Rockabilly Soft, from Hill Country Weavers

Well, well, well. You may have heard there's a drought on these days here in Texas... Both our lawn and this blog have dried to a crisp in the face of severe heat and a really rough time at work.

On the upside, I'm learning all sort of things about HTML at work, including better and more nutritious ways to create line breaks and boldface type!

I do have some exciting news to share. Hill Country Weavers has now released my latest pattern: Rockabilly Soft.

Let me say something about the yarn called for in the pattern, Road to China Light from the Fibre Company: holy snot, that stuff is amazing! And did you know it has a little bit of camel mixed in? Soft, soft, soft!

It made working those colorwork sections a dream. And, by the way, take a peak at the pictures of the Western-style piping at the shoulders: I'm not telling you how I did it (you'll have to buy the pattern, natch), but I feel pretty dang smart right there. I even attended a design workshop with Shannon Okey at HCW in the spring, when I got to show off how I did it - and there was trigonometry and everything.

In the demonstration. Not the knitting. (Calculator not required.)

Anywho, I hope knitters will enjoy this pattern. It's funky and luxurious, all in one!

Growing Things

This spring, I have tried my hand at some gardening, of various sorts.

In the backyard, we have/had onions, potato plants, a strawberry plant, rosemary, and tomatoes. Mostly, my crop has been a shining example of laughable and puny, although so far everything has proved edible.

I have learned that this is the difference between caged tomatoes (big) and staked (small):



Same variety of plant, even.

I have also learned that Central Texas soil is really tough to work with. I can grow better things out of that nasty poly fiber-fill stuff than I can from the clay-heavy crud that's in our backyard:



Pattern: Lucky Bamboo by June Gilbank
Mods: I made the stalks shorter; my yarn choices (scraps) meant that the stalks were turning out relatively bigger than the pot and sand.

Lace, Intarsia, and Stamina

That's what this required:



No more complaining from me about how rough this sweater treated me, in-utero. And you know what? I think it looks great on. Wore it for a whole day yesterday, and it didn't stretch out, even.

Oh - and it's unblocked. The pattern doesn't specify, but I'm content to let it stay that way. And I'm not sorry.

Pattern: #03 Multi-Pattern Top by Gabrielle Hammill from Vogue Knitting, Spring/Summer 2006.
Yarn: Lion Brand Microspun, and hey, don't judge me. It's what the pattern called for and it's inexpensive. It's also splitty and unfriendly to the hands, plus the acrylic content isn't my fav, but I must have bought it over two years ago for this pattern.
Needles: Size 4. I don't often go down a needle size, much less two, but judging from other FOs, that's common for this pattern.
Mods: None, really. I did skip a few rows on the short-row collar, but it's not hugely dramatic.

Ewan McGregor Cares About My Yarn

So there's this sweater I've been hammering away at for the better part of a year. It's the Multi-Pattern Top from an older issue of Vogue Knitting.

A few months ago:

Cute pattern, working up like a dream - if that dream involves discovering a city of gold after slogging through fever-haunted jungles with a bad case of malaria and cramped fingers.

Bad metaphor?

Okay. The pattern did not list which of the four lace patterns you use for measuring gauge, so I eventually went to the smallest needle size I could manage with that yarn. (Seems to be working okay.) There are several errata in the chart, which Vogue has listed on the website. I've already run out of yarn once, and now that I'm in the final stretch, I am almost coming up short again. Again!

Strangely, every time I pick it up to work on it, with only a handful of rows left on the collar, I hear in my mind the soundtrack from Moulin Rouge, right at that point where Christian (Ewan McGregor) decides to heck with it all, he's going back to the Moulin Rouge one... last... TIME.

Teaser Pic: Rockabilly Knits

New design in the pipeline, and I'm not allowed to give pictures yet - but here's a teaser shot:

As I said in my last post, Latvian braid makes you feel like a stud.

Another hint: This sweater really needs some fiddle music to make it complete.

I can't wait to show off the whole thing! Hill Country Weavers will start the photo shoots soon.

J'existe!

I do exist, it's true.

New skills recently acquired:

(1) Helical knitting:



Grumperina's tutorial says it all. It's easy and it makes you feel like a stud. Also reasonably in style at present.

(2) Latvian braid:



See the dark blue bits? That's a Latvian braid. I learned from the instructions in the Victorian Christmas Stocking pattern (such a lovely pattern), but the Ohdessa Knits tutorial looks pretty good. Plus she's got these bright pink manicured nails.

3. I can't knit dishcloths to save my life.

Seriously. I can do some pretty nifty stuff, knitting-wise, but the simplest of projects leaves me flummoxed. In fact, I have a Rav friend who is similarly challenged - she even designed this remarkable shawl pattern - and so of course I've challenged her to a duel of ugly dishcloths. We've each agreed to make two dishcloths by the end of March to demonstrate our inability to make a simple square. I've got one down, and I'd show it to you, but (a) you don't need to vomit on your keyboard, and (b) there's going to be a voting round, and we've agree to keep the dishcloths more or less under wraps until the time comes.

But seriously: wait for it. These are gonna be hilarious.

Yarn Ho 4 Life

One of the many reasons to love Hill Country Weavers is the owner, Suzanne. In an email to the SHELTER design group today, she said (and I quote with permission), "I have had 30 years of being a Yarn Ho... It is hard to shut it off."

Suzanne has been instrumental in bringing the SHELTER design project to life, and it looks like there will be more design projects from the same group of lovely Austin designers, among whom I'm privileged and a bit astonished to find myself counted. I'm going to sleep every night with color schemes and pattern ideas in my head.

For now, check out Brooklyn Tweed's blog post from today and his mention of the design project. It's exciting to see our work featured so elegantly.

In other news, I have also learned a new skill: entrelac!

Generally, I don't like to complain about tech issues in my blog, because that seems discourteous to the readers. I should have just figured it out, y'know? Well, 30 minutes later and I can't understand why this picture is showing up sideways:

The other shot seems okay...

But then I realized. It's entrelac: duh. The internet magically understands that entrelac goes first one direction, then another. It's just helping me stay on message!

It's a long story why the Michael Chabon book appears in the image. Just know that it is a positively superb book full of intrigue and imagination, and you should all read it right away, right after you visit Brooklyn Tweed's blog.