August's New Colors
We have three pretty blues for the dog days of summer. From left to right the colors are P446, P409, P303. They are 15% off until August 24th.
Color P446-0003 is gorgeous, I would make something that I could look at while I wore it, like gloves or a shawl.
Color P409-200 is beautiful, it's very close to a Koigu blue that I used for my Clapotis scarf.
Color P303-0002 is hard to photograph. There is more of a brown/violet cast to it, not beige or yellow. Pretty, muted and subtle would be the three words to describe the color - it would be a gorgeous sweater.
As the summer winds down, we are finalizing plans to be at the Indie Untangled Rhinebeck Show (October 2016) as well as Vogue Knitting Live NY (January 2017).
And we're excited to have our projects bags find a home at a new Brooklyn yarn store (more about this tomorrow)!
One More Shawlette!
I'm definitely, 100% completely and utterly on a shawl/shawlette kick right now! This one is another new pattern that I hope to release soon (soon, soon!), I'm naming this one Chaya and she'll also be offered in a full-size version and a shawlette version. The original idea for this shawl came to me, oh, 2 years ago, and I even knit it up, but then one thing after another went wrong and I never got around to publishing it.
The pattern itself is great and so easy to modify for any size/yarn amount/gauge, but the color of the yarn the sample was in was impossible to photograph (road-cone orange, anyone?) and the original had something wonky in the middle that made it look like it was crooked. My friend Shana is currently knitting a new full-size sample for me using Kureyon Sock, which I think will show the directionality of this pattern to its fullest potential, and I whipped up a sample of the shawlette size in just a day using a skein of Colinette Jitterbug in the Bright Charcoal color, which just happens to be my favorite Colinette color of all time. I think I see a few more of these in my future . . .
Seriously?!
Folks, that's the second knot in my skein of Colinette Jitterbug! I've knit a bunch of projects with this yarn and I love it, I've even defended it on Ravelry boards when others have complained of short yardage, bleeding colors, KNOTS, and who knows what else . . . I realize the ball of yarn has no way of knowing it's just done the equivalent of stabbing me in the back, but I still can't help but feel betrayed.
There's something so supremely annoying about having to weave in 4 extra ends in a small, quick project that uses less than 150 yards of yarn!
In happier news, I blocked the Leila Shawlette and I'm very pleased with how it came out:
I used less than one skein of Socks that Rock and it's a pretty good size shawlette, the perfect size to wear as a scarf during the spring. It's kind of amazing to think that you can get this much shawl out of one pair of sock's worth of yarn!
The STR softened up significantly in the wash, I was actually really surprised. The only other thing I've knit with it is socks, which are definitely soft enough, but since they're knit so tightly the yarn only relaxed so much with washing/wearing. This loosely-knit fabric feels amazingly soft in comparison! And I just love this tone-on-tone purple, I wish I had more of it in the stash!
Planning to wear this to work tomorrow, I wonder how many coworkers will ask if I knit it?
New design
I'm not quite done with the 2 secret sweaters, one of them needs 3/4 of a sleeve and the other is only half done, but I couldn't remain monogamous any longer. Last Saturday I started a new lace shawl design, and after a few false starts I am really in love with what I've come up with now:
(sorry for the crap photo, I can never seem to remember to take pictures until nighttime)
I'm using Cherry Tree Hill's sock yarn, a yarn I rarely use but actually have a decent stash of (weird how that happens). My idea was to make a triangle shawl, knit the traditional top-down way, but to have it include baby cables all over it. The first two versions had YO increases bordered by garter stitch edges, but then the AHA moment happened where I thought, "Why do I have to make the edges boring!?!? I should throw some cables in there!" and ripped and started over again. You can see in this photo that the horizontal top edge (shown on the bottom of this picture) is a cable, and the cable is repeated, then flipped over and mirrored, down the center back where the other increases are. I am pretty sure I've never seen this done in any other shawl before (please correct me if I'm wrong!), and a quick search through Ravelry didn't reveal anything to the contrary . . . so I'm pretty darn proud of myself!
I've been pretty dedicated to this shawl since I started, so much so that I'm past the half-way mark already. I have an idea of how I'm going to deal with the bottom, but I haven't worked out all the kinks yet. We'll see how much ripping out that takes, there is always a lot of that in any new design!
Unfortunately there is no way this is getting done before the wedding, so I've put it away in favor of the sweaters, which are completely mindless knitting and need to be done ASAP. I've been so stressed out the last few weeks with all these wedding issues that keep being thrown at me . . . let's just say I'm really looking forward to the honeymoon!!! Thankfully the toughest decision I have to make about THAT is what knitting to bring . . .
