Adumbrate
The pattern for adumbrate is up. These are free and are meant as a sort of thank you present to mark the one year anniversary of this website and of my adventures in designing. This has become a much bigger part of my life than I ever thought it would, and I've found it tremendously rewarding. I can't tell you what it means to me that you take time out of your day to knit my patterns, say hi, or even just drop by to read my rambles. Your encouragement means the world to me. Thank you.
Olympic Glory?
So I sort of did it, but only sort of. The official goal was 'don't cast on any new projects.' The unofficial goal (which seemed to follow rather naturally from the official goal) was 'get lots of stuff done.' I totally met the first goal. Despite severe temptation (we went to a fiber festival right at the beginning of the Olympics--this was not a plan designed to foster restraint), I didn't cast on anything new. Alas, I also didn't get quite as much done as I had hoped. I did make some progress. I finished a pair of secret socks, [...]
Shameless
Shamelessly pink, shamelessly lacy, shamelessly frilly. There is really nothing somber or serious or even respectable here. These mitts are nothing more than a confection. They are the knitting equivalent of marshmallows. They were cast on the minute the Olympics finished and completed in a few hours. I'll turn my attention to more worthy things some time soon, but these were just the thing to make up for the uncharacteristic fidelity demonstrated during the Olympics.
Coming Attractions
I enlisted the help of The Boy and waded out into the snow (really waded, it's well past our knees in many spots). Turns out it's surprisingly hard to find a pose that both shows off the knitting and keeps me from looking like some sort of sausage-fingered mutant. We eventually met with success, but we were cold and wet long before we got there. I'll show you a shot of just the mitts now, but rest assured there are pics with actual hands in them coming shortly. The pattern will go up next week, and I'll be back with [...]
Brrrrr
Turns out that bit about 'when the snow lets up' was overly optimistic. As far as I can tell the snow is never letting up. It will continue forever. Sled dogs and igloos are starting to sound eminently practical. I had grand plans for taking pictures of the blue mitts (adumbrate...I'm thinking they will be called adumbrate). Alas, taking pictures of your own hands involves a substantial amount of fiddling around with the tripod, swearing, knocking the camera over, swearing, sitting still while the timer runs down, swearing, and just generally having a bad go of it. I can barely [...]
Improvise
I used to think sock blockers were totally unnecessary, not much more than props really, something to make it look like you know what you're doing. They don't make your socks any warmer or softer or sturdier. Some people swear they help socks dry a bit faster. However, I try to wash at least a dozen pairs at once, and I'm not likely to buy a dozen pairs of blockers, so they're not much help in that regard either. It wasn't until I started taking pictures of socks that I realized what they're for. They're for persuading your stitches to [...]
Testing
If anyone wants to help me out by testing the blue mitts, now's the time. There is a thread over on Ravelry where you can volunteer. I'm deciding on testers Saturday night, and sending the pattern out on Sunday. You'd need less than 150 yards of sportweight yarn, and you'd need to be able to finish one mitt in a week (one mitt takes me about 3 hours).
Remember These?
The cute sweet simple little mitts that took all of a few hours to knit up? From way back in December? Yeah, well, neither did I. Until yesterday that is, when I realized my hands were cold, recalled I was a knitter and that knitters have ways of dealing with this condition that do not involve turning up the heat, went looking for some of my old fingerless mitts, and stumbled across them. What I found was most of a ball of yarn skewered by a small handful of needles, one completed and blocked mitt, and one folded scrap [...]
Hubris
Things seemed to be going well. Really they did. It was a new (to me at least) way to make a gusset and it seemed to be going off without a hitch. I finished the first Greenhorn and grafted the toes. It was the prettiest and least fussy graft ever. I should have known something was up. I soaked it, blocked it, and hung it to dry. I had tried it on several times during its construction, and had no reason to think anything was wrong. But there was. It pulled, just a little bit, right across the point where [...]
Mailing List
Want to hear when a new pattern comes out or something fun is going on? Sign up below!
Patreon
Want to support the content I create, get nifty bonus material for some of my favorite patterns, or get every new release delivered right to your inbox? Head over to patreon and sign up!
