A thrill a minute....

I love creating new patterns.  It still blows my mind that I can draw something on paper, figure out how to turn it into a 3D garment and put it on an actual human and have it fit.  It is awesome every. single. time.

Second to that thrill is the thrill of seeing the finished projects other people make from my patterns.  I love to see new project pages go up on Ravelry or Craftsy, and I even occasionally google my pattern names to see if I can find any blog posts about them.  (Yes, I'm a dork, and yes, I do occasionally find blog posts that people have written about using one of my patterns.) 

The third thing that thrills me is clicking through my orders and seeing where my patterns are going.  Whether it's someone in my own state ("That person only lives 20 miles from here!") or from the other side of the world ("I can't believe someone in Indonesia is going to make a sock monkey hat!") it always fascinates me to see where the orders are coming from. 

By far, Trappings and Trinkets customers hail from the US, Canada and Scandinavia.  But I've also gotten a significant amount of orders from people in Australia, Iceland, England, Italy and Germany.  [Let me just insert here that, as a monolingual person, I am in awe of people who speak English as a second language and still buy my patterns. You amaze me.] 

I probably got the biggest "Wow" out of the order I received from an island near Antarctica, followed closely by Indonesia & Croatia - those places all seem very exotic to a Midwestern girl like me!  A while back, when I started noticing a significant number of orders coming from outside North America, I thought it would be fun to get a map and mark it to show where the orders were coming from.  I thought it would be a fun way to talk about geography with my kids, and, let's face it, it was a way for me to see my thrills in black & white!  I haven't done the map thing yet, but maybe I'll pull it out as an activity to do with the kids sometime this summer. 

I am convinced that one day I'll be going along my merry way someplace on this Earth, maybe close to home, maybe on a vacation, and I'll spy someone wearing something I recognize as having been made from one of my patterns.  I wonder if I will say anything to the person or if I will just smile to myself and know that I would one day get this last thrill on my list....

Lunch Break

You know what I should be doing?  Probably writing up the pattern for the new purple top you've been seeing so much of around here.  Because it's almost done except the sleeves, and it's always good to type my notes into a pattern when it's fresh in my mind instead of having to go back and think, "What did I mean by____?"  Last time I did that, I had to spend an hour experimenting with increases because I had only written "M1" in my notes and I thought maybe I had meant it in a generic way (like "insert increase here")  Turns out, I actually meant "Make 1" in the real knitting increase sense of the word.  You see, this is why it's good to write when it's fresh: I don't even believe what I've written when I actually do write it down correctly!

Anyway, instead of writing a pattern, I thought I'd share something un-knitty today.  It's an absolutely gorgeous day here in Central Illinois - the sun it out, the temperature is in the high 70s and the birds are singing.  It's the kind of summer day you think of when you think of summer.  And when I think of summer, I think of eating lots and lots of fresh foods.  Today I made up a batch of the summer lunch that is my absolute favorite: Avocado, Mango & Shrimp Salsa.

Behold:

 

It takes about an hour to make up a batch because there's lots of washing & chopping involved, but it'll last me about 3 lunches, so I don't mind the extra work on the first day when I get to just pull it out of the fridge and eat on days 2 and 3. 

If you want a nice dose of healthy fat as well as a whole lot of other nutrients that your body will say "thank you" for, here's the recipe, my friend!  PS: use this recipe as a loose guide...I don't measure anything when I make it, so none of these measurements are set in stone.  Likewise, if I start shopping up my avocados and one of them is rotten, I just make the recipe with 3 instead of 4.  It's really, really adaptable!

Avocado Mango Shrimp Salsa

4 avocados, diced

2 mangoes, diced (the recipe pictured only had one mango because when I peeled the second one it just     

                   looked wrong.)

15 fully-cooked frozen shrimp, run them under water in a colander for about 5 minutes until thawed, then 

                  chop

1 tsp minced garlic

1/4 c chopped cilantro leaves

4 green onions, chopped (just the white parts)

a few squirts of Frank's Red Hot Sauce

1/2 tsp salt

3 Tbsp fresh lime juice

All you do is prepare all the ingredients then mix them up in a bowl.  I like to serve it on top of a hand full of crushed tortilla chips, but it's a great side dish for a fish entree, too.  To store it (and not have the avocados turn mushy & brown) pack it tightly into a bowl that isn't much bigger than the amount of leftover salsa you have, making sure you can't see air bubbles in the salsa (clear glass bowls work great because of this).  Once you have it packed in there, place a sheet of plastic wrap over the top of the salsa, and press it lightly onto the surface (again, you're just getting rid of the air).  Then, put the lid on and pop it into the fridge.

A little time saver for this recipe is every 3rd or 4th time you make it, just wash & pluck the leaves off the entire bunch of cilantro that you had to buy.  Use 1/4 cup of the chopped leaves for this recipe, then freeze the remainder of the leaves in a tupperware container for use in future recipes.

What's your favorite go-to lunch in the summer?  I have a pasta salad with tomatoes, black olives, corn & a vinaigrette dressing that I love, too, and I pretty much alternate between those two homemade things and lunch at Panera or Qdoba when I get sick of cooking!

Getting Closer....

I have really been looking forward to writing my first adult top pattern.  And really, there's only been a couple minor hiccups along the way.  I've ripped back a couple times to get it right, but I want the fit to be perfect (for me, and for you when you make it!)  So it's taking a little while, but I think this will be my last rip-back (and it's not even a big one.)  The armhole depth that my fit chart gives me is a little too loose for this design, so I'm tearing it back down to the base of the arm holes and raising it up a bit.

But, I am loving how it's turning out - it's always exciting to see an idea you had actually exist in reality!

Please excuse the "my head is cut off" picture.  This is what happens when you balance the camera on top of the cat's scratching post and use the timer to take a picture of yourself!

Zephyr

 Occasionally I go wild and make something that is just for kicks.  Something that is just for me and something that I don't have to do any math to invent.  This time a couple patterns from Tori Gurbsz caught my eye.  I was actually planning to make her Coastal Hoodie, but once I realized that the recommended yarn was going to run me $160 (and I really did want the yarns she used because her color combinations were so perfect)....anyway, I decided to come up with a Plan B.

Plan B was not hard to settle on at all.  I just had to glance at Tori's designer page on Ravelry to see another cardigan that I loved.  Zephyr seemed perfect - casual, but could be dressed up, it goes with anything, it appeared to be very comfortable, and the fit looked pretty good on almost all the projects listed by other users.  I was convinced it was going to be a winner.

And it is - let me start with that.  I really do like the sweater, and I may even make it again sometime.  I have a lot to say about the pattern, but I don't want to overshadow the fact that I do think it's a good design and one that I think many people will enjoy.  However, there are definitely things I thought were unnecessarily difficult about the pattern, and knowing what I know now, I would do a few things differently if I were to make it again.

First, this pattern is listed as "Intermediate".  I know, that's kind of vague, but to me it means that anyone with basic skills and the willingness to learn a few new tricks will do fine.  I would consider myself to be an advanced knitter and I found myself frogging a couple times, just because there were many things to keep track of and they were on multiple pages.  So at any one time, I might have 3 pages in front of me with 3 different things to remember for a row, and I would forget one of them only to remember a couple rows later and have to frog.  I'm a couch knitter and laying out 3 pages of instructions to read simultaneously isn't ideal.  I just felt like there could have been a more easy-to-follow way to word the instructions.
Adding to the "what have I gotten myself into?" feeling is the fact that the last 2 pages of this pattern are simply spreadsheets full of stitch counts for different parts of the construction.  I write these sort of spreadsheets when I am sizing a pattern that I am writing, but I don't know why she included it with the pattern itself.  I can't imagine that a lot of pattern users look at it and have any idea what they're looking at (I certainly didn't, anyway).  And it gave me a mini-heart attack to look at it and think, "Am I going to have to make sense of this thing in order to work the pattern?" 

Second, this was my first crack at a contiguous sweater.  The pattern didn't look complicated, so I thought it would be a good introduction to the method.  The cast-on was also new to me.  There is an internet link to help people learn the cast-on and after a couple tries I got it with no problem.  But, since I was unfamiliar with the construction, I wasn't able to preemptively modify the design to fit me properly.  I liked the way the shoulders were very fitted in the sample photos and many of the user project photos, but once my sweater was blocked, my shoulders were pretty droopy.  It's one of those "no one would notice it if I didn't point it out" things, and I'm not terribly worried about it, but for a future sweater, I would only work about 2/3 of the rows that are written for the section where you're making those rows on the top of the shoulder.  The last 1/3 of them just droop over the top of my shoulder and it would fit better without them.

Speaking of being a novice, something that would have really helped me with this sweater would have been a couple close-up photos, especially of the shoulder / sleeve cap area.  There is a helpful picture of the button loops, but all the other shots are just full-sweater beauty-shots.  If I had been looking at a picture of the sleeve cap, it would have saved me a lot of time, since one of my frogging incidents happened because I missed the line about increasing for the sleeve caps.  If I had seen what it was supposed to look like, I would have known much sooner that I had made a wrong turn. 

My favorite part of the sweater is the design of the button band.  I am fresh off of working on two designs that use pairs of twisted stitches, so when I started working this button band I had a moment of thinking "Why did she use the two more difficult pairs of twisted stitches?  Maybe I should just reverse them and do the whole thing that way."  But the I decided that there might be a reason for it that I'm not seeing, so I did it the way it was written.  After working the whole thing that way, I can confidently say that there's no reason to not do the front cross as knitting the second stitch through the back loop, then knitting the first stitch, and doing the back cross as purling the second stitch, then purling the purling the first stitch.  Those two pairs are way easier than the two she used and it will give you the exact same effect.

Lastly, I modified the length (29" instead of 24"), though I think the listed sleeve length was perfect for me.  I love the Quince & Co. Osprey yarn that I used, but it does grow quite a bit upon blocking, so if you use it, make sure you figure that in while you're knitting.

Even though I would change a few things to use this pattern in the future, I do love this design and I am happy with my sweater.  If you want to give it a try, know that it is written for 8 sizes, so you'll want to go at it with a highlighter before you begin.  Also, a good portion of this is a "thinking knit", so if you are looking for something to do while you watch tv, this isn't it.  Don't get scared when you print out the pattern - it is long (though I really see no reason to print out the last 2 pages) but if you just figure out each section as you come to it, you can get it done.

More Purple...

 The purple top is getting bigger....about 15 inches down, 12 or so  left to go.  I slipped it on last night, but it's so hard to tell at this point if I'm getting what I intend....  I haven't made a bottom-up shirt in a long time, and I think I've only made one for myself.  So much of the fit has to do with the shoulders & chest, so to try on a tube of fabric that is just over the hips & waist....well, it doesn't tell you a whole lot.  So I knit on knowing that I may end up frogging and starting over after I figure out what I want to change about my initial attempt.  It's all part of the process though, so I'm just going to enjoy it!  Plus, this yarn is just a dream to work with and I have no doubts that it will take frogging like a champ if it comes to that. 

This morning I inexplicably woke up with hives on my back.  The last time this happened was 20 years ago when I was nervous about a music contest I knew I hadn't prepared as much for as I would have liked to.  I'm not nervous about anything today, so I don't know what these hives are about.  I was outside for a few hours last night at dusk though, so I wonder if I was bit by something that I'm allergic to.  I went up to the walk-in clinic in town this afternoon, but since it's Memorial Day, it was closed.   Instead I stocked up on Benadryl, but I haven't taken it yet.  I'd like to stay awake for a good part of the day before I submit to being knocked out by the medication!

Since this is a knitting blog and it's common knowledge that knitters like cats, I thought I'd share a picture of one of mine that my daughter took yesterday.  She came up to me and said, "Tevie is depressed."  Then she ran off to take pictures of the 'depressed' cat.  I think he was just relaxing on the cool bathroom sink, his favorite place to be when it's warm out!

New Design

Things have been clipping right along here in the workshop.  I finished a long-term project last night.  It has actually been sitting around for 2 months waiting for me to put a neckline on it, but for a number of boring reasons, it took me until last night to get it finished.  Now, all I have to do is finish writing the pattern and get the test started.  I won't be able to take modeled pictures until late in the summer because I'm waiting for my little model to grow just a bit more!  (I originally made it for another child, but that didn't work out, so rather than frogging and modifying the size, I'm just going to wait for another child to grow.  That's not lazy, is it?) 

Now that I'm done with that project, I've started on something else. This one (finally!) is a top for me.  I've held off from doing adult garments until now because I felt like I still had so much to learn.  So it was much more manageable to practice new techniques and perfect my grading skills on smaller child's garments than it was to take the risk with larger things.  But I have an idea that I really love and I think my skills are there, so I'm jumping into the world of women's garments. 

I had two skeins of Madeline Tosh sock yarn in the hollyhock colorway that I've been petting for months now, so I knew exactly what I wanted to make it out of.  I ordered 3 more skeins from The Loopy Ewe yesterday so I know I'll have plenty.  I think I might be able to do my size using every last bit of 3 skeins, but I'd rather have the extra just in case.  And if I have enough extra, I'll make a kid version so my daughter can have one as well. 

Stay tuned....this project might take a while, but I'll post updates as it progresses.  My hope is to have it testing in July & August so I can release it in September....but I think that's pretty optimistic.  But, never say never, right?

Button Swap: FAIL

 I was going to write a really happy post about this little sweater.  You see, it's the first draft of the Guacamole sweater you've been seeing so many pictures of lately.  I had this one gorgeous skein of merino wool that had various shades of pink, peach, orange & white.  (Really, these pictures don't even almost do it justice.  It's way prettier than these pictures are telling you.)  Anyway, I had a little baby up north in mind and I decided I was going to make something for her.  I thought she'd be wearing 12 month sized clothes once the weather turned cooler again next fall, so I tried to conjure up a design that I could complete in 440 yards or less.  I was really sweating the last few rounds, but I finished this pretty little sweater and had a tiny, tiny ball of yarn left over.  Really tiny - like maybe 2 yards tiny.

I put some little buttons on it, but I didn't love how they worked.  They really needed to be bigger to work well with the button loops I had made for them.

Tonight I sat down with my new buttons and started removing the old ones with the intention of swapping them out.  On button #3 I got a bad feeling as I cut the yarn holding the button in place.

Apparently it wasn't the button-holding yarn I had snipped.

Blast.

Be brave - take a look....I only ruined something that took about 10 hours to make.  And, it served its purpose as the first version of what became a new sweater pattern, so I can't be too sad about it.

But how pathetic is that hole??  (Of course it has to be like 40 yards from the cast-on of the darn thing.  Couldn't have caused a big hole near the bottom, that I could easily fix, right? 

 So I spent tonight un-knitting this sweater.  All the ends were already woven in, so it was kind of a pain.  But, it's finally all back in a ball, albeit in about 10 different pieces.  I have no idea what I'll turn it into now, but it's still very pretty yarn!

Looks like it's back to square one as far as that baby gift is concerned!

PS - Wondering why I have a random piece of white paper in the first picture?  Ever try photographing something red on top of something else red? (Or on top of anything that isn't black or white?)  The camera goes nuts and thinks the sky is falling.  Little photography tip - always throw something white in the frame of your picture.  It'll help your camera recognize colors correctly, or, at the very least, it will give you a neutral color to use when you're messing around with editing the photo on the computer after the fact.