knitdesign

I’m finally at the point in my wedding shawl where I need to decide which pattern to do next. So I’ve been swatching. And re-doing charts (I love charts, btw). And swatching some more. And then swatching again. I’ve churned out at least five swatches just for this section of the shawl. I’ll admit, I was a bit reckless and didn’t swatch at all for the centre bit or the lace bits that separate the points. Then again, those three lace patterns that I’m using as fillers are my favourite patterns of all time (patterning on both sides!) and I’ve used them before, so I was fairly confident that my charts would work out just fine without a test run.

Anyway, it turns out that the leaf motif I’d picked out, while awesome, really isn’t going to work with the rest of my shawl. Which is a shame because in my head it looked fabulous. Reality had other ideas. But that’s okay too. I’ll just use the leaf motif in something else later on. It’s really pretty and I’ve got plenty to swatches to look at to try to figure out what works and what doesn’t with it.

I think I’ve got it figured out now. I know what the next section will be. I’m just taking a little break from it this week and knitting on N&M’s wedding blanket. Garter stitch is a very nice change from having to pay attention all the time to what patterning I’m supposed to be doing and where to put the beads.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with all of the swatches I’ve created. I’m thinking of possibly framing the ones I really like and putting them up on the walls. Any other ideas?

Here’s the second of my two patterns from Defarge Does Shakespeare: Mrs Lear’s Scarf. It has cabling and wrapped stitches, just like the mitts and sections of textured stitches in between the columns of cables. So if you’d rather make a wrap instead of a scarf, super easy to just modify the stitch count to make it wider.

If I wasn’t in the middle of lots of deadline knitting projects (as well as sewing projects), I’d start playing around with the pattern in various weights to see what it’d be like. I can just imagine the stole being knit up in a mohair laceweight feeling like a cloud of cotton candy (without the sugary stickiness) being wrapped around you. I would do it myself, but I really dislike knitting with mohair, so that’s not going to happen. Someone else, make it happen! And show me pictures.

In other news, I think there’s something hinky going on with our mail. Some days, no mail at all. Then wham! We get a massive pile in one go. And yes, I check the mailbox daily, so it’s not like we’re the ones letting it pile up. What brought it to my attention was a letter from my grandma arriving last Friday. It was dated back in February. So like a month late. And then receiving another letter from her yesterday (ie the following Monday) dated just 27.03. So clearly the mail can get here in a timely manner from Finland, it just chooses not to. Baffling. Still, I’m going to keep writing replies, because handwritten mail is always nice to receive. And I’ve got pretty stationery that I want to use. I’ll just make sure that nothing time sensitive is said in the letters, that’s what phones are for.

As I mentioned earlier, I have two patterns in the new Defarge Does Shakespeare book that’s coming out soon (digital copy out tomorrow, March 27th, print version ships two weeks later). I’m the kind of person who likes clothes, accessories to match/co-ordinate, so I designed a scarf and a pair of mitts meant to be worn together.

Side note: Yes, this started as a kid. My grandma keeps telling me how at three years old, I’d tell her in English (not Finnish, I don’t know why) if outfits/jewellery matched or not. If they did, it’d be good, if not I’d apparently wrinkle my nose and suggest something else.

Anyway, back to the focus of this post: Mrs Lear mitts! I’m an indecisive person at times (those of you who know me in person, stop laughing, I can be! You just don’t see it often). But the beautiful thing about the pattern that I came up with is that it’s totally customisable to the yarn and needles. The red sample is done in DK (Fyberspates Scrumptious was so nice to work with) and the lavender is laceweight (Natural Dye Studio Angel 2-ply which is now sadly discontinued - the links are to my Ravelry project pages which are still lacking photos).

The focus of the mitts is the cuff, which has a picot edge and a cable & wrap pattern. The body of the mitt is plain stockinette and then it’s finished off a picot bind off.

Now, I was a dork and didn’t take good pictures of the finished items before I sent them off to be photographed for the book. Both sets were knit to fit me, and I’ve got fairly big hands. The samples look a bit loose (especially the laceweight ones) on the models, but when I wore them to check the fit, they were perfect. Snug, but not too tight. But as I said, the pattern is totally customisable so they can be knit in any size.

And because I like the whole matchy-matchy thing, I’ve cast on for another pair of the laceweight mitts in a yellow Malabrigo (I forgot the colourway name) to go with my lacy Malabrigo scarf that I knit last summer (again, need to take pictures of that too, I’ve really slipped this last year with updating everything). Who knows when I’ll actually finish them, because I’ve got a ton of other projects that are time sensitive, but I’d say it’s a good sign if I want want to knit a pattern more than once. I don’t always want to knit my own designs again, because sometimes they drive me a bit batty due to all of the work I put into them, but these? Totally want to knit them again. Interesting but easy, and that’s something that I need right now to keep me sane with all of the wedding planning.