Frühling

This blog post is for the really nice lady today who was so impressed by my knitting I’m still smiling.

I was wearing my Blooming Garden Shawl in Wollmeise pure “Frühling”. As the colour means “spring” and it is rather warm here already for febuary I though it was the fitting piece for today.

I sadly don’t have any pics of me wearing the shawl but a funny one of it blocking:

In other news I finished a companion piece to my Waldhaus socks: Some mitten I knitted for the ravellenic games. Atm they are tested and will be available soon.

Bowties and sweater

I’m I’m not a very good blogger. Mainly I forget to write something for 2 or 3 weeks and then feel strange coming back to the blog.
But I got two projects I’m really exited about.

First my third Doctor Who inspired shawl.
This time with a bowtie and a TARDIS cables running up the sides and a beaded constellation of Kasterborous in the middle.

Not really a lot to see in the sample as yet, but I only started yesterday with the gorgeous yarn from Sheepy Times Knit in the colourway Bowties are Cool.

And the second project, which will take more time then the shawl, is my first sweater design.
It’s a top-down, seamless construction with a lace and cable panel running down one side.

And of cause as it’s just getting into the cold part of autumn I’m knitting in cotton yarn.

Peris Paradox

A little behind-the-scenes for my latest shawl design, Peri’s Paradox, newly published in knitty.

The whole thing started out as a little sketch in my notebook.

First it was just a half circle with stockinette stitch and a border, but with time and playing with the idea in my head I changed the stockinette stitch to the woven-pattern and later added the reverse stockinette panel on top.

The whole pattern is an homage to one of my favourite Doctor Who companions: Perpugilliam “Peri” Brown and the audioplay Peri and the Piscon Paradox.

The first version was worked as part of the Nerd Wars over at ravelry, I’m usually in team “Shady Cels” all things comic/animation/manga/anime.
I made it as a dissertation, a project that takes more than one challenge and is worked over the whole tournament, and got full points for it 🙂

This dissertation was worked in Wollmeise 100%/Pure in Spinaci and I used 88% of the skein, so if you have a skein of Wollmeise Pure lying around this is a nice project that uses just that one skein.

This is the version I send to knitty.
From knitty I got a lovely silk/merino yarn, SweetGeorgia Yarns Silk Crush to be precise. A strangely aped name for the yarn. It’s lovely and smooth and cuddly like you would expected from a silk/merino blend but the silk characteristics are very strong and you get that paper-ish feeling from pure silk with the warmth of merino.
The colour chosen by knitty was a nice deep pink-ish/purpel-ish-berry colour “Raspberry”. Which is a colour you would not find in my stash but the best thing about knitting-friends with different tastes in colour is not only that you don’t have to fight over the same unique skein of yarn but also you can “pay” your model with the piece she’s modeling.

And it’s totally her colour 🙂

The pics were taken by another friend and we had really good fun while shooting, here some behind-the-scenes-pics:

Mostly pinning things down as it was a bit windy.

I hope you will all have fun with my pattern, it’s not the easiest I ever designed but it’s one of my favourites and get’s a lot of wear.

Lady of the Lake finished

Finally the pattern is finished.

After month of writing, knitting, rewriting, testing, rewriting and taking pictures the pattern is live 🙂

I’m really proud of my first circular shawl and it works as a parasol.
The tutorial for building the parasol is HERE.

My friend/model Jaqueline and I had some fun during the photo shoot. The weather wasn’t ideal, to cold and always looming rain clouds but we managed some good pictures.

As expected we got a lot of strange looks. Some people asked about the parasol and were positively shocked to learn I made it myself.

“Spaziergang im Garten” Help

In my shawl “Spaziergang im Garten” startes with a lovely clover-like pattern which is not only lace but adds a bit of texture too.

Here a little help for the smocking bit in the pattern:

1. The first pic shows the stitches just before you beginn the smocking. You have 7 stitches while smocking and 5 AFTER the double decrease in the middle.

2. Insert the needle between the 7th and 8th stitch and pull the working yarn through.

3. Pull said working yarn loop until you can put it in front of the first stitch on your left needle.

4. Knit the first stitch and the loop together. Be careful not to pull yarn too tight you don’t want any puckering.

Once upon a time

I really have a fascination with fairy tales, ok the comic book series “Fables” to be honest, and knit designs inspired by them.
So much that I just put three patterns (Frau Holle, wilde Schwäne and the newly published Sterntaler) together as an ebook. There is still one pattern to be added to the collection later.

The Sterntaler knee highs are some of my favorite knee highs, warm, not too complicated to knit and the patterned part is not obscured by shoes or boots 🙂
The foot and calf part are completely adjustable to your size and the knee highs even look good in a variant or self patterned yarn thanks to the large stockinette part.

If you bought any of the single patterns or want to buy the collection after buying a single pattern you get 40% of the ebook.

It fits!

I finally knitted enough shawl to fit my umbrella 😀

It’s not blocked in the picture so last part looks very sloppy and the estonian flowers are hardly visible.

Now I “just” need to knitt the ruffeled boarder. I now have a 1m cable and not really space to work but I finished the increases for the ruffels and I now knit until the yarn runs out.

Swatching

The really annoying part of designing and knitting my own patterns: I can’t blame anyone else then myself for stupid mistakes in the pattern.
Yesterday I found a math error (switched two numbers in my notes!) and thanks to that I had to frog, recalculate part of my shawl, made a new chart and swatch that chart.

It’s a play on a classic estonian waterlily with a mesh background.
It’d the last chart before the boarder. I only need 10cm more in the shawl to fit my umbrella.

But before I can finish the shawl I really need a new skein of yarn, my second one is running low:

And I thought I would need less then two skeins. Will be quite heavy now, hope I works as a parasol!

BBC America

It’s not everyday one get’s a shout out at the BBC America blog. The last blog post there is about knitting and features one of my dishcloth designs, and it’s the first one on the random list 🙂

The dishcloth in question is the Cyberman one and was one of the first things I ever designed and put up as a pattern on Ravelry.

 

Green and leaves but not together

After spinning two of my mini-fibre braids I started on something bigger 🙂

It’s a lovely braid from Drachenwolle, in the colourway Apfel (apple). I bought the fibre nearly two years ago for my spinning wheel but never got the hang of spinning it as fine as I wanted it. But with the spindle it’s working fine (so far).

With my parasol I’m at that point where I thought “hey I knitted already a good bit of that shawl I must be already across the half way point”.
But NO, after a late night midway blocking session, I have 28cm of the needed 60cm.

You can already see the tiny leaves, the larger ones as a band and the water between the leaves.
Now I just need to finished knitting those other 32cm and the boarder.
And if I want to finish it in time for dissertation deadline of the Nerd Wars, the shawl needs to be finished by the end of the year.