Knitgrrl Guide to Professional Knitwear Design - Review

As part of Knitgrrl's Kickstarter campaign for Cooperative Press, I got a digital copy of The Knitgrrl Guide to Professional Knitwear Design. This was a real bonus, as I was intending on buying the book myself. :)

The book starts with some marketing nuts and bolts - social media. With such a rapidly changing field, it's difficult to keep on the cutting edge in a book. The data is mostly up to date, but with a few minor things that have changed since publication (like automatic re-tweets on Twitter, for instance, and several references to the now-defunct AKD - Association of Knitwear Designers). There are also a few mentions of flash-in-the-pan internet phenomena - for instance, a subscription service which was started last year (!!), Patterndraft, which now has disappeared!

While the core ideas of the book are solid, I worry that parts of it will be less and less relevant as time goes on. Unless there are plans to release a new edition every so often, some sections will no longer be relevant, say, five years from now. Think about it: a little over five years ago, Twitter didn't even exist (it was launched in July 2006). Luckily, a digital copy can be easily updated as trends progress.

The book also covers more timeless topics, such as maintaining a professional persona, setting up multiple streams of income in addition to selling patterns, copyright, and formatting patterns. It's all really useful information - a lot of it I already knew, but some of it was new to me. Intriguingly, tucked in an appendix at the end of the book is a Book Proposal Template - a sample book proposal with notes about writing your own. If you dream about submitting your own knitting book to a publisher, this is a heck of a start.

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Wispy in Green

Since I'm working on a lot of my own designs lately, I haven't had very much time to work on other people's patterns. I do try to make time every once in a while, though, and knit something that isn't "work"! After many months, my Wispy Cardigan is finally finished.

If you're familiar with the pattern, you will notice I made several modifications, like removing the ribbing from the sleeves and bottom. Basically, I liked the original Whisper Cardigan from Interweave, bought the Wispy pattern from the designer, and modified it to look more like Whisper. ;) I'm extremely happy with the result.

The yarn is Valley Yarns 2/14 Alpaca Silk, which comes on 8-ounce cones, in the color Nile Green. It's lovely yarn, though a bit splitty - but soft with a nice sheen, and it has exactly the wonderful drape I was looking for in this project. I have a ton of yarn left on the cone, well over 100 grams! Believe me, I never would have thought I could knit myself a sweater with 150g of yarn. But it's true!

I'm not much of a sweater-knitting person, and anyone who has seen me at knitting group working on this cardigan has heard me whinging about the miles and miles of stockinette. But, I think this is going to be a very wearable cardigan, so it's worth it!

~Joyuna

Making do and Mending

There was a time when materials were costly, and time was plentiful. To get a pair of socks, you would need to get the wool off the sheep, prepare the wool, spin it into yarn, take that yarn and knit it... you get the idea. Nowadays, if you want a pair of socks, you can hop down to the shop to get any flavor of sock yarn. Or, you can just buy the socks themselves.

But when your materials are scarce, you want to conserve them in any way you can. That means unravelling and re-knitting sweaters as children grow older, or darning socks. Recently I had a mishap when my darning pile got mixed in with the laundry pile - my pair of merino cashmere socks were already wearing thin, and while they didn't felt in the wash, the thin spots got even thinner to the point where I just couldn't darn them any longer.

Instead, I'll make them into something new.

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Navajo Knitting for Hexipuffs

I heard about an intriguing technique while I was at the Glasgow School of Yarn - 'Navajo Knitting'. No, it's not a traditional Native American knitting technique - it takes its name from Navajo plying, or chain plying, in spinning. I've done Navajo plying many times before - it's an extremely useful technique to preserve color changes in handspun yarn, and to make a 3-ply out of one strand of singles. In a nutshell, you make a very long crochet chain out of your singles, and then twist that into yarn.

Navajo knitting is the same principle, only without the plying twist. You take your single strand of yarn, and start making it into a long (as long as you like - an arm's length of more) loop, and pull the yarn through the loop, as if it were a giant crochet chain. It takes some getting used to, but it's very effective once you've got it. The technique was first 'discovered' or 'unvented' by Lucy Neatby, and you can see her video on it here.

Why use Navajo knitting? It's the perfect way to knit with a yarn tripled. It's easy to knit yarn doubled - just knit from both ends of a center-pull ball. But to knit with yarn triple, you'd need either three balls of yarn, or a center-pull plus an extra ball. With this technique, you can easily knit with three strands of yarn out of only one ball.

I tried it out on some laceweight swiss silk I got from The Yarn Yard booth as GSoY, for my hexipuff blanket. It worked a treat!

See the loop at the end of the yarn? The silk is far too thin to be knit on its own into puffs, and it's a bit thin even when doubled. But tripled, it's just the right weight.

~Joyuna

Happy Wovember!

This month has been dubbed Wovember. The Wovember project is all about celebrating sheep's wool, and clearing up misconceptions. Here in the UK, most people call any kind of yarn 'wool' - be it cotton, or acrylic, or anything. Shops use the term 'wool' as a marketing tool to take the positive associations of wool fiber - warmth, wicking properties, and so on - and apply them to other things that aren't wool at all. The Wovember website has a Hall of Shame set up for shops which are marketing their items as 'wool' or 'woolly', when in fact they have no wool content at all.

There's also a Wovember photo competition, judged by Jamieson & Smith. The theme is '100% Wool'. Here's my contribution, which I title 'The Rainbow'.

It's 10 different breeds of wool, all in natural colors, all handspun by me - part of my Fiber Sampler project. I love the diversity of natural colors of sheep - from the shiny, silvery grey of Gotland to the nearly pure white of Shetland, to the rich brown of Manx Loaghtan. Both the Gotland (silvery grey) and colored Ryeland (dark brownish grey) I prepped myself from fleeces.

Not only are the natural colors different, but the textures are drastically different - from the shiny, wiry longwools like Lincoln and Gotland to the softer, springy Merino and Corriedale. People think 'wool' is just one entity, but each breed has its own unique properties. There is not just one 'wool', there are dozens! All of them have different feels, different properties - not all wool is itchy; some is lusciously soft. Not all wool is elastic; some is shiny and drapey. There's a whole world of wool, which most people have no idea about. So celebrate Wovember and get the word out about wonderful wool!

~Joyuna

Unbraiding Cables hat in issue 43 of KNIT Magazine

I was thrilled to see KNIT Magazine #43 (formerly Yarn Forward) at WH Smiths the other day. Inside, along with 13 other patterns, is my first print mag design: Unbraiding Cables. It's a top-down beanie in three sizes, with an original cable pattern that grows along with the shaping of the hat.

KNIT Magazine can be found at most supermarkets and newsagents across the UK - it hit newsstands on Monday. In the US, it is carried at Barnes & Noble, and issue 43 should be stocked in early December (there's about a month lag to the US).

This is my photo, the magazine's photos are much nicer :)

for $5.00

Yarn: Between 160 and 300 yds of DK weight yarn (Shown: Artesano Superwash Merino, less than 2 balls)
Needles: US 6 / 4mm and US 4 / 3.5mm
Special Techniques: Knitting in the round, cables, charts



~Joyuna

Have you seen this Knitted Bag?

Some heartbreaking news has been circulating around the knitting world recently - a designer, Trisha Paetsch, has had one of her knitted samples stolen from the Sanguine Gryphon booth at Rhinebeck. This beaded, lined, colorwork bag is truly one of a kind - and Trisha put many many hours of her own time and many dollars of her own money into it. The pattern is called Fulfillment, and it truly is a work of art.

If you were at Rhinebeck, and you saw anyone walking away with this bag, or if you've seen it anywhere else since then, please contact The Sanguine Gryphon. No questions will be asked.

For more information, see this thread on the SG Ravelry forum, and this thread on the Ravelry main boards. You can also help spread the word by blogging, Facebooking, or tweeting/retweeting about it.

~Joyuna

Glasgow Mystery Solved

Earlier I posted about some mystery knitted goodies at the Glasgow Botanic Gardens. Well, I learned who the culprits were! The crafters behind it are the Glasgow PicKnitters, a mischievous yarnbombing knitting group.

Oddly enough, I found out that the knitted pumpkin I found was the work of one of the woman I had met in Glasgow - Rita, AuntyRita on Ravelry. In fact, it is partially thanks to her that I made it to the School of Yarn at all - we met on the bus en route, and navigated to the church together.

The Picknitters apparently plant pumpkins around Glasgow every year - here's a report on last year's go with more photos. And you can meet some of the knitters in this BBC profile video.

~Joyuna

Mini Magical Friendship Ponies (free pattern)

The cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is surprisingly awesome. It's clever, has a good sense of humor, and features six strong female characters, each with her own very distinctive personality. On top of that, the art style is adorable - the characters were designed by Lauren Faust, who previously worked on The Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.

You can make your own little ponies too, either for the little one in your life, or for yourself :) Though you do have to attach all the pieces at the end, each piece is knit seamlessly. The ears and wings are flat garter stitch, the legs are based on i-cord, the head and body are in the round, and the body is shaped with short rows. Then, finish it all off with some embroidery and an innovative way of making soft fluffy hair. Ponies are rather top-heavy, but they can easily stand up on their own with the help of some light wires hidden in the legs.

Mini Magical Friendship Ponies

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KNIT Mag Sock Club Wollmeise Shipment!

Yesterday I got another shipment from the Knit Magazine Sock Club. This is a special shipment, because the yarn this time is Wollmeise! I've gotten some Wollmeise before - the Twin sock yarn direct from her site and some Lace from Knit Nation - but I won't say no to more! Claudia's colors are wonderfully saturated, and I love the generously sized skeins.

The base is 100% Merino, which feels a little bit softer than the Twin I've used before. But, it doesn't have any nylon content, so I'm not sure whether I'll use it for socks. The color is Brombeere, which is absolutely to die for. It's the kind of color I wouldn't buy for myself, but it's really gorgeous.

~Joyuna

First stabs at colorwork

I've been practicing my colorwork recently. The reason is I was inspired at the Glasgow School of Yarn to knit Ann Kingstone's amazing Pemberley jumper. However, the only stranded colorwork I've done so far has been very basic, and a very long time ago. So, in preparation for this knitting marathon, I have been in training - working a few more basic colorwork projects before tackling the big leagues.

First, I dug a project out of my queue that I've been planning for quite some time. I wanted to knit a jumper that had some colorwork, but not too much. I wanted to knit a jumper out of handspun, but I didn't want to spin a whole sweater. Enter my Caitlin pullover. It's a simple free pattern for a pullover with colorwork on the sleeves, bottom edge, and yoke. I spun up four natural colors of Shetland top as well as some orange top for the colorwork sections, and I had some Lang Shetland Soft yarn (also in orange) to use in the plain sections. I can have my cake and eat it too - work a handspun colorwork sweater, but not have to spin it all or knit it all in colorwork!

The colorwork pattern is also deceptively simple - most of the colorwork is done through slipped stitches, not stranding. In fact, there are only a handful of rows in the chart which use stranded colorwork instead of slipping stitches. The end result is much easier to knit than it appears.

Next, to further practice my stranding/Fair Isle colorwork, I'm making Ella Austin's Intrepid Fox. This is an absolutely adorable toy that uses some simple fair isle patterns on the body and legs. The stranding pattern on the body is optional, but I think it adds a very nice touch! Though, to be honest, pink hearts on a gray background reminds me of Companion Cubes more than anything else :)

I plan on working a few more small fair isle projects (such as the Endpaper mitts, maybe) before tackling Pemberley. I am really, truly awed by that design but also a little intimidated by it. But, I'm confident that if I take it step by step, I can conquer it!

~Joyuna

Puffing for a Good Cause

I just worked up a couple hexipuffs that I'm quite proud of - they're going to be part of something much larger, and I don't just mean a quilt!

In their winter issue, UK Handmade announced the Beekeeper's Quilt Charity Prize Competition. 192 knitters are contributing 2 puffs each to make a fantastic patchwork puff quilt. The hexipuffs are getting sent to our very own Jelly right here in Reading, who will hold a day-long stitch-athon to join the quilt together.

To contribute hexipuffs, sign up here. Or, to enter to win the quilt and a Tinyowlknits pattern, enter here. Entries are £1 each, you can enter as many times as you like, and proceeds benefit the crime-reduction charity NACRO. The contest is open to UK residents only, sorry everyone else!

~Joyuna