Tidewater Twist

It’s summer, and that means new summer wear! I’m so excited to introduce you to my new sleeveless top, Tidewater Twist!

Whether you’re feeling a bit twisted up about summer or just trying to stay cool, this is the pattern for you! This lightweight tank feels extra cool and breezy in a soft cotton blend, while maintaining coverage in all the right places.

A cable twists up one side of the front to add interest and bring to mind the waves of your favorite beach. Which, by the way, is a great place to wear it!

Tidewater Twist is available on Ravelry, Payhip, and LoveCrafts. Be sure to check it out today!

Mountain Air

I’m so happy to share a cool breeze with you on this hot August day! My new pattern Mountain Air is exactly the sort of light, airy tunic you need on a hot summer day.

This charming a-line tunic features a few creative, highly-personalized shaping options to insure the perfect fit for every body.

Mountain Air is worked with a provisional cast-on from the bust up, and then from the bust down. Its soft, floating lines pair well with a light skirt, or with jeans for a nice transitional piece between seasons.

Fire on the Mountain

I’m excited to introduce you to another shawl pattern this summer, Fire on the Mountain!

This shawl was specifically designed to show off Abstract Fiber’s newly released Super Sock+ colorway, Mountain Sunshine.

The lightweight lace is perfect for keeping the mountain breeze off your shoulders. The relatively simple patterns make an easy summer project for the experienced lace knitter, and are very manageable for those newer to lace as well.

If you’re looking for some great vacation knitting ahead of your next mountain adventure, this is the pattern for you!

Water’s Edge

I’m so thrilled to introduce my latest summer knit, Water’s Edge.

This light, elegant shawl was created specifically to show off Inner Yarn Zen’s newest Duality colorway, Beachcomber, and it certainly looks at home on the shoreline!

The simple, airy seafoam body knits up surprisingly fast, and the striking scalloped edging is positively loaded with sparkle thanks to roughly 1700 glass beads!

If you have a special occasion coming up or are just looking for an extra dose of glitter in your life, this is the pattern for you!

Road Trip Socks

Wow, it’s been a while since I posted here! I am fresh back from a road trip to New Orleans, and I have a new pattern for you! It’s summer in the northern hemisphere and for many of us that means road trips. I created this pair of Road Trip Socks on my own road trip and was sufficiently struck by how perfect for travel it is that I decided to share it!

These quick and easy cabled socks are wonderfully portable and not too warm in your hands, making them perfect for that summer road trip! The pattern is easily memorized, and uses a maximum of about 450 yards of yarn – easy packing!

Because the cables are only two stitches wide and repeat frequently, they’re also perfect for learning to cable without a needle, so you can leave one more piece of equipment at home! Instructions for no-needle cabling, if needed, are linked in the pattern and also available on this blog. If you’re doing a traveling this summer, I hope you’ll take Road Trip Socks along for the ride!

Fall is Coming

There are rain clouds gathering outside, promising to bring an end to what is likely the last 90+ degree day of the calendar year. It’s been stunningly dry here the last couple weeks, so the garden and I are looking forward to a good dousing. The break in the heat should make me feel a bit less weird about working on this beauty too:

Although 85 really still isn’t sweater weather (at least outdoors), at least the fact that it’s cooler should make it feel a little more fall-like, right? I’m not especially dying for an end to summer, but since school is back in session and the stores are full of Halloween candy, I wouldn’t be too upset by the arrival of fall either. At least the rate of pretty on my Ravelry feed should pick up!

Cotton Queen

I am slowly slogging through the rewriting of my design for the dratted multi-yarn,

but my heart just isn’t in it at the moment. The project is working up nicely; I’m just tired of working on it. Luckily, the yarn support I mentioned in previous posts has arrived! Turns out it had an excellent reason for being delayed, but now it is here and smooshy and lovely and a perfectly timed dose of “new” to consume all of my attention.

It occurs to me that both of these projects are made of cotton yarns, and thank goodness for that because there are no days in the local forecast with highs below 90. I love summer anyway, but it’s a little easier to love with weather-appropriate yarns.

Vacation Knitting

Last week I promised a post on the project I took along to Montreal, so here goes. Since the yarn support I’m waiting on didn’t make it here before I left town, I started a new, somewhat experimental design with some variegated cotton I had laying around. Variegated yarns are always a little dicey to play around with – so many things can wind up looking wonky.

But, I had hopes! So I brought along the full pack of yarn and a couple different needles and other supplies to allow for mind changing as I worked. Then I spent about half of the drive up and back (about 11 hours each way) and lots of time in Montreal, plus all of last week, working on…this:

Sometimes designing hurts.

Montreal

Hubby and I are back from a week in Montreal, and very grateful to my little sis for again house- and pet-sitting! Ready for a few highlights? It’s photo-heavy!

First off, the hotel we stayed in had such amazing views we almost didn’t want to leave it! From one side of the impressively affordable suite, we could see Vieux Montreal, the St. Lawrence River, and Habitat 67. From the other side we could see a good chunk of downtown and Mont Royal. It was pretty stunning.

Even though we deliberately got a room with a kitchenette so we could take advantage of Montreal’s famous farmers’ markets and bagels, we had a surprisingly hard time finding any! We did manage to find a few local treats to sample though!

We spent plenty of time touring around Vieux Montreal’s beautiful old buildings and museums (And ice cream shops. So many ice cream shops.)

 

And spent a day exploring Mont Royal too.

Of course, being hockey fans (if not especially Habs fans) we had to go to Centre Bell. We chose to do that on the only day it rained, because the so-called underground city meant we could walk there without ever actually going outside. Pretty amazing.

All in all an excellent week, with plenty of built-in knitting time as well! More on that later!

Updates

So I suppose ya’ll are wondering where I’ve been lately, huh? Well, the biggest part of that answer is…work. Not the fun designing kind, but the (usually also fun, but currently exhausting) kind that pays the bills. I won’t bore you with the details. Instead, here are some more exciting things that have been keeping me busy.

The garden is in full swing, with newly ripe strawberries every day, and plenty of blossoms on the blackberries and peppers. My tomatoes always seem a bit behind the rest of the garden, unfortunately. Last night we had some seriously unseasonable cold (although not frost, thank jeebus) and I had to get quite creative covering the more tender plants, most of which have been in the ground a good two weeks already.

Here also is a peek at an upcoming shawl design I’ve been working on. It’s deliberately smooshed and low quality, but you can probably get a good idea of just how lacy it is. It’s quite an involved little sampler of a project. I’ve also been back and forth a lot lately with the publisher and tech editor of that pattern collection I worked on all last summer and fall. These sort of things take an obscene amount of time compared to self-publishing, but it’s in the final stages now!

Now that test-prep is pretty much done with and it’s really just full on test-mode for the rest of the school year, I’m not bringing home quite as much work and am thinking again about KALs. There hasn’t been much input in the polls thread, so if you’d like to participate in a Feel Good KAL, please chime in! Likewise, if you’re interested in donating a prize I’d love to hear from you too. I have a few possibilities in mind already, but more is never a bad thing!