(such as residents of Pittsburgh, Detroit and all the other delightful cities a reasonable drive from Cleveland)
FYI: Annie Modesitt is teaching three classes at our shop this month. Worth the drive, believe me. 2 combination knitting classes and one for her (very cool) universal mitered bag (also called domino knitting). Sign up soon, because her classes tend to sell out quickly.
And, as per usual, I’m going to point you to last year’s post for more, including trackbacks and what people had to say about last year, as well as the NaKniSweMo category here.
How it works with NaNoWriMo: write a 50,000-word novel in a month. As they said on previous versions of that page: “This is not as scary as it sounds.”
How it works with NaKniSweMo: knit a 50,000-stitch sweater in a month. If you divide your chosen sweater pattern’s rows or rounds by 30, you’ll have an idea of how many rows you need to knit each day to make it. Yes, the stitch count thing is crazy, but I think I can say with confidence that most sweaters out there are at least that, or more.
NaKniSweMo also has a Ravelry group! (Here’s the thread for this year). But no worries if you’re still on the Rav waitlist — post a comment here and say you’re taking part. If you’re super-proud of your FO, send me a photo and I’ll post it in December!
This year, time and sanity permitting, I’m going to put together an “official” NaKniSweMo pattern (if you find yourself in the — frankly, unimaginable — position of not having anything to knit) to raise funds for our local animal shelter. Anything in particular you’d like to see? Or should it be quick-and-dirty/can-knit-in-your-sleep easy?
…as I change the look of knitgrrl.com and add some new features. If you run into anything that looks funny in your browser or doesn’t render properly for you, please leave a comment and let me know! Thanks!
Not since June Oshiro’s DNA scarf have I seen such a fantastic mesh of art and science, barring, of course, the various amazing knitted brains, dissected rats, etc. Genome quilts! Artist Beverly St. Clair has developed a pictographic means of encoding genetic information in quilt designs.
Have you seen what’s coming out in November? Oh mama. The spinning book of all spinning books. I cannot wait!
What a week. Can I just say that spending multiple days in the sun scraping and painting one’s garage is decidedly not what I consider a holiday weekend? At least this weekend will be fun, I’m teaching a dye workshop at Stitch Cleveland and dyeing some other things for an upcoming magazine article. Also, I need to pull out my sketchbook, I had some really vivid dreams about color and Russian-inspired motifs last night, plus parrots (I blame the Frida Kahlo portrait-with-parrots on my fridge for that one).
Funnier still, we were doing a crochet photoshoot at this Russian-but-not-really dacha. It looked like a cross between proper Russian architecture and overwrought Victorian, it was so odd. Also, most of the colors resembled the paint chips I was considering for the wood chairs on our deck. So, if you ever wonder where my design ideas come from, “in a dream” sounds funny but is a bit true!
If you consider my dreams some sort of color oracle, we had blue green (a muted one, similar to the Martha Stewart paint color Blue Hosta), bright yellow with a tinge of green to it, cream, blueish but bright lipstick red and some really deep reddish purple in there. Note this for future reference in case the palette shows up in one of my designs… Maybe I got the Russian thing stuck in my head when Tamas declared one of my new test hat designs to be “really Soviet looking”? Sigh.
Remember my earlier Kindlegrrl post? Amazon sent me a linky for a $100 off promo they’re doing (oh sure, NOW you send it, Amazon), so click here if you want more details. Then you’ll be ready when my new Kindle patterns are released!
As crazy as it sounds, I think the time has come to design some cute haramaki for handknitters. Will they be as popular as a shrug? Maybe not. But useful? Oh yes. I’d wear one under a cardigan when it’s really cold out — would you?
Barring that, I want the plant, matrioshka and octopus family ones from that site…they’d be really cute under a croppy t-shirt.
(That’d be me & Franklin, who seems to be in a similar hat-boat to me these days)
You think I am kidding? Here are five variations of the current pattern in progress. There is another one on the needles. I am debating between “best hat wins” and the other, more complex possibility that is “aww, put most of ‘em in, people can pick which one they like best.” The more-work variant is the current fave.
Yes, I know you can’t see all the details, that’s by design for the moment. Suffice to say it is felty, and it is addictive and I am branching out into different yarns to see what it’ll do, not to mention creating a cocktail hat variant. COCKTAIL HAT. Seriously. I’ve lost it. Who even wears cocktail hats these days? But I can’t help myself.
Also, speaking of Franklin, his translation of cat-speak is probably the most accurate one I have ever read. Here’s a snippet:
Hi! Whatcha doing? Are you drawing? Is that drawing? Let me see. Cool. Is that a sheep? Are you drawing sheep again? Move over so I can see. I like your pencil. You know what’s fun? When we draw something together. Here, I’ll help you. Hey! You know what else is fun? Drawing cats. You should draw cats. I’ll be your model. Here. Draw this. Look. Look. Look at me. Look at me! Lookatme lookatme lookatme! Hey!
My boys, however, rely more strongly on the “meowl loudly, then show Mommy your butt” method of communication. Giles, who I suspect has Siamese blood, is a loud and frequent talker. Spike relies more on nonverbal communication such as hey look I am sitting on your hand this means you cannot type and must come give me tuna now right right right? and [walks away with yarn ball, doesn’t say a word].
Here is Spike, enjoying some felt.
And Giles, “helping” at a photoshoot:
Things that are awesome: The Pratchgan. If you haven’t read any Terry Pratchett, deary me, what are you waiting for? I’m particularly fond of the book he did with Neil Gaiman called Good Omens.
With that, it’s back to writing some stuff that’s due and doing crazy things like knitting cocktail hats. I think I’m gonna send that one to Bubbo. She’s the only person alive who could possibly rock a cocktail hat in the way this one will require.
Check it out! I was one of the original writers on this site, forever ago (or so it seems), so it was cool and a bit of a surprise to see this crop up. Fun.
Her only critique (that some patterns only offer one photo) is based, really, in the realities of book publishing. You only have so many pages to work with! Ever notice how most craft books are 96 or 128 pages? What do these have in common? They’re both divisible by 8 — most modern books are bound in 8-page signatures, and when the editor has done their initial “this is how much it will cost to print this book” estimates, they probably end up sticking to the original pagecount 99% of the time to keep their supervisors happy. In other words, if you end up with one extra page, then you have to have 7 more at that point no matter what, and that’s not always feasible.
Authors often end up having to edit for length if they’re over, or do what we did in How to Knit in the Woods, which is place multiple pages of the Snake in the Woods sweater chart online instead.
Authors (and even editors!) don’t usually have full control over their titles and covers either — that’s all marketing department, all the time. Otherwise How to Knit in the Woods would’ve been named Does A Bear Knit in the Woods? (ha ha)
(FYI on the Fern Tee in Alt Fiber, though — it’s more or less the same front and back, though one side is “scoopier” than the other!)
Pagecount is yet another reason digital publishing appeals to me so much — no worries about binding types, no worries about shipping costs! If there’s something short and sweet that people would want to buy, be it a single pattern or a chapter-length how-to, you can charge for it accordingly and get it out for sale a lot sooner. One more reason I love my Kindle…
Today we’re staining the deck. I’d rather be dyeing yarn, personally. I doubt Reduran will take deck stain off my hands half as well as it does dye, though.
Here’s a fun new pattern from Xan for a Men’s Tie Purse — these were incredibly popular at the shows we’ve done this year — now you can make your own! $6, downloadable multipage PDF with full color photo illustrations for how-to.
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