Do random thoughts pop into your head while you are doing mindless things?  It happens to me all the time and this morning  it occurred to me that it might be fun to hold a New Year’s blog contest.

I’ve never held a blog contest before so here goes…

Leave a comment on this post answering one or both of the following questions:

What do I really want to knit in 2012?

What is a special holiday memory for me?

You have until the end of January to leave your comment and I will select a winner by using a random number generator.  The winner will receive pdf downloads of all my 2011 patterns.

Here’s a run down:

I started the year with Knit Night Gloves

Knit Night Hat is a free pattern to match the gloves.

Sweet Details Cardigan

Skein of Geese Shawl

Waldenwood Shawl

Amberwell Shawl

Sunshadow Tam and Gloves

Mercy Bay Cowl

Daylily Shawl

and lastly Little Sparrow Cowl

Please enter my contest and leave your comments!

In the meantime, I’d like to share with you one of my favorite memories from the holidays. It was watching my son read “Twas The Night before Christmas” to his daughter.  Here’s the little story behind the moment.

I was busy in the kitchen on Christmas eve morning, cooking for our family dinner that night when a random thought (there it is again) started pestering me.  I had given my son an illustrated copy of Clement Moore’s “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and I had given it to him as a small child on Christmas Eve.  And I also remembered tucking it away in my bookshelf when he outgrew stories of Santa Claus.

I knew I still had it, even though I had moved (counting on fingers) eight times since that Christmas.  I remembered unpacking it five years ago when we moved to our current home.

The thought pestered me so much that I stopped what I was doing and ran upstairs.  I put my hands on it right away.  I opened the front cover and there in my own much younger hand writing was inscribed – To Ryan Love Mommy Christmas 1979.  I sat down and sighed.  Thirty two years ago today.  My son would have been 25 months old (give or take a day or two), on that long ago Christmas Eve.  And in a few hours time, he would be arriving at my door with his wife and daughter, my granddaughter, who just happened to be 25 months old, give or take a day or two.

I dusted it off, wrapped it in brown paper and wrote on the front, in my much older handwriting – To Ryan from Christmas 1979.

He read it to her after dinner, while I sat beside them, quietly listening.

Happy New Year everyone!

My last pattern of 2011 was published on the last day of the year.

A few months ago I told you in this post how I was lucky enough to be asked to design a shawlette for the Shakespeare in Lace Group on Ravelry.  Wooly Wonka Fibers and the Ravelry group offers a Lace Accessories Club as well as a Shawl Club each year.  I was asked to design a small shawl/shawlette for the January Accessories Club 2012.

I couldn’t show you any photos in that post but now that the kits have been mailed I can show you!  Meet Elizabeth R, inspired by Elizabeth the first.

Elizabeth R is an exclusive to the Shakespeare in Lace club until April and then it will be available for purchase and download on Ravelry.

 I had a great test knitter on the project, Susan aka Northwoodsdream on Ravelry.  Follow her link and take a look at her version in a gorgeous blue color way of Malabrigo sock.  Not only did she test knit the pattern in record time but she couldn’t show it to anyone until the kits were sent out.  Thanks Susan, for going above and beyond!

 

I have to mention the yarn which was kindly provided and dyed to order by Wooly Wonka Fibers.  It’s their sock yarn Nimue, a 50/50 Merino Silk blend that is so luscious to work with that you won’t want the project to end.  The color way Anne created for me is exactly what I had been envisioning for my design.  It reminds me of softly crinkled silk, aged to a buttery sheen.  After seeing my photo inspirations, Anne dyed my dream skein for this design, which really brought the shawl to life.

My fellow designer Shelly was kind enough to model for me and she did a fantastic job in showing off my design.  We spent a fun morning snapping photos and trying to get great shots to show off a few of our latest designs.  Shelly has a new hat and cowl pattern called Glowing Embers Hat and Cowl.   Here are a couple of my favourite photos of her latest design, taken the same day -

Happy New Year and thank you to all who follow my blog.  And many happy knitting hours for 2012.

My youngest granddaughter recently turned two, or as she says “twoyears… OLD”,  so cute!  I made her cousin a doll bed last year when she turned two and decided to do the same for this granddaughter’s birthday.  I purchased the unfinished bed from Ikea and painted and decorated it with a different color scheme from her cousin’s version.  This time chocolate brown with blue accents.  Then I stitched up a little mattress, pillow, pillow cover and quilt for the bed.

As the final touch, I wanted a little lacy throw for the bed.  I used my Waldenwood Shawl pattern and it’s small motif lace pattern to knit this coordinating blanket for the bed.

And my favourite part, I found a doll that came with her own teddy bear!

I’ve been in a bit of a knitting frenzy lately.  Time for one more pattern before the end of the year and here is the Ravelry link - Little Sparrow Cowl

It’s an easy knit and works up very quickly in super chunky yarn.   It is deeply textured and very warm.  You will stay toasty in this baby, that’s for sure!

The yarn I’ve used is Debbie Bliss Paloma in this lovely magenta color called cyclamen.  The cowl measures 44 inches around by 8 inches deep.

This pattern would also be a great stash buster.  I think that it would be great in any worsted weight or heavier yarn.  Just adjust your needle size and gauge to the selected yarn weight.  The pattern is also easy to adjust in width and depth to almost any yarn quantity.

I made a second smaller one using one skein of Cascade Eco Cloud.  This one is 24 inches around by 8 inches deep.

Now on to my Christmas knitting, which is very modest this year.  I’ll have photos next time.

Cheers.

My new design, the Daylily Shawl is being published today on Ravelry.  This has been a really fun design and I have already been wearing the sample as the weather has been quite chilly for the past few weeks.

Daylily may be knit to any size by adjusting the number of repeats worked for the main lace pattern.  The sample shown was a quick knit working only five repeats of the pattern and then the border.  On and off the needles in just a few days.  And the perfect size to wrap around your neck as a scarf/cowl.

It’s also just large enough to cover your shoulders if so desired.

The yarn is Manos Silk Blend in Magenta.  Such a pretty color!  I used 3 skeins for the scarf size, but I only used a few grams of the third skein.  I have enough leftover to make some matching fingerless gloves!

I’d like to thank my fellow designer, Shelly, for modelling Daylily for me.  Shelly is a new designer on Ravelry.  Go and have a look at her designs here.

On sale on Ravelry – here’s the link to Daylily Shawl

The Mercy Bay Cowl began with the interesting stitch pattern.  I was playing around on the needles and really liked it.  I have been having a little love affair with Manos Silk Blend yarn lately and still had a couple of skeins of this gorgeous turquoise blue that I hadn’t used yet.

The cowl is knit sideways so easily adjusts in length by changing the stitch count.  The stitch pattern repeat is 10 stitches, so any number divisible by ten may be cast on for your own custom length cowl.

The reverse side in not identical to the right side, but very close, and interesting, kind of like fraternal twins.  Below, the same length looped around the twice for a cosy neck warmer.

For the size shown here you will need 2 skeins of Manos Silk Blend, or 300 yards of your favourite DK weight yarn.  Malabrigo Silky Merino is another favourite of mine that would be equally beautiful for the cowl.

Thanks, Elizabeth, for being such a great knitwear model!

On sale on Ravelry today – here’s the link to the Mercy Bay Cowl

September and October kind of tiptoed past me while I wasn’t paying attention this year.  And now it is November and I can’t quite believe it.

One thing that has kept me busy working is a design project for the 2012 Shakespeare in Lace Accessories Club.  I was lucky enough to be asked to design a shawlette for this club and it has been such fun.

The theme is historic Elizabethans and I am using Elizabeth 1 as the inspiration for my design, which will be for the January Kit.   To research my topic I sifted through a lot of dry facts on the web.  And then I went to the Video Store.  Wow, I watched these two movies twice each and I was absolutely enthralled with them.  The second one, here covers the latter years of Elizabeth’s long reign as Queen.  The first one, here, covers the early years.  Yes, there were historical inaccuracies in both but they are such epic movies that I didn’t care.  Cate Blanchett gave me a living breathing Elizabeth and was the inspiration that I had been looking for.

And that is all of the story that I can tell you for now.  You will have to wait until January to see the photos and hear the rest of the details.

The price for the club is very reasonable and imagine the fun of getting a surprise package in the mail every few months!  Check out the details at the above Ravelry link or at the website for Wooly Wonka Fiber and come join us while we knit our way through history!

In the meantime, if you are curious and you have some mindless knitting you want to power through, I highly recommend a big bowl of popcorn, your knitting and the above two movies for a very satisfyingly long autumn afternoon.

September is always a busy time of year for me.  I have a new schedule of Knitting Classes at the shop to organize, and I usually take some vacation time in the fall because it is my favourite time of year.  This year we spent a long weekend in Osoyoos, which is in southern BC.  Desert country, it was hot and dry and we had a lovely time.  It is also wine country and we spent a relaxing afternoon and evening touring wineries and having dinner at the last on the tour, Burrowing Owl.  It was really great to get away.

Also in September I finished up a few WIP while on my road trip.   First I finished my Tiny Tea Leaves cardigan for my granddaughter.  I had yarn left over so I improvised a little hat with a crocheted flower to go with.  Still yarn left, not enough for mittens but just enough for little fingerless gloves which I also improvised.

The color looks really good on her and it’s a little bit big, which is what I was going for, as I wanted it to fit her most of the winter.  If you want details, you’ll find it on my project page on Ravelry.

Next up I finally finished my Dahlia cardigan and it is my new favourite sweater.  I used Ultra Alpaca Light and it is so warm and cozy, I absolutely love it.

Sometimes a sweater project can seem to go on forever and loses its charm half way through.  Not the case with this pattern.  I have to say that I enjoyed every bit of the knitting of this sweater.  With clever, interesting construction, the lace panel on the back is where you begin and it was fun to knit.  Then once you get the top and bottom of the back sorted out you have some lovely mindless knitting on the fronts, perfect for car or television knitting.  Of course, part of the charm of this project was the yarn.  The Ultra Alpaca Light was so nice to work with that it made the whole project enjoyable, even some potentially boring bits.

This was a heavier yarn than called for in the pattern, so I did a little improvising to get the right size and I added length as well.  But this pattern is actually very easy to adjust.  The key measurements are the back width (between sleeve openings), the sleeve width and the length.  The width of the fronts can be adjusted as you knit them.  More details on my Ravelry project page here.  I am very tempted to start another one……if only it wasn’t November already!

Here on the west coast of Canada our summer started late.  Really late.  Like about 4 weeks ago.  No knitter’s tan this year!  And now, already, the leaves are starting to fall.  Just a few, but still.  Right now it is hot and sunny but this knitter knows that fall’s arrival is not far off.  My favourite time of the year.  Sweater weather!

In anticipation of Sweater Weather’s arrival, I have a pattern to get you started on your fall knitting.  Sunshadow Tam and Gloves is a small project that you can work on while enjoying the last warmth of the summer sunshine.  Small, portable and interesting to knit, one of my test knitters is working on her’s while camping with her family.  Thank you, Clare, hope you enjoyed knitting around the campfire!

The Tam can be blocked flat to fit like a beret or blocked rounded for a cute little hat.  It is ever so slightly slouchy, with an interesting texture stitch that is much easier than it looks.  No cable needle required for this pattern, it uses twisted stitches and is fun to work up.

The matching fingerless gloves repeat the texture stitch at the cuff and come in two sizes, woman’s small or medium/large.

The pattern calls for DK weight yarn and my samples were knit using Manos Silk Blend in the gorgeous colorway called Topaz.  This is my first time working with this yarn and I love it.  The silk content makes the color shimmer and gives it an amazing sheen.  It’s pretty awesome in the hand as well and glides over the needles like butter.  A really enjoyable knit.  Both hat and gloves were produced with slightly under 2 skeins.

Available on Ravelry, here’s the link Sunshadow Tam and Gloves And bring on Sweater Weather!

I have published my new design today, the Amberwell Shawl  The design was inspired by two things, a book and a skein of yarn.  I visited a new yarn shop a few weeks ago and fell in love with a skein of Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light in the most amazing color way named Ginger.  I decided to try and design a lace project with this beautiful yarn with the flecks of golds.

I like to listen to audio books while I knit and a few years ago I had listened to Amberwell by D. E. Stevenson.  At the time I was actually spinning while listening and enjoyed it so much that I decided to listen to it again while working on this new design project.  And that’s how the shawl Amberwell came to be.  Inspired by tales of the Scottish countryside and the estate of Amberwell and it’s family.

Amberwell Shawl is a top down triangle with quick to learn stitch patterns.  And it is designed to be knit with just one skein (100 grams) of sock (fingering) yarn.   Of course you could always alter the size by knitting it with a slightly heavier yarn such as sport or dk weight and a larger needle.  (Yardage requirements will vary).  But with one skein of sock yarn you can knit the perfect size to wear as a light shoulder shawl over a summer dress or as a scarf in the colder weather.

I knit a second version using another yarn that is new to me, Shibui Knits Sock which I really liked working with.  The color is amazing, in different lights it can look grey, blue or black.  The yarn is bouncy and very easy to work with.

They both blocked out very well, the Tosh Merino Light blocked out much larger than the Shibui, partly because of the silk content and I also had more yardage in the skein to work with.  I’m very happy with both versions.

Another huge thank you to the test knitters who helped me with this project, Sophie, Teresa, Carol and Elizabeth.  They are awesome and deserve many thanks!

Amberwell Shawl is available on Ravelry here.

I’ve worked in yarn stores for the past 8 years, two different shops, and I always meet interesting people but once in a while a person crosses your path that you can’t forget.  This is about one of those people.  It’s a true story that happened one morning about 5 or 6 years ago, while I was working in a shop situated in a little seaside town.

The weather had been cold and it had snowed three mornings in a row. But by noon each day the snow had melted, replaced by cold rain and a drizzling dampness that made you reach for hand knits.  On this morning the sun was shining and as I drove south I could feel the warmth through the car window.  I had just flicked on the open sign in the yarn shop where I worked and unlocked the front door when she appeared.  She came through the door pushing a walker and thanking the cab driver who was holding the door open for her.  She was tiny and had short curly white hair and was well into her nineties.  She was wearing a soft fabric jacket in a beautiful shade of robin’s egg blue. And perched on her head was a hand knit blue hat. The hat had bits of metallic sparkle and was a little lumpy and bumpy but the way it cupped her head had a dazzling effect.  It matched the blue of her coat and in it she looked like an ancient fairy.

Her bright eyes took in the array of yarn and she smiled. She pushed her walker along side the bins of yarn and as she walked along she began to chat to me.  She told me that she lived in a retirement home and she didn’t get out much because she couldn’t stand or walk for too long.  But she would really rather stay home and knit anyway.  She learned to knit when she was five and she had always loved it.  “Oh, look at those colors” the blues and lavenders had caught her eye.  She began to plop balls of yarn onto the seat of her walker as she pushed it in front of her.  She chatted and looked at yarn, and then she came to a stop before a shelf of cotton/alpaca. She picked up a skein of green, a lovely soft grayed blue green and she said, “Oh, if my father were alive he would beg me to knit him a sweater of this.  Not a regular sweater, mind you, he would want a golf sweater.  Oh, he would have loved this.”  She squeezed the skein and placed it on her walker and reached for another of the same.  She plopped that one down beside the first, and said, “I must buy these, in honor of my father.”

She continued down the isle and collected a few more skeins of yarn.  She asked to look at knitting magazines, and when I handed her four of the latest, she quickly selected one.  She told me she had been out of yarn for quite a while and she really wanted to knit.  And to emphasize this point she said,  “You know, I would rather knit that go to a party!”  When her head moved the blue hat threw sparks into the air.

She paid for her purchases and stowed her bag of yarn in the basket of her walker.  I held the door for her, and she was gone.  I worried for a while about her crossing the street with her walker, about her getting jostled by other shoppers.  Soon the shop filled with customers, and my day was underway.  But for days afterward, I smiled every time I thought of her.

She didn’t appear to give a thought as to what she would knit, and she didn’t worry about how many balls to buy.  She never looked at a pattern or a price tag.  She never questioned herself at all.   She wanted to knit and that seemed to be all she needed to know. My usual duties were not required.  She didn’t want me to calculate how many balls to buy.  She asked no questions about fiber content or gauge.  She wanted no recommendations on pattern or size. She didn’t agonize over which color was most suitable.  I stood aside to give her room and just watched.  After seeing her hat I knew anything that she made would be irresistible and magical.  She bought yarn for the sheer joy the color gave her.  And she bought yarn for no other reason than the fact that her long dead father would have loved it.  What a father he must have been.

I had not seen her before that day, and I have not seen her since.  But sometimes when I am sitting quietly and knitting, I think of her.   I imagine her in her cozy room at the retirement home.  I picture her sitting in a chair by the window.  She is knitting with the green alpaca and has produced a long strip of garter stitch, lofty and swishy soft.  My hands become her hands, forming the stitches, forming a smile.  It will eventually be a scarf but just for now… it is a golf sweater for my father.

Happy Father’s Day.