Other people's sweaters

I spent the weekend on a whirlwind trip to western Massachusetts for my 20th undergraduate reunion. When packing for the trip, I ran into that ever-present knitter's question:

How many projects do I need?

The answer to which is, of course: as many as you can pack and still have room for clean underwear. For my three day trip, I took four projects. Two unfinished and two to cast on in case I found myself shockingly without anything on the needles.

The first of my unfinished projects, a shawl for Boo's Year 2 teacher, I finished sometime during my viewing of "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug". Since my other unfinished project was in my checked baggage, I was forced to cast on something new. Woe is me...I had packed a couple of balls of this lovely yarn,

Firenze fingering in a gorgeous blood red...

so I cast on for Veera Valimaki's Juniper, which is running as an Unwind Brighton KAL. It is such a pleasure to knit someone else's pattern, I can't even...this is a good sign that maybe I've been doing a bit too much on the design side of things recently, although I suspect that most designers don't get to knit other people's stuff. In any event, I cast on in the plane, and have made some progress.

Juniper in progress with funky Instagram filter to make color nutty

I'm enjoying it, although I keep screwing up the teeny tiny cable crosses along the shoulder line. You would think that I would be able to count to four. Apparently you would be wrong. Very, very wrong...

I'm dubious that this will actually be finished by the end of the month (see above mention of presents for teachers!), but I am having fun working on a project that doesn't require that I do any math. Or rather, any math beyond counting to four...

Rhaeadr

The designing process is a funny thing. At least it is for me... Sometimes I get a glimpse of a stitch pattern, or see an intriguing piece of a building that I want to translate into knitted fabric. Sometimes it's something as simple as a shape that makes me spend countless moments daydreaming about how that little piece might work in a larger garment, and puzzling out how to get there.

But sometimes, the image of the finished piece appears fully formed in my head, something akin to Athena's birth from Zeus's forehead. Those are the designs that scream at me until I get them on the needles and out of my brain space. Rhaeadr is one of those screamers, and it started from one simple comment at the October Plug and Play Pembrokeshire retreat a couple of years ago. A comment about the rarity of top-down, textured shawls in the Ravelry pattern database.

From that moment I knew I had to design such a shawl: a shawl that started at the nape of the neck and flowed down the back and over the shoulders, covered with sinuous cables that looked like sunlight dancing off the ripples on the surface of a stream as it flows on its merry way. Those cables would give way to cascading sheets of ribbing, ribbing that evokes the rush of water cascading over the edge of a cataract, hurtling down through space until it explodes in a wild tangle of mist and spray and water droplets flying every which way.

In celebration of the release of this pattern, and the fact that I'm heading off to the US this weekend for my 20th (!!!) college reunion, I'm going to offer 10% off all of my patterns through midnight, Sunday 15th June. And since I'll be in the States, we'll make it midnight EST. Just enter the coupon code "RHAEADR-FF2014" in the appropriate space when you check out, and the 10% will be automatically deducted.

Thanks to SweetGeorgia Yarns for yarn support, and Allison Thistlewood for photography. The photos were taken at Thames Barrier Park and the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, both in East London.

We have a winner!

And that winner is sulander - hooray! I'll be in touch via your contact info and we can sort out getting you the yarn/beads AND the pattern.

Thanks to everyone for playing along!

Welcome to the new site!

So....I've been thinking about shifting to my own site for quite a while now, so I could consolidate my designing with the newly added tech editing, and just make every thing look a bit better. Here it is!

Please --- if you find any mistakes, or things that are unclear, or any issues you want to mention, don't hesitate to get in touch. Either through a comment on this post, or via email (porpoiseknits AT gmail DOT com), Ravelry (porpoise) or Twitter (@porpoisefur). I'm looking forward to sharing all the upcoming wooly adventures with you on a fresh new site!

Ja'ali Stole

When I was seven, my parents moved my brother and I from Deepest, Darkest Cleveland, OH to New Delhi, India. My dad had a Fullbright scholarship, so we spent a year in a far off and very different land. More then thirty years later, I went back for the first time, with my own seven year old (plus her younger sister). In some ways it had changed completely, but in others, it was just as I remembered it: the light was the same, the sounds of the birds in the early morning, the cows wandering through the city streets, and monkeys sitting on fences, waiting for the opportunity to snatch what ever they could right out of your hands.

We went and saw all sorts of sights in the Golden Triangle, and it was an incredible source of inspiration for my designing. The first design that came out of that trip was the Delhi Beanie, with a border inspired by a series of tombs in Delhi. The second one is in Issue 35 of Knit Now - the Ja'ali Stole.

Photo credit Dan Walmsley for Practical Publishing

This pattern grew directly out of my trip to India: one of the almost ubiquitous features of the numerous palaces and tombs that we visited were pierced stone structures called ja'ali. These were basically the Moghul version of window curtains, and served to let in light and air while making it very difficult for anyone outside to see inside.

This picture makes it pretty clear where the stitch pattern came from! I swatched in a number of different yarns, but finally settled on a mohair blend, in two colors to emphasis the eyelets and the solid hexagons.

The perfect finishing touch? A beaded fringe.

The finished stole is a lovely, lightweight wrap that is perfect for summer evenings, or days when you need a bit of extra warmth.

This issue of Knit Now is on sale starting today, Thursday, 29th May, in craft stores, newsagents and supermarkets across the UK. Outside the UK, you can get a paper copy from http://www.moremags.com/knitting/knit-now, or a digital edition from http://www.moremags.com/digital-editions/all-devices/knit-now. You can also get it digitally via Apple Newsstand. 

As a little celebration of the publication of this pattern, I'm going to give away the yarn and beads needed to knit the stole - that includes 5 balls of Wendy Air (70% mohair/30% nylon) in two colors, and approximately 75 faceted glass beads for the fringe. Please leave a comment on this post between now and midnight BST, on Sunday, 8th June, telling me which pattern is your favorite from Knit Now Issue 35*. I'll use a random number generator to pick one lucky winner. Good luck!

* Note: saying that this is your favorite pattern does not increase your chances of winning ;-).