Yarn and pattern matching, interlude. Ok, so here are the five swatches it took to figure out which yarn I wanted to use. There's still one more to come where I figure out sizing info, but these were what it took just to settle on a yarn. One of the most common questions I get is what I do with my swatches. Usually I just rip them out. But as always the real answer is a bit more nuanced. For swatches like these, where I am trying to match yarn and concept, but not yet trying to figure out gauge, [...]

Yarn and pattern matching, take five! I think we have our winner. This has the scale I want, it has the stitch definition I want. It has the color vibe I want. I think we're golden. Now, that doesn't mean I'm done swatching (there's at least one more to come where I work out some gauge questions and a few more last minute options). But it is the end of the 'which yarn do I like best' swatching. You can see I started to make some of the changes I talked about last time (fitting the ribbing to the faux [...]

Yarn and pattern matching, take four! This is one of the yarns that came in over the weekend. And so far it's very promising. The ribs are much closer to the scale I want for the hat. This is absolutely the scale of yarn I'm going for. But, I have noticed that the rib starts out a bit winder than it looks when the faux cable business gets going, so I need to handle that. And I'm starting to feel like I want a narrower purl rib, so I need to tweak that. Plus I want to see how the [...]

You folks know me.  You know my secret (not so secret) conviction that book patterns are better when kept firmly bundled up together in one tidy little package.  It goes hand in hand with my (also not so secret) conviction that paper books possess a magic that electronic books, despite their unquestionable practicality and convenience, can never hope to achieve. However, I do (grudgingly) admit that my personal proclivities are not shared by everyone. I'm sure someone out there absolutely delights in the idea of all their books living in the ether, never to see the inside of a moving [...]

Yarn and pattern matching, resupply break. The yarns I ordered last week came on Saturday (because both the good folks at the yarn shop and the good folks at the post office are awesome and doing heroic work to help us all be as comfy as possible while we stay home as much as possible). I love them both. I *think* I know which one will end up being the best bet for the pattern I want to design. But as always, the only way to tell for sure is to swatch. So, more swatches are next. Yes, more! I [...]

Yarn and pattern matching, take three!⁠ ⁠ Now, I don't actually have much in the stash in heavier weights (most of my knits are in that dk to light worsted range). And if I stick with single ply yarns, I have even fewer choices on hand. But I did have this, so I figured I'd swatch it up and see.⁠ And we're pretty darn close here. I wouldn't mind if it were a hair thicker (but I think this will still be lovely, which is important, because I want to have the pattern work at a range of yarn thicknesses [...]

Yarn and pattern matching, take two.⁠ ⁠ This is closer! The yarn is more substantial, so you see that nifty sort of cable effect much more clearly. And I really like how it looks in a single ply yarn (I am a sucker for single ply yarns, and they are perfect for things like hats that don't get a ton of abrasion).⁠ ⁠ But it's still not quite as big as I'd like. A hat's going to hang out on your head, and you have to be sure you have a pattern at the sort of scale that shows up [...]

Ok, so let's walk through the process of matching yarn to idea.⁠ ⁠ I have this idea for a pretty little not-quite-cable I want to play with. I think it would look delightful as a nice chunky rib on a hat.⁠ ⁠ The first step is figuring out, mechanically, if the set of stitches and stitch manipulations will do what I think they will do (because wow is the answer to that question not always yes). ⁠ ⁠ And I don't know a way to do that other than just grab some yarn and see. The first yarn I grab [...]

So yes, yes you can indeed put the hearts inside the envelopes!⁠ ⁠ Though to be fair, if you knit an Absolutely Massive Heart and a Very Very Tiny Envelope, you may run into problems of scale. But if the general question is 'is the envelope open on the inside,' then yes, yes it is.⁠ ⁠ Though I did have a couple of folks who were a little...surprised...that, when they put a puffy thing (the heart) inside a flat thing (the envelope), the flat thing was then less flat. So I suppose maybe I should mention that the envelope is [...]