Category: design

a special gig

Thanks for all the great comments on the stripey knee socks! I’ll be working on writing them up for various foot/calf size combinations in the next little while.

Last Wednesday I had a special gig – a talk at the Downtown Knit Collective, one of Toronto’s knitting guilds (the biggest?). The always fabulous Patrick asked me if I’d be interested in doing a talk/presentation at the guild way back before I left for my trip, and it really came up fast.

It was a little daunting arriving early and seeing the podium and microphone…

Along with the soon-to-be-not-so-empty seats!

Of course, after I took these I suffered from a bout of camnesia. Oh well. The talk went well, I think! I spent the weekend previous writing up a whole speech, but didn’t really read from it – as it should be. The writing really helped me order my thoughts, considering I’d never done anything like this before, and now I have something to fall back on should I need to!

I spoke a bit about how I learned to knit and got involved in design and such, a bit about my design process (with accompanying slideshow!) and a bit about the experience of writing Teach Yourself Visually Sock Knitting. The time (which was quite short, thank goodness!) really flew by.

Everyone was very nice, welcoming, friendly, and there were lots of great questions too.

Susanne even showed off her Simple Yet Effective Shawl during the show & tell at the beginning of the meeting. Gorgeous!

I had lots of fun, gave away a couple of books in the raffle, and brought all the socks from the book as well as some of my sweater designs for everyone to look at in person. It was a little nerve-wracking at first, but I think we all had a good time.

Thanks to everyone who came out!

March 22, 2009
FO: delicious stripey knee socks!

Okay, so these have been a LONG time in the making – I started them way back in September in London and Paris when I went with ysolda. If I recall correctly, I do think I finished one in a pretty timely manner…but the second one took FOREVER.

I guess the important thing is, now they’re done! And with temperatures still in the single digits (in Celsius, of course) there’s still plenty of time to wear them.

Stripey Knee Socks
Pattern: my own, custom to fit my enormous calves (seriously people, I’ve got an 8″ differential between my ankle and calf)
Yarn: Indigo Moon fingering weight in Chocolate and Raspberry
Needles: US 0

These were knit toe up, with a turkish cast on and short-row heel. The yarn comes in 100g balls, so I divided them up by weight first. Then because I wanted the brown to have slightly wider stripes, I decided to do the toe, heel, and top ribbing in the pink only. I’ll probably weave a little bit of thread covered elastic into the bottom half of the ribbing (which is folded over in these photos) to help them say up.

To cover the jog and just look pretty, I made a faux seam by slipping a stitch every other round up the back of the leg. I did lots of increases for the calf, then a few decreases as well to help them stay up!

I love them!

P.S. I’ve moved the comments button to the bottom of each post, just in case you’d like to find it :)

March 20, 2009
FO: Lucy in the Sky

So, way back in January I was working on a new version of my Lucy cardigan before I set out on my trip. Despite the minor snag in the underarm gusset, I did get it done, blocked, and buttons sewn on right before I left!

Of course I didn’t get around to taking any photos of it in Japan and China, despite wearing it all the time and taking photos all the time! I think it was mostly because anywhere I was wearing it, I was also wearing a heck of a lot of other layers on top to keep warm.

I think I must’ve used just 4 skeins of Dream in Color Classy to knit it up, because I bought five and have one still kicking around! The colourway is Black Parade, which is a superdark blue-black. Love. The yarn is great for this pattern – sturdy but soft, smooth, and the texture shows up really nicely.

I made the body and sleeves longer than my other brown one (which I also still wear a lot) and made a larger bust size (35″ for 36″ me). I also knit the collar onto the buttonband rather than sewing it on afterwards. One of the two sweaters I brought on the trip, it got a LOT of wear and still looks great! It’s even been washed and dried in the Indian sun, which is pretty special.

Ysolda took a few photos while we were at the Botanics, predicting that I’d be blogging about it in two weeks. I think that was *exactly* two weeks ago! I had fun knitting my own pattern again, and I think I’ll be wearing it a lot.

(Kind of a crazy photo – I’m working my way around Photoshop for the first time ever, and I think the levels in this photo were just a little weird to start with!)

Next time:

P.S. I almost forgot! Thalia asked in the comments what shoes I took on my trip – an excellent question, I think! I took exactly one (1) pair of shoes – my Doc Marten mary janes that Ysolda and I both bought when I went to Europe in September. Since I wore them all around then, I knew they could stand up to a lot of walking, and I was right! They’re really supportive, and versatile enough for cold or hot weather – in cold weather I wore thick, thigh-high socks with leggings underneath; in hot weather I just wore some little cotton ankle socks. They’re perfect shoes. I should probably buy another pair!

March 16, 2009