Dyed Fir Cone

I dyed my Fir Cone shawl last night (in between rounds of trying to get my almost-2-year-old to sleep) and it's blocking now.

The carpet sucks obscures the pattern a little bit but you can get the general idea. I'll take some better ones tomorrow or Sunday. This took me about two hours to get right--I knew it looked off but until I got down with a tape measure, picked a center point, and measured about 20 different directions, I figured out where things needed to move. It's still not perfect but it's close enough for me until its next blocking (shudder!!).

I'd thought that it would block out into 3/4 of a square but it REALLY didn't want to--it wanted to be in a more winged shape.

Overall, I think I'd give this finished item a 6 out of 10 on an expectation rating; I thought I'd like the non-pointy end over my butt, but I think it's reeeaaaaly bad--I don't need another horizontal line there to emphasize my width. I'm also disappointed with the wool, especially after the gloriousness of the Alpaca Cloud I used for the Kiri. I'm pretty happy with the color though, which is why this project is scoring as high as it is. Before dyeing it was hovering in the 4 out of 10 range, so things are looking up. I added a little too much red to the bath (one of these days I'll remember to wait until ALL the dye has been absorbed before I start "correcting") but I think it's fine. Not as blue as I wanted, but totally livable and a big improvement over the differences between the skeins.

Sorry for being pissy and negative--head cold that the rest of the family has is finally hitting me, and I hate having a sore throat. Whine! Hopefully things will look up after more sleep (4 hours last night and about 4½ the night before do NOT make for a happy camper).

Anemone Pattern is up up up!!

After multiple tries all day, for some reason the computer gods smiled and the same thing I've been doing finally worked!

The Anemone PDF is up on my site!!!
Here it is and I'll also put it on the sidebar on the right.

Woo hoo!!

I'd love feedback on it, so feel free to share!

If anybody has any ideas about how to fix the sidebar graphic header being off (which didn't bother me a first, but now it's driving me nuts), I'd love to have some help fixing it. Don't ask how I screwed it up. LOL!

Fir Cone knitting finished!

At long last (it's been one day less than a month!) the Fir Cone shawl is done as far as the knitting goes. It hasn't really been long at all, and I'm pretty proud of myself for getting it done relatively quickly. This is far from the best picture, but I'm going to dye it so I didn't bother pinning out the whole shawl.

I'm really not happy with how much darker the second ball of yarn is. It's totally obvious on the border.

You can really see it in the first picture. So, I'm going to over dye the whole shawl! I think I'm actually going to paint it rather than do a dye bath, so that I can control the dye a little bit more and not get the already-too-dark border any darker. We'll see how it goes. The whole shawl may end up a really dark blue.

So except for the color differences between the two balls of yarn, I'm quite happy with the way it turned out. I have to have decent pictures of it by Monday the 14th in order to enter the Shetland Lace Workshop contest on EZasPi, and I also want to take it to knitting guild and show it off (also the 14th). It's a good thing I have deadlines!

REJECTED!!

I got a very nice email from Amy at Knitty.com that they aren't going to take my Anemone design for the Winter issue. Dang! Dang for me, that is--good for you, since I'm going to post it on my website instead.

So, now I can post a picture of it:

It's a neck gaiter with a flirty ruffle--lots of fun! Best of all, it's fairly quick to make, and very portable for while-in-transit projects. So why is it a neck gaiter and not a cowl, you ask? Well, that would be because it's tighter than a cowl--it very lightly hugs the neck, while a cowl drapes more around the neck. Now what's a wimple, you're wondering? Well, that's a larger cowl that can be pulled over the head like a hood, kind of. Yeah, that was probably more info than you wanted, but there it is anyway.

So now I just need a rejection from KnitPicks and my pathetic knitting life will be complete. Oh wait, no, I'll need to not win anything in the EZasPi Shetland Lace contest, too. Ha!! One good thing about being an established quilt pattern designer is that I'm used to rejection from publishers. I'll just have to keep designing. Gee, how awful. ;-) Throw me into that briar patch!

So, give me a day or so and I'll put up a link to the pattern, downloadable in PDF format. It'll take me a little while to remember how to do that, since it's been a while. :-)

Triangular Frost Flowers and Leaves shawl

I'm doing a happy dance--or at least I would be if I weren't so tired. I got the first chart redone (and tested!!) for the Frost Flowers and Leaves KAL from A Gathering of Lace (see button at right). I decided that I really didn't want a square shawl so I decided to make it triangular. I posted my thoughts to the list and other people are interested in doing that also, so I had to clean things up enough that others could follow my instructions. So here's my test knitting, which is chart 1:

It's not blocked, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up overdyeing it. I think the variegation of the yarn obscures the stitch patterns, although it worked fine for the Fir Cone shawl (which isn't done quite yet--had a deadline on this one to do first!).

So now I have to get a bamboo size 4 circular needle since my size US4 9" straights aren't big enough to continue without packing the stitches onto the needle really tightly. Woo hoo, yarn shop here I come! ;-)