White Iris Collection

Like last week, my walks through Jamaica Plain inspired my colorways. This week, white iris stole my heart. I just love their crinoline lady look, with their lacy petals, and their soft pastel hint of a color.
These are again very different colorways for me. I have never done a collection based on variations of white. Here, like last week, I focused on creating very subtle gradations from the palest white, to amore sustained color. The results make me so happy. The colorways are like the crinoline ladies, as soft and fresh as the iris that inspired them.

Enjoy the White Iris Collection.

I was remiss in my last post - HERE's a link to the complete Longfellow poem. It is really beautiful. I will get the pattern written up for the Lulu store soon - I only hope Knitpicks' doesn't discontinue any of the Palette colors by then.

Speaking of Christmas, last year DH didn't get me a gift as I instead asked for him to take me to Gallup, NM to buy me a piece of Indian jewelry. The trip finally happened and here's the bracelet I chose. It is Zuni and the artist's name is Quinton Quam. It features a blue jay, hummingbirds, and cardinals.




Here's downtown Gallup - it is the destination for people looking to buy Navajo, Hopi, or Zuni jewelry. Years ago I ordered from Virtual Yarns and I received a nice email from Alice Starmore recounting how she once purchased a bolo in Gallup. I've always wondered if that is the bolo she is wearing in her photo for her Fair Isle knitting book.



On the side of one of the buildings is a mural devoted to the Navajo code talkers - one guy is even holding a bunny!




We met up with my brother-in-law Dave from Phoenix and his partner Matt. Matt's family owns a cattle ranch in the Cibola National Forest where they camp in the Ponderosa pines. There is even a lake in the distance.

Here's a mama with her brand new baby hiding behind her.

Here's my latest project. I charted out the first stanza of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Christmas Bells" poem on a mitten. Longfellow had endured a tragic couple of years - first his wife died from a freak accident then his son was severely wounded in the Civil War. He wrote the poem on Christmas Day 1864 - here's the first stanza:

"I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old familar carols play

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, goodwill to men."

I'm using three colors of Knitpick's Palette - white, ivy and pimento (a really lovely red). This project is going pretty fast - I just love knitting letters.

Black Iris

I get my color inspirations from varied sources. Sometimes it is the work of a painter, sometimes a country, and at times the simplest thing can inspire a whole collection. This is exactly what happened this week.

I went for a walk in my lovely neighborhood of Boston, Jamaica Plain. Jamaica Plain is a sort of paradise. Imagine living in a great city, but instead of crowded dark buildings, and concrete everywhere, you have lovely victorian houses with gardens full of flowers, beautiful trees shading the streets, a great downtown with restaurants that serve delicious foods from all over the world, the best thrift store in town, Boomerangs, and of course the majestic Jamaica pond...But back to my walk.



I saw the most beautiful black iris in a garden, and got a rush of coloways passing through my head. I saw black and ruby, black and amethyst, black and tourmaline... I went home and started working... I wanted the colors to have both black and jewel tones, and I wanted smooth transitions. I opted for gradations from a practically pure jewel tone to the deepest black with a touch of jewel.
The results would make any black iris proud!



Enjoy this week's Black Iris Collection.

Tesuque

Today's blog road trip highlights the beauty of Tesuque, NM which is a few miles north of Santa Fe. We were there last week and it was incredibly green.

The first 3 photos were taken at Shidoni Sculpture Gallery. Way back when I started the mitten booklet I had the idea to use Shidoni as the backdrop for some mitten photos but life intervened.










Shidoni has a foundry where you can watch metal being cast. All the sculptures are for sale if you happen to have an extra $20K or so in your pocket.









We ended up in a national forest area (Upper Pacheco Canyon??) and although I was too far to get a great photo, you could see the Santa Fe Opera house in the distance.








Someone was growing a garden at the bottom of this valley.






I have a new Christmas project (It is never too early to start!) to show you next.

A Little Bit of Fabric

I have 2 favorite stores in Boston, Windsor Button, and Winmill Fabrics. I get my yarn, notions, buttons, and embroidery supplies from one, and my fabrics from the other.I am afraid to say it, but I do have a fabric stash... and a yarn stash... and a button stash... and a notions stash... Well, you know, one cannot be too cautious, what if there was ever to be a shortage of fabric, or yarn, or buttons, or...!
The other day, I had gone to Winmill fabrics to pick up an elastic band for a skirt I was making for my daughter, when, and I wasn't even trying to really browse the fabrics at all, this butterfly fabric caught my eye.



I had to have it. What could I make with it though? It was all down hill from there. I could make a quilt, but I needed fabrics to go with it. I picked the striped one, and then all the others...



I can't wait to play with them, they say spring and summer, and happy days to me! But first I'll have to finish my son's crochet blanket, and the embroidered pillow case, and ...

No piggies today for you but here are some toes. I had to change the length of most of the toes to fit my feet - my little toe was much longer and my middle toe was much shorter. You can tell the middle toe is still too long in this photo.





My feet really don't like wearing toe socks so I'm in a quandary about these socks. I am planning to give everything I knit this year (except any socks I need and DH's Dale sweater) to the rabbit rescue people to sell at a garage sale but I'm not sure anyone will want piggy socks in non-machine washable yarn. Therefore I'm putting these socks aside until I figure out what to do.



Speaking of the rescue garage sale (the one I knit 10 zillion rabbit finger puppets for), I wanted to show you what the money they raised was used for. This is a fancy rabbit cage to fit six bunnies for the city animal shelter to use. You can see the cage at the Lucky Paws shelter in the Coronado Mall in Albuquerque.

Wonderful Parrots

This week's SockPixie collection, the Parrot Collection was inspired by the cutest little parakeet, Boston Creme.
We found Boston Creme on our street last weekend. She was sitting terrified in a bush in a neighbor's driveway. I was able to coax her into sitting on my finger. We brought her back in the house, put her in a safe cage, and called the MSPCA. We gave them our contact information in case she was reported missing.



Boston Creme (as we nicknamed her)was incredibly friendly, and playful. We were falling in love with her. The morning after, we found an egg in her cage, and we were even more excited. We marveled at the perfection of the egg, the kids were completely mesmerized by this miracle. We all hoped (quietly) that no one would claim her, and that she would become our new family member.



Unfortunately, shortly after laying the egg, Boston Creme started acting sick. We ran to the Angell Animal clinic. The vet told us, that she had probably injured a chest bone when she got lost, and laying the egg broke the bone completely. She passed away. We all felt so sad.

After finding Boston Creme, and in the process of helping her, we read a lot about parakeets, and parrots, and parrot rescue. We looked at pictures of glorious colorful parrots, and I was inpired to create this week's Parrot Collection. Parrots are often misunderstood, and as a result abandoned, so I decided to do a little to help finding new homes for these wonderful beings, by donating 10% of this week's proceeds to a rescue organization called Foster Parrots. They do an amazing job welcoming, rehabilitating parrots of all kinds and sizes.



I hope you will enjoy the Parrot collection.

Albuquerque

I rarely get to downtown Albuquerque so when I went last weekend I took a few quick shots to show you.






This is San Felipe de Neri church in Old Town Albuquerque.





The world needs more bright blue doors, don't you think?



Old Town is quite popular with tourists and has lots of fun shops.

In the comments yesterday Nancy commented that what I was doing in the rainbow hat was knitted in I-Cord and PatB said her wonderful clock socks in Socks, Socks, Socks used a method of intarsia in the round. Check it out if you have that book or look her up as patknitter on Ravelry for more info. I'm almost to the heel on the first piggy toe sock and I decided to do duplicate stitch since I thought that would be the fastest. We'll see how long all that duplicate stitch takes me.

Granny Square Bliss

A few months ago, I posted about making granny squares with left over tweed yarns. I finished the blanket a couple weeks ago for my oldest daughter's birthday.

I love the texture. I crocheted with double strands throughout. This made it a much faster project. I used left over tweed yarns from Jo Sharp, and Rowan, as well as a few other odds and ends.
I really loved making the vibrantly colored squares. To unify them, I picked a natural, undyed wool. I found that this was the best choice as it married itself beautifully with any square.

I love the boldness of the blanket,and in fact I love it so much that I have already started a new one. This one will be for my son's birthday which is on Wednesday...

Happy Mother's Day

I will start this post by wishing you all a Happy Mother's Day.
This week's SockPixie Collection has a very Mother's Day feel to it, as all the colorways were inspired by my favorite vintage hankies from the 50's, state hankies.
The colors are so fresh, they look like rays of sunshine! It was so hard to pick which ones to create, I could not stop making new colors, and I ended up with 8 luscious colorways. Here are 2 of them, California and Washington.



This week I also made a little Mother's Day gift that will go in each one of your packages, a little sewing needle case.



I had so much fun making these for you, choosing the felt colors, combining them, trimming them with pinking sheers, and most of all embroidering the little daisies.




Happy Mother's Day!

Too Cute to Resist

My grand-mother is a knitter, and to this day (she jut turned 88) she has knit sweaters for all the children in the family. Her mother was a wonderful seamstress. I still remember the wonderful Regional costume from Martinique she designed for me one year. My mother is mostly an embroiderer.
I knit mostly, I sew occasionally, and up till now I had barely embroidered.

The other day, I was at Windsor Button, in dowtown Boston, and I was just browsing when I spotted the cutest stamped embroidery pillow cases: 2 adorable retro kittens in a basket with daisies everywhere. It was love at first sight. I walked over to the embroidery threads,and quickly decided I was going to pick my own colors to embroider these kittens. Reds, corals,teals and a little gold were my choices.Since I was at the time a "virgin" embroider, I also picked up a hoop, and a set of embroidery needles. I could not wait to get home, and stitch.

I went down to my studio, put on some Georges Brassens, and sat in my chair next to the window. It was 2 o'clock. The children were out with Mr. SockPixie that afternoon. It was past 8 o'clock when they came back, and I was still stitching...



I guess embroidery was in my genes too!

Chasing Rainbows Cap

INTARSIA IN THE ROUND

The one and only time I did intarsia in the round was for this Chasing Rainbows Cap. (No pattern yet but I do hope to knit another cap and offer it as a free blog pattern this fall.) For each color I cut about 2 yards of yarn. I worked in the round with the black background color and each time I got to a new color, I did an interlock (i.e., twisting the yarns) and knit with that new color, then another interlock and back to the black which was stranded.




Here's the inside - this method will only work for narrow stripes though. As it is because the yarn for each color is pulled back to the beginning stitch every time you start a new row, it kind of puffs up the vertical stripes. I believe this is what PGR calls "zigzag intarsia" in the article referenced below. Interestingly she says to weave the background color in EVERY stitch when working the new color which I did not do for this hat. I bet her method will help the stripes from puffing up so much.



Here are some resources I've found for other methods of intarsia in the round. Some of these methods are called festive knitting or motif knitting. Some methods are considered true intarsia and some are a mixture of intarsia and stranding. Most seem to involve some sort of combo of short rows or moving counterclockwise either by purling back to a specific point or by knitting back backwards. If I've missed any good references, please let me know in the comments.

PRINT

"Traditional Techniques for Creating Ethnic Intarsia Designs," Interweave Knits, Fall 2003, Priscilla Gibson-Roberts - She outlines four methods - zigzag intarsia, motif knitting, intarsia with a seam line join, and seamless circular intarsia (which looks seriously complicated). There is also a pattern, the Love Stamp Socks, which uses all four methods. I checked and this back issue is no longer available so Ebay is your best bet.

Ethnic Socks and Stockings, Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, XRX 1995. She includes a section discussing motif knitting and zigzag intarsia.

"About Festive Knitting," Heel and Toes Gazette, Fall 2001, Dawn Brocco. A back issue is available at http://www.dawnbrocco.com/ . The issue includes a pattern for Cushy Socks which use this method.

According to the Dawn Brocco article a few other print resources on festive knitting are: Meg Swansen's Knitting, Anna Zilboorg's Socks for Sandals and Clogs, and Mary Thomas' Knitting Book.

ONLINE

Meredith Davey's free Ravelry pattern for Baseball Socks uses festive knitting.

Knitty's Intarsia Fun Hat is worked in the round.

Moth Heaven has a tutorial on one method of intarsia in the round with photos. There is no direct link - check the sidebar to the left.

Let Me ExplaiKnit discusses some methods of doing intarsia in the round.

Honeybee33 discusses four methods of circular intarsia.




This is Patch the sweetie pie. She's waiting to be adopted at Petco West Side on Old Airport Road in Albuquerque. The woman who grooms the dogs says Patch is very curious and just loves watching the dogs get haircuts. She'd be a great first-time house rabbit!

You can also meet Patch tomorrow, May 9th, at our next HRS Rabbit Adoptathon between 10 am and 2 pm at the Petco Lomas (10700 Lomas NE). Please stop by to meet our adoptable rabbits and talk to our knowledgeable rabbit people. You can also bring your bunnies in to get their claws clipped or to bond with another bunny.

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.