The colorway is Flower Shop Inferno. When I received this yarn, I immediately thought “Oh how gorgeous” quickly followed by “What the jack am I going to do with it?” I wanted to design a new shawlette that really showed off the colors and could be used with any variegated yarn. There aren’t a lot of patterns out there that do that successfully in my opinion.

So at knit night on Friday we discussed it. And the consensus was that this sort of yarn looks best in plain vanilla socks. So of course, I’m out to prove them wrong. I’m making it sideways because A. I’m good at that, and B. It makes it adjustable to nearly any yarn. But you should really get your hands on some of this. Seriously, it’s gorgeous stuff. And a bargain in the yarn world. $21? Even for someone on the fringe I know that’s a great price for these rich colors.

Oh and check this spot tomorrow – I’ve got a cute little hat pattern going live that is just *perfect* for some March Madness knitting.

It actually started out pretty well. The boys left early, so I was awake and dressed early and was ready to go. I have two collections I’m working on, so I broke out all the stitch dictionaries I had marked up and got to swatching. I had a ton of stuff on my dvr to watch, so I was all set. Of course my swatching my interrupted by the constant whining of the dog to go in and out but we will pretend that didn’t happen. Because if we acknowledge the constant whining of the dog we might have to sell him. Grrr.

After I cleared out my part of the DVR I went back to watching Lost. I had started watching it back in the day, but that was before we had a DVR and I missed way too much and gave up on it. But it’s all on netflix so I can watch all the episodes in order without missing a thing! At this point I had made no progress at all. I had ripped out swatch after swatch. Hindsight being 20/20 what I really needed to be doing was a bit more charting before I started to swatch. But I was acting like this was all organic and artsy. Bad move.

By the end of the day Saturday I had nothing to show for it and I had to admit defeat and go to bed. Let me just tell you, sleeping alone for the first time in the new house was weird. All sorts of noises that I never noticed before. But I slept ok, and got up at 7am to let the dog out. I thought after that I could sleep for a bit longer, but he was bound and determined to whine and howl until I got out of bed.

But it was ok. I was gonna make progress – I thought. I was wrong. Come noon the boys informed me they would be home around 3pm and I was sick. Something hit me wrong and my stomach was in knots. So after getting sick I opted to lie down til 2pm. Figuring I would get up and tidy up before the boys arrived. They arrived at 2:15. Someone was being a speed demon. And the weekend continued it’s course of making sure that nothing that I planned came out quite right.

But the evening wore on, the boys were in good spirits and I swatched something that didn’t quite work in some lovely Wollmeise. But would it work in something heavier – like some Tosh DK?

Why yes, yes, I think it does.

Actually pinterest seems broken for me today, which is a good thing. But then I went and burned all the fingers on my left hand making breakfast, so the sewing and the knitting that I need to accomplish today is going painstakingly slow. Emphasis on the pain. Why can’t I seem to stop burning myself? The place at the base of my thumb where I touched the element is *still* not healed.

So what am I working on? Well one thing is sooper seekrit so I can’t show you or else I’d have to kill ya. So let’s skip that. I made some progress last week on my Elsewhere cardigan though. Nearly done with the second side panel. The nice thing about this pattern is that it’s all knits and purls. So it’s easy to set down and pick back up and not be lost. You can also amaze the muggles with your ability to knit without looking. Plus I love the fact that I will end up with a cardigan that is super wearable.

And I must just say that I adore the super squishy-ness of the Malabrigo Worsted. That yarn is perfection. Look at those beautiful little squooshy stitches. Perfection.

And then there’s this other thing I’ve been working on. I’m putting together a collection of patterns that I’m very, very excited about. See all those little orange tags? They are all for stitch elements that I’m considering for inclusion in this collection. (The pink tag is for a potential Petite Purls pattern). It’s only 7 patterns, so a ton of them won’t get used of course, but I’m so inspired right now!

Right now I’m in the swatching stage and I’m trying to balance preparing this collection with the sooper seekrit knitting and the bajillion activities that the boys are involved in and making costumes for the menfolk who are going to MegaCon and oh my goodness the laundry and the cooking and the cleaning and I really need to wash the dog. You’re probably tired just reading that sentence, aren’t you? See what I mean about the hats?

I do.

Just to be clear I am hopelessly unfashionable. Today I am wearing jeans, stripey Valentine socks, a grey dry-fit Nike workout tee and a thin black cardigan. No fashion plate here. But my feet are warm and grey and black go together! Right?

That said I get tons of compliments where I wear my designs out and about. Those who don’t know me well will ask me where I bought my scarf. Those who do know me well will scoff and tell them that not only did I make it, I designed it. I find that shawlettes especially are infinitely wearable. Especially if you live somewhere where there is real winter. We’re having fake winter now here in Florida and I must admit I kind of love it.

Here you see my sad and unfashionable coat. It’s a corduroy peacoat – quite lightweight – but I love it and it’s perfect for Florida “winters”. But doesn’t it look lovely dressed up with my Berlioz? I especially love the Berlioz shawlette because I have super sensitive skin and the silk content in the Swoolk Yarn makes it feel all soft and delicious up next to my face.

So yes, lace is quite useful, quite versatile, and quite lovely. Knit yourself up a lovely shawlette to use as a scarf and you too can scoff at those who ask where you bought it!

This is a tall order. But I’ve started with the yarn. It’s the perfect go with everything color.

The colorway is called Cloud Jungle, and it’s Dream In Color’s beautiful workhorse of a yarn Classy. I’ve heard this wears very well, so it satisfies the “wear a lot” requirement and the colorway is nothing short of genius. It’s kind of a smoky purplish grey. Kind of. But it has hints of browns in it. Which I adore, because that is one of my biggest wardrobe problems. Rich browns are good colors for me. But basically in my closet I have clothes you can wear with brown things and brown shoes and then another subset of clothing that only goes with black stuff. But with this being both grey and brown I think it will bridge that gap!

The Classy has a nice twist to it, and the little bits of other colors are so nice. There are hints of rose and plum and in some light bits of greenish brown. It really is the perfect go with anything chameleon of a colorway.

I’ve done some sketches and I’m thinking hard about what exactly I want this sweater to be. What do you think makes a sweater perfect?

]]> http://picnicknits.com/design/sweater-perfection/feed/ 1 http://picnicknits.com/design/how-goes/ http://picnicknits.com/design/how-goes/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:08:43 +0000 Corrina http://picnicknits.com/?p=2155 [Continue Reading]]]> All I can think about lately are sweaters. Probably because my fingers are slightly blue – it’s actually been cold here in Florida lately – and I refuse to turn the heat up on principal. Last night I was sketching up and submitting sweaters, and I am quite seriously considering hitting the yarn store today to get yarn for a sweater for myself. I’d also like to make myself one of these:

When I designed this sweater, I had the perfect sweater in mind. I thought about features on other garments I had knit – what I liked, what I didn’t like. I knew I wanted a zipper, and I’m a sucker for turned hems and i-cord edgings. So I starting thinking and I started sketching.

I played around a lot with where the cable motifs would go – how they would integrate into the sweater – what seemed most organic. I swatched the cable motifs in Malabrigo worsted – because it’s always good to have some of that on hand for swatching. The motif I had chosen lent it self well to sleeve insets and panels up the front of the sweater and around the hood. The motif itself reminded me of a harp, so after a smidge of research (wikipedia to the rescue!) I found that a cithara was a kind of ancient Greek harp or lyre. Hence the name. Naming things is sometimes the hardest part!

When I received the Mountain Mohair from Green Mountain Spinnery I was pleased to find out how well it cabled. And the little tweedy bits were perfect for the large areas of stockinette in this sweater. Something with a bit of interest is best – either texturally or color-wise. That way the stockinette areas don’t look flat.

And when push came to shove I ended up with a sweater that was actually better than I envisioned. Which is really all a designer can hope for.

The Cithara Cardigan is available for download in the Winter 2011 issue of Twist Collective.

The stockings are actually coming along – believe it or not. The first one is done – here’s a grainy cellphone picture of it:

The second one is in progress even! I’m debating whether to do two designs and knit each one in red and green or do four designs. The fifth one is for the dog, so his will be a bit different. Yes, I’m planning on knitting a stocking for the dog. Yes, he gets presents. No, we are not crazy dog people.

How’s your Christmas knitting coming?

I am trying to minimize the crazy though. I’m knitting them in Lamb Pride’s Bulky. So the cast-on is only 42 sts. And the cabled version you see on the table has 48 sts in the main body of the stocking. So it’s not totally asylum fodder.

Unless you take into consideration the fact that I’m convinced that each of the stockings has to be unique and different. No… I couldn’t design just one stocking and knit five of them. That would be too easy. Commit me now.

And to add just a little extra pinch of madness I thought it might be a great time to sit down and cut out all the coupons and start couponing again. Yep, I’m certifiable.

In not so crazy news, Berlioz – the final song of the Seven Songs has been released. I’ll blog about it tomorrow and there will be a contest to win that gorgeous skein of yellow yarn that I didn’t use!

Yeah. I think so too. I’m insanely proud of it. I had an idea, I sketched the idea, and when push came to shove the finished sweater was even prettier than I imagined.

I absolutely adore the way the inserts on the sleeves came out! And the Green Mountain Mohair yarn cabled like a dream. So nice to work with!

And this beauty is available in the new winter issue of Twist Collective! I’m so proud to be part of such a beautiful issue. So many things that I love in this one. Yep, now I want to design sweaters all the time. Must learn to knit faster. Oh yeah, and move to Canada. It was nearly 80 here today! But I know lots of you live in places where it is snowing already – so head on over and find yourself a lovely winter sweater to knit – preferably mine!

This is why I’ve been swatching for over a week. I swatch. I rip out. I swatch. I curse. I rip out. I *think* I’ve finally figured things out for this song. The math and the crux of the design has been done forever. But the motif for this first section has been giving me gas! But I think I finally got it right.

This yarn is wonderful though. Such a beautiful shade of silver grey. And you need some Paca Peds with the heel-toe skein so you can make this design when it comes out!