KnitQuest

Space Bunny

Gilly’s school is having a Star Wars/Space spirit day today. This entails dressing up like a Star Wars character or space creature for no other reason than it’s fun. I’m not sure I get the whole spirit day thing, but Gilly adores it.

Can you guess what she is? Yup, she’s a space bunny. Probably not hard to guess given the title, but otherwise it might be a bit of a stretch. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a space bunny before.

No normal costumes for this girl. In her words, “There’ll be tons of Princess Leia’s, that’s boring. I like to be different.” No doubt about that.

PS – Her suit is covered in glitter (cuz everything is better with sparkle) and her tail is made from Marine Silk. It’s important to be a stylish space bunny you know.

Sock Summit 2011 Teachers

The list of teachers for Sock Summit went live a few minutes ago. I’m thrilled that I can finally say I’m a part of such an amazing group. I’ll be teaching Stitch Whisper and Don’t Despair, Repair. What an honor to be included.

Go check out the full list of teachers and classes, then start plotting your weekend. That’s what I’m doing. Well, that and the happy dance.

Release: Aventurine

It’s that time again. Pattern release day! It feels a bit like the first time your child goes out into the world without you. Excitement, terror and relief all jumping around inside my head. Today, as I post Aventurine, it’s mostly excitement and a big dollop of relief to be done with the work. Although, no matter how much I love a design I can’t eliminate all of the terror that I’ll be the only one who does. 

Aventurine is a top down fitted hoodie, with a deep v-neck. It’s worked with two colors of the lovely and luscious Marine Silk from Blue Moon Fiber Arts.

On the surface Aventurine is a basic stockinette sweater, but look closer and you’ll see the graduated texture pattern on the bottom, the interesting shaping at the top of the hood, and the touch of color at the bottom of the sleeves and body. I paired the increases to make them appear as long diagonal stitches. The raglan lines are carried up the back of the hood to tie the pieces together. I’ve said it many times before, it’s the details that make the sweater.

 

The focal point of the sweater, the band, surrounds the face and the long v-neck. The V makes a long slimming line and naturally draws eyes to the wearers face. Best of all, you get all that impact and interest for four rows of work!

I like to start with simple and classic, add a bit of flair and twist, then hopefully bind it all together with the right details. It doesn’t always work, but this time I don’t think it could have worked out better.

Materials

Blue Moon Fiber Arts Marine Silk Worsted (51% silk, 29% merino, 20% Sea Cell Rayon; 3.5 oz/243 yds) MC - 5[6, 7, 7, 8] skeins or 1100[1250, 1350, 1,500, 1,650, 1,800] yards in China Rose. CC - 1 skein or 25[30, 35, 40, 45, 50] yards in Blush.
US size 7 (4.5 mm) needle, 32 inch or longer circular needle, or size needed to obtain gauge for body
US size 7 (4.5 mm) needle, 12 inch circular needle or DPNs, or size used to obtain gauge for sleeves
Stitch markers
Waste yarn
Tapestry needle

Gauge 19 sts and 28 rows over 4 inches (10 cm) in St st

Size S[M, L, 1X, 2X, 3X]

Finished Measurements

32[36, 40, 44, 48, 53] inches (81.5[91.5, 101.5, 112, 122, 134.5] cm) at bust
23[23 1/2, 24, 24 1/2, 25, 25 1/2] inches (58.5[60, 61, 62, 63.5, 65] cm) length

Aventurine is part of the Sweater for all Seasons club and can not be purchased separately until May 15, 2011. If you are interested in the club you can see all the details on the Ravelry page or my previous post.

Logo Love

Way back in September I told you I was working on some KnitQuest upgrades. I still am (insert big sigh). Obviously it’s not a speedy process when it has to take a back seat to just about everything else, but it’s finally getting close.

It’s been all slog and nothing to blog. Downright depressing. Now that I finally have something concrete to show for all my effort I just couldn’t wait to show you. So…

Ta Da! The new KnitQuest logo.

 

 

Thanks so much to Jill Zielinski for a great design and for sticking with me through all the revisions!

PS – can anyone identify what’s on the center of the shield?

4 Months

I’d forgotten how much having a puppy is like having a two year old. She’s curious, doing new things everyday, has a two second attention span, makes a mess with her food and you can’t take your eyes off her for even a minute. On top of that she’s a two year old who has really sharp teeth and can run faster than you. Let’s just say she’s good for my stamina.

Her daily antics are funny, sweet and down right infuriating. Although even when she does something awful (like yarn nabbing and subsequent destruction) she is so cute it’s impossible not to love her.

Did you notice how big she’s getting? Moxie is four months old today and I can’t believe how much she has changed already. She can’t walk under Kona’s belly anymore, we had to adjust her collar again today and no matter how hard she tries to cram her whole body on my lap she keeps sliding off. When she first came home, one walk to the bus stop took 25 minutes are wore her out for hours. Now she needs 3 longer walks a day and does them in half that time.

While she may be growing up and changing, she’s still Moxie. She still talks up a storm (I’ve never seen a Basenji who baroos so much), likes to sleep with her head buried in the crook of your arm or under a blanket, and jumps first and thinks later.

Life with Moxie is full of laughs, cuddles, silliness and not much rest. Well, not much rest for us.

Fresh Designs

Have you heard about the new series of books Cooperative Press is publishing? They’re called Fresh Designs. Each book in the series will focus on a single topic and include 10 designs, each from a different designer. In the works are books for sweaters, shawls, hats, scarves and many other topics.

The ideas behind this series of books are innovative and I hope will lead other publishers to follow a similar model. All the books will be available in print as well as digital and ebook editions, but Coopertive Press's business model is what’s really different. Here’s what Shannon says about it…

“Instead of paying 10-12% royalties on book sales to its authors, CP equally divides the profits from each title between author and publisher -- even higher in the author's favor on digital products! Authors can earn much more than they would with a traditional publisher, exercise greater control over their intellectual property, and get their work in front of an audience faster.”

As someone trying to make a career and a living from design this is a huge deal.

If supporting independent publishing and design is important to you, take a look Cooperative Press’s Kickstart campaign. As of this afternoon they were only 600 dollars from their goal. Any bit of support helps, but if you donate $10 or more you’ll receive some nice thank you gifts in return.

I’m also excited about these books because the shawl book will feature one of my designs. I can’t show you the whole thing, but here’s a small sneak peak.