“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.
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
Well, my cunning plan for this year worked out. Having knit like a demon all spring and summer, by the first week in December I’d almost finished all the samples for this season and had no immediate deadlines reaching over my shoulder with their sharp, deadliney claws. I was feeling pretty damned pleased with myself. All that was left was the gifts for the niece and nephews–the special fun knitting I’d been saving until now–and I had plenty of time…oh, crap. Mailing times. To Canada. Why do they always sneak up on me? Gah. As it turned out, everything I’d chosen could be made quickly–the first two took a day each–so all was not completely lost. If you’re in a last minute panic, fellow knitter, maybe these ideas will help you, too. They’re not even child-specific, in my humble opinion. Continue reading
Yesterday was a most excellent knitting day here at the Casa de Cusser. All summer, I’ve been working on design samples, one after the other, many of which I can’t even talk about here until some time in December. They’ve been fun projects, and I’ve enjoyed making them, no doubt. Too many work projects in a row can make one a bit squirrelly, though. With all the note-taking, the directions-following (even if they’re your own directions), the need for a perfect finished object: after a while, a knitter needs to break free, you know? I try to have a fun, playful/mindless/doesn’t-have-to-be-perfect project to turn to, and with the end of the tea cozy, it was time for something new. I’ve been obsessing about self-striping sock yarns again, so I dug into the stash and found just the thing: an insanely bright self-striping sock yarn bought at the dreary end of winter last year. Continue reading
Over the last few months, I’ve mentioned a collaborative project with an indie dyer whose work I really admire. Well, here it is: the Saturnalia Infinity Scarf, in colours by Astral Bath Yarns. Mmmm…red and red.
The observant among you may have noticed a brand new knitting project at the bottom of my last post. “What’s that?” you may have wondered, “A new project? Does that mean she’s finished some of that giant, nagging heap of WIPs?” No. No, it does not, smarty trousers. What it means is that I have this compulsion to use every trip over half an hour long as an excuse to start something new. Continue reading
Being stage 2 of ongoing experiments in becoming the boss of colour in spinning.
The Cormo spinning progresses apace, but as I mentioned last time, it’s going to take a while, and I have the attention span of a hummingbird on speed. Enter some English Shetland wool from Into the Whirled: one multicoloured braid
E. Elliott Knits 