On Mondays I sit down and figure out what I’d like to (or need to) work on in the coming week. I thought it’d be neat to take a photo of the plan, which is also a record of where each project is at.
Continue readingMy week, in a nutshell
design
Fauxtarsia Wave swatchorama
Since releasing Fauxtarsia Wave I’ve had a few questions about yarn substitution: would other yarns work in this design? What kind of yarns would work best? What about yarns with more contrast? How about a variegated + a solid or semi-solid? While the short answers are “Absolutely!” and the ever-relevant “Swatch and see!” I really want to encourage knitters to experiment with this design, so I did a bit of swatching myself to show some of the possibilities.
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.
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
Snowchaser
I’ve got one last scarf pattern for this season, and it’s something a bit different: a generous scarf with a slipped stitch texture, knit sideways to allow for lovely, long stripes.
Snowchaser uses stitches slipped with the yarn in front to create a subtle texture that is pleasing on both sides of the fabric. Continue reading
Meltwater Scarf
As a fan of woolly wool, I really like Brooklyn Tweed‘s yarns. I’ve noodled around with Shelter and Loft, and just love the light, spongy, cohesive fabric these woolen-spun yarns create, and the wide range of lovely, heathered colours are a colourwork fan’s dream. It pleases me that these beautiful yarns are made sheep to skein here in North America. (I love the house yarns by the mill they use, Harrisville Designs, for all the same reasons.) So when Brooklyn Tweed released Quarry late last year, just as I was finishing the next round of samples for photography, I had to try it. A bulky weight yarn at 200 yds/100g? I could get a hat out of that in no time at all, and have one more sample ready to go. When the skein arrived, I played around with stitch patterns to see what it could do, and it turned out that what Quarry does really well is texture. Ribs and cables turned out beautifully. I didn’t want to stop knitting with it: I wanted a big, generous scarf out of this stuff. Not the most practical thing for the South, but fie on that. Sometimes you just have to go where the inspiration takes you. I ordered more skeins, and knit. And knit. And very soon I had a scarf. And it was exactly what I’d pictured. It’s warm and cozy and the pattern reminded me of runnels of melting ice water, so I called it Meltwater.
Gyre, revised (and on sale)
When Jill Zielinski (a.k.a. Knitterella) did my snazzy new pattern layout, I decided to redo some of my previously published patterns with the new look. I’d be selective about it—redoing layout takes more time than one would think (at least, if I’m doing it), and that time often would be better spent making shiny new patterns—but there some of my earlier patterns are still pretty popular, and I’d like the good people who buy them to have the best version I can give them.
On the top of the list was Gyre: my swirly, colourwork cowl with the optional striped lining. This pattern needed new photos, though, and it took a while to get that together. Now the new photos are here, and they’re fabulous (in my not-unbiased opinion, and thanks entirely to the talented Gale Zucker and model Ariana McLean), and it’s time. The new version of Gyre is now on Ravelry, and it’s 30% off until November 10. You don’t need a coupon code: the discount will be applied at checkout.
The revision turned out to be more work than I expected (surprise!); I think the results are worth it. For one thing, look at these photos:
E. Elliott Knits 