Loose Ends

Thank you all so much for the wonderful comments on the Corolle Sweater. I am working on the pattern, and will be offering it in a range of sizes from 3 months to 10 years old. This should cover a wide range of little fairies!I am proceeding slowly, but to have it ready in about a week.

I really love Corolle and I am so glad you like it too. Flowers and fairies definitely inspire me. I am a pixie at heart! Magic and colors make me so happy.

Here is what brought the biggest smile to my face today. A beautiful patchwork of colorful skeins waiting to leave and fly to their new homes.
Don't you just feel like smiling, or dancing or singing when you see magical colors?

Mittens in Color Booklet

Give me a day or two and I'll round up all the resources I can find about intarsia in the round and post them here. I need to hunt through my files.

The mitten booklet is finally done just in time for summer. It is available HERE on Ravelry and HERE on Lulu. It will be on Amazon also in a few weeks. I'm doing this one a bit differently - I will just give a straight 20% from the proceeds to our fledgling chapter of the New Mexico House Rabbit Society. I'm still committed to giving $1000 a year to the Colorado HRS from the other booklet sales.

Here are all the mitten patterns (four total) in the booklet again. I also included a little section on mitten knitting techniques.

Spinning Fun

Even though I have not written about spinning lately, I have been stealing blocks of precious minutes to spin.

This time, I gave myself a little challenge. See, I loved this roving's colorway so much(a SockPixie colorway from a few weeks ago), I decided to ignore the fact that it was a Merino/Bamboo mix, and would probably be a little too slippery for my inexperienced hands.

It was a little bit of a challenge at first, the fibers would slide along each other so fast that my roving strand would break. After a few attempts, I got in the groove, and was in pure spinning heaven.



I love the long repeats of juicy orange, fresh green, and the hint of pale blue.
Right now, the bobbin with its thin singles is sitting in my spinning basket, with just a little more of the roving to go.

I intend to spin a companion single for it. Probably a very subtle solid so as not to overpower the lovely colors.

Actually, I am off to my studio right now to find its companion or maybe to dye it...
(I don't have far to go to get to my studio, it is actually on the lower floor of my house, it looks out on my city garden. My studio is a heavenly space, full of colors, skeins of yarn,fluffy rovings, giant inspiration boards covered with color samples and swatches. I love to work, spin, knit, sew, embroider and create there while listening to the music of Edith Piaf, or Yves Montand... I'll have to show it to you one of these days...)

Sandia Fingerless Mitts

Thanks everyone for reminding me I can also do the pigs on the piggy toe socks in intarsia in the round. I do have that old PGR article about how to do it - I'll dig it up and see what I think. I'm going to get started on the socks tonight during the 1st game of the Boston/Yankees series.

I've finally finished the knitting and photography for the mitten booklet. Here are the Sandia fingerless Mitts done in 2 colors of Palette. I'm happy with them but I'm even happier our lilac is blooming. The previous 2 years we received late frosts so we didn't get any lilacs.

All I have left is editing so I plan to drink lots of caffeine this week and finish up the booklet. Then it is on to a summer of fun socks.

A New Flower

I love flowers, flowers of all kinds. Lately, I have been so in love with them, that I have been knitting them.

After I finished knitting the little Clochette hat, I set out to knit another flower. Asters are one of my favorite flowers with their bright peach center framed by vibrant purple petals.



I sketched, and sketched, I searched my stash, and it all came together. I had some lovely Bouton d'Or Mango cotton in just the perfect colors, a soft deep purple, and a peachy orange. I also found one single ball of a lighter purple, which would be perfect for the trim.



I designed the sweater so that it would have a slight flare, with the petals narrowing into a delicate empire waist line. The yoke of the sweater became the stygma.




The sweater is knit in one piece, ( after each petal is started)with no seams. I placed the decreases between the petals, and separated the petals with columns of purl stitches.



While the petals were knit in stockinette stitch, the yoke was knit in garter stitch. After a few rows of the lighter purple the yoke switched to its bright peach tone, and the sleeves were added to the knitting by casting on extra stitches. I really like the discrete and graceful nature of the short shoulder hugging sleeves.



The yoke was gently decreased, until it came to a flatteringly open neckline. It was then topped by a few rows of the lighter purple.
I picked up stitches along the front sides of the sweater, and around the petals and added a few continuous rows of light purple.

Picking the buttons was great fun. Again I searched my stash, ( I am ashamed to say, that on top of my crazy yarn stash, I also have a button stash!) and these little peach water bubble stole my heart.



I took notes as I was designing the sweater and I will be working on different size options and will publish the pattern as a free pdf. What would you think of the name Corolle for this pattern?

A la Monet...

I know it is only Saturday, but the colorways are already up. Birthdays claimed my Sunday, so I had to be ready by Saturday.

This week, I found my inpsiration in the paintings of Monet and Van Gogh. The colorways are infused with soft light, and aqua tones.
Here is a sample of the Painterly Touches Collection



I hope you enjoy this voyage with Monet and Van Gogh. Happy Knitting!

The three colors of the Valencia mittens I showed in my last post are done by alternating the contrast color on each row (i.e., row 1 is blue and yellow, row 2 is blue and green, row 3 is blue and yellow again, etc.) - you do get some twisting of the yarns but I really like the finished look.

Once I'm done with the mitten booklet I'm going to start the piggy toe socks from Socks, Socks, Socks. After spending so long trying to find a sock yarn in the right shade of pink I finally decided to just make them in Palette using the colors below. After looking at the pattern it looks like duplicate stitch is the only choice for the pigs because they're not on the bottom of the foot. I suspect all that duplicate stitch will probably take as long as the actual knitting but I still think they'll be really fun to knit. I've never knit socks with individual toes either so that should be interesting.