Too Fun!

At guild on Saturday, Vickie showed her new hat, Anemone by Cat Bordhi.  Cat Bordhi's patterns are almost always fun as my collection of her books and finished objects indicates.  Her sense of adventure in designing knitwear has great appeal to me.

Looks more like dredlocks to me than anemone tendrils, but either way I love it.  

Vickie chose to use the mobius brim.  A lot of mobius baskets and other Cat Bordhi edgings have been done in my time but for this one I decided to do the plebian regular edging, Option 2.

Also it seemed that this pattern would be perfect for using up leftovers so went into my stash to pull out all the worsted weight yarns, and then the superwash ones.  Found some (well lots) of leftover primary colored worsted I purchased last summer in the Adirondacks for a baby blanket made to give to a shower for soldiers' pregnant spouses.  You can tell there is a lot of acrylic in this yarn, but it was the best fit I had on hand (and I have a lot of it left, sigh, as enough was bought so I couldn't run out here at home.)

Such a load of fun placing the tendrils just about anywhere, twisting them up to spring joyfully all over the hat.  A delightful interlude item between designs.  

Oh those buns

So where were we?   oh yes, doing intarsia instead of Fair Isle.  The second block I committed to was of the Humping Bunnies in Winterfair Gifts.
"Although Roic was fairly sure that the two realistically-detailed ice rabbits humping under a discreet bush were not part of the decorations m'lord had ordered...they did not pass unnoticed, as the first person to observe them immediately pointed them out to everyone within earshot. Ivan Vorpatril averted his gaze from the cheerfully obscene artwork - the rabbits were grinning - a look of innocence on his face.  The Count's menacing glower at him was alas undercut by an escaping snicker, which became a guffaw when the Countess whispered something in his ear."

I found some busy buns on a hat online but there were no charts to go with it so I made my own.  I worked it up in Knit Visualizer but those boxes are square and knitting is not. Knitting is usually about 4 by 5. The chart looked skinny so it was moved into Photoshop where the dimensions were made accurate. Such fun!

Next was to knit the design.  From the last one, see previous post, which is a bit under the needed 10 by 10 inches I decided to add 5 stitches in width and 8 in height.  Also this one has more bobbins to work with -

3 and the ball as compared to 2 and the ball on my first block.  Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone, so added some holographic thread to the white and grey bobbins to mimic icy sparkle.

It was a fast knit but definitely took most of my attention so no listening to a book on my ipod.

Here's the back.

Notice the fairly neat edges where the yarns change and the fair isle section in the middle where the grey bunny's front paw is overlapping the white buns' back.

Fun!  Just may need to do a whole project in this technique, minus the fussy glittery thread.

From Fair Isle to Intarsia

There's a great science fiction series - the Miles Vorkosigan Saga that Jim got me hooked onto a few years ago.  Each planet has a different culture that started from different areas of Earth or different viewpoints on life.  The uniting factor is Miles, a forward thinking, very active brilliant character who likes strong women and men friends leading to some very fun and interesting stories.  The series begins with Cordelia's Honor.  Cordelia becomes Miles' mother.

If you have any idea of what Ravelry can encompass, and it is beyond extensive, then you will not be surprised that there is a forum called the Dendarii Free Knitters, after the Dendarii Free Mercenaries in the Miles series.  Knitters have many interests so it has been fun to 'talk' Miles with others from all over the place.  The author, Lois Bujold, who also writes Science Fantasy (that's for another day),  has a new book in the series coming out in the fall.  It will be about Mile's cousin Ivan. Ivan plays a role in several books but always second or third string.  This new book will be all about him.

We got so excited we decided to make Ms Bujold an afghan of blocks representing different aspects of the series.  Actually started discussing the possibilities last fall with the due date for the blocks being May, giving the finisher several months to put it all together.  One person will be designated to present the afghan to her at a signing.

After much discussion on color and availability we decided to use Cascade 220 Superwash in 

Silver #1946, Medium brown #862, Blue #813, Red #809, Dark Brown #819, Off-White #817

The possibilities for blocks are wide open.  So far we have my Dendarii Free Mercenaries Logo, Humping Bunnies (more about this one tomorrow) another Logo, Ekaterin's Garden, Imp Sec Horus Eyes, Auditor's Seal, DNA, Zap the cat, wormhole nexus and more to be decided later.  Such fun.

I couldn't get to my squares, even though I bought the yarn last December from Spun Right Round (oh and Webs is backordered so this LYS may be your solution), what with getting this and that finished for different deadlines until this month.  It was something to look forward to until I realized it is flat knitting and more than one color.  oy  big OY!  Doing the square in Fair Isle technique would look awful on the wrong side,  as Fair Isle has all the colors go all the way across stranding the unused yarn in back (wrong side) (or front as the case may be) along the way.  Since this is an afghan, there is no way to hide that.

So I put on my big girl pants and read up on Intarsia as compared to Fair Isle/stranded knitting.  I have done lots of Fair Isle, but always in the round as I avoid flat knitting whenever possible.

Intarsia uses more than one color but leaves yarn 'stranded' in the knitting and is done flat, often with bobbins of yarn to aid in not confusing all those balls.  On the wrong side or return, the yarn is picked up and purled where it is needed, then when the next color is needed it is wrapped with that color, dropped and one purls on with the new color.  This actually works on both sides in a similar manner except that the wraps are always on the Wrong Side.

.

Years ago, Anne F saw me struggling with wrapping yarn in Fair Isle and taught me to knit 2 handed, speeding up the process enormously.  I am told that it was probably easier for me as I knit English so learned a bit of Continental to strand the unused yarn with my left hand.  Normally I can't keep any kind of even gauge with Continental knitting so stick with English unless I am doing colorwork.

So there I was with 2 bobbins and one ball stranding just fine on the right side, but on the left I was doing that tedious wrapping when yarns had to be fair isled for a few stitches to get them to a second or third place.  "How difficult could it be to do 2 handed purling?", I said to myself.

Not as difficult as I thought, it turns out.

And now we have the Dendarii Free Mercenaries Logo Square ready to go.

IN PRINT

OMG.  It's on sale now!  

I couldn't be any happier with the placement, feature and treatment of my pattern.

Pages 56 - 59!!!!

Heart to heart beaded tie on kerchief.

K105 Winter Knitter's Magazine

Get yours online, at your local LYS, B&N or even Wegman's.

Arrived on Time

Greetings –

Your submission for Jane Austen Knits 2012 arrived safely at Interweave.  Thank you for sending it and have a wonderful day!

Best regards,

Interweave

Submission

Cathy gave me a copy of Jane Austen Knits.  I am a bit too large to wear most of the designs but would if I were smaller.  I designed a dress with leg 'o mutton sleeves to wear to my sister's first wedding lo those many many many years ago.   The way some of the garments in this issue are constructed is very intriguing to me.  I think I have leafed through the mag at least 5 times, always noticing my ad under New York stores.  All of a sudden a Call for Entries near the front popped out at me.  Now this magazine came out in November so I thought, well let me go look, but probably it's too late.

Amazingly, the deadline is for Tuesday, January 31, 2012.  I actually had a design in mind that I have always thought had an early victorian (1837+) feel so could also be late regency period (1795-1837).  Sure enough when looking on the internet at clothing for that time I saw items that were similar in scope to my design.

Now this was on Thursday afternoon, January 26. The package had to ship by today to make the deadline. Less than 2 days to get it all together - hmmmnnnn.   I was also on a self imposed deadline with my latest Knit Picks' sample.  It's a shawl that, of course, takes longer and longer to get through a row the larger the shawl gets so it is taking way longer than the shawlette version I made a few months ago and way longer than I estimated.  The plan was to be mailing that shawl out to them today.  Well that was the plan, but I neglected to factor in the blocking and finding someone to model so I could take some pics.

There was my dilemma.  Postpone completing the shawl to get a submission in to Jane Austen Knits or bag it?  I had to admit my own deadline on the shawl was not reasonable.  Once I faced that little fact, postponing its completion by 2-3 days didn't seem like too much.  

However I did need to make a nice sized swatch for the Jane Austen submission and make time to do that as well. PLUS - Putting together a submission package takes me at least a day, usually more like 2 but that comes from adding up bits and pieces done over a week or so.  I needed to gather and print good photos of the finished garment, put together a cover letter, an updated short designer info section, put the pattern into the format needed for whomever wants it (and that changes for each publisher), and write a compelling reason why my design fits into whatever category is being asked for.  Then it all needs to be collated into a neat readable good looking portfolio.

Parts went easily and well.  However then I found myself not getting much done. I realized this was because I felt rushed.  So I absconded to town to have lunch and knit with Cathy for an hour or so.  I knew the break would do me good but really had to talk myself out of being guilty.   After lunch at least a half hour was spent picking out the portfolio cover.  The last few entries seemed stuffed so I wanted something with a bit of space, yet compact and professional looking.  I think I have found the answer.  Its a hard cover report cover with a nice clippy thing inside for holding pages.  I put all my pages into sleeves and clipped them into the cover.  Oh and the cover is frosted so putting a pic of the completed project on the first page looks intriguing peeking through.

By 7 last night I had the swatch completed (only needed to frog it once) and then blocked for overnight drying. I loved how it looked this morning.  YES!

Writing the cover letter is always hard for me so it's left 'til last when nothing else can be done but that letter.  This morning it went faster than I feared so all the parts were ready to go, spell checked and all.  PayPal multi order shipping has a section for new orders so I used that to make out the shipping label and wha la.  All ready for pick up with the other packages going out today.

They are supposed to let me know by mid-late February.  This would set a record for Interweave but I am optimistic and ready to believe it might be by March or April.  I'll let you know.

Nautilus Beret Completed

This hat does come out nice.  Jim loves it. 

The shell sequence is so pleasing to look at which is what got me into this 7 stitch turn turn turn thing in the first place.

Done. Finished. Not to be repeated.