Commission to Land

I've just been reading the Darkness article in this month's Q (hilarious if you like tales of rockstar excess, and Lowestoft), hence the awful blog post title.

But I am really pleased and excited - I've had my 2nd magazine commission! After all the trauma of the last one , it's great to have another one accepted. This time the magazine in question is Knit Now, a lovely magazine which launched last year and focuses on accessories and smaller projects. I won't give any details of what it will be yet - it's for issue 18, which won't be out until Jan/Feb.

I wasn't convinced that the yarn I knitted the swatch in was the right yarn for the project, so I also have an excuse to head out to some yarn shops to see if I can find the right one. The yarn I did the swatch in was Louisa Harding Grace, which is a fabulous silk/merino blend, but I think the final fabric needs to be a bit less firm - a bit drapier, in other words. Maybe some bamboo, cashmere or alpaca content would achieve this. It also needs to come in a dark terracotta or brick red.

A brief hiatus between Olympics, cricket and paralympics...

Means that the mangrove pattern shawl is finished and blocking; the pattern should be available sometime next week. It's a lot simpler than my original concept (which involved trying to knit mangrove flowers, which proved impossible to reproduce) but I've created a slightly frilled edge using yarnovers which makes it quite pretty despite the simplicity, I think.

Designing + Olympics = no designing...

While the Olympics is providing continual inspiration in every way possible it is just TOO EXCITING to make it possible to concentrate on designing anything...

My Mangrove Forest Shawl and Tobago cross over top have both reached the "complicated bit"... which I'm afraid means they've been sidelined while I automaton-like knit in-the-round stocking stitch on the body of the lovely Challow from wonderful Fyberspates.

Once the closing ceremony's over hopefully both patterns will accelerate towards completion!

Am off to the Dressage tomorrow - so exciting - team GB currently winning both team and individual and looking to build on the fantastic success in the showjumping today. Don't want to risk bringing my knitting - even the baby birch DPNs that don't cause trouble on the plane - partly due to security and partly due to the fact that I'll be finishing the day at Olympia for the Great British Beer festival.  And I was at the Athletics on Saturday morning, which involved far too much screaming & flag-waving even for stocking stitch.

Two days at Lord's next week should be a more productive sport & knitting combo!

A good day to be British...

Wasn't the Olympic opening ceremony fantastic? It even tops my previous favourite-ever Olympic ceremony (Sydney closing - prawns on bikes & every classic Aussie cliche you can imagine). As a knitter it was obviously good to see great British sheep involved.

I've recently joined Pinterest and have set up a Pattern Inspiration board for anything that my brain thinks might one day make a knitting pattern - lots of Olympic related ideas sloshing around. Feeling rather ahead of the new British cycling-obsessed curve after having started my pattern designing career with Pendleton and Cavendish. But what to do with Bradley Wiggins? Surely the man deserves celebrating with a knitting pattern.

Have sold a few patterns for Bartolome, earning the Galapagos Conservation Trust a grand total of £2.50 so far. I'll keep this blog updated with any more money I manage to raise. The second Queen of Cups pattern is advancing quite well & I think I will also put that up for sale rather than free download, and am considering appropriate charities to get a proportion of Queen of Cups proceeds.

Galapagos knits

We went on holiday to the Galapagos earlier this year, and as well as having a wonderful holiday I came back with lots of ideas for knitting patterns based on the animals and natural phenomena we saw.

I was inspired to start writing some of these up when I got the idea to sell the patterns and give a proportion of the sale costs  to the Galapagos Conservation Trust.

One of the most amazing places we saw was the island of Santiago where there is a huge expanse of swirling lava fields - like this:

So, I've been working out how to get something of a similar effect with knitting, perhaps using short row shaping. The first result of this is the Bartolome cowl, which isn't quite the full thing but uses the basic short row shaping technique to make swirly shapes. The next step will be to combine with a more textured knitting design to get a little closer to the lava.

I'm also looking at a mangrove shawl and of course some tortoise themed knits!

The cowl is available for £1 on Ravelry. 50p from each sale goes to the Galapagos Conservation Trust (and 24p to Paypal less charitably). I'm quite excited to have made my massive 4 sales so far, which is £2 for the Galapagos and £1.04 for me...

The Knitter's Curse...

I love a retro comedy song, and here's one about knitting!!!

The Knitter's Curse by The Savoy Ballroom

Well... as the Scissor Sisters would say... Ta-Daa!!

It seems I am finally a published author of a real knitting pattern in a real magazine ON PAPER and in WH Smiths and everything!!!! (I am too old to regard web publishing as real publishing.. with the greatest of respect to all the proper bloggers out there).

My Cecily Mitts are in Yarnwise issue 50. This is the magazine previously known as Knit and before that as Yarn Forward. It's been a bit of a saga as the magazine went into liquidation about 2 weeks after I sent in my pattern - I had some notion that this might be on the cards by then but had agreed the contract, and got terribly excited, before I realised how seriously wrong things were. So my parade has been well and truly rained on in this respect up until now.

However, the mag has now been bought by new publishers, totally unrelated to the old ones, and there's a great new team in place (well, the editor actually used to edit it a while ago, before the last owners got into "serious difficulty".... google rock and purl if you want the whole story...)

These are they. I haven't actually seen the mag yet but there should be proper lovely professional photography instead of my photo of my own moley arm...

You can see my pattern and all the other patterns in the new issue on Ravelry

There will also be a full update very soon on my "Queen of Cups" bra size pattern range... first pattern is now available & I'm in the planning stages for the second.