Clearly
Now that the mitts are done, clearly we need to do a hat...
Weather dependent
So these are done. And the general plan is both to have them come back out, and to make a hat to match. And probably to make a little digression on how that stitch works and how to play with it because that sort of thing amuses me. All of which will be available in various forms as they come together. The timing of all that is somewhat weather dependent. It's summer, finding the right sort of day to take photos where they'll come out nicely and I won't keel over from the heat sometimes takes a while. And I [...]
Shorthand
This? This is alas another of those things best done by pointing and gesturing and talking. The video that goes with this is up on a public post on patreon and also on instagram, and you should go look at one of those for a second first so this makes sense! Ok, so first I must emphasize, Do Not Fret If This Looks Like Gibberish! But this is sort of how I draw out stitch patterns when it's JUST for me. Just for my own use, not ever to be inflicted on anyone else in any but the most informal [...]
Blocked, and not
You know how I'm always um, let's say 'encouraging' you to block your knits? Yeah. Here's why. This is the same pattern (Constellate, it's not out now, but the clever among you can probably guess that this little stack of goodness means it will be soon), knit in the same yarn (Seven Sisters Arts' gorgeous color wheels). Just one is blocked and one isn't (yet). The blocked one is just so much smoother and more even and more orderly, all for about 5 minutes of effort. And yeah, every single time I do something like this, I get someone piping [...]
Mind the Gap
I warned you I was going to indulge myself and talk about the nerdy bits of these mitts, so let's just do that. Let's talk about how to handle that little gap you can sometimes get between the hand part of the mitt and the thumb part of the mitt. When you make a mitt, you (generally) set some stitches aside for the thumb, finish off the hand, then come back and make a tube for your thumb using the stitches you set aside. BUT, if you just start making a tube with your set aside thumb stitches and nothing [...]
Discontinuity
Let's talk about thumbs on gradient mitts. First, this is a very long gradient with subtle shifts. The color change over the course of the mitt is slight, so you could get away without doing this! But it's a neat trick, so it's worth talking about. Usually when I knit a mitt, I knit a tube for the wrist, make the tube wider to make room for a thumb, knit the wider tube until I get to the webbing between my thumb and hand, set stitches aside for the thumb, then go back to knitting the original size tube for [...]
Swatches…so many swatches
It's high time I start showing off some of the bits and pieces for the upcoming book! And for me, that means swatches. So Many Swatches. Now, if I were cooler, I'd have this pinned out and under tension for you. Because this is one of those stitches that just absolutely pops when it's stretched a bit (always a good choice for sock patterns, where you generally have a bit of negative ease). But instead you'll just have to imagine me stretching it just a tiny bit and making cooing noises as I revel in the tiny twisted stitches and perfect lines. Yarn is [...]
More incoming…
So at some point here I should probably start talking in detail about Silk Road Socks and how it will be out next month and how it's full of lovely things and how I very much hope you will like it as much as I do. But for right now, I'm just going to show you one of the sample socks I helped sort out (sometimes I put sample knitters in touch with yarn makers to get samples made for shows...which means I get to pet some truly lovely socks). That's one of the patterns in the book (I'll tell [...]
So when I say I knit a lot of swatches
Yeah...so about that swatching thing...I really do mean it. And right now, I'm hard at work on Curls 3 swatches. That's one little doodle with one of the lovely Varigradients from Seven Sisters Arts. The yarn is perfect, the stitch is fun, but I'm not 100% sure I'm sold on the combination. So I try again...and this has lots of promise. And again, this is absolutely normal. It's totally not a sign that anything is wrong. It's just that swatching is sort of the knitter's equivalent of sketching...and you sometimes need to do more than one to find just the [...]
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