This has been my best designing year so far. I’m amazed at the support and wonderful comments and beautiful finished objects that have come from my design work. So to celebrate (and to pad my vacation fund) I’m having a half-year half-price sale. Everything in the PicnicKnits pattern store is half-price. Well except for the free stuff – that’s just still free!

So now’s a great time to buy any PicnicKnits patterns you’ve been eyeing. We got shawls:

We got cowls and bags:

We got socks (and a pair of slippers!):

And we got hats:

I say we, but it’s really just me of course.  I’ve got lots of new stuff coming out from PicnicKnits, but this sale is your best chance to get some tried and true favorites for a great low price. And thanks again for all of the support!

Sometimes it all just comes together. I had a good idea, and Petite Purls had an upcoming submission deadline. And just to make it sweeter, a photographer friend of mine has the cutest little girl ever.  It was meant to be. See how cute?

Wait. She gets cuter. Look at those adorable little toes!

And just in case you have not yet succumbed to the cuteness…

What? You say that’s not cute. You don’t have a heart. Well even if you are heartless and the word “awww” never passes over your lips… this one will get you.

If you don’t think that’s cute, you might be dead. Have someone check your pulse.

Want to hear the best part of the cuteness parade? The kid is not for sale, but the pattern is FREE! Yes, free! So head on over to Petite Purls and make a Sourpatch top for your own cutie!

And if you’re local, and you need an amazing photographer you should check out Cayden Lane Photography. Lori Robinson is nothing short of fabulous!

Training is going well for the 3-day. And I’ve already got over $100 in donations. If you made a donation and deserve a free pattern, make sure you let me know which one you would like. Also, my new shoes are fabulous! I walked five miles Saturday morning and wore the new “anti-friction” socks and my feet felt wonderful. Well it totally kicked my butt, but my feet felt good. If you’re local the Baldwin-Jacksonville trail is a fabulous place to walk or bike. It’s mostly shaded, the path is smooth, and the miles are marked off!

In other news and notes, I missed a contest deadline. I was working on a beautiful shawl out of this yarn and I just ran out of time:

The yarn is delicious. If you’ve ever worked with Baby Twist, you know what I mean. And it worked up into a generous wrap that is lovely and reversible. Not truly reversible like some of my shawls are. But both the right and the “wrong” side of the fabric are lovely and very similar. In fact, I think I prefer the “wrong side”.

This should be going to the tech editor in the next day or so. So hopefully there will be a new PicnicKnits pattern published very soon! I also have two designs that will come out in magazines in the next few months and two designs for online publications. Yes, I’ve been busy, even though it doesn’t seem that way!

This one has been a long time coming. I’ve known I wanted to do it for at least six months. And the actual pattern has been finished for nearly a month. Finally today, I got some photographs so I can show it to you!

It’s reversible – totally. The lace pattern is fabulous and blocks out beautifully. It’s worked side to side (as all my favorites are) with a cast-on of 2 stitches and the same number for cast-off.

It does a perfect job of highlighting some of the really gorgeous semi-solid sock yarns out there – like this Ink colored Madeline Tosh Sock. It shows all the lovely little highlights and lowlights.

The pattern is provided in charted and written form just like always!

Needles: Size 7 needles (4.5 mm)

Yarn: Madeline Tosh Sock, 395 yards in the colorway Ink

Size: Sample blocked to 64″ wide and 28″ deep

Gauge: 26 stitches and 26 rows = 4 inches in blocked lace pattern (yes, the gauge is basically square!)

Notes: Worked from side to side. Offered in charted and written format.

The Kyveli Shawlette on Ravelry –  $6.00 USD

Designing inspiration comes in many forms. One of the most fun is when the yarn just tells you what it wants to be. While I’m working at my LYS I have to rearrange the yarn. Make it look pretty. Re-twist it if it has come undone. Yarn is a tactile thing. So everyone touches it and well, they just mess it up. It’s no problem. I don’t want folks to stop touching the yarn. Because if they stop touching the yarn, they stop buying the yarn. And if they stop buying the yarn, I won’t have my (albeit very part-time) job anymore.

So about a month ago I spotted a very lonely skein of Claudia Handpainted Fingering Yarn in Copper Penny. And right there next to it was a lonely skein of Chocolate. They looked really pretty together. But I knew a good size shawlette would need more yardage. Fortunately I had a second skein of Chocolate at home. And that’s how this….

Became this…

It’s worked from the top down with only five stitches being cast on. You work striping sequence until you have the just right number of stitches and then you add a nice little lace border.

And the pattern is now available for sale.

Needles: Size 6 needles (4.0 mm)

Yarn: Claudia Handpainted Fingering, 175 yards per 50g, 2 skeins of main color, 1 skein of contrast

Size: Sample blocked to 60″ wide and 28″ deep

Gauge: 19 stitches and 32rows = 4 inches in blocked stockinette

Notes: Worked from the top down. Lace edging is offered in charted and written format.

The Pierrette Shawlette on Ravelry – only $5.50 USD

When I used to work at the newspaper, there was a certain group of folks who had new-itis. They were not interested in dealing with old projects, they just wanted the new. I never understood it. And it frustrated the heck out of me sometimes.

I understand now. I have a bad case of new-itis. I’m working on some secret stuff for publication, which is all well and good, but I’m stealing secret moments (like movie theater knitting) for some new stuff. Like this.

Claudia Handpainted Fingering is so squishy, so lovely. But two skeins isn’t really enough to make a good sized shawl or even a shawlette with any depth. So let’s add a third. And let’s make it stripey!

I’m loving the way the copper penny and chocolate colors are working together. In some places the copper is darker so it nearly blends into the chocolate. The working title is Penny Candy. It may change. It frequently does…

In other news I don’t know if I mentioned I’m going to Stitches South here in Atlanta. Well I am! I won’t be up until Friday morning, but I’m staying on site and will be attending the party on Friday night! So if you’re there, find me and say hey!

It’s been one of those weeks. One where all my best laid plans did not pan out. I had some good news and some bad news. But I’m keeping on. I’m constantly surprised at which of my patterns do well and which do not. I wish I knew the secret formula.

I’m in an odd place. I have submissions that I’m working on. But my brain is over-loaded with ideas. I need to get them all on paper, finish my submissions and come back to them. But before I do, I wanted to show you the next step in the evolution of my Ink Madtosh Sock shawlette…

This is about the fifth swatch I’ve done. I knew what I wanted with the body pattern. But the edging is giving me gas. Here it’s nearly what I want. But there a couple of places where the yarn-overs aren’t lining up quite properly. And I want to flush things out with a bit more garter to outline things. So I will re-chart and then I will write the pattern. And then it’s test knitter time!

But for now I’m putting this down. I need to make some progress on my submissions. If only I could figure out how to get this all done. I think I might need a taskmaster!

A lot of times I get asked questions about how I design. Hmmm. It’s not always the same. Sometimes I see something and it inspires a fabulous idea. If I’m on top of things I file that inspiration away in some useable form. Sometimes the ideas leave my head as quickly as they come and they never see the light of day. I found myself a little leather notebook that is filled with graph paper though, and I’ve been getting much better at throwing together a quick sketch or a chart. So less ideas are going off into the ether.

On Saturday Kimber and I worked at the yarnstore. The day was winding down and it had been a long one. We were rearranging yarn and kind of just slugging along when the owner offered up a treat. New yarn to stock on the shelves! Kimber and I are grade-A first-class yarn sniffers. And touchers, and fondlers… well if you get it, you get it, and if you don’t, there’s no way to explain it. But we were happy. A Stitch In Time now carries Lorna’s Laces in Worsted, Sock, and Helen’s Lace. All gorgeous. Plus we now have MadelineTosh Tosh Sock. There are no words for how gorgeous this, so here’s a picture of what I brought home in the Ink colorway:

I bought it for a specific purpose. There is this amazing reversible stitch pattern I’ve been wanting to use in a shawlette pattern. And I thought this would be perfect. So I brought it home and held it in my lap for a long time. And then I decided that it would not work for it’s intended purpose. I do this all. the. time. Sometimes I end up using the yarn for something else. Sometimes the yarn is forlorn and lost for a very long time. But this yarn was too pretty. So I caked it up and tried to re-purpose it.

It did not work. At all. The idea I had is a good one. But it needs some tweaking and it’s not ready for public consumption as it were. So I went back to the yarn’s original intended purpose. (This happens all the time!) Because I had abandoned the original idea without actually swatching it, I figured it wouldn’t kill me to swatch.

And I love the combination! Today I spent a few hours on SugarbeeStudios’ couch. I charted up the pattern, and I modified it with a coordinating lace edging. As soon as my household duties are done today I will swatch it all up to make sure it works. And then it will be pattern-writing time. Coming soon to a pdf near you…

You know when it rains it pours around here. My design droughts sometimes seem to last forever, but then I get on a roll and things just go. I actually have one design on the needles right now, and a second in the almost ready to type up and swatch stage. So we might get a shawl a week for the next few weeks. Also one of my design submissions hit pay-dirt! So that’s exciting too.

Oh and yeah. I won the calender raffle today at school. So that’s $25! I must have done something right. Either that or I’m flying under the radar.

I know I seem to have new-itis. I get really excited about new designs at first. And then I hit the middle stretch and get really tired of them. That’s why this one took so long to knit. But then I finished it, and I blocked it, and the angels sang…

Look at those points. Look at those scallops. Look at that blue-green loveliness. That is courtesy of Malabrigo Sock of course. Indicieta colorway.

It’s reversible, and the scallops make the prettiest collar when it’s folded over. And it’s available now.

Needles: Size 6 needles (4.0 mm)

Yarn: Malabrigo Sock, 100g, 440 yards, one skein

Size: Sample blocked to 62″ wide and 21″ deep with 22 repeats of the feathered lace on each side

Gauge: 18 stitches and 26 rows = 4 inches in blocked stockinette

Notes: Worked from side to side. Totally reversible. Size is customizable as the pattern has two distinct halves. Use up half of your yarn and then start decreasing – it’s just that simple.

The Bakersfield Shawlette on Ravelry - only $5.50 USD

So I’m moving into a new world – the world of sample knitters. I’m trying to be “serious designer woman” -  which is not to be confused with “serious Cadbury egg eater”. I have more ideas than I have time to knit them. So for my latest design I procured a sample knitter. And knit she did. Brenda is a very serious Knitter with a capital K. She is proficient and fast and cranks out beautiful stuff at the speed of light. And the speed of light is what I was looking for. I gave her yarn and a pattern on a Saturday, and by Monday she was all done. I had 5 hours of van knitting time in the same period of time and I’m still not done with the Pettine shawl! But I digress – as usual. Here’s the Bakersfield Shawlette:

It’s shallow and wide: 15″ deep and 84″ wide. So it’s a bit more of a scarf than a shawl. But it actually cups and covers your shoulders quite nicely, so I’m still calling it a shawlette.

The nice thing about a shallow shawlette like this is that you can make it with precious little yardage. This is worked up in Colinette Jitterbug which only has 320 yards and there was nice little pile of yarn leftover. So if you have some sock or even sport or dk weight yarn that is low on yardage, Bakersfield is perfect.

The wave lace is not something new (!) and exciting (!) but I think the application here is beautiful. It would be lovely in a nice shade of blue or green. The model shawl works 13 repeats on each side and uses size 6 needles. But the needle size is not crucial – and if I were you I would work up a stockinette swatch and block it. This fabric is loose but not airy if that makes sense. Go for a fabric that you love.

Needles: Size 6 needles (4.0 mm)

Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug, 320 yards to 100g, one skein

Size: Sample blocked to 84″ wide and 15″ deep

Gauge: 20 stitches and 26 rows = 4 inches in blocked stockinette

Notes: Worked from side to side. The sample has 13 repeats of the lace pattern on each side.

The Bakersfield Shawlette on Ravelry - only $5.00 USD