Recently in Knitting Category

I'm happy to announce that SCK is going to have a table at the Tacoma Rainiers Stitch n Pitch on July 22nd! If you're in the area and want to come to the game I've got tickets. Can't wait!

So Sock Summit is coming in August and for the first time ever Stick Chick Knits will have a booth! More precisely, my friend is getting a booth and sharing some space and cost with me. But hey, I'll be out there on the floor selling my own patterns.

In light of this the majority of my design time the last couple months has been spent on socks. Right now my pattern line up has things made from sock yarn, but only one pair of socks (and those are free). I've been fiendishly working on socks around the clock and have various patterns in various states of completion. My goal is to have at least 4 sock patterns for sale in time for the show.

Imagine my surprise when wandering around Ravelry, poking around in my friend's activity section, I see a pair of my socks, completed. Only, they didn't have my title and they weren't mine. Yep, someone designed the exact same socks I did (same ribbing, same st count, same gauge, same st pattern, also a heel flap/gusset, though without the eye of partridge mine has). I know there is nothing new under the sun, but it's a bit eerie when you see something this identical pop up.

If Rav didn't exist, I wouldn't have know these existed (they were published for free at an online UK site I'd never heard of). I would have published them (for pay funny enough) and gone about my way. But, thanks to the blessing/curse of Rav, I now know they exist and mine will be scrapped. Back to the drawing board for at least one sock.

Ugh. As if trying to buy a house and wrangle a monkey don't keep me busy enough. Is it time for Tahoe yet?

I'm back from Stitches and have recovered enough from a crazy weekend away to recap all the fun. Sadly my camera had no batteries, so there are no photos of the weekend to show off.

Thursday was supposed to be my day to relax. I was arriving in the early afternoon and had planned to get a pedicure and then wander down to the market preview. Sadly, Virgin had other plans for me. My flight wound up being delayed by two hours. On the bright side, I got the body of my next sweater design finished while waiting. On the not so bright side my pedicure was missed and I had to rush to get to Spinnity's house in time to get to the preview.

We had a lovely time at the preview, I spent my Christmas gift cert to Webs on some lovely wool/silk from Plymouth and had a great dinner at Tomatina after with Spinnity, Bill, Jo and her mom Joyce and 'S'. Thoroughly worn out I crashed back at Spinnity's house.

Friday was a day long design class with Edie Eckman. I wish I'd been able to take this class last year, when I had originally planned to, it would have helped me immensely. As it is, I still learned some new things and got the inside scoop on the publishing world. Friday night I was entertained by Bill's live music while enjoying Cajun food with more of my old friends; Bogie and Roger, Jeni and Becky and later in the evening Rebecca and Adam popped in.

Saturday was more fun at the show, lunch with some friends from my previous day job and off to the Bobbin's Nest after party. I missed dinner and was late to the party because I thought I'd lost my jewelry bag. Who knew it was in my purse all along? I heard the gang at the Thai place had fun. I would have rather been there than frantically looking for my earrings. But once I got to the party I had a blast. It was awesome seeing Erin, the hostess with the mostest, and Wendee again.

I'm also happy to say that the Stitches after party was the launch of my new pattern, Twist & Sprout! I've been busy doing the layout work on these and thanks to Spinnity some revisions on all my patterns. Now that these are finally launched I can take a breather before diving in to my fall designs.

Sunday was a brief trip to the show followed by an uneventful trip home. I was lucky enough to be on the same flight back as Wendee. It's always nice to be able to chat while waiting for the plane. There's another design in the works for her fabulous sock yarn, but that's all I can say for now!

The book and the broom...

I just spent 4 days in Portland at the TKGA/CGOA show working for Stitch Diva and I did, in fact, put down my knitting. I spent all weekend working like crazy running the booth while Jen taught classes. I learned a lot about the inner workings of a successful knit/crochet company and I learned how to Tunisian crochet. Yes folks, I can now wield a hook with a basic level of success.

Jen was carrying Tilli Tomas, so needless to say much yummy yarn was brought home with me. There's a new yarn they make called Elsie, which is quite lovely, but totally reminds me of Cabaret, so I was humming the song all weekend long.

When I wasn't working I was off touring the town with my cohorts, Spinnity and Bogie. A very good time was had by all. We've decided that Portland has awesome public transport and it's on our short list of places to live. As if I need to move again. But it felt great to be out and about doing again, and pushing my little business along too.

Oh yes, dear Grant got Stick Chick Knits up and running, huzzah! It's very basic for now, but at least it is lovely to look at. It's forward progress and I'll take. As I learned this weekend...

When I go I'm going like Elsie!

I was talking to a friend online yesterday and realized that though I'd agreed to make a pair of socks for her mom, I'd never finished them. So I went digging through my stash yesterday and found this.

It's a pattern I was making up as I went along. Of course, I took no notes. So now I have to decide whether to plow on to the end (just have the toe left) and try to decipher my own knitting as I make sock number 2 or if I should just frog the thing and start over.

Here's my take, I like the pattern, mostly. Hate what I did with the cuff and am worried it will be too big through the leg. It fits my leg, but it's meant for a woman that is very thin and wears a size 5 shoe.

So do I cut off the cuff and work another cuff with smaller needles going up? Will a smaller cuff be enough to make this fit a small woman? Ugh, so much for a quick finish on a lingering UFO.

Though I have a blog, the vast majority of my tech support is done by my husband. That said, my poor husband is overworked when it comes to matters of the interwebs. Despite this, and because he is such a wonderful guy, Grant agreed to help me launch Stick Chick Knits.

I'm creating Stick Chick Knits as a way to break off the working nature of this blog (the patterns I'm chugging away on and planning on publishing) from the personal nature (pics of Zig and my travels and other ramblings). I was happy to let scknits (yes, it's a nod to both my Knittyboard name and my alma mater, yay) languish in the background for quite a while as I tinkered with my patterns. But now things are picking up speed and I really wanted to get something out there. So today I made interwebs! I borrowed some code Grant wrote, adapted it to my needs, created an image (bonus points to anyone that can name the yarn, including colorway, used), figured out how to use ftp through the run command line in Windows and put the dang thing up.

So now there is a tantalizing little image telling you Stick Chick Knits is on its way to becoming a real live website! It's not much, I know. But I kind of feel like this is the interwebs equivalent of that first scarf that actually turned out right. It might not be the perfect yarn and the stitch pattern might be basic, but it doesn't unravel and it can be recognized as a scarf. So go see my interwebs scarf!

Our good friend Chris excitedly emailed me the other day that his sister was due to have her baby girl very soon and he couldn't wait to be an uncle. So, of course, I asked him what her favorite color is and busted out the needles and the yarn as every baby deserves to have a hand knit hat to keep them warm.

I was thrilled to hear back from him today that his sis loved the hat and her little girl was happily wearing it at just three days old! He was even so sweet as to email me a picture of her wearing it. Isn't she darling? Almost makes me want to have another baby.

I've got to say, it absolutely warms my heart to see the things I make for little ones being used. It also reminds me that I should send thank you pictures along with the notes for all the folks that made Zig gifts. I think that may be what I love the most about knitting - the FOs are like little hugs. A sweet reminder that someone took some time to make you something.

I enjoyed making that little green hat so much that I decided to whip up a second one in blue so I could write up the pattern. I think I shall call it the Teeny Cabled Beanie. Here's a shot of it I took at lunch. Despite being outside, it's not the best representation of the color.

Once the hat was bound off I did some frogging on the Fair Isle scarf, I missed the last row of the snowflake pattern on one side of the scarf. So I took the opportunity to weave in the starting ends before continuing on with the scarf. Here's a shot of the inside of the scarf, kind of cool in its own way.

Lastly I'll leave you with a sneak peak of a big project I'm finishing up. I've got ends to weave in then it's time for the big photo shoot this weekend. After that the object goes to The Bobbin's Nest Studio and the photos go to the publisher (hopefully to be published online). If not, watch this space as I'll just publish the dang thing myself.