The cold weather and our upcoming mid-winter break trip to Alaska have reminded me of the knitter’s curse – the lack of coordinating/matching head-and-handwear.  A few years ago I traded with a friend – I knit her a pair of socks, and she knit me a hat/scarf/mittens.

The socks were knit out of Three Irish Girls Beckon Merino in the lovely Elsbeth colorway – which has sadly since been discontinued – and I am reminded of how much I enjoyed knitting with yarn that reminded me of strawberry ice cream with hot fudge sauce.

(pattern: Carinish Socks)

I still have the hat/mittens/scarf set, knit in Three Irish Girls Carys BFL in Pewter Amethyst and Smoky Quartz, and I’ve knit fingerless mitts to go with out of Three Irish Girls Finley Fingering in Pewter Amethyst, but none of my other cold-weather gear matches in any way. I think I’d better get working on that!!

(pattern: Porphyria)

What does YOUR cold-weather gear look like? Do you coordinate? Match? Clash terribly?

First thing I have learned is that just because I think that I should have enough yarn doesn’t mean that I do. I assumed that since I had enough yarn to knit Laughing Miss Dashwood (this was the yarn that I used for the first version, which was too big.)  I figured that there would be enough to do Murcott, even though it uses more yarn. Nope.

The second thing that I have learned is that I should not ignore the nagging feeling that something isn’t right. I read through the whole pattern, several times, and it seemed pretty straightforward. But the shaping on the right front piece has an error in it, just a small matter of reversing 2 sentences which actually has a big effect on the knitting. If I had listened to the nagging feeling, I wouldn’t have knit almost the whole right front piece even though it has a glaring mistake in it. I think that if I had worked the pattern in the order written, I wouldn’t have noticed, because I would have made both pieces the same. I started with the right one in case I needed to get more yarn, because I figured it would be better to use the new yarn for the layer that isn’t seen as much in case it didn’t match. Another lesson here is that when I am tech editing I should be extra sure that the instructions are right, but also that they are in the right order. (Obviously I didn’t tech edit this pattern, I am just holding on to this lesson for the future.)

The fourth thing that I learned is that I really like the style of instructions used for this pattern. It’s very clear, but doesn’t hold your hand. I like that. I tend to write patterns that have more information rather than less, but I like to knit from patterns that give you what you need and let you decide the other stuff.

So now I need to decide what to do. I don’t have enough yarn, and I am not sure which instruction is correct for the front pieces. I might frog and make up a different front that will not overlap, so will use less yarn. But I am not sure that scrapping the pattern and making up my own thing is really in keeping with my plan, so I might just set it aside for now and decide after I make something else.  Please don’t take this post as a slam on the pattern, it really is lovely and well written and believe me when I say that I know that mistakes can still appear in patterns no matter how hard you work to prevent them. If I can figure out how it is supposed to be, I will make this pattern again. Maybe with different yarn though, so I can be sure that I have enough. This poor yarn keeps getting its hopes up about being worn and being let down.

The Fulfillment bag is still missing, so I cannot just photograph the orginal sample. I am having it reknit, but it is not ready yet. Temporary pictures are up on Ravelry that I took while I was working on it, but they were never meant to be seen in public. Please, be nice about it. ;)

The first 2 people to pm me on Ravelry will get both of the patterns for free.

Edited: Wow, that was fast! The free copies have been given out. :)

I have been getting lots of pm’s on Ravelry asking about my patterns that are no longer available through the Sanguine Gryphon. I wish I knew what to tell you, but unfortunately I haven’t heard anything from them in quite some time. I do know that the patterns are not listed on their site, and haven’t been since Dec 23rd, and I do know that at some point I will get my rights back to publish them on my own, but I do not yet know when that will be. I am planning a photoshoot this weekend of A Lady’s Bumbershoot since new pictures are in order, and will work on reformating the pattern next week. I will reformat Fulfillment at the same time, but will not be doing a photoshoot myself since the sample is still MIA. Tesia, the wonderful friend that she is, is knitting parts of the bag for photography, so I will have unembellished shots on the pattern page on Rav and in the pattern for the first while. So I guess that the official answer is

Thank you for your interest in my designs. I will do my best to have them available as soon as possible. Check back here for updates.

And now, a plan. I have realized that I do not know very much about sweaters. There are so many ways to make them, and I really haven’t even dipped my toe in that pool. My plan is to knit as many sweaters as I can in the upcoming months. It’s not really a new years resolution since I have already started. Yesterday I cast on for  Murcott by Jen Arnall-Culliford, using Three Irish Girls Felicity in the Mirth colourway. I will get to practice seaming, pleats, folded hems and patience with purled wrong side rows. I am just partway through the back piece for now, but it’s sure pretty.

I’m stuck in the grading doldrums and just posted to Twitter with the hashtag #ratherbeknitting.  Then I got the bright idea to look at the hashtag to see if anyone else had used it. I was kind of sad to discover that nobody else has (at least not in recent times).

So I decided to take a minute or two out of grading to post this entry and see if I can get more people using it!  What are you stuck doing when you’d rather be knitting? Tweet about it with the hashtag #ratherbeknitting and then we will all know!  ;)

My school district, in its infinite wisdom, has decided our last day of school for this calendar year will be on December 16th. We return January 3rd, after two weeks and one day off. Exciting, no?

Unfortunately, I’ll only be spending one of those weeks at home. The other week will be spent enjoying the holiday with my husband and inlaws in…. Hawaii!  I’m pretty excited about this. Think of all of the knitting I will get done on the airplane, on the beach and when we’re relaxing!

Before then, however, I’ve got heaps of things to get done.

Design submissions, grading unit tests and quizzes (why oh why did I decide we needed to quiz today? I haven’t finished last week’s unit tests yet!), preparing lessons, getting ahead for January… oh, and Christmas gift planning and shopping.

Wish me luck!

Email us for more information.

TrishaDOTtaatdesigns@gmailDOTcom
AbiliciousDOTdesigns@gmailDOTcom

Instead of two taller bookcases we now have three of these shorter bookcases. It’s hard to tell that they are shorter in this picture, you will just have to trust me on that. Due to the need to match book height to shelf height and my insistence that the shelves be at the same height on all three bookcases, my knitting books are now split across two shelves, and my knitting bins between two other shelves, but the end result is not unpleasing.  In this photo you can see one of our lovely new (purchased on sale with free shipping from Target.com) bookcases. The bottom shelf houses some scrapbooks my “knitting notions” bin and my “random papers” file along with my sock blockers (purchased from Twisted at Sock Summit 2009). The middle shelf has my yarn-to-use-soonly (cream) and yarn-to-destash (brown) bins along with my Knitpicks binders and my shorter knitting books. The top shelf has my husband’s and my old yearbooks, some miscellaneous tall nonfiction books and then my taller knitting books and magazines.

This arrangement is somewhat pleasing to me, although it kind of bothers me that my knitting books aren’t all side by side anymore, nor are they sorted by an easy-to-identify theme as they were before.

In my mind, the obvious solution to this is to buy more books. So – hit me with your best suggestions! I mentioned two new books in a recent post, but I must admit that my collection is kind of skimpy in general. I lean toward “how-to” and stitch collections versus pattern collections, but am open to anything really.  Available from Barnes & Noble or Amazon preferred.

Everyone who has commented but not won was put into today’s draw. And the winner is Amber! Yay!! I will send you your coupon code shortly.

Thanks everyone for your comments and compliments.

Trisha