FO • The Knitting Vortex

Spring Scoop(neck)

Mar 132014

I’m pleased to announce that as of June 2015, Box Pleat is available as an individual pdf pattern from my Ravelry store. I’ve extended the size range to 10 sizes from 36.5 to 57.25 (and suggest it be worn with about 6″of positive ease), and expanded the pattern instructions and notes, as per my usual pattern style and format. See all the details and the new photos on my new blog post, and on Ravelry. I buy all the knitting magazines, and my favorite by far is knit.wear from Interweave – so modern, with beautiful, simple photography and exactly the kinds of things I like to knit. Having a design published is always exciting, but I’m extra-jazzed about my Box Pleat Scoopneck sweater, which is in the Spring/Summer issue of knit.wear. Box pleats can easily bring to mind classic schoolgirls with blazers and penny loafers, so the challenge here was to design a clean updated look that a modern girl would want to wear. I kept the fabric simple stockinette, and gave the boxy sweater . . .

Clubbing with Katie

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Mar 022014

Probably my all-time favorite movie is Gone With The Wind; I love everything about it – the period costumes, the sweeping narrative, the human frailties. And of course the heroine, Katie Scarlett O’Hara. As flawed a human being as she is, with her childish, manipulative, selfish temperament, she is also unflinchingly strong and unfailingly loyal to the people and places she considers her own. Certainly she qualifies as a heroine in my view. Last year, Anne from Wooly Wonka Fibers invited me to design two shawls for her 2014 Heroines Shawl Club, and asked me to pair my choice of heroines with her lovely hand-dyed yarns. And so I designed two shawls, using Artio Lace and Aerten Sock to depict two admirable heroines. The first of these is the design in the March 2014 club kit, Katie Scarlett. It’s a semi-circular laceweight shawl, knit from a garter tab cast on, with four tiers of lace patterns that represent Miss Scarlett’s trajectory through life. The beautiful, jewel-green color is the exclusive Twelve Oaks colorway, meant to . . .

So much colors!

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Oct 112012

Variegated yarns are an ongoing challenge; they look so appealing in the skein that you cant resist, and yet – what to do with them, really? Socks, maybe; those are mostly covered up and are like a secret crazy. I think that’s why sock yarns tend to have the most numerous, exuberant instances of variegation. But what about something like a worsted weight superwash? My solution was to make fingerless mitts with a K1below stitch pattern. The hand and cuff edge are regular rib, but the long gauntlet arm section transitions to a K1below rib that breaks up the colors and makes a fluffy, less elastic brioche, good for scrunching up. Both pairs use Malabrigo Rios, one in the Candombe colorway, the other in Azules. I made the Candombe pair first as the design prototype, when I was trying to find a way to love all that yellow in my skein. Then I thought I’d try a shaded-variegated with some of the Azules left over from Blue Honey. It may be mostly blue, but . . .