Organizing your winter accessories: A contest
Winter is finally officially here and I've started wearing hats and scarves on a daily basis, but until yesterday I was wearing just one or two pieces repeatedly because all the rest hadn't been pulled out from storage yet. Yesterday, I pulled everything out.
What you see above is the mess I ended up with.
I assume all knitters have a huge stash of winter accessories like this but I'm betting most of you are way more organized than I am.
So I need your help!
If you have an answer to this question:
How do you organize winter accessories so that you'll actually wear them?
I'd love to hear it!
To make this more fun for you guys, I've decided to run a contest to get more answers. And of course every contest needs a prize, right?
The Prize
Here's what's up for grabs:
A Lantern Moon woven bag in a lovely shade of green, filled with the following:
- One Loreley Scarf Kit in your choice of color
- One iKnit iPad Cover Kit in your color choice
- A subscription to the Chiagu Collection 2012, meaning every single pattern I release in 2012
How to Enter
Answer the question "How do you organize winter accessories so that you'll actually wear them?" Your answer can be written out, or can be a link to an article in a magazine, or a picture of your storage solution. It's up to you!
Send in your answer in one of these ways:
- In a comment on this post
- In a wall post on the Chiagu Facebook page (you probably want to "like" it while you're there too!)
- In a Tweet that includes the hashtag #chiagu
- In a Ravelry forum post of your choosing, magic linked to my designer page on Ravelry
- In a blog post on your own blog, with a link back to this blog post
If you want to do more than one of the above, go right ahead! More entries of course mean a greater chance of winning!
Please note that only one entry per venue per person will count towards the prize (meaning if you tweet 7 times, that counts as 1 entry. So don't spam your friends!).
How to Win
A winner will be chosen at random from all the entries received by the end of the contest.
The contest runs for one week, through Tuesday, December 20th, 2011, at midnight in NYC.
On Wednesday, December 21st, I'll pick an entry at random and email the winner to get his/her prizes out. I'll also be aggregating the suggestions and putting them on chiagu.com in a resource page with all the tips, with attributions to you.
Have questions?
Leave them in the comments and I'll get back to you asap.
Good luck on the contest! My accessories thank you in advance for all your help ;o)
How to wet block your iPad cover without ruining your iPad
If you're knitting my iKnit pattern from Koigu Magazine 2, you may have reached the (admittedly vague) instructions to "block cover to measurements" and might be asking yourself what the best way to accomplish this is. After all, ideally your blocking should yield a finished sleeve that fits the iPad snugly . . . but who wants to wrap their precious toy in wet wool? No one, that's who!
The solution is pretty simple but I'm not sure I would have come up with it on my own had I not read about it within another context, so I thought it was worth posting about. What is this magical solution, you ask? A ziplock bag!
Just put your baby in there (yes, magic cover and all, if you want to be able to use the iKnit cover over the magic cover the way I do),
Seal her up tight (yes, I reuse ziplock bags, that's why this one looks so beat up!),
Slip the wet cover over the whole thing,
And lay it somewhere to dry.
I like to prop things like this up partially on an angle, so that the bottom and top layers are drying at roughly the same speed. I also usually park the item right in from of a fan to speed things up . . . but of course don't put your precious iPad near a heat source, no matter how impatient you are for your iKnit cover to dry!
My next iKnit pattern post is going to show a step-by-step tutorial for sewing the fabric lining and installing the zipper closure . . . stay tuned!
Koigu Magazine 2 and my new pattern!
I've got a new knitting pattern to show you and I couldn't be more excited!
Koigu Magazine 2 just came out and I have a design in it! This issue is all about small projects and accessories so I thought it was the perfect issue to submit my iPad cover idea, and it got accepted!
So let me introduce you to iKnit, my iPad cover design done in Koigu KPPPM yarn:
For this design I wanted a textured stitch pattern that was not only fun to knit, but that also played with the colors in KPPPM yarn and provided a cushy fabric to protect everyone's favorite gadget. I settled on this lattice-type pattern that's done with wrapped cables and then I moved on to thinking about what functionality I wanted in an iPad sleeve. I decided that it needed to fit a few requirements:
- It had to be cushy and protect the iPad
- It had to fit very snugly around the iPad, so that it would take as little extra room in my bag as possible.
- It needed a closure, so that the cover would stay put.
- It needed a pocket, so that I could tuck my headphones and USB cord away securely and always have all 3 together.
In the end I came up with this design and I am very happy with it. I've been using my own ever since!
You can't really tell from the way they shot it, but the opening of the cover is closed with a zipper, and I also fully lined the inside with cotton fabric. Picking out the coordinating zipper and fabric was tons of fun . . . so much so that I decided to put together kits for all of you!
Brand new to my shop today are iKnit kits, which include 2 skeins of Koigu KPPPM, 1 12" zipper, and 1 fat quarter, all in coordinating colors. Hope you like them!
Oh and one more thing about this pattern: the instructions included in the magazine were incomplete. I've created an errata page for it with the rest of the instructions for the iKnit pattern. Our apologies for the confusion!
This year's sole Christmas gift
Sometimes knitting for others really pays back a million-fold in love. This is one of those stories.
My parents are back in the US for the holidays for the first time in recent memory and I am ridiculously excited about getting to spend Thanksgiving, my birthday (which was last Friday), and Christmas with them. We've been hanging out and going out to dinner and getting along great (we all know that too much time with the family usually ends up in tension!)
Well enter Sunday, when I was hanging out at their place. I was sitting on the couch reading the Steve Jobs biography when my mom came over to me swinging a pair of multi-colored socks. She said to me, "remember these?" and I totally didn't. It was obvious that I'd knit them for her, but I had literally no memory of doing it until I saw the mistake in the leg . . . and then I remembered.
It was more than 10 years ago.
They were knit in ugly pink/white/yellow acrylic.
There's a big mistake on one of the legs.
And my mom still wears them.
In fact, she told me that she "doesn't wear them too much because she doesn't want them to wear out."
I'm still a bit dumbfounded.
So of course I'm making her another pair of ribbed, cushy socks. This time I'm using Koigu Kersti instead of Kmart acrylic, so they'll be even softer and cushier on her feet. She likes these bedsocks the best because they don't have elastic at the top and therefore don't leave a mark on her calf . . . which is something only my mother could care that much about, but there you go, that's who she is.
I cast on 44 stitches with size 4 needles and started doing K2, P2 rib. I'll be doing a contrast-color short-row heel and using the same color for the toe, and I'll post the free pattern here when it's ready. At this gauge I should be done in a few days!
And hopefully my mom will wear these for the next 10 years, too.
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Not related: I just listed more Hexipuff Mini-Skein Yarn Packs for sale, get them while they're in stock! A new Koigu shipment is arriving today too . . . stay tuned.
Scarf-in-the-window inspiration
I saw this simple chunky scarf in the window of a fancy store in soho and stopped dead in my tracks. So pretty! So easy! So wearable!
It's knit with very chunky hand painted yarn on about a size 15 needle, and the stitch patter is 3 rows of k1, p1 then 3 rows of p1, k1
Now you can make your own version for a fraction of the price! You're welcome ;)
