Time for some Salsa!

 I've been on a mission for the past couple weeks.  I was really wanting a shrug to wear with my summer tank tops.  Probably half my summer wardrobe is sleeveless tops, but so far this summer I've barely been wearing them.

Memorial Day weekend, I went to an outdoor party one evening and got bitten by a few mosquitoes.  Normally I get pretty big welts, but they're gone the next day.  This time, I woke up the next morning with hives all over my torso (not attractive!)

Over the next couple weeks, the hives came back about every other day.  I got it checked out at the doctor's office and she gave me a prescription that is supposed to help suppress them for the next month.  It helped a little bit, but they still came back a couple times a week.

Anyway, being polka-dotted did not inspire me to bear a lot of skin early in the summer.  The hives have only come back once since finishing the 30-day prescription, so I'm hopeful that this little episode is coming to an end.  But the curse of having fair skin is that any time something disturbs it (zits, scratches, HIVES), I end up with dark marks that take months to fade.  So even though the hives aren't much of a problem now, I am still all sorts of polka dotted, especially on my back.

Enter - the Salsa Shrug!  It's constructed in one piece (sleeves are knit together with the body, not separately), then the border of the body & sleeves are worked from picked up stitches. Between it being a construction I've never made before and the gorgeous yarn I used, it was a really fun one to make.  I'd love to write a pattern for multiple sizes, but the main measurement is one that isn't on any sizing charts, so I'm going to have to figure out how to get that measurement for a range of sizes in order for me to write this properly.  Do you think people on the street will mind if I approach them with a measuring tape and ask them if I could have a moment of their time?

Tiny Dancer, Jr.

The photography fairy must have been with me today when I shot pattern photos for another design - Tiny Dancer, Jr.  This sweater is very similar to the teen/adult version that I have previously shown, but the shaping is slightly different (more gradual waist decreases, proportionally shorter length, slightly more fabric on the shoulders).  Together, these two patterns could be fun for a mother/daughter set of sweaters.

Testing starts today for this design with high hopes that it'll be ready to publish at the end of August.  If you would like to try this pattern out now for free (in exchange for providing feedback) you can find the testing thread here: http://www.ravelry.com/discuss/free-pattern-testers/2216675/1-25

In Honor of July 12th...

...here are 12 random facts about Nicole!

1. I have known my husband since we were 19, when I called into his college radio program and dedicated a song to him to get his attention. We had only met once, about a year before I made that move. It worked.

2. I come from a very creative family. Just between my parents, grandparents & great-grandparents, I think we have all the bases covered from music to painting, crocheting, quilling, sewing, embroidery, woodworking, and probably any other made-by-hand skill you can think of.

3. I am a cat person. About 4 years ago, we had to install an "invisible fence" and I used it to train our cats to stay in our yard. (Not something I would have chose...more oof a necessity created by our nutty neighbor.)

4. When I used to imagine my life as a wife & mom, I always knew I would work from home, but I never imagined that it would be as a knitwear designer. My other work-from-home job is that of a piano teacher. I still do that, too.

5. About 5 years ago, my friend invited me to a "Sangria & Knitting" night. I don't usually care for sangria, but I was immediately hooked on the knitting!

6. I love to play piano & sing Broadway & pop music. I played the violin in junior high & high school, then gave birth to a boy who screamed every time I tried to play. I can play "Take Me Home Country Roads" on the guitar (and that's just about it!)

7. I could be alone for a solid week and be perfectly happy. One of my kids is just like me. The other would be thrilled if she saw her friends every single day.

8. I would love to have a beautiful garden, but I don't enjoy the work it requires. I've planted quite a bit of landscaping in my yard but I apparently need to hire someone to keep it up. For now I settle for looking at weeds 90% of the time, then occasionally taking two solid weeks to spruce it all up.

9. I am a night owl. It kills me to get up before 7am, but it's easy for me to stay up until 2am.

10. I'm good enough at scrabble that most of my friends won't play with me anymore (this includes my husband). I do have a couple stoic friends & an aunt who still challenge me to games. (Thanks, guys!)

11. The last time I sang kareoke was at a bachelorette party 14 years ago. I believe I may have danced on a speaker.

12. I think we'd all be better off if all the 24-hour cable news channels disappeared.

Now you know a little more about me, so introduce yourself with a random fact in the comments and let me know you're out there!

A gift from Mom & Dad

So....today is my birthday!  Now that I've crossed the line from 36 to 37, I think that puts me officially in my "late 30s".  I'm a happy birthday person though....no griping about getting older here.  I always say it's much better than the alternative! :)

Usually when my family asks me if there's anything I'd like for a birthday or Christmas gift, it takes me a while to come up with something.  But this year, I was prepared!  On the knitting front, I knew I could really use a ball winder and a yarn swift.  You should see the contortions I put myself into to hold the yarn on my legs or feet while I wind it into a ball, and although I could occasionally talk my husband into holding it if I was winding while he was home...well, it's not his favorite way to spend an hour.

My mom must have gotten caught up in some web sites with expensive swifts because in the end, my parents gave me a check towards a swift.  I was lucky enough to have just gotten a 20% off (to use in my birthday month!) coupon from The Fiber Universe, one of my local yarn shops, and I knew they sold Knit Picks swifts.  I had read quite a few reviews of the swifts on Ravelry boards and the consensus seemed to be that they may not hold up forever, but that Knit Picks does have great customer service and will replace the swift if it breaks.  That's good enough for me, so not only was I able to get the swift with the money my parents gave me, I had enough left over for a skein of this gorgeous blue Three Irish Girls yarn as well.  (I didn't want that skein to be lonely, so I got two more, which should be enough for a sweater for me since they include so much yardage in one of these skeins.  They're labeled as containing 430 yards, but they weigh about 30% more than the label says, so I think the yardage is more like 550 yards.)

I actually picked up two more skeins of yarn in a different colorway for the shrug I'm currently working on, but it's in the basement right now blocking, so that's a post for another day.  I'm hoping that by turning a fan on it for a few hours, I can get it dry enough to start knitting on the border tonight....that's if it dries to be the size I'm expecting....otherwise, I may have just knitted a really, really big gauge swatch!

Sock Monkey Hat Gone Wild!

 One of the things I love most is the fact that after I publish a pattern, there are all sorts of creative knitters who work their magic and put personal touches on their work that I never would have imagined.  No where in my catalog of patterns is this more obvious than when people use my Sock Monkey Ear Flap Hat pattern as the base for their own magical creations.  I thought I'd do a post today that featured some great variation that are (mostly) not my own!

Kelly, knitter extraordinaire from Canada, made this first adorable little girlie monkey.  She added little corkscrew i-cords for "hair" and ties and put tiny little flower earrings.  (How cute is that?)  I saw that little monkey project go up on Ravelry and knew we were two peas in a pod.









Sticking with the theme of "sock monkey with a twist", my friend Nicole asked me to make a sock monkey hat for a friend who was having a baby.  She mentioned that the parents either attended Notre Dame, or followed the sports teams there, so she wanted to tie in the school colors somehow.  So I knit her a monkey in navy blue with a gold stripe and cut a little green clover out of felt that I sewed on to the hat.  I think this may be my favorite sock monkey hat that I've ever made.  (And I've personally probably made between 70-90 of them.  I lost count a long time ago!)

Another way to go if you have high school/ college/ professional sports team colors that you like to wear, and you feel like you're a little too old to be wearing hats with faces, is to do something like this:

Just pick two or three colors and knit the hat up plain.  It's a nicely-fitting hat (as long as you use appropriately-sized yarn & needles that allow you to get gauge!) and is very wearable by people of all ages when done up this way!


 I love this next example for girls of any age.  It's from Kelly again...you probably suspected since it has her signature curly ties.  :)  She knit the hat up with stripes and did a double layer for warmth just around the ears & forehead area, then did this darling dragonfly (it's a combination of knitting & crochet) as a decorative touch.  I would totally wear that.

 I completely missed the Owl Bandwagon, but Cathy from Kansas figured out a way to transform a monkey hat into an owl hat!  She crocheted big owl eyes and knitted a little beak to put together for this little face.  Then she used two colors to jazz up the pom pom and the ties.  What a hoot! :)

Until I sat down to write this post, the lion hat that Jean had posted on my Facebook page had slipped my mind, and since I forgot to ask for her permission to steal the picture for the blog, I thought I'd like you to the Facebook picture instead.  Behold, Jean's Little Lion Hat!

If I was giving out prizes though, I'd have to give it up to Kelly, because, honestly, can you even believe that this Eeyore hat is even loosely based on the sock monkey hat?  I'm sure it took a couple tries to figure out how to get those ears exactly the right shape, and can you believe how perfect all the other features are?  Those droopy, sad eyes?  The little shock of black hair?  Even the way she stitched right down the middle of the face is spot on.  She even figured out a way to incorporate Eeyore's little tail into a hat pattern.  Brilliant.  I would have suggested she publish it as a separate pattern if it weren't for that whole "selling things based on other people's copyrighted characters" thing.  So, I'm sorry to be the meanie that is dangling something in front of you that doesn't have a written pattern.  But, it just goes to show what a knitter can do with a basic pattern and a little ingenuity!

Guacamole

I can not remember the last time I was so excited about releasing a pattern!  I adore everything about the way this sweater came out - I just wish my daughter was into wearing things her mom knits.  (But, alas, she's 9 and thinks I 'have no fashion'.)

Whether you're looking for a lightweight casual sweater for your little girl to wear over t-shirts or tank tops, or whether you need something for her to put on over a nicer dress, this little cardigan is extremely versatile.
Skills used that you may not be familiar with are twisted stitches, applied i-cord button band, and lifted increases.  All three are explained in-depth in the pattern, the first two have video links in the pattern, and there is an internet link in the pattern to refer you to an illustrated web article on lifted increases.

I dare you to try this sweater pattern - you won't be able to just make one!

Pattern purchasing link can be found in the "patterns" tab of this blog or in my Etsy shop (link in the right sidebar.)

Priorities

 ....What I should (and want to) be doing today [that's "doing the final edits on my soon-to-be-released Guacamole Sweater pattern" in case you can't read the tiny print].

....What I'm actually doing today [that's "spray painting the mailbox and new house numbers so the siding installer can put them on the house before he's done working here tomorrow afternoon.]


For the last couple summers, I've had no delusions about getting any pattern work done.  This summer, I have 1 test knit I have to do (or will have to explain to Knit Picks in September why the pattern I promised them isn't ready, and we're not going to go there), and two test knits that I had to finish up because I ended up needing to extend the deadline on one of them.  As long as that stuff was already going on, I thought "Well, it isn't that big a deal to release that Guacamole pattern in June, and while I'm at it, maybe I should knit, write, and test the Tiny Dancer pattern for women and older girls?  That seems reasonable, right?" 

Well, it is, as long as I keep in mind that my summer schedule is not my own.  Many times it belongs to the kids, or the person who schedules softball season, it belongs to the siding guy and to the park district workers who schedule my son's basketball things.  I'm not complaining at all - I love that I can be home to keep my kids as active as they want to be in the summer, but if I fit a couple uninterrupted hours of pattern writing or editing in every two weeks or so, I consider myself lucky.

So, for today, I am a spray-paint artist.  Tomorrow, maybe I'll get to turn a little attention back to the medium I love best.