Come join us for a 7 day Caribbean knitting cruise in January 2014.
The price includes 3 whole days of knitting classes, too — no hidden fees. To sign up or to get more details, contact Linda.
As you may have noticed, I have designed a number of patterns in yarn from Rocky Mountain Dyeworks. RMD has become Raventwist, and in celebration we’re running a little contest in the Knit & Knag Designs Ravelry Group.
How to win?
Find one of my designs originally knit in yarn from Rocky Mountain Dyeworks. Then tell me what that yarn is now called at Raventwist.
Your post needs to contain
the name of the design (please link if you can)
the original RMD yarn specified
the Raventwist equivalent
Note, you may enter multiple times, but you do have to use a different pattern for each entry.
In the end, I will enter all correct entries into the random number generator and select a winner.
What can you win?
A kit from Raventwist containing this gorgeousness:
The kit (pictured in the middle left picture) contains the Hugin and Munin pattern, 1 skein of Torc or Tyr from Raventwist in a colour of your choice, a Rune Book Pendant and a Strickland Brooch.
The winner will be posted on May 24.
When winter has finally lost its grip on our part of the world, it’s time to sort through the hats, mittens, scarves and what not and put them away until the fall. When I do that, I always look through them and check their condition. When checking the Eragon gloves, I found this:
Gasp! Ok, ok, it’s a tiny hole, but all you knitters know how easily something like this can spread and turn into a giant hole. So obviously it needs to be fixed. These fingerless mittens also happen to be my daughter’s favourites, so fixing them is important.
There are a couple of different ways of doing it. Since the hole happens to be on a finger, I decided that the most invisible way of doing it was this:
I inserted my very pointy, very sharp scissors into the hole and simply cut the finger off. Now, I wouldn’t have done that if the hole had been on the hand or on the cuffs, since that would mean a lot of re-knitting. But a finger on a fingerless mitten is quite small.
I then unravelled the loose ends to expose live stitches and put them on needles.
And then I knit the finger back on. I still had the leftover yarn in my stash, so it was easy to get a perfect match.
Ta-da! The mitten is all ready for the fall. I, on the other hand, plan to enjoy the summer first. Aaah!
The new Mystic KAL mystery knitalong from Anna Dalvi / Knit & Knag Designs.
Join us on a lace knitting adventure. The knitting starts on May 22, and there will be 4 weekly clues, released each Wednesday. Sharpen your needles, and join the fun!
You will need two skeins of contrasting colour yarn.
The original sample uses
1 skein of Tanis Fiber Arts Red Label in orange blossom
and
1 skein of Tanis Fiber Arts Red Label in poppy
or you can of course use any other colours that you might like. Tanis has lots of choices. Just keep in mind that you would like two contrasting colours.
You can order the KAL here for $6CDN, and the pattern will be delivered in 4 weekly clues, starting on May 22, 2013.
Note, the pictures show shawls from my previous mystery KALs, not the new one – it’s a secret to be revealed during the KAL.
The pattern is offered at the current price until the first clue is released, at which point the pattern price will increase to $8CDN
Hugin and Munin are the two ravens that belong to the Norse god Odin. They fly all over the world, Midgard and Asgard, and return to Odin and tell him what they have seen.
I’ve always found the story of Hugin and Munin fascinating. I mean…. imagine having your own private minions who scour the earth for interesting information and then whisper it all into your ear. So when I met up with Hasmi of Rocky Mountain Dyeworks in Banff last summer and she told me that she was rebranding her company to Raventwist, I knew I had to knit a Hugin & Munin shawl out of her yarn.
She sent me a few different skeins to play with, and I settled on Tyr in a colourway aptly named Raven’s Wing. It is soft and wonderful to work with. And with that colourway, the design just came together. I knit large feather motifs on the shawl for the wings of Hugin & Munin.
When Hasmi knit her version of the Hugin & Munin shawl, she used Torc – a high twist fingering weight yarn that has a very nice drape to it. And she knit hers in red.
The Hugin & Munin lace shawl is a top-down shawl with large lace feathers, symbolizing the ravens’ wings. It is available as a kit from Raventwist (along with a number of other goodies), or just as a PDF download from me.
The tail end of winter (which I sincerely hope we have reached now) is usually gray and dreary. So I’m trying to brighten it up a bit by knitting on my Stained Glass Window Tiles. Nice, colourful. Small and fun. And great for carrying around in the knitting bag. I’m up to 49 tiles now and still going strong. I can’t wait to see the finished blanket, whenever that is. I’m aiming for size large, so I still have a while to go, but in the meantime I’m admiring the progress.
The yarn is from Apple Laine here in Russell, ON. I love the colours. So vibrant and pretty. And perfect for some brightness in the gray late winter.
A couple of months ago, I got the urge to design a double knit cowl. For those of you that know me, you know that I tend to work in fingering weight yarn or lighter. Most of the time, at any rate. But this time, I thought I would branch out and use something heavier. So I settled on Bugga! from the Verdant Gryphon. I’ve used a lot of different yarn from Gryphon over the years, but somehow, despite its popularity, Bugga! had not been one of them.
We discussed colours and settled on a deep, rusty orange (Eastern Amberwing) contrasted with a blue (Eastern-Tailed Blue Butterfly). For the main motif, I thought it would be nice to knit the Midgard Serpent. The Midgard Serpent (Midgårdsormen, in Swedish) is a creature in Norse mythology. The giant snake surrounds Midgard (the world) holding in the great seas. It is so large it surrounds the world and bite its own tail. At the end of time, during Ragnarrök, the Midgard Serpent will let go of its tail and the oceans will fall off the edge of the world, and the world will end.
The serpent snakes around the cowl, and surrounds your neck. It has a picot hem on the top and bottom, and is fully reversible since it is double knit (the colours are reversed on the inside).
When I had finished the design and was knitting the cowl, I was chatting with Gryphon and mentioned that I had chosen to knit the Midgard Serpent. Her response? “Well, I have the Midgard Serpent tattooed on my ear, so I’m definitely a fan.”
I thought she was joking.
The pattern can be purchased from the Verdant Gryphon here starting Jan 18, 2013. After Feb 1, it will also be available here and on Ravelry.
I guess winter has been a bit late this year, but it has finally arrived. Usually the flu and colds start in October, but this year we managed to stave it off until last week. Actually, I believe it really started during the weekend when my daughter’s hockey team had a tournament in Peterborough. They played very well and after the round-robin games they were first in their division and advanced straight to the final.
But in the meantime one of the girls on the team (not mine) succumbed to a terrible stomach flu. Fortunately she recovered in time for the final, and the girls won. A great big congratulations to the gold medalists!
And speaking of winners – it’s time to announce the winner of California Revival Knits. The random number generator tells me that Ellen M is the winner. CONGRATULATIONS! The book will appear in your Ravelry library shortly. Enjoy.
Anyhow, we returned home with our very own gold medalist. And while she managed to escape the flu, her brother was not quite so lucky. He must have caught a different strain, because (luckily) there were no upset stomachs involved, but he and I were both down with it last week. And I have to say that being sick does not really go well with designing, so I had to put away the projects I was working on and cast on something a little more straightforward. Enter the Dancing Swedish Twins (that would be the Sedin brothers – more hockey, of course).
One of the first skeins of yarn I bought from indigodragonfly was a skein in the colour way Dancing Swedish Twins. I originally bought it for my daughter and she started to knit a shawl from it. But for some reason the shawl never progressed very far and the skein has just been sitting around in the stash. So I thought that this would be a good time to use it. Since the colours are so bright, I thought it was best to pick a relatively simple design, so here is my very own recipe for a twisted rib sock.
The second one is coming along too. I mean, with a name like that, it really must have a twin sock to go with it.
A while ago I decided I would like to knit myself a sweater. After searching high and low, I didn’t find anything that really captured my attention, and that would go with the lovely yarn that I had. I started with two skeins of JulieSpins 435 Silky Fingering in Polar Night. I got this yarn in a swap on Ravelry a few years ago, and I haven’t really known what to do with it, to show off all the different colours and shades in this yarn.
Combining the two, I thought it would be nice to let the yarn shine with a stockinette body. This way, the depth of the colours in hand dyed yarn like the yarn from JulieSpins can really be shown to its full advantage.
The sweater is, as you can see, not finished yet. But I’ve knit a large portion of the body. The yoke and chest portion is knit in Polar Night, and the waist is a contrasting Cerise colour. I think it brings out some of the purple from the Polar Night.
I’m looking forward to finishing the sweater and getting to wear it. Now that it’s snowing outside and winter is coming closer, I think it would be wonderful to warm up in this sweater.
One of the great things with working with Cooperative Press is getting to know all my fellow authors. We correspond online, of course, but also get to meet at various events, such as Rhinebeck or TNNA or a whole host of other knitting events.
One of the authors I’ve had the pleasure of spending lots of time with at a number of these events is Stephannie Tallent of Sunset Cat Designs, author of California Revival Knits.
She designs a number of different types of garments, from sweaters to socks, fingerless mittens, hats and cowls, and I’m sure there are a number of other things as well. I really like how intricate the designs are – I love the Bavarian twisted cables in this Wrought Iron Cardi (from California Revival Knits – and the book also has patterns for matching mitts, socks and even a beret).
My favourite, however, from California Revival Knits is the Fringe Socks. The fringe socks are are inspired by a tiled “rug” in the Adamson House in California. The tiles have a printed pattern on it that makes it look like a Persian carpet, complete with the intricate carpet pattern, and a fringe on the edge.
Steph then took this idea and translated it to socks. And the result looks like this:
Well…. at least that’s my version of it. The original sample in the book is a deep burgundy and white, but I like the dark green.
The socks are knit from the top down. After a bit of ribbing there is a stranded section with the carpet pattern, and then come the fringes. The fringes are simply two-colour cables that squiggle down the leg in a meandering way. I really liked the result. And on top of that, I now have another pair of hand knit socks in my drawer.
The book is really wonderful, and there are a number of other projects I would love to knit from it (in all my spare time, ha ha). If you’d like a copy of the book, it can be purchased here, either as PDF or PFD/print. OR, if you leave a comment about what you would like to knit from the book here, by the end of Dec 2, 2012, you can win a PDF copy of the book. Just make sure you leave me a way to contact you in case you win.
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