give-away? give-away? why yes!

With the permission of the marvelous and talented Miss Babs, who provided yarn for Fiori Autunnali, I am giving away a skein of her gorgeous Wild Silk (100% tussah) in Roasted Pumpkin, the color used in the original shawl! Along with that skein of loveliness will go beads enough to complete the shawl. These are also the original beads used: size 6/0 Japanese seed beads in iris bronze (metallic).

This all goes along with my new Craftsy class, of course. :) And here again is the link to purchase that class for 25% off!

Here are the rules! Leave one comment here by midnight PDT, Saturday night July 27, 2013. Each comment will be an entry. If you would like to enter more than once, tweet, or post on facebook, plurk, or Ravelry (or other social media!) about the give-away and then post another comment here telling me what you did. If you tweet and facebook, for instance, that's two extra comments for two extra entries!

I will draw one winner from the list of comments, using random.org's random number generator. Ready? Set? Go!!!

knit knit knit; test test test

First of all, I think a little sneak peek is in order, don't you?

Are you getting excited?

How about now?

I am loving how reversible the Sakaki pattern is!

And how nicely it drapes using the lovely Sunna yarn from Spirit Trail (Acadia colorway).

And now, just to make it as irresistible as possible (because I so want to maximize the funds going for Japan support!), I'm doing a red version.

And what a red!!! Alisha (who has a new etsy shop with lots of goodies!) gave this skein (On the Vine colorway) to me at TNNA, and it is sublime! A perfect ripe tomato red.

No leaves on this one, but plenty of beads.

I found some hexagonal bronze seed beads and they look amazing with the red.

I'm really enjoying the knit in the evening while watching my latest acquisition: the full Deep Space 9 series. (squeeeee!)

All should be tested and ready soon. :)

And she was

7 Small Shawls: T - 169 days and counting down.

Today, between moments of packing club shipments up and making more pins, I got a little time with my preciousssssss. I just had to pet the yarn and play with the beads. It's been so long.

Plus, I was aching to try out a new method for placing beads. After hearing so many great things about it, I decided to try SuperFloss from Oral B. I had to track some down online first. Apparently, no one around here uses it.

It comes in a box of 50 (I think) pre-cut pieces. Each piece has a stiff end (for threading through braces) and it's fairly easy to string beads on it. And even though I knotted the end, I really didn't need to, since the floss plumps up and the beads really stay put.

To place a bead, stick the end of the floss through the stitch to be beaded and then move a bead up and run the thread back through the bead.

Pull the stitch off the needle.

Settle the bead down on the stitch and replace it on the left needle. Work as usual.

The best thing about this method is that you can keep quite a few beads ready to go on the floss. It seems like it would be great for travel.

Other than that, though, I'm not a huge fan of this method. It works fine, but I love my little teensy crochet hook more. :)

Well, now. It's back to work for me. Happy beading!

What a difference a day makes

7 Small Shawls: T - 193 days and counting down.

Thanks to all of you who sent encouragement! Today I've been feeling much better. I made a to-do list and crossed 6 items off. They weren't huge, but they did include secret project #1. I am so happy to have that gone gone gone! I am feeling a great sense of accomplishment, even though the large items all still remain! I did make a start on a couple though. Whew.

I continue to be absolutely smitten with my yarn and bead combination for shawl number 3 (yet to be named). The color in this post is much more accurate, although still not quite as stunning as in person!

I keep stopping and staring at it, turning it over slowly so the beads will catch the light just so.

The yarn is Enya sock from Saffron Dyeworks in the New Moon colorway. In my opinion, having seen them both, the color is every bit as saturated and delicious as the famous Wollmeise sock yarns. Delectable.

And although I love green with a passion, I have to admit that my very favorite color is the deep greenish teal (there! green again!) that the sky turns in the west as twilight fades to dark in the summertime. This yarn has streaks of the exact perfect color. I don't know how she captured it!

(In this picture you can see the coil-less safety pin I added to keep track of the correct side.)

And the beads. The beads are just sparkly enough, but not too sparkly. :happysigh: I love it when things come together properly. :)

Oh, hey! I promised a sketch of the shape, didn't I?

It wraps nicely around your shoulders!

In other news, #1 Son thanks you for your kind birthday wishes. Yesterday was lovely for him, full of reading, swimming, and cupcakes.

Perfect!

I am weak

7 Small Shawls: T - 196 days and counting down.

After playing with the beads and yarn, I couldn't resist casting on. This means I didn't work on my secret project or my wholesale pin orders. Weekends are made for relaxing right? And this is way more relaxing. :) I often think about that, actually. How many people are lucky enough to make a living doing something they'd want to do anyway in their free time? I mean, I'm certainly not rich money-wise, but I'm rich in so many other ways! I get to live in a beautiful place, be home with the kids, knit, metal work and sometimes I even travel on business. It's Good.

Anyway...back to casting on. I am fairly picky, and I don't like knots in my lace at all. Like this one.

So that means I've devised a favorite little method of starting lace. I cast on one extra stitch (I like the knitted cast on or backwards loop for lace) and then I don't knit the slip knot. This is how it looks, just kinda hanging out there on the end.

When I've worked a few rows and I'm satisfied that nothing will unravel, I undo the knot. And when I've finished the piece, I just split my plies, weave in the tail...and presto! It looks great and there's no knot!

So, as I was saying...I couldn't resist casting on, for I am weak when it comes to beads and yarn. This one is a modified triangular shaped shawl, knit from the neck edge down. I will show you a sketch of the shape tomorrow. And it has beads. My inspiration was a starry sky, and one of the versions (there is also an un-beaded version) has a random - uncharted - pattern of beads in the garter stitch top portion.

I am absolutely loving the way it looks.

l'm also loving not having to follow a bead chart. I just take a look at it and add beads where I want on the row. Without realizing it, I beaded in a little dipper. Hee. I am having a blast with this. But not to worry! For those of you who don't like random, the bottom portion of the shawl will be charted! Actually, Mr. Romi made the point that it isn't truly random. I would need a randomizer to make it truly random. It's so nice - on such occasions as these - to have an engineer in the house. N'est pas?

The kids are needing wrangling, so I'm off to officiate!

:yawn:

7 Small Shawls: T - 197 days and counting down.

Yesterday was one of those inevitable days when life happens to plans big and small. Mr. Romi was super super busy and out working in his shop. I had a pattern to finish up and put together for my test knitters. The kids had other ideas. Crisis, drama, and tempests in teapots ensued. Teapot tempests seem so huge when you're young: insurmountable. It wasn't possible to leave the kids alone for even a moment without one of them making a bad decision. Some days are like that, and I hate leaving a situation where I know they almost can't help getting in trouble. So I kept close watch. Very close watch. The situation was finally stabilized at around 8:00 in the evening while Mr. Romi was at Kiwanis. So at 9:00, when they went to bed, I went to work on Maia. I finished at 3:00 in the morning, and then couldn't get to sleep until about 3:45. You know how it is. I had my second (or third or fourth) wind! I was wired. And no. I didn't sleep all day today. I got up at 8 in the morning, and I'm a little tired now. Truth be told, I'm blithering.

But enough of that!

The New Moon colorway was calling to me yesterday and it was still calling me today. Why fight it when it's meant to be? :) And so begins shawl #3 of the 7 Small Shawls eBook! This one has beads, so that was the first order of business today.

I raided the bead stash and out came the contenders. The one thing about beads is that you can give an educated guess about what might look good, but something unexpected often looks amazing. So in my first round, I included a few that I thought wouldn't look too great: the lavender, the gold and the pink.

And I added my old stand-by, the clear bead with foil lining. All of these are size 6/0 seed beads, my favorite for knitting.

Next was to string them on the yarn and see what I could see. I eliminated one here: second from the left. The lavender didn't do it for me.

I eliminated three here. The second from the right stayed. (Can you believe that's the pink?)

The second round.

These go on a swatch. It's difficult to see in the picture, but the middle two were the real contenders here. And of those I chose the one on the right, the blue metallic. They look great in person! I was looking for something that sang to me, and these fit the bill perfectly.

They're not my cup of tea by themselves, but I keep a stash of them for knitting, and this is not the first time they've been pressed into service!

Then, of course, I couldn't resist casting on. I think this one is kind of a potato chip knit. I'm really enjoying it, but I'm feeling guilty about not knitting on my secret project.

I'm saving the secret project for when my brain wakes up.

Nighty-night!

traduction française

Bitterroot is now in French!

The wonderful Christine has posted it on her blog. She provides this amazing service free to French knitters. Fabulous, non?

Introducing...

...my newest shawl pattern, Trieste! It's a super fun and simple knit with an easy-to-memorize lace repeat. The pattern includes both written and charted instructions for a plain garter stitch version:

and a beaded version.

Trieste is named for a little bistro called Cafe Trieste, a favorite haunt of mine in high school and then again in grad school, with a deck in the back overlooking a creek. The people watching was fabulous, and a warm but simple wrap to throw dramatically over one's shoulder would have been just the thing.

In designing Trieste, I strove for simple elegance, both in the knitting and the wearing. The shawl begins with one stitch at the bottom of the triangle, and increases one stitch at the beginning of each row. By the end of the second repeat, I had memorized the stitch pattern. I took the shawls with me to swim practices, where they served as both a lap blanket and employment for fidgety hands!

The two versions, one in garter stitch and one in beaded stockinette stitch serve two very different purposes in your wardrobe, but both are wonderfully simple to knit. I have included dimensions for one, two and three balls of yarn, and
since you are knitting from the bottom up, you can stop wherever you wish!

The samples shown use 3 balls of elann.com Silken Kydd in Raisin for the garter stitch wrap:


and three balls of Rowan Kidsilk Haze in Splendour (sadly, discontinued) for the beaded stockinette wrap.


The pattern is available both on my site and on Ravelry , for $6.50, as a pdf download.

Hope you like it!

Bitterroot!

The Winter Knitty is up! And here's another of my secret projects: Bitterroot!

There are two sizes. Shawlette:




and shawl!


The shawlette uses four skeins of Royale Hare merino/silk sport in Arctic Sky, and the large version uses my hand spun lace weight from A Verb for Keeping Warm's gorgeous silk/camel in the Glenda colorway. Hope you all enjoy it!

Many Thanks

It's late in the day, but I hope not too late to give our veterans a heart felt thank you for your service. I so appreciate what you have done and do every day. My husband is a veteran and jokes that he wears his veteran's hat twice a year. Veteran's Day is one of those days, and he has had people thanking him all day for his service. It really means a lot to him to know that he is appreciated.

In other news, I've finished my garter stitch mohair/silk shawl. Here it sits, awaiting blockage:

You'll have to take my word for it that it's pretty. :) And I've started the beaded stockinette version.

I am really loving knitting this thing. The color is luminous! I wish my photography could do it justice. I'm hoping to finish it this weekend at the swim meet in Vallejo. There will be plenty of knitting time! Next week, I'll block them both and post pics.

Also this weekend, the winter issue of Twist Collective is coming out, and I have a design in it! It is due out Sunday, and I can't wait to see it. I really love Twist. The "stories" are inventive, the photography is exquisite, and the designs are high quality. I'm honored to be included!