I get a round

Posted on October 5, 2025 | 4 comments
Three knit circles

So it’s gone from this

A knit circle being stretched over an embroidery hoop

to this

Three knit circles featuring assigned pooling, and a cat

to this! Pardon my Quality Assurance Cat; she’s making sure the ends have been woven in properly.

A knit circle featuring assigned pooling motifs on an embroidery hoop

I’ve added spiral stitch markers to the circle; can you see them? They’re cats! The ears help them stay in place. The stitch markers are meant to hold my lightweight necklaces. Which I’ll show you, once I get them untangled. They’re currently in a box, all jumbled up.

Reminder: The Knit Your Own Adventure Summit is this week! This free online event will help you be a more confident knitter. Learn more about the Knit Your Own Adventure Summit, and grab your free ticket here (The links to the summit give me credit for you signing up, which is free. If you upgrade your access with an Expedition Pass, I receive a commission. Your choice!)

My presentation is Frogging Your Knitting: Getting Back On Track. And I’m participating in a Zoom panel on Tuesday October 7 at 1 pm Central. It’s called Live Fix-It Lab: Your Top Troubleshooting Questions Answered. Come join the fun!

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Posted in cat, classes, events, Knit, pattern design

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Introducing Fantasia Cowlette

Posted on September 30, 2025 | 6 comments
Woman wearing a hand knit cowl featuring assigned pooling fans

I’m so pleased to publish the Fantasia Cowlette! Fantasia is a fingering weight bandana cowl knit in the round, featuring easy assigned pooling fans on a stockinette stitch background.

Choose a single skein of fingering weight yarn that is dyed for assigned pooling. I used A Chick that Knitz Singles Fingering in Tropical Flowers for mine.

yarn dyed for assigned pooling

The pattern is available through Ravelry and Payhip. Use coupon code FANCY for 15% off the pattern through October 9, 2025. Let’s get knitting for fall!

Reminder: The Knit Your Own Adventure Summit is next week! This free online event will help you be a more confident knitter. Learn more about the Knit Your Own Adventure Summit, and grab your free ticket here (The links to the summit give me credit for you signing up, which is free. If you upgrade your access with an Expedition Pass, I receive a commission. Your choice!)

I’m presenting a segment on frogging your knitting and how to get back on track. And I’m participating in a Zoom presentation on Tuesday, too. Come join the fun!

Onward!

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Posted in events, Knit, pattern design, yarn

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Knit Your Own Adventure Summit

Posted on September 22, 2025 | 2 comments

I’m excited to be part of the Knit Your Own Adventure Summit! This is a free 4-day event where you’ll learn from 20+ top knitting designers who are ready to help you fix your knitting mistakes, tackle challenging techniques with ease, and knit with confidence.

I’m giving a presentation about frogging your knitting. As a designer, I have a lot of experience with frogging. It’s part of my design process. (Rip-it, rip-it, rip-it! Practice makes perfect.)

This summit is free! You can watch the presentations for 48 hours after they go up. You can also upgrade your access with an Expedition Pass, but basic access is totally free.

You can get all the details about the Knit Your Own Adventure Summit over here, but as a quick recap:

  • The summit will run from October 7-10, 2025
  • Each day will be packed with amazing speakers who are ready to help you learn
  • The summit is absolutely free to attend, but you can choose to get the upgraded Expedition Pass for bonus resources and an upgraded event experience

Learn more about the Knit Your Own Adventure Summit, and grab your free ticket here (The links to the summit give me credit for you signing up, which is free. If you upgrade your access with an Expedition Pass, I receive a commission. Your choice!)

Looking forward to it!

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Posted in classes, events, Knit

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Will it go round in circles

Posted on September 13, 2025 | 5 comments

Progress report on my jewelry storage project. I want to hang my necklaces so they don’t tangle.

This circle isn’t quite as big as the embroidery hoop, but it’s going to be stretched while wet blocked. It seems a bit ruffly, and if I fold it in half it’s slightly more than a half circle.

Wet blocking solves that. And the little yarn over holes are a good guide for centering it in the hoop.

It definitely grew when wet. Now what should I do with the excess fabric? I don’t want to keep it looking like a mob cap.

I can turn it to the back and trim it off, but it might still show. Or I could try to glue it to the inside of the hoop. Or I could take yarn and sew across the hoop to hold the extra in back, like spokes on a wheel. That might show through to the front, though. What do you think?

I’ve decided I want a brighter color for my bedroom; the gray/blue isn’t as contrasty as I thought it would be. Also, I think I don’t want it to be a single ply; it’s going to get some bumping and handling as I hang and swap out jewelry on it. So this lovely yarn is on its way to me from Sharon Spence at Garage Dyeworks. It’s a plied MCN blend (merino/cashmere/nylon), colorway April in Paris. I think it’s going to be perfect.

Let’s find out!

5 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design

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Plumside up, plumside down

Posted on September 5, 2025 | 4 comments

Happy birthday to me! I was going to coffee this morning at a friend’s house, and I said I would bring cake. Gotta use those plums! This is my favorite plum torte recipe; you can find it here on my blog. It’s a mash-up of NYTimes, Smitten Kitchen, and Food52. My take on it subs in cornmeal for part of the flour.

Someone mentioned to me that the plums don’t sink as much if you put them cut side up, that the plums turn into a glaze with all that sugar and cinnamon. So I tried it yesterday. (No picture, sorry.) The plums didn’t sink in as much, true. But it looked more like a cake with plums on it, rather than a plum infused cake. Would that make a difference in the taste and texture?

I wanted this morning’s torte to be perfect, so we had to taste it. For science. I knew I had enough plums for two cakes, and I would bake a second torte whichever way I liked better.

plum torte, yogurt parfait, candied bacon, coffee

Cut side down was the clear winner. All that juicy goodness goes into the torte, instead of sitting on top. I baked another one last night. Here’s this morning’s torte, with yogurt/fruit/nut parfaits, and candied bacon (on the green plate).

The things I do for science!

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Posted in foodies!, recipe

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Introducing Simply Stellar

Posted on September 1, 2025 | 5 comments

Simply Stellar is an asymmetric triangle brioche shawlette, knit on the bias from narrow end to wide end. It features assigned pooling stars. The pattern requires two skeins of fingering weight yarn, one of which should be dyed for assigned pooling.

I knit my Simply Stellar with A Chick That Knitz Deluxe sock in Wildflowers (pooling) and Sassy, a fabulous hot pink.

I designed this shawlette as a slightly simpler version of my Starstruck. Tammy Pelfrey, the dyer at A Chick that Knitz, told me that some people were intimidated by the syncopated border on Starstruck, so Simply Stellar was designed as a simpler introduction to brioche plus assigned pooling. The shaping is very simple, and the yarn tells you when it’s time to make a star.

This pattern is available through Ravelry, link here, and Payhip, link here. Use coupon code SHINE for 15% off through September 9, 2025.

Have fun!

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Posted in Knit, pattern design, yarn

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Busy as a bee

Posted on August 29, 2025 | 5 comments

We’re barreling towards September, and I am juggling several projects! I’ll have a new design out next week (Tuesday, September 2), another one ready for tech edit and test knit, and a fun online project for October. I had a photo shoot with my sister yesterday. She doesn’t work for cash, so we go out for our favorite lunch instead. Her: chicken and waffles. Me: usually the perfect fried chicken sandwich.

Lunch at Screen Door, PDX Pearl District

But this time I had a fried chicken salad. It’s salad, so it’s healthy, right? (Look away from the bacon.)

I’m still editing pictures, so you’ll see those later.

I’ve been looking for a way to store my everyday necklaces and earrings. Right now they’re jumbled in a pretty box, and they’re always tangled. I’m planning to use a big circle of knit fabric in an embroidery hoop, and add some hooks to hold the necklaces. Those hooks may be spiral stitch markers; we’ll see if they work. Earrings can go directly into the fabric. Wish me luck!

I started knitting with leftover yarn, but I really wanted something that coordinated with our bedroom, and I wanted it to be more interesting than a stockinette circle. Assigned pooling is doing the trick.

I bought this yarn, MadelineTosh Tosh Merino Light, at For Yarn’s Sake on the way to a meeting. I didn’t have the right sized dpns with me, so I bought these Knit Pro Cubics. They’re square shaped. I like them!

We’re heading into a holiday weekend. Hope yours is full of knitting. I hope mine is, too!

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Posted in Knit, pattern design, yarn

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On the needles

Posted on August 17, 2025 | 2 comments

And off, and on, and off, and on again! Sometimes it takes a while to figure out what your yarn really wants.

This yarn is A Chick that Knitz Singles Fingering in Tropical Flowers. I got it at Nash Yarn Fest, intending to pair it with another color for brioche plus pooling.

Here it is with Caribbean.

It was nice, but the stars didn’t really pop against the background.

I liked the contrastier combination of Wildflowers and Sassy. this is A Chick That Knitz Deluxe Sock. This pattern, Simply Stellar, is coming soon. It’s been a busy summer, and this will make a nice intro to fall knitting.

I frogged the blue version, and decided to try a different assigned pooling pattern, without brioche. I want this to be a cowl, and it has to be worked in the round because the motif has to be worked from the right side of the fabric.

I love how the colors pop against the background when it’s just the pooling yarn. The second color in brioche really didn’t add anything meaningful.

But do I want the motifs to be flowers?

Or volcanoes? I knit on this last weekend, while we were traveling to and from Ellensburg, Washington for a friend’s birthday/retirement party. And by the time we were halfway home, I decided I wanted flowers.

And voilà, my project was instantly transformed into a swatch! I needed to frog the whole thing, and work it from the bottom up instead of top down.

That meant choosing an edging for the beginning, and doing some math. Easy peasy. The nice thing about working it from the bottom up is that there won’t be any yarn chicken shenaningans going on. The edging is completed first, so I know there’s enough yarn for it. And I can knit the top of the cowl to be as tall as I want it to be with the yarn that’s left; the height isn’t a critical measurement.

I’m about halfway done, and looking forward to showing you the result. It’s an easy knit.

Cheers! (Cocktails at Julep in Ellensburg. Backwoods Barbie on the left, Rhinestone Cowboy on the right.)

What’s on your needles?

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Posted in Knit, pattern design, yarn

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July in the rear view mirror

Posted on August 10, 2025 | 3 comments

July was a jam packed month. Besides San Diego, I also visited Sisters, Oregon and Seattle, Washington. All fun!

I visited friends in Sisters. They took me to the Dee Wright Observatory, a structure built from lava rock. It’s at the summit of the McKenzie Pass in the Willamette National Forest.

Each window in the observatory looks out at a different mountain peak, and there are signs that tell you what you’re looking at.

They also make good photo ops! I don’t remember which Sisters these are. July was a long time ago.

Apparently it’s the North and Middle Sisters! This bronze was cast by students at Benson Polytechnic High School in Portland, Oregon in 1937, before my dad was a student there.

It was also a music weekend. Becky and I played in church. The other musical group was the Renaissance Sisters, who played baroque and renaissance music on soprano, alto, tenor, and bass recorders. Very fine work.

The church has a stunning view behind the altar. Is that Middle Sister, maybe?

Banjo welcomes you to happy hour…

On to Seattle!

Four of the five Adagio Babes met for a reunion. We all met through Sonata Piano Camp from 2000 to 2003, I think. We’re not playing a lot of piano these days, but the friendships last a lifetime.

We played tourists on a beautiful day in Seattle.

Mt. Rainier even put in an appearance.

It was a fabulous weekend. I’m so lucky to have met friends through music!

It’s been a little quiet around here, but I’m still knitting. More on that in the next post. How’s your summer? Or winter, down under?

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Posted in piano, Pie Birds, travel

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Frogging brioche

Posted on July 18, 2025 | 5 comments

I started a brioche project with a new to me yarn. This lovely Andante worsted from Sweet Paprika is 195 yards/110g, or 1.77 yards/gram. My usual worsted is Malabrigo Rios, which is 210 yards/100g, or 2.1 yards/gram. So the Andante is a bit heavier/thicker than what I’m used to. I cast on with Andante based on my previous gauge with Rios, and it turned out that it was noticeably bigger.

Ripping out brioche knitting, one layer at a time

As usual, my project is a project, until it’s a swatch. At least I measured my swatch for gauge before frogging!

You can really see that brioche is a 2 layered fabrc when you frog the colors separately. I find this highly amusing.

I’m back on track, and have a fun project that is easily memorizable. It will be fairly simple, for newer brioche knitters. I’m designing this for Sweet Paprika’s Skill Builder Yarn Club; it will be published in 2026.

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Posted in Knit, pattern design, yarn

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