Interweave Sale

30% off patterns at the Interweave site! This means you can purchase downloads of the original patterns for $4.20 (regular price $6):

An Aran for Anne
An Aran for Frederick
Bixby
Sotherton

A Vest for Charles and Benwick are not yet available, but I'll let you know when they are.

The kids are off school for two (2!) weeks of Spring Break. Sadly, the weather is decidedly wintry. Work is slower than usual due to wrangling said children, but I keep plugging away :)

Thanks for stopping by, and happy knitting!
xoxo, Kathleen

Sweater fix

If you don't follow me on Instagram (you should! I'm @kathleendames of course), you didn't see the little problem I discovered today:

Can you see it? I did an extra round without twisting. Must have been an intense moment in Small Island (love when my dvr records Masterpiece Classics for me that I might have otherwise missed - if you get the chance to watch it, it's pretty good: Benedict Cumberbatch and thought-provoking views on race relations post-WWII in the UK). Anyway, I debated for a few minutes about fixing it. Most likely such a thing would pass the galloping horse test; however, I'm me, and it is front and center on this pullover. My knitting bestie/enabler Annie reminded me that as a Virgo it would drive me bonkers. 

Rather than tinking back the seven rounds, I grabbed some DPNs and decided to see if I could fix them in situ. Pulling the working needle out of the stitches in question, I then pulled the ends of the circular tight (and let them hang to the back of the work) to keep all the other stitches safe from harm. 

I pulled the working strand out of each row until I was a row below the error, at which point I slipped the stitches in question onto a DPN. With a second DPN I used the lowest thread to rework the stitches properly. After a couple of rows I realized that the tension was off (really tight at the right end and loose on the left), which led to dropping back down and doing it again, adjusting the stitches on each row before proceeding wih the next thread. 

Above you can see me working across the row and that the stitches on the left are loose. 

And here it is, all better (although it looks a little wonky a few rows down from my thumb, but that should settle down when the sweater is blocked)!

Forgive the state of my mani. Who knew I was going to be documenting my knitting today?!

BTW, this yarn from The Spinning Mill in Greenville NY is amazing! Undyed merino. I bought it at Rhinebeck. No website info that I have been able to find yet, but I'm pretty sure they are there every year, since Kay Gardiner (Mason Dixon knitter extraordinaire) recently knit a beautiful baby blanket with some that she'd gotten from them at Rhinebeck a few years ago. 

This is what my two skeins looked like when I bought them. Each one is almost 500yds of undyed beautiful squishiness. I can't wait to finish this design and share it with you, but at least now you know how to repair a twist error if you make one like me ;)

Thanks for stopping by, and happy knitting!

xoxo, Kathleen 

Housekeeping

Not the "fun" kind of housekeeping for which I made a chart, since that got blown out of the water last week as I sketched and swatched and wordsmithed my way through a pile of submissions. No, I'm talking about some business housekeeping. Whee!

I updated the patterns page here on the blog so it's easier to see the multitude of patterns I have already published. At first this seemed like it would be a breeze, but the coding that makes it easier to blog here on Blogger made it harder to edit and streamline the page. It kind of made me want to tear my all-brown hair out, but eventually I got it straightened out, and I hope it will be useful. Patterns are in alphabetical order. Let me know if there is another sorting scheme you'd prefer.

I'm also in the process of adding schematics to all the pattern pages on Ravelry and Etsy (I would like to do Craftsy, but they don't support wide graphics), as well as thumbnails of the pattern pages so you can get an idea of what my patterns look like before you purchase them. I love seeing the cable patterns shrunk down, as you get a really good idea of how they look IRL. That's kind of an ongoing project, so I will get to them as I'm able (with the goal to have them finished before the kids go on Spring Break for the second half of the month - sigh). An Aran for Anne, An Aran for Frederick, Hap-py, Sotherton, and Wavelette are up, so you can see what I'm talking about (Rav links, but they're on Etsy, too).

In exciting pattern publishing news, my samples for A Vest for Charles and Benwick have returned. Now I just have to wait for one of my girls to grow big enough to wear Benwick, since the lovely model is smaller all around than me, and definitely less endowed ;) I'm still waiting to hear when those patterns will be available as individual downloads from Interweave but will let you know ASAP. It's on their radar.

And in more exciting news, I'll be contributing to the next issue of Jane Austen Knits due out this Fall! I am always thrilled to work with them and see what Jane Austen inspires other designers to create. There are a couple of other patterns in process for publications, and I am really close to sharing a shawl with you.

If you are on Pinterest, join me over there as I pin knitting patterns I think are fantastic. I'm curating boards of cardigans, pullovers, shawls, and mittens at the moment and plan to add more as time allows, including some boards for men. I'm trying to make sure they are good pins that lead to the patterns themselves, so it will take me a little longer than some other pinners, but I think it will be worth it.

Thanks for stopping by, and happy knitting!
xoxo, Kathleen

Fake-it-'til-you Make It Monday

Can you tell what's fake in this photo? I hope not or I did a bad job! It's the hair. "Naturally", I've got a lot of greys, but almost all hard dyes these days seem to have propylene glycol in their formulas now, even ones that didn't previously. Sigh. I don't want to look like an old lady (even if I act as crotchety as one), but I don't want to break out in a rash on a regular basis. So, I finally found a brand (Revlon Colorsilk, which also surprisingly cheap yet inexpensive) that hasn't yet bunged up its formula as far as I'm concerned. What do you think?

With spring coming it seemed like the time was ripe to start sprucing things up, especially since I have to snap some beauty shots in the next week for a pattern. I'm even contemplating a haircut (crazy, I know)! 

If you follow me on Instagram, you might have noticed that I'm getting a little tired of winter:

There is a car under there!

Footwear option for when it's not absolutely frigid but still cold and messy. I love my Hunter boots but would like to reacquaint myself with my shoes. 

There is nothing better than these llbean boots in the winter. The shearling lining almost makes you think you can go sockless. But it's time for these beauties to go away!

The good thing about the cold is all my sweaters. Some of these beauties haven't been written up yet, so you have something to look forward to. Eventually :)

Alright, back to the grindstone. Lots of time with spreadsheets and layout software. I will fake it 'til I make it in regards to enjoying the pattern writing portion of my job, too. I love having written a pattern and love knitting but sometimes the number wrangling is hard. 

Thanks for stopping by, and happy knitting!

xoxo,

Kathleen 

So much non-bloggable work! Plus my FOs for my sister

Sigh. I finished a project I'm very excited about. All its ends are woven in, the numbers crunched, and even a few pictures snapped. It is handsome and modern with some clever moves that make its seamless construction pretty fun to work. But I can't show it to you. You'll just have to wait until Fall to see it in its glory. I promise it will be worth the wait, and I'm dying to see what else will join it in its publication.

And now I'm on to another non-bloggable item, wrestling with numbers so I can reknit the yoke. I think you'll like this one, too. Then I have to start sketching and swatching for some of the great submission calls that are out there right now. But I also want to work on some of my longer-term collection ideas. And a nascent book proposal.

But it's cold and sunny today, so I kind of just want to sit and knit and move the laundry along, recovering from the busy-ness of Thursdays when I teach my young friends to knit (we have two additional knitters this semester, so I really feel like that nun in the Madeline books leading home her charges, except they don't walk sedately two-by-two).

We are now at the point where all my young knitters are fairly comfortable with the basics, so my challenge is to help them find projects that will keep their interest and allow them to expand their skills, especially since most of them don't knit between classes. They are all capable of knitting, purling, casting on, binding off, increasing, and decreasing. Most of them have even done some work in the round. I think the next step is DPNs before they get too set in their ways. I'm thinking i-cord to start, just so they get comfortable with holding pointy-at-both-ends sticks.

In bloggable projects I can finally share the things I made for my sister a couple of months ago! First up a super-cozy blanket in Reynolds Andean Alpaca Regal, a bulky alpaca-wool blend that obviates the need for electric blankets. Due to the discontinuation of the yarn, this could only serve as a one-of-a-kind prototype for a future design. I'm trying to figure out what yarn I would like to use in its stead that is cozy, reasonably priced, will stand up to the rigors of blankie-dom (i.e., machine washable since there are two constantly shedding cats in my house), and won't be discontinued in the near future. Oh, and it might need to be the same silver-ed lavender/twilit sky colorway, if that's possible.



My sister has always wanted an Old English Sheepdog, probably as a result of watching Please Don't Eat the Daisies during childhood. Since she needs to spend this year smacking down breast cancer, she doesn't really have time to care for a live dog, I thought she might enjoy a small, non-shedding, low-maintenance version. I used some Kidsilk Haze and Cascade 220, which I had lying around, with the pattern from Best in Show, where my dad's scottie came from. It only became clear to me that my gauge was off once I sewed the pieces up - this one seems taller and slimmer than the version in the book (and than real life exemplars of the breed I have known). It's still cuddly and hopefully makes her smile, which is its intent.

And I have to tell a tale on myself. You know that saying "If you want to make god laugh, make a plan"? Well, right after I shared my chore chart with you, I realized that the apartment needed some serious cleaning to prepare for my stepson's non-party birthday party, especially since his mom and her fiancé would be stopping by. Why is it that women are judged on the cleanliess of their homes? It's one of those sexist tropes that I can't escape - it's so firmly ingrained. I don't really care what other people's homes are like, but I get kind of worked up about my own, beyond even my own desires for order and cleanliness, when other people come over. I guess I need to just embrace it as something important to *me*, taking it off the gender peg. Anyway, the tasks and the days went right out the window! I cleaned and tidied and organized for much of the weekend. At least it cleared the decks of most chores (laundry being the ever-necessary exception) for the week, which allowed me to finish all the work on the first project mentioned in this post and send it off to Loveland a day early.

With all that said, I'm thinking of knitting something fun just for me this weekend. What do you have planned?

Thanks for stopping by, and happy knitting!
xoxo, Kathleen

Chore list

Before January rushes off in a whirl of excessively cold air, I thought I'd add a handy graphic of my chore list to keep me on the straight and narrow :) I do try to stare at the floors rather than clean them every once in a while. This chart inspired me to wash down the inside of the fridge earlier this week (when the cupboard was quite bare). It's amazing how dirty that fridge was (and we're a fairly tidy group)!

daily + weekly chores (click to download full-size chart)

With the home front marginally under control, I've been able to focus on sketches and swatches for design submissions (I've tweeted about that a fair bit this week), the finishing of a sample, and work on another sample. Waiting in the wings are a list of projects for a collection and the idea for an instruction book for young knitters.

Away from the needles I've been reading the annotated Persuasion and Pride & Prejudice, which have been interesting, even if they aren't necessarily as scholarly as they could be. And with the needles I had a Jane Austen movie festival over the past few days to help me prepare my submissions for the next issue of Jane Austen Knits (submissions are due on Monday, in case you've been struck by inspiration, too).

I've also been tweeting about the dearth of obituaries of women in The New York Times Obituaries headlines with #nodeadwomen. The paper of record now includes up to three obituary headlines in their daily email, and at some point it became apparent to me that most of the dead people were men. To test this crazy theory of mine I decided to keep track for a while. So far 18 men, two women in one week.

With the return of the Polar Vortex (or whatever you call it), my skills have been front and center (sweaters, hats, scarves, mittens, gloves, shawls, etc.), particularly on Instagram where I've been capturing some of my "Today's sweater" details.

Mermaid's Cardigan sleeve

Sotherton waist shaping

Turn of the Glass seed stitch front edges

Wavelette hem

 Hope you're keeping warm in your neck of the woods. Thanks for stopping by, and happy knitting!

xoxo, Kathleen

Greetings from the NYC Polar Vortex!

This is the time of year a knitter earns her keep: hats, cowls, scarves and shawls, mittens and gloves, sweaters. I am warm and woolly for the most part, though I think I may need to knit myself a pair of woolly leggings, since my legs are the only part of me that aren't warm enough. (I should knit socks, too, but I "cheat" with store-bought wool-blend socks and my fantabulous shearling-lined LLBean boots. They are the *best*!)

I had to bust through a couple of new pairs of mittens for the girls, since one was lost and the other was down to her running gloves, so I took a break from the sample I'm working on to cover the cold hands of the "cobbler's children".  Sample is almost complete and then I can think about designs for the next Jane Austen Knits, which is always fun! And Upon the Spanish Main is almost ready to be released, so get your luxurious sock yarn ready :)

Bundled up in blue

Even the produce at the market needs a blankie (and even after they added cold frame doors)

Upon the Spanish Main shawl (coming very soon) and An Aran for Anne

Isobel in her element (and my elf cap)

Penelope making the best of it with a Ripley hat and my Castaway shawl for added cover

Snowfall on the way home

Penelope's new mittens

Isobel's new mittens 

Heading out for Isobel to sled

In the meantime, stay as warm as you can. Thanks for stopping by, and happy knitting!

xoxo,

Kathleen