Knitting for Victory: Kickstart it!

I've found a fascinating knitting Kickstarter - Knitting for Victory, America's Knitting History 1916-1945.

This looks to be a great, informative book about the Production Corps - knitters for victory in the first and second world wars. Not only will this be a history book, but it will also feature 25 updated patterns from the time period. Sweet!

I love knitting history, vintage patterns (er, sometimes) and knitting Kickstarter projects - when I donated to the Cooperative Press Kickstarter campaign, not only did I get a great informative book, I got warm fuzzies in helping out an awesome publishing company - and every time I see what Cooperative Press has been up to, I know I made the right decision!

There's just under two weeks left to fund it, so get in there are knit your bit!

~Joyuna

Welcome to Joyuna.com!

You may have noticed, if you look up in your address bar, that my address has changed - I'm no longer being hosted on Blogspot, but rather on my own Joyuna.com domain. This is a change that I've been meaning to make for a long time now and it feels good to finally make it.

This is my first step towards an official Joy Gerhardt Designs website showcasing my design portfolio. That won't be ready for some time yet, though - first things first, the blog has been moved over.

There's no need to update your bookmarks - all joyarna.blogspot.com links should redirect automatically to the new address. However, if you do notice anything that isn't quite working right, don't hesitate to contact me - leave a comment, shoot me a Rav message, or email me (joyuna at gmail).

~Joyuna

Garden Path Moebius wrap

My newest pattern is the Garden Path Moebius. It's a knitted moebius capelet featuring a cables and lace pattern, edged with a sweet ruffle. I've loved moebius knitting ever since I first heard about it. Once you master the cast-on, it's just regular knitting... with a bit of a twist.

The Garden Path Moebius (rav link) takes its name from my studies in linguistics - a garden path sentence leads the reader astray as it is being read. It's perfectly grammatical, but it takes an unexpected turn. Examples include "The old man the boat," (the old people man the boat) or "The horse raced past the barn fell" (the horse, who was being raced, fell).


The Garden Path Moebius combines some of my all-time favorite things -- the name comes from my passion in linguistics, the yarn comes from my favorite indie dyer, Juno Fibre Arts, and the knitting combines some great techniques: moebius knitting (which itself comes from one of my favorite designers, Cat Bordhi), cables and lace, a reversible stitch pattern, and ruffles. This design was a real labor of love for me, so I hope you enjoy it.

for $6.00

Sizes: Available in five sizes: 31 [37, 43.5, 50, 56]" (79 [94, 110, 127, 142]cm). To pick the size that best suits you, measure comfortably below your shoulders, at the widest point of your upper arm. Sizing is flexible, and if in doubt, go for a larger rather than smaller size.
Yarn: 550 - 910 yds of fingering weight yarn (Shown: Juno Fibre Arts Myrtle, two 100g skeins). All but the largest size require under 200g of fingering yarn.
Needles: US 7 / 4.5mm - 47" or longer circular needle.
Special Techniques: Moebius/mobius cast on (full instructions included), twisted stitch cables (instructions included), lace knitting, reading cables & lace from a chart or from written instructions

~Joyuna

Designer Shop Talk: Pattern Formats

I just came across a post by Carol Feller of Stolen Stitches: Survey results. Any designers out there might be interested in taking a look - she surveyed her readers about what kinds of pattern formats (single, ebook, hard copy) they prefer.

The PDFs won by a landslide in Carol's survey: Do you agree? I definitely do. I've always been a bit wary of ebooks as a replacement for dead tree books (real books are easier to page through and never run out of batteries) but I really think that PDFs are the ideal format for single patterns.

I was cemented in this belief when I fell in love with and ordered EZ's Green Sweater. I fell in love with the story of this sweater in Twist Collective and its details captivated me. In other words, I needed to knit it, and there could be no substitute.

Schoolhouse Press sold the pattern, but only in hard copy format. So I already had my yarn and was itching to cast on, but I had to wait for the pattern to arrive. To be fair, when the pattern arrived it was beautiful - skillfully formatted into an 8.5x11" booklet, in a plastic sleeve, full color and glossy. But the paper pattern can get creased, or torn, or lost, and unless I scan it, once it's gone, it's gone. And having gone through 6 moves in the past 3 years, I worry about important patterns getting lost for good.

Digital patterns can get lost too - hard drives fail, CDs deteriorate, email accounts get hacked. But the options for backups are plentiful - the majority of my pattern files are stored not only on my laptop, but also in my Ravelry library, my Dropbox account, my thumb drive, and my iPod.

I love PDFs for knitting because they're infinitely portable, I can access them on any of my devices, I can add bookmarks and notes to them just like I could a paper pattern, and heck, I could even print them out if I wanted to. They're instantly delivered and, on Ravelry or Patternfish, automatically updated. It's not as easy to leisurely flip through a book on a screen, so I often prefer paper books for actual reading, but for knitting patterns, PDFs are my format of choice.

-- I digress a little bit. Carol's survey is not just about digital versus tangible. It also contains some valuable information about distribution preferences. How many patterns should be in a collection? What kinds of patterns? How should they be released? Very worthwhile reading for any indie designer.

~Joyuna

Knitmeter

I've pledged to work on UFOs and knit down my stash this year, and sometimes it can be disheartening to do all that work without seeing progress. I'm a very visual person so seeing things in front of me can give me a real sense of accomplishment.

You've probably seen Knitmeter widgets before, on people's blogs or Ravelry profiles. I finally decided to get one, to track my progress this year. How many miles will I knit in 2012? How much will I spin?





The Knitmeters were very easy to set up - the only thing that could make it better if it were integrated with Ravelry for automatic yardage-updating. But it only takes a minute to update the site with my recent projects, and then I get a much better big-picture view of my knitting and spinning progress so far.

~Joyuna

A Timeline of Events - KAL/All Craft Media

I've been following this situation for some time now, as a member of the sock club and a former designer with KNIT Magazine. There's a lot of information about it out there, but it's all scattered around the web in fragments. It's very difficult to get the full picture from just one source. So here is my attempt at collecting all the relevant information together.
If you're a non-knitter - note that many of the links below are from Ravelry, and will not be visible to non-members.

First, some acknowledgements. Alex Tinsley's post on Dull Roar was an ideal starting point for piecing together the big picture. I couldn't have put this together without the tireless efforts of the Ravelry Rubberneckers, either, nor Ruth Garcia-Alcatund (Rock and Purl) for being the first one to come forward in the blog community. Very little of this information is originally mine; I am just compiling it so others can read it all in one place.
If you think something should be added to this timeline or anything needs to be corrected, please let me know in the comments.

In researching this I found it went farther back than I ever expected. There is a long history...

August 2005 -
Kerrie Allman buys Hipknits yarns. It was originally founded by Dee of Posh Yarn, sold on to Kerrie, and is now run by Kerrie's father. (Added Mar 5 2012 - Dee weighs in)

2007 -
Kerrie works on a book, Handpainted, commissioning designs and collecting samples from designers. The book was never published. Samples were not returned.

June 2007 -
Hipknits project club starts. Parcels go missing, poor communication.

April 2008 -
Reports spring up of Hipknits orders going missing. Prior to this mega-thread, Hipknits had been having post problems as early as 2006. Hipknits eBay feedback.

Around the same time, Magknits is closed, all the archived patterns being wiped. Kerrie's explanation. A new issue of the magazine had gone live only a week before.
(Magknits, for those who don't know, was a quite popular free online mag, akin to Knitty. Popular patterns that originate on Magknits include the Jaywalker Socks, Evangeline gloves, Hannah ponytail hat, and Odessa hat.)

Read more »

Ditzy Dyeing Mishap

I had a specific color scheme in mind for a project I'm working on - the Catching Butterflies mitts from Tiny Owl Knits in an old issue of Yarn Forward. If you're not familiar with the pattern, it's a pair of textured mitts with some knitted butterfly embellishments done in a fuzzy yarn. I had a few balls of Debbie Bliss Angel in my stash, but none in the color I wanted. So, I wound off a small loop of a light-colored shade to dye it to my liking.

I've dyed small amounts of yarn to match certain things on a few occasions - like my silk Aeolian shawl - so it wasn't a big deal. It helps, though, to actually remember how to dye. As in, acid dyes require acid to absorb.

The dye wasn't taking up like I was hoping, so I kept adding more little by little... until I remembered I had forgotten the lemon juice. I sprinkled a bit into my dye bowl, and it all took up at once... creating a bright magenta in contrast to the pastel pink I was going for.

Doh.

Luckily I wasn't working with much yarn and I had extra to re-do the dye experiment -- the too-dark yarn went into my hexipuff bowl, and the correctly-dyed yarn went into my project. Happy ending!

~Joyuna