A Little Christmas Special for You

A little while ago, another designer I know wondered what would happen if three very different designers decide to collaborate on a sock design?

Magic!  And a lot of fun!

Annina from Artesanitarium Designs, myself and Tanja of Knitted in Switzerland have put together a little Christmas treat for you. 

A Mystery Knit Along for a pair of socks.

Each day from December 1st to December 24th we will be posting small clues on Instagram on one of our accounts.

Want to play along?

You will need:

100 g of fingering weight sock yarn.
US size 1 - 2.5 needles (2.0 - 3mm) to obtain a gauge of  32 sts and 36 rows to 4 inches (10cm)
A cable needle (optional, you can totally knit these without it if you prefer to cable without a cable needle)
Large eyed tapestry needle.

A knowledge of working in the round, basic cables, increases and decreases...but there is nothing too hard, I promise!

How to participate :

Follow each of us on Instagram.

Me
Knitted in Switzerland
Artesanitarium

The clues will be posted alternately from each of our accounts so it is crucial that you follow all three of us...but don't worry we will all post which account has the clue on it each day.

(To complete a full pair of socks, work two at a time using your preferred TAAT method.)

The fun starts tomorrow!

~M

Too Busy to Knit To Talk....

Won't you join us?

~M

So Much to tell you about

It's been a busy week!

First up, the beta knitting for a cowl was just about finished so I decided to go ahead and hit publish for a new cowl pattern. 

People sometimes ask what inspires someone to design a particular piece and for me, very often the answer is that I have a "pain point" to solve.

This time around the pain point was I want to knit myself a color block, fully reversible wrap that is seamless.  (And of course being me, I also wanted it in lace weight yarn with reversible lace patterns too!)

Changing colors in knitting usually leads to a row of unslightly bumps in the "old" color. So I spent a bit of time trying to figure out how to get rid of that on the "wrong" side of the work.

But, who wants to figure that out on a 45 by 65 inch wrap, in laceweight?  (Spoiler, not me!)

So I grabbed two contrasting aran weight yarns and starting playing!

And thus was born  Cowl Trick!

You can purchase that pattern in my Ravelry Store by clicking here.

But wait, that's not all!

I am again thrilled to be included in a "special" issue of Knotions! The Sock Issue!  My contribution  is based on a houseplant!

Schlumbergera is probably the only houseplant that I have that I managed, somehow, to not kill!  In fact I have several because they seem to thrive on the balance of neglect and overwatering I give them!

Schlumbergera is a small genus of cacti with 6-9 species found in the coastal mountains of south-eastern Brazil.  But you probably know them as a Thanksgiving, Easter or Christmas Cactus!  With flowers in red, orange, pink and white, this easy-to-grow and -propagate plant is found in many homes, including mine!

Worked in three (or more!) colors, these top-down socks morph from slipped-stitch colorwork to comfy ribbing. Only one color is used at a time. The flowers take very little yarn, so dig out those little 15 gm scraps and put them to good use.

 

You can get your copy of these socks and some other truly lovely designs on Knotions


But wait...there's more!

Coming soon to Ravelry....The sixth annual Indie Designer Gift Along!  But I will tell you more about that this coming week!

~M

A Moment of Silence

Pourquoi

One of the things that products and services are supposed to do are fix a "pain point" for the people who buy them...so that electric kettle that boils water in just a few minutes, while it performs the same function as the old fashioned one on your stove, could entice you to buy it if your "pain point" is the time it takes to boil water for tea or instant coffee...

What does that have to do with knitting?

One of my "pain points" in knitting is that funny little hump that crescent shawls sometimes get.  So many factors play into if the hump will block out or stick around forever...the yarn, how tightly you knit, how quickly or slowly increases are added, where they are added.

In my never-ending search for a crescent that would solve those problems for all knitters...I approached the problem backwards.  How could I make that hump worse?  Maybe those things could tell me how to make it better...then inspiration struck.  Instead of just making it worse, why not make it a feature.

How the shawl got her name:

Pourquoi Stories, porquoi means why in French, are also known as origin stories and include Australian Aboriginal dreamtimes stories, Alamat or legend stories from the Phillippines and Tinga Tinga Tales from African Cultures. They explain why certain animals are the way they are, for example why a tiger has stripes, a snake has no legs or the camel has a hump.

 

This shawl is made from one skein of Melilla Fingering Weight yarn from Cascade Yarns on US 6 (4mm) needles and starts with a small garter tab and ends with a fancy picot bind off (with a few beads thrown in for added weight at the bottom.)

You can get it now in my Ravelry Store!

In other knitting news, I am playing along in the NaKnitMo group on Ravelry.  My goal is to knit 70,000 stitches in the month of November and get a few things off my needles before the holiday knitting rush starts!  If you have WiPs you need to get off the needles, maybe you would like to join us?

Happy Knitting!

~M