When someone very important to me told me she would be moving away, someone who had done a great deal for me over the years and for whom I have never done a damn thing, I knew I should do something nice for her. She had always admired my Ishbel, and so I thought something like that would be nice, but not exactly like it because I like variety in my crafting.

So I was looking for a small-medium sized shawl involving some lace – either all-over simple lace or just a little lace, along the lines of the Ishbel, and preferably something that would work in a lightweight sock yarn, since that’s what I had to work with. Enter Emily. Now I will straight up admit that I am not a lace knitter. I can do it fine, but it’s not my favorite thing, and I am almost never drawn to big lacy shawls. Ever. But the sideways asymmetry of this pattern really grabbed be. Knitscene did a great job shooting that shawl, in my opinion. It looks very casual and natural on the model. So many modeled shawl shots often look awkward or too magickal-fairie-dust-esque for my taste. So I grabbed some malabrigo sock and cast on.

And I fell deeply, passionately in love with the results. So much so that it made giving up the shawl even more painful than it was already going to be. The lace pattern was easy, but there were enough things happening around the edges that it kept me interested the whole time – no small feat when we’re talking about the world’s most easily distracted crafter. And then there was the blocking! Magical. (Not magickal.)

And in the end it’s taken me a month and a half total to hand over the shawl, post the pictures, and write a blog entry on it. In the end I managed it all by clenching my jaw, forcing back the tears, saying goodbye and walking away.

Really, is there any better way to start the day than to wake up and see that a pattern you dreamed up, knit up, wrote up, and poured hours and hours of time, blood, sweat, tears, etc into has won a sock contest? I think that pretty much takes the cake. When Elinor announced her sock contest I thought, “great! an opportunity for me to make this chart I’ve been fantasizing about into something real!” (Yes, I fantasize about charts.) Like most things I do, if I hadn’t had a deadline it never would’ve gotten done, and because of that I’m eternally grateful to Elinor for organizing this whole competition, all while picking up and moving her life, kids, and dogs a few hundred miles.

In order to celebrate (besides taking these pictures of the smaller size Brocade on a foot smaller than my own) I added about a bazillion new sock patterns to my ravelry queue. You can check out all the entries in the contest here and queue up your own faves! First up for me are the Burning Stripes – that heel is clever as all get out, and what a great way to work with the long stretches of color of the zauberballs. (I never get tired of that word.) I’m also looking forward to Circuitry, where I’ll learn about mosaic colorwork, and Oh Jamie, My Jamie, where I’ll get to knit stags and a fabulous strawberry toe. (Can you tell I’m really into colorwork lately?) And finally, I’m really drawn to the vintage aesthetic of the Solstice Stockings. Which contest patterns caught your eye? It’s a fabulous collection, and whatever your knitting proclivities, I’m sure there’s something in there for each of us, and I’m so flattered by the recognition for Brocade.

Ahem, and if you haven’t been there already and would like to go, here is the Brocade pattern on ravelry, where it is available for purchase/download.

I feel I should mention that the subject heading of this entry is a bit of a rhetorical flourish. I’m sure regular readers realize that I’m prone to, um, strong feelings when it comes to knitting and that I’m not actually blogging from beyond the grave.

That said, I knit this shawl a little while back and I had to give it away and now I’m just going to DIE if I don’t get one just like it very, very soon.

This is Herbivore, a design by Stephen West. I have had a big huge crush on this pattern for the longest time, and when some local knitters decided to hold a little shawl swap to commemorate Anne’s visit to Chicago and I drew Sara I knew Herbivore would be a great pattern for her. It’s got nice clean lines; it shows off a nice semi-solid colorway; and it has a large wingspan for a small shawl.

The only reason I hadn’t previously cast on for Herbivore is that, honestly, I thought it would be boring to knit. It’s a bit of an idiosyncrasy, really – I love long clean lines, but dear lord are they ever boring. But for whatever reason I cranked this sucker out in just a couple of days. I think I was doing a lot of knitting on the bus, in which case a simple pattern that doesn’t require me to keep looking at a print copy is always best, but I think the lack of boredom is also a result of the construction of the shawl itself. For whatever reason I didn’t take any pictures that show this clearly, but you cast on for Herbivore at the top center point, increase along both edges and around the center stitch, and then add two more axes of increases in the middle of each half between the center and each edge. (That’s not exactly the most clear written description, so if you’re curious take a look at some of the pictures on Herbivore’s ravelry page – you’ll see what I mean.) This variation between twisted ribbing and stockinette around three axes was just enough interest to keep me going.

So you may notice I took quite a few pictures of this shawl. That’s because I didn’t want to take it off. I definitely didn’t want to give it to Sara, but she’s a good friend and she brought chocolate/salted caramel cake and beer over to my house, so I did. And the minute I get some time to make something for myself for once (sadly that won’t be for a little while) I’ve got my eye on another Stephen West design: Daybreak.

Oh what a week I’m having. There are two crafty deadlines, school work that has stepped up a notch or 15 recently, and then I was called in for a full day of jury duty yesterday. Despite the fact that waiting in the jury room all morning was really, really boring and that I’m now going to be playing catch-up all week, the experience was actually kind of interesting in the end. I know, I’m totally batshit crazy.

But in the meantime, I’m really psyched to be able to share a design preview with you all and talk about process. When Elinor announced the Socks Revived Design Contest a few weeks ago, it seemed like a great opportunity to work up a chart I’d been toying with and make it into an actual knitted object. The chart began as a reworking of a particular design in this book, which I recently discovered we have in our university library.

I modified the chart to make it fit my gauge and stitch count for a pair of fair isle socks, cast on and went with it. My first attempt looked pretty great from the front:

so you’ll just have to take my word for it when I say that the back of this sock is a disaster. I tried to break up a large chart of overlapping repeats by putting a bunch of vertical stripes down the back of the leg. While this is a nice way to break up the visual “jump” that you encounter with colorwork in the round, and offers an easy way to adjust size, it looked crappy and it was an awkward width when it came time for a heel flap. Rrrrrrip!

I futzed with the chart more, and by this time it had been so futzed with that it can be described as being loosely inspired by what I originally saw in the Anatolian Knitting Designs book, made it fit my stitch count, and after trying 900 different and ridiculously complicated heels, I decided what I like best, and what fits my foot best, is a good, sturdy heel flap with gussets:

This will be the heel in the final pattern. I love it because it’s worked with the background color held double-stranded so the fabric is a pretty close match to the feel of the rest of the sock. And I have heels of steel, apparently, and will felt and wear through almost anything, so I’ll take all the extra sturdiness I can get.

The problem with the sock you see in that picture, however, is that the toe is heinous:

It pained me so to even take that picture, and then to post it on the internet?! I assure you I ripped that sucker out long ago. That ugly, square, floppy, weirdly bendy toe is long gone. I was trying to continue the lines from the chart and ended up with some really long floats in which my toes would always be getting caught, and then there’s the ugliness factor. Yuck. I decided the best thing to do was just to continue the chart as I had been working it and maintain that design as best I could while decreasing on the edges of the sock. And I’m quite pleased with the result:

And what you see there is, with a few details tweaked, what the final design will look like. As per the rules of Elinor’s contest there will be more than one size, which has been my main challenge given the large, unwieldy chart. In the end I decided the best way to deal with that would be to do what a lot of designers do to make fair isle mitten patterns with multiple sizes: change the gauge. The orange and white socks are designed for my feet, and as a result, they’re kind of big, and I like sturdy yarn so I’m using pretty heavy sock yarns (more on yarn details when I unveil the final product). I’m currently working up a smaller version using more lightweight yarns and so far as I can tell it’s working well, and it’s helping me work the rough edges out of the pattern. Now if I can just finish it all in time to publish by Friday!

I’ve been doing a whole lot of a whole lot lately, and as much as it might feel like I’m a chicken running around with its head cut off… well, I make a pretty good headless chicken. That doesn’t exactly make sense – what I mean to say is I’m my best at everything, and I’m most excited about everything when I’m crazily busy. Among other things there’s been cooking, of course, because I have to keep eating and all. That pizza pictured above is a breakfast pizza, which is a brilliant idea I read about on Smitten Kitchen. You can also click through to my photo on flickr to see another shot of my pizza with the herby-oniony toppings.

In crafting news I’ve been working on a new design that is almost, ALMOST done. And no, despite the picture above it does not involve tweedy mitered squares. There will be orange involved, though, and I can’t wait to show you all what it is. In the meantime I’ve got about 9,000 other ideas and projects kicking around the apartment, and it’s killing me to not cast on for them all Right! Now!! The preview for the new issue of Crochet Today! went up today and there are some super cute projects in there. And I must be a total masochist because I can’t wait to start hooking up this necklace with some size 10 crochet thread. Just to put things in perspective, this is what size 10 thread looks like:

It looks like thread. BECAUSE IT IS. Surely I will go blind, but at least I’ll have a completely amazing necklace. Right? RIGHT?! I originally thought I’d use this thread for some potholders (to swap) but I was clearly delusional when I had that idea. I did manage to make one potholder (not with the thread, obvs), however, and then sent it away to live with a friend.

And amidst all this I’m walking all over creation taking pictures, many on film with my two toys, a Canon AE-1 –

(sniff, good bye, winter) and a holga (hello, summer) –

And just as a teaser before I check out for an afternoon at the library, I’ve got that forthcoming design to tell you about (as soon as I, you know, finish it…) and a really great meal to write up -