So this happened:
It’s never just a straight line
Author: eelliottknits
Handspun inspiration
The next round of samples is almost done, and I’m ready for a break. Between indie releases and commissions, I’ve been going pretty much non-stop since July, so I’ve promised myself at least two weeks away from sample knitting when these are out the door.
Once these are off, I’ll need to spend a day or so digging the apartment out from under the mess that accumulates during a big work bender. After that, though, ohhhhh, yes. I’ve got more plans than could reasonably be accomplished: set up my workspace, finally; finish himself’s sweater, which has been a sleeve and a button band/collar away from done since April; get started on at least one of the sweaters I’ve been sketching and swatching for myself; finish my Circular Reasoning cowl before another winter’s come and gone; play Fallout 4 until my eyes bleed…it’s a very long list, and I won’t get to all of it, and I’m okay with that. The thing I’m most looking forward to, though (apart from exploring the post-nuclear wasteland), is getting re-acquainted with my spinning wheel. Continue reading
The Wedding Blanket
“Make us a crazy-bright, Mexican-inspired blanket!” they said.
“I think I can do that,” I said. “I think that might be fun!”
It was. It really, really was.
Yarn: Quince & Co. Osprey, pattern: making it up as I go along, with a garter mosaic stitch panel from Barbara Walker’s book Mosaic Knitting.
Home again, home again
Here we are, back in Birmingham. After a day of sleep and a day of running errands (including replacing my phone, lost, presumed stolen, in the wilds of Toronto), I’m ready to tackle Mount Laundry, put the luggage away, and get back to work. Though I moved away so long ago, Toronto still feels like home to me: my big city face and fast-walking feet snapped into place like they were just waiting to come out and play. Still, it’s nice to be back where things move more slowly, in the place where I keep my tea things and my knitting chair and my cats and my deck full of plants and my own bathroom with a shower that doesn’t require a pilot’s license to operate. (Seriously, y’all should’ve seen the shower at the last place we stayed.)
In between family time and wedding chuppah-holding and birthdaying (the day after one sister’s wedding was the other sister’s birthday) and such, I managed to visit a few yarn shops, exhibiting admirable restraint (in my humble opinion), at least until the end. Unfortunately, that restraint extended to taking photos, for which I’m kicking myself now. However, here’s the rundown, in the order visited: Continue reading
No sooner am I home…
…than I’m off again. It feels like I just got back from DC (wait, I did just get back—I’ve only been home a week), and I’m packing to head up to Toronto. This trip is for fun: my sister, who lives up in the T dot, is getting married to a lovely man, and the clan is gathering for the event. My other sister has rented a cottage, so there will be city time and lake time and family time and time with old friends from the punk rock stompin’ around town years. Many of my internet friends are gathering while we’re there (for another wedding—apparently it’s the thing to do right now), so there will also be time with old friends I’ve never met in real life. And there will be knitting. I got shockingly little knitting done during TNNA, and hooboy, am I going to make up for that in the next couple of weeks. (See above re: lake time: there’s a whole nine glorious days of it.) Of course, most of it will be work knitting, but that’s my favourite kind of work, so I don’t mind one bit. Continue reading
Line and Shadow
Goodness, it’s been a while. This spring has been a full one, with no sign of slowing down for the summer. The drawback is that a lot of the busyness has been working on projects that I can’t talk about online yet, so my posts are starting to read like a catalogue of pattern releases. I hate when that happens—I recently set up a mailing list for pattern release announcements to try to move this space towards less sell-y content—which is probably why it’s taken me so long to post about Line and Shadow. However, the sample is going to TNNA with me to be displayed in the Shibui Knits booth (the sample, that is—I’m not nearly as good at staying still. It’ll be in booth 389.) I’m pretty chuffed about that, plus it’s well past time, so here goes. Continue reading
Born at Sea
You may remember that some time ago, I made a blanket for my then-newborn nephew, whom we shall call Galactus, Eater of Worlds. (Really, he’s a cherubic little thing with a mess of blond curls; he’ll always be Galactus to me.) For that blanket, Ridgely (the colour genius behind Astral Bath Yarns) took my rather stream-of-images-type description and came up yarn that was exactly the colour in my head, a colour that is now in her repeatable colourways under the name Grotto.
Her dyeing technique and those stitch patterns worked so well together, and enough people liked that blanket, that we decided it should become a pattern, and the pattern should be called Born at Sea. Continue reading
Done!
Mostly. I think.
I’ve been meaning to redo this site for a while: the Patterns page was a scrollathon horrorshow, I felt the blog page layout could use some tidying, the About section needed updating, and I wanted to make it easier for people to contact me. The process was a bit fraught: I’m no coder, plus it’s impossible to be objective about your own work. I’m still not sure I’ve got it right, so if you’ve got suggestions for how to make this site work better for you, please do let me know, either by commenting here or through my spanking new contact page. I’ll probably do a bit more tweaking to get the site just so. Continue reading
Site changes
The Cusser Knits is due for an overhaul, so I’m going to be making several changes over the weekend. Please bear with me; it may look a bit weird while I reorganize things.
E. Elliott Knits 