You are here: Home / Archives for patterns

The Esquiline Venus

May 5, 2011 By 1 Comment

It’s actually a beautiful marble statue, but when I saw the name, I couldn’t resist naming my new shawlette Esquiline. The yarn is the Venus colorway of Celestial Twist by the Knit Witch. You can see the convoluted road that took me there, right? Naming patterns is so hard to do.

.

I took her to the beach for some pictures, because she just seemed watery and oceanish. And the lace mesh in the center reminded me of a (very pretty) fisherman’s net. So she spent some time at the pier…

.

…and she soaked up the sun. I think the mesh lace is the perfect pattern for those lovely skeins of variegated fingering weight yarn that you have and don’t know what to do with. Even the pooling looks pretty.

.

And the pattern is now available for sale. It takes about 400 yards of fingering weight or sock yarn and size 7 (4.5 mm) needles and can be purchased for $5.50.

Filed Under: design, knitting, patterns

May Day

May 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Or mayday as the case may be. I’m actually very glad it’s May. Normally it’s the month of February that is the short and painful bane of my existence, but this year April was not so good. Stitches was awesome, but my running was off, and my entire family has been butting heads for what seems like the entire month. And just to add insult to injury…

.

Just when I was on my way to my first ever (planned to be) completely running 5K race, someone decided that they were above the traffic laws (not me!). A lady failed to look or yield at an intersection, and although I was going pretty slow, I still got the rear end of her. So I’ve spent some time thanking God that neither my son (!!!!) nor I was hurt, and that my husband bought me a tank of a Chrysler minivan that meant ours was not the car that went a-spinning.

So no race for me or the big dude. He was particularly grateful when a friend came to pick him up for a sleepover. I kept kissing him and hugging him out of the blue and being grateful that he wasn’t hurt. I’m also grateful for Geico. They don’t mess around with this stuff. I have an appointment Monday morning with an adjuster at a collision shop where my rental car will be waiting for me.

There are pretty things in the works. I have two new patterns that are nearly done – here’s a sneak peek of one of them.

.

And because it’s May, and it’s Sunday, and I’m grateful for so many things, and because I’d like to offset the cost of the insurance deductible… I’m having a SALE. (The other driver has insurance, but I can’t wait for that to be sorted out, and Geico says they will go after her to get our money back.) But anyhow, back to the sale. For today and tomorrow, Mayday and um, the second day of May, everything in the PicnicKnits Store is 25% OFF! So kiss the ones you love, thank the ones you’re grateful for, and buy some patterns!

Filed Under: life, patterns

Math Lesson

April 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

My Sideways Shawlettes E-Book is normally $25.00. This week it is on sale for 25% off. That means that the new improved price is $18.75! (Psst… the discount is applied automatically – you don’t need a coupon!) For $18.75 you get eight of my most popular patterns… which means you are paying less than $2.35 per pattern. This is a super awesome bargain!

You get great patterns like Gaenor….

wrapped-portrait

And Bakersfield…

IMG_1471

And Pettine…

IMG_1535

And Renita…

IMG_2731

And even better, when you buy Sideways Shawlettes you are also making a donation of over $9 to the Hubbard House – a local domestic violence shelter. I’ve set a goal of raising $250 by Saturday morning. I’ve already raised over $60 from yesterday’s efforts, so I’m well on my way to my goal. And remember all PicnicKnits patterns are 25% off – and 50% of all sales this week goes to the Hubbard House.  Thanks so much to everyone who has helped so far!

Filed Under: life, patterns

Grumpy By Nature

April 1, 2011 By 1 Comment

No this is not an April’s Fool post, I’m actually here. And I have a new pattern – and other new patterns that will finally be coming out! So first up, we have the Surly Scotsman.

IMG_3967

IMG_3958

Yes, that is my crazy husband. He named this cabled hat that I designed for him – and I told him if he was gonna pick such a ridiculous name he better be prepared to make some ridiculous faces. This was easy for him of course.

IMG_3957

This hat takes one skein of Cascade 220 on size 7 needles. The pattern can be purchased for $4.50 –

It’s also available in a new little e-book I’ve put out – Blue Brim Hats. It includes all three of the blue hats I designed this past winter for my menfolk for the bargain price of $8.95.

Filed Under: patterns

Numerology

January 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

No I don’t believe in it. I don’t really believe in astrology either. That’s why all this recent zodiac kerfluffle didn’t even phase me. Although I did spare a thought for folks who had zodiac tattoos. ‘Cause if it really changed, that would suck.

But I do have a favorite number. 27. Twenty-seven. Why? I have absolutely no idea. For as long as I can remember 27 has been the random number I’ve thrown out. “I had to wash the bowl 27 times before that stupid blueberry stain came out.” “I swear I’ve taken the dog out 27 times today.” “It’s been 27 minutes since I texted her with very important information and she hasn’t gotten back to me!”

So yeah. 27. Today is not the 27th of anything. It’s just the 17th of January, a nice, quiet rainy day where I get to keep my boys home with me. I’m hoping the rain breaks so we can do our 5K training this afternoon. But it’s just a comfy, cozy day where I will probably knit while wearing the snuggie I got for Christmas. Yes, I did.

But because 27 is on my brain, and because I can, and because Ravelry makes it so easy, we’re having a sale. Use the coupon code favorite and you can get 27% off any pattern or e-book in my Ravelry store. So if you wanted the Sideways Shawlette e-book,  it would be $18.25 instead of the normal price of $25 for 8 patterns! 27% off everything!

Filed Under: patterns

Future Rockstar

December 23, 2010 By 3 Comments

My son is obsessed with his guitars. Yesterday he spent a good part of the afternoon building a cardboard replica of his Ibanez and now he wants to string it up and see if he can play it. He teaches himself songs, and he practices all the time. So of course when he got to name his own hat, he opted to name it after a rockstar. So today’s special is the Armstrong Hat – named after Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day.

IMG_3675

If you look closely you can see the cord for his necklace – he wears a guitar pick around his neck anytime he’s not at school.

IMG_3673

The hat is completely reversible and has a deep fold-up brim per the boy’s request. It knits up quickly in Cascade 220 on size 7 (4.5 mm) needles. It’s available in small, medium, and large sizes in written and charted instructions. And until Christmas rolls around it’s only $2.50! No coupon code required.

Filed Under: 25days, design, patterns

Something happened there.

November 26, 2010 By 1 Comment

Even though I hadn’t officially signed up for the November blog posting thingie (I can *never* remember the abbreviation) I was doing really well. I blogged everyday for 19 days. And there wasn’t as much ennui and malaise as you normally get in a stint of that length. But life was conspiring against me.

Actually Clearwire was conspiring against me. Supposedly something is wrong with one or more of their towers and now my internet is all over the place. One minute I will get great speeds – down and up – and the next minute it slows to a crawl. And because of this inconsistency I lost about a week there. I couldn’t send anything but the briefest of e-mails. And to add insult to injury their phone lines are all jacked up. So if you call at 10am, it will tell you the tech support doesn’t open until 9am (!?!!?!?!) and that you should use the online chat feature to get support. Um, yeah. If I could use the online chat feature I probably wouldn’t need to call you.  This has been going on for over a week and every time I call them they tell me that the ticket is being investigated and that it was updated very recently on November 19th. Again with the um, yeah. November 19th was the day after I first called to complain. Forgive me if I’m not inspired and awed by your fabulous non-existent customer service and trouble ticket tracking skills.

So maybe the last day or so I’ve had limited success with being on the internet. Sometimes I have to walk away and take a potty break in order to give it time to load very complicated things, like say my Facebook page (insert rolleyes smiley here) but I can at least do some stuff. But my poor husband is on-call again this weekend so he will be driving into the office at the butt-crack of dawn on a Saturday (for the second week in a row!) because the connection is not stable enough to support his VPN.

So if you live in Northeast Florida and can recommend reliable, reasonably priced internet that is not Comcast please let me know. Because this sucks big time.

In other news – aka news you might be interested in – I’m having a Black Friday/Shopalooza weekend sale. All of my patterns, including the e-book, are 30% off if you use the code word “pumpkin”. Why pumpkin? Because I was having pumpkin pie for breakfast naturally when I thought of this totally copied everyone else on the interwebs who has an online store.

And since it’s the day after Thanksgiving the boys and I went all crazy with the Christmas decorating. We listened to music, and ate leftover pie, and completely put up the Christmas tree and most of the inside decorations. So I share with you one of the boys’ favorite Christmas songs:

Filed Under: life, patterns

Finally Phoenix

November 3, 2010 By 3 Comments

The actual final finished object of the Pink Phoenix pattern gave me some gas. There was a dog involved and a lot of sickness, and too much walking and not enough time to re-knit what was undone. But it’s finished. And I’m really, really happy with it!

IMG_3282

The interesting thing about this shawlette is that when it comes off the needles, it looks like 3/4 of a square. But when you block it like so….

IMG_3270

You get a lovely shape that looks like this:

IMG_3283

It drapes perfectly around your shoulders and isn’t too deep. Plus a bonus for those of us with junk in the trunk – it doesn’t have a big ole arrow pointing to your bum!

IMG_3273

If you wanted to make this bigger you could easily add more repeats of the 28-row lace body pattern. Just make sure you have enough yarn to do the 10-rows of edging afterwards.

IMG_3281

Needles: Size 6 needles (4 mm)

Yarn: Malabrigo Sock in the Light of Love colorway, 440 yards to 100g (I only used about 2/3 of the skein)

Size: Sample blocked to 64″ wide and 17″ deep

Gauge: 18 stitches and 24 rows = 4 inches in blocked stockinette

Notes: Worked from the top down – offered in written & charted format. $2 from the sale of this pattern will go to the Komen Foundation.

The Pink Phoenix Shawlette on Ravelry – $7.00 USD

Filed Under: design, knitting, patterns

Fenmore

October 11, 2010 By 2 Comments

I’ve been experimenting with shawl shaping again. I’ve made a lot of shawls and so far I really love the sideways construction. But this bottom up might be growing on me. I saw a shawl that was constructed in this manner and wanted to experiment with it. And then Brianna from The Yarn Side hooked me up with this amazing yarn and things just happened. Good things I think.

IMG_3091

It starts at the tip and works its way up, and the edging is incorporated – which I love. And there is short-row shaping along the top edge which is very easy to accomplish with yarnover short-rows and make the shawlette sit beautifully on your shoulders.

IMG_3098

But let’s talk about the yarn. The yarn. Oh my goodness. The yarn is amazing. In fact the name of the colorway is “Falling Lovely & Amazing”. And it lives up to the name. It’s a blend of alpaca, cashmere, and nylon. It’s fingering weight. The colors are kind of unsaturated and as a result the yarn just glows. Everyone who touched it just oohed and aahed. Because it’s just that nice.

IMG_2914

This blend of alpaca and cashmere makes the perfect little snuggly something. Lightweight enough to carry in your purse, but warm enough to ward off the autumn chills. The picot bind-off along the top edge makes for a fancy but simple to work finish.

IMG_3103

Needles: Size 6 needles (4 mm)

Yarn: Lorelai Sock from The Yarn Side in the “Falling Lovely & Amazing” Colorway

Size: Sample blocked to 70″ wide and 22″ deep

Gauge: 16 stitches and 28 rows = 4 inches in blocked garter

Notes: Worked from the bottom up  – offered in written & charted format.

The Fenmore Shawlette on Ravelry – $6.00 USD

Filed Under: design, patterns

Danger Prone Daphne

September 28, 2010 By 2 Comments

ANNOUNCEMENT: Something special is coming. It looks like I’m about $710 short of my $2300 goal for the Komen 3-Day for the Cure. And if I don’t make my goal (or pay the difference) I don’t get to walk. So… October is Breast Cancer Month, right? The first week of October we’ll be having a Boobie Blitz! So watch this space.

WARNING: If you are not done with the Daphne Ann Mystery Shawl and want to be surprised, don’t read this post!

Doing the mystery shawl was so much fun. I mean a crazy amount of fun. I have an amazing tech editor, and the folks who participated were just wonderful. I know some folks are still plugging along, but we got some fabulous finished objects out of it!

I will definitely be doing this again. But the next one will be on a grander scale. For this time around we only used one skein of Dream In Color Baby – 700 yards to 100g. It’s really kind of a light fingering as opposed to a true laceweight in my opinion.

IMG_2939

The shawl is composed of five clues which have now been compiled into a single pattern. The cool thing is that all the discussion and help is still available on Ravelry in the PicnicKnits group.

IMG_2944-1

Each clue is comprised of about 130 yards of knitting – so you can easily knit up a clue in a weekend! The shaping of this shawl makes it sit easily on your shoulders and each clue flows smoothly into the next without the tier effect you sometimes see in mystery shawls.

IMG_2936-1

Oh and the name! I nearly forgot. The shawl is named after a character on Scooby Doo. Because while I was brainstorming for mystery shawl ideas I kept thinking of Mystery Incorporated and Scooby Doo. Those who know me well know I have a small to major obsession with all things Scooby. So the Daphne Ann shawl was named for Daphne Blake and the purple/pink colorway reflects her fashion sensibilities!

Needles: Size 6 needles (4 mm)

Yarn: Dream In Color Baby – Punky Fuchsia Colorway – 700 yards to 100g

Gauge: 15 stitches and 25 rows = 4 inches in blocked stockinette

Notes: Worked from the neck down – offered in written and charted format

The Daphne Ann Shawl on Ravelry – $9.50 USD

Filed Under: design, knitting, patterns
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »