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me
Chess Records studio tour
Bronzeville tour with Dilla of ChicagoMahogany.com
50th Anniversary Tour, Prairie Home Companion
Gettin’ our kicks

And a blues show (Stephen Hull Experience) at Rosa’s Lounge, and a late night show at Second City. Whew! We also ate ourselves silly…Filipino, Cambodian, English pub, Chicago deep dish pizza. Our friends Susan and Patrick are phenomenal hosts, as is their sweet dog Luna.

Luna

Back to work for me! Let me know if you’d like to test knit!

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Back from camping

Posted on July 15, 2024 | 8 comments

A hot dry weekend is always better under the trees!

It was our very timely ladies’ camping weekend. We went to Panther Creek Campground in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, just north of Carson, Washington.

Rocks in Panther Creek

The water in the creek is clear and cold, perfect for a bracing dip on a hot day. The rocks are such pretty colors, too.

Panther Creek Falls

Panther Creek Falls is a twisty drive of 4.7 miles up the road, and then a very short hike. You can go down to the bottom of the falls. Stunning!

Panther Creek Falls, from the bottom

What a gorgeous beetle.

Tai chi

The tent pad at the vacant site next to ours made a great tai chi space.

I played with beads (ankle bracelets)

and I almost finished this project. We’ll see if blocking makes the brioche patterning show up better in the green section. Super fun to knit.

We also played games and just had a great time hanging out. It was a perfect weekend with friends.

How was your weekend? Hot? Do you knit when it’s hot? I always knit!

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Posted in beading, Other craftiness, pattern design, Portland area fun, travel

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Decisions, decisions

Posted on July 9, 2024 | 10 comments
Trailing Leaves cowl, Take One

I’ve been playing with some ideas, zeroing in on what to keep, and what to toss. This first version (Knit Picks Chroma Fingering) was my attempt to spare my pooling yarn from the tenth frog/restart. It’s pretty good, just a bit longer than I wanted. I’ve got it figured out, and I’ll be looking for test knitters soon.

Trailing Leaves cowl, Take Two

This pooled version (Yarn Snob Fingering) is the right length, and I changed the increase rate to get to the number of stitches I wanted for the edging. But you can’t really see the pooling, because it’s on the sides and back of the green brioche section. Why do all that extra work, if you’re not going to see it when you wear the finished object? The leaves are really the star of the show. So I don’t plan to release a pooled version as a pattern; it’s a unicorn.

That doesn’t mean I want to give up the idea of combining brioche with pooling/algorithmic knitting.

Places you can knit: Bon Bon Vivant sound check!

There’s enough yarn left over for me to design another piece. It features that lovely syncopated edging, too. I’m halfway done…

Places you can knit: Margo Price at the Blues Fest

We had a great time at the Waterfront Blues Festival this weekend. It was HOT, so we were mostly there during the evenings. Of course I brought my knitting.

And my Lantern Moon fan, which I’ve had since 2009 (Sock Summit!). Make your own breeze!

Local great Curtis Salgado and 11 more fabulous musicians
Hawthorne Bridge lift for the fireworks barge to get through
Doing our part! (We take this picture every year)

Bisquee hopes you’re keeping cool! We have central air conditioning, so she’s not as hot as she looks. She’s enjoying her bit of sunshine.

Do you knit when it’s hot? It’s always nice indoors here! But I did knit outdoors at the festival, too. At least it was a small, not very woolly project!

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Posted in cat, Knit, pattern design, Portland area fun, yarn

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Powering through this brioche knitting

Posted on July 1, 2024 | 5 comments

When you want a snack, but you don’t want orange dust on your knitting, chopsticks are the perfect snack tool. Just sayin’.

Dropped stitch, oops!

I tried a different brioche 4 stitch decrease on this project. It’s a lot faster. But it’s also prone to dropped stitches, so I’m not going to recommend it. Which means I don’t have to make a video tutorial after all! My tried and true slowpoke method is a better choice for me.

In case you’re daring and want to try this one: Slip 3 stitches as if to knit 3 together. Knit the next two stitches together. Pass the 3 stitches back over the k2tog. (Don’t forget to pass the yarn overs along with the stitches when slipping/knitting/passing.) That’s it! But I found 3 dropped stitches in that round, so I won’t be doing that again.

I did manage to fix the dropped stitches, and I just finished binding off. Now it’s soaking. Looking forward to seeing how much this grows (I hope) with blocking!

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Will it block out?

Posted on June 28, 2024 | 4 comments

As I said in the previous post, yarn still surprises me.

This is where I left you in the last post. The further I knit, the more the ribbing biased. I think it’s because this yarn is a single ply, rather than a plied yarn. It wanted to lean hard to the right. I didn’t have another project going, so I soldiered on, figuring it would block out…or not. A science experiment!

Fresh off the needles. Quite a lean, and also a loose column at the beginning of the round.

The front was quite askew, and the the leaf pattern was wonky at the bottom, too. Place your bets!

Blocking is magic. This project is essentially a big swatch. It’s longer than I want it to be, but it’s the right general idea. I did some math, and I’ll knit another one. Remember, as a designer I make the mistakes so you don’t have to!

I’ve been knitting outdoors all week; the weather has been spectacular. Not too hot.

The hydrangea is coming into glory; it’s going to be a big year for these blooms.

I’ve been reading while I knit; it keeps me on task. I highly recommend Things Past Telling by Sheila Williams (I also read her Dancing on the Edge of the Roof which was good, but not as good as Things Past Telling). I also read The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl; her descriptions of food are incredible. I just finished First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston…so twisty! I enjoyed all of these. Now I’m starting Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. Our library system uses Libby, and I read all these as e-books on my kindle.

What are you reading? What are you knitting?

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Posted in Knit, pattern design, yarn

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WIP Wednesday

Posted on June 12, 2024 | 3 comments
Knit Picks Chroma Fingering

I’m so happy with my current WIP (work in progress). It’s brioche knitting with Knit Picks Chroma Fingering in Drawing Room and Bare. I love the gentle color shifts in Drawing Room. This was yarn I found in my small stash.

Of course it can’t be just plain brioche rib, right? So there’s some syncopation going on, plus some increases and decreases to make it pretty and engaging to knit. Because this yarn is single ply, it’s knitting up to be a fluffy wonder, but probably too warm to wear until this fall. I think the plied version is going to be be perceived as lighter weight, even though they’re both fingering weight yarns.

Yarn still surprises me!

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DIY yarn sleeves!

Posted on June 11, 2024 | 6 comments

Side craft: I saw Romi Hill do this on Instagram, so I wanted to try it.

Crafty pouf time!

You know those bath poufs for scrubbing? They’re made of a long tube of nylon net, which is pretty much the same as a very long yarn sleeve. I had a pink one at home, but decided that I wanted a more neutral color. This pale green was as close as I could get to neutral. I snipped the string that held the center together, and was rewarded with 3.5 yards (3.2 meters) of usable tube.

Yarn sleeves!

I like mine to be about 5.5 to 6 inches long; they shorten up when stretched. I’ll get at least 20 sleeves from this inexpensive (less than $2) pouf. I’m finding that these are a little looser/wider than the commercial ones, but they’ll do. (Edit: Romi says that steaming them can make them a little narrower/tighter.) Why do I like these sleeves? They keep the ball tidy, no yarn unwinding from the outside of my center pull ball.

Knit Picks Chroma in Bare and Drawing Room

Do you prefer a center pull ball/cake, or working from the outside? I usually like center pull. But I’m knitting one of my projects with Knit Picks Chroma, and it’s easier to knit from the outside of those balls, no sleeve needed.

This monogamous knitter just said “one of my projects,” haha! I kind of have two right now. They’re related; the green one is an brioche and assigned pooling project but I made an math error in my decrease rate, whoops! It was bottom up, so while I was re-figuring, I also decided to make it top down. And to save the yarn from many more froggings while I work things out (it’s holding up amazingly well through several different design ideas), I decided to do a non-pooled version with the Chroma.

I’ve just frogged the green project, so I really do have only one project on my needles!

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Posted in Knit, Other craftiness, pattern design, yarn

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Knitting in public, but not while biking

Posted on June 11, 2024 | 5 comments
Knitting at a Portland Pickles baseball game

Well, I didn’t manage to knit in public on Worldwide Knit/Craft in Public Day, but I did knit at a baseball game last Thursday. I’ll knit anywhere, on MY schedule. That piece of knitting has since been frogged; I decided I wanted it to be narrower. Each cast on is a swatch, until it’s not!

The previous cast on went along for quite a while until I realized that I made a math error on the decrease shaping. Along the way I decided to flip it from bottom up to top down because increases are prettier than decreases, and I’d start with fewer stitches. Bonus! That’s what I was experimenting with at the baseball game.

Marine Drive, Columbia River

No knitting while bicycling! DH and I went on a bike ride along the Columbia River. We had great views of the river, birds, Mount Hood (see it at the top of the picture?). This is an urban ride on a path alongside Marine Drive, which is very busy! I’m glad we could be off the road for most of it.

Fundraiser for Parkinson’s support

We’re participating in a fundraiser for Parkinson’s Resources of Oregon this month. DH was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease last year (early, mild symptoms, doing great). Parkinson’s Resources of Oregon has very helpful programs including informational seminars, activities, and support groups. If you’d like to donate, here’s my link. Thanks for considering it! And here’s a link to DH’s Parkinson’s blog, if you’re interested.

We’re making the most of a string of perfect summer days. Not too hot, not too cool. I hope your weather and knitting are…perfect!

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Posted in Knit, pattern design, Portland area fun

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