That went a lot faster than I thought it would

Did you guess right about which pattern I was going to review next? It only took me about a week to rewrite and knit up some new models for the punkin hat, which was much faster than I was expecting. But then again, it's a simple little hat, and even the color work portion follows a pretty simple mathematical formula, so it wasn't as hard as I anticipated to scale up and down. It will be available in 4 sizes, from infant to adult, to fit heads 10"-24". The photos on the left show my Monster Baby modeling the Child size; she's 3 years old with an 18" head, so she's pretty big for a toddler. The hats are really stretchy, too. The Toddler size fits her, but just barely, and the child size fits my 20" head as well. The ribbing creates a really stretchy, adaptable fabric, which is a great quality in a hat, I feel. I'm putting out a testing call tomorrow (after I hear back from my core group of testers about whether or not they'd like to have first crack at it) over in my group so be sure to swing by and sign up if you're interested.

In other news, the new school year is starting and I'm a weird mix of excited and stressed. I met the majority of my students at the open house last Friday (two were out of the country, so that's understandable, but the third... where were you?) And I'm mostly done getting ready, like maybe 95% done. I have next month's lesson plans sort of finished (I just need to input the theme work, and I didn't get the study unit list until Friday, but the core work is done) and the classroom is nearly all decorated and organized, but my class list keeps changing so I've had to change name tags and all like 3 times. Then my supply closet got padlocked shut and of course it wasn't one of the standard padlocks, it was apparently one someone brought from home so we have to wait for the city to come back and cut it (when we put in the work order, we specified that we needed it cut, that it wasn't one of the city or county locks, but of course they sent a guy with the master key ring to try anyway, and of course he didn't bring bolt cutters, because of course these silly women just forgot that keys open locks. Sigh.) probably some time next week, so I can't even finish all the things that aren't done yet. So I'm way less excited for the new beginnings that I could and should be. Plus, I still have to move, and that's a drain.

But, Monster Baby has started making friends. We visited one of her friends last night, and they seriously spent about 30 minutes playing a game (?) where they would take turns running across the room, "fall," and cry for help. Then the other would rush over and help them up, then they would hold hands and run back to the adult side of the room to exclaim "Friend helped me!" before starting the whole thing again. I didn't really understand it, but then, I guess I don't have to. Of course, since they're both three, it wasn't all fun and games and getting along. There was more than one instance of pleasant play for a time before both would become jealous of whatever the other had, merely because they had it, only for the toy to be abandoned once they actually possessed it, to make moving on to the next fight much more streamlined, I guess. I am simultaneously sad that my problems aren't so simple anymore and glad that my problems aren't so simple anymore, lol.

How has your weekend been? Leave a comment below and let me know, or start a thread in the new group.

Summer Time is a Busy Time

Phew. I have had a crazy summer. I've lost a job and started a new one and now I have to have my classroom all in order for the new school year by this coming Wednesday. The pressure is on to say the least.

On my lunch breaks, and times at home that Monster Baby has co-operated, I've been getting a good amount of knitting done, I think, all things considered.

For my birthday in June, I got myself some Hikoo Merino Lace Lightin the Bliss colorway. I'm using it to make an open square shawl for myself. I've never made a square shawl before, but it intrigued me, and I knew I wanted something pretty and light and airy, so this yarn the pattern (the 5 Shawl Shapes Cheat Sheet by Derya Davenport) just kind of came together somewhat fortuitously.  I don't have any pictures of the shawl itself yet, as the weather as been kind of crappy for photography for a few weeks. Hopefully that changes soon and I can get a progress picture of the shawl soon.

I spent most of July doing a test knit for my Ballerina Skirt in my brand new Ravelry Group. Head on over there if you're interested in joining a test knit or if you'd like to get sneak peeks at new stuff I have in the works. There isn't a whole lot going on right now, but I literally just started it and there's only about ten members, but going forward I'd like to build a whole community, and that means I need more of you! If you're a Ravelry member and enjoy my designs, join the group! I'm planning some polls about future designs and possibly a knit a long around Christmas or the new year. Head on over and tell me what ideas you have. If you're not a Ravelry member (which, how is that even possible? Check it out, I promise it's worth your time) leave me a comment below on those same topics. What kind of designs do you like best? What would you like to see more of? How can I improve? Let me know!

And I'll end on the kind of sneak peeks I'll be providing in my Ravelry group. Last month I bought some Knit Picks Bare Swish DK to dye, and I finally dyed it up last week. Now that it's washed and dried and I've swatched, I'm ready to review one of my original patterns. When I first started designing, I didn't know anything about pattern writing, or tech editing, or test knitting, or how to grade sizes. I was a hot mess, honestly. But I've learned a lot since then (it's seriously been 6 years, I can hardly believe it sometimes!) and it's time to go back to my old designs and make them something someone else would actually be able to make, rather that just documenting the process I took. Especially since the process I took was a bit... convoluted sometimes, if you know what I mean. >.>

But, either way, let me know in the comments or on Ravelry which pattern you think I'm going to be reviewing next and what changes you think I'll be making to the pattern. See you soon! :)

A little of this, a little of that

This was honestly the best photo I had

This big thing on my mind lately is this skirt I've been working on perfecting the design of. I've figured out the waistband, I think, and Now I've just got to decide which hem treatment I like best and settle on a limited palette for the pattern, as well as a definite length instead of the two I've been waffling between. See, my biggest issue has always been that I have so many ideas, it's hard for me to capture one and really polish it up into something worthwhile. Once I finish one thing, I'm ready to run off and start on the next thing, and the next, and the next. The only reason I don't have more UFOs is because I really put a lot of pressure on myself these last couple of years to make myself finish something for once before I'm "allowed" to move on. It's paid off in that I have more finished products to show for all  my work, but I wonder sometimes how that affects the quality of my work. Not noticeably to me, but would I notice? Isn't that just always the way?

I think this one might be my favorite

 At the same time, I wonder if that's a bit how it is for all creatives? All the artists and craftspeople I've known over the years have always had their hands in more than one cookie jar; it seems like we just can't help it. If we're not working on one thing, we're working on another. Maybe I'm asking too much of myself? Could it be that (shock and surprise!) it's a bit much to ask one individual to be naturally skilled at every part of the production process? Maybe it makes more sense to have one person who comes up with ideas and another to execute them and another to write them up reasonably and another to market them, and another to have great ideas for the photographs (a definite weakness of mine!) and so on? But that would certainly drive the cost per pattern up significantly, so I'm back to doing it all myself, at least for now.

Hmm, or maybe this one?

For now, I need to spend some time ruminating and deciding which elements I want where and how that would impact the overall design, and how I'd like the overall feel of the design to be, and on and on and on... I'm back to the problem of having too many ideas. Plus once that's done I need to get the test knitting organized, and I'm not so good at organizing. I do it all the time as a teacher, with both children and adults, but when it comes to getting volunteer adults together, especially to do something that benefits me, I'm always too timid, thinking to myself "well, I don't want to be too much of a bother, I'm sure they'll offer to do more if they're willing..." But of course, this is not how human nature works, so I'm always shooting myself in the foot a little bit. Guess I'll have to work on pulling out my teacher voice/attitude when it comes to promoting myself!

In addition to all that, my birthday was this weekend,so I got myself a little something. It's a skein of Merino Lace Light from Hikoo that I bought at my LYS. I don't often go because it's a bit of a journey to get to (local is a relative term, after all...) and in addition to the gas required to get there, all of the beautiful yarns are technically out of my budget, even though they are reasonably priced. But they had this 100 gram skein for just $17, which I think is pretty reasonable for such a pretty 2-ply lace weight yarn. The cake is small, but incredibly dense. I'm thinking of making a lace scarf or possibly a hat. Or a shawlette or capelet? It's so hard to choose. I think I'll go to the library tomorrow and borrow the (singular) stitch dictionary and thumb through it. If more than one thing strikes me, I'll take it home and do some swatching. I do love the beginning of new things...

Let's try something new - Motivational Mondays

Hey guys. I've been trying to come up with ways I can keep on schedule, and I think a prompt is a good way to make sure I have a coherent post each week, instead of subjecting you to my rambling. (I'm an expert rambler ;D) So let's give this a try.

This was a quote someone handed me on a college campus a little while ago, and it stuck with me. It was handwritten on a business card (the other side was to the campus mental health services) and there was no attribution, so I imagine the girl handing them out came up with the sentence, and it just.. really stuck with me. I could totally relate to this quote.
Everyone has something in them that sparkles; something they're good at, or something or someone they love that just makes their whole being shine. But there are a lot of people out there who dull your sparkle, whether they mean to or not. Anyone who's ever been mocked for a hobby ("knitting is for grannies," anyone?) or affiliation or their appearance or really anything knows the sting of someone dulling their sparkle. It's hurtful and can really make you feel like a dull piece of nothing, not worth anyone's time or attention. But you're not. You're a beautiful, sparkling, shining, wondrous thing, and anyone who can't see it isn't worth your time. This week, try to focus on all that's good and wonderful in you. Hold fast to the sparkling things that make you you. And don't let anyone dull your sparkle.

Bunny Hat Update

The Bunny Hat(Ravelry Link) started life as a newborn hat that I made when I first started getting baby fever. I never did end up getting my daughter into one, but a lot of that had to do with how much she hated hats as a young baby.

However, as a preschooler, she loves dress up, and the idea of this hat came back to me. How cute would it be to see her in this hat now? Very, I decided, and since I was already doing the math to size it up for her now, how much harder could it be to figure out all the math for all the sizes? Turns out, not very, much to my pleasure. It is a pretty simple hat, after all. So, this is now available for sale in sizes micro-preemie (about a 5" head circumference, and with an open top in case your baby needs wires or tubing access) all the way up to a 24" circumference, which should fit the average teen or adult. Get it while it's hot!

Is it summer already?

It's the end of May and while it's technically still spring in the Northern Hemisphere, summer is in full swing in Florida. The monsoons (daily afternoon thunderstorms) have started again, and I'm remembering being a kid again and knowing that if it was raining when we lined up for the school buses every afternoon, it meant that school was almost over and summer was nearly here. While I don't have the same itchy sense of impending freedom behind it, I still feel that little wisp of childish glee now that the rains have returned. Especially since Florida's been hit hard with a drought lately and we've faced water restrictions and fire safety protocols. We've already had one big brush fire this year, and I'm hoping these rains can help prevent another one.

Because of the changing weather, I'm compelled to knit things a little more summer-friendly these days. A couple weeks ago, I knit this little dress for my daughter. It's a bit shorter than I'd meant to make it, but I'd definitely double-checked the measurements and it's definitely the length I intended to make it, so that must mean... my daughter's growing?! It feels like just yesterday she weighed 8 and a half pounds and was just shy of 2 feet tall. And now a dress with a 12 inch side seam is a bit too short... Where does the time go?

I've also been trying out some skirts. I had an idea and it wasn't quite working out. The main problem I'm having is getting the increases for the shape I want
right. It will seem to be working and seem to be working and then suddenly it's too many and it's just insanely, unreasonably full. I'm working on a third one now, and the way this one is going, I think it's going to be The One. The previous two lost length to the ruffle, but this one has remained pretty full while maintaining length, so I've got my fingers crossed that I've found the magic number.

In addition, I'm taking another look at the first pattern I ever released - Scaley Vase Cozy -  (available here on Ravelry and here and here on my blog) because it was written five years ago, way before I really knew what I was doing. That pattern is a mess. So I'm going over it, and re-making it and seeing if I can pull something presentable out of it to present to you guys in the future.

Well, I guess that's it for now. Until next time. :)

Granny Cap - With Pattern!

Remember that cap from the last post? I couldn't let that one go. I kept fiddling with it and came up with a few different brims, and since I already made another 4 of them, why not write it up and let other people make it, too? I called it the Granny Cap, and if you're not a member of Ravelry (which you should be, it's amazing!) you can still buy it here: buy now  So, what are you waiting for? Go check it out and tell me what you think in the comments, either here or on Ravelry. I want to be releasing a pattern like this every month or so, and your comments and support will help me reach my goals. Thanks! 💙💚💜

A return

I've been out of blogging for about 4 or 5 months now, due to some unfortunate circumstances that led to me having no fixed address for the last 5 months. That's still the situation, but things are a little more stable now, and I have reliable, non-mobile access to internet, and I've been itching to get back to blogging, so here I am.

Even though I haven't been on the internet (reliably, anyway) I've been knitting a lot. Like, a lot. If you already knit, you don't need to ask why. It's been such a great way to relax and de-stress and feel like I'm doing something. I've been feeling so helpless and lost a lot of the time and having something to do as opposed to letting things just happen has been invaluable. Plus, when I'm stressed out I want to create, so I've been doing a lot of "okay, look at that thing and see if you can figure out how to make something that approximates it." Which certainly leads to a lot of frogging, but can be a very engaging way to spend an afternoon waiting for something that just shouldn't be taking as long as it is.

The first thing I made, or really, the first set of things I made, was a set of motifs for my class. The original idea was to make a whole lot of them, to be left at work, and rotated in and out for the whole of the year.

I made a star, a teddy bear (though I was informed by my students that actually I had made Mickey Mouse, so...) and a heart, because they are all easily recognizable and since this was supposed to be a sorting activity, I wanted to make sure they could have some easily identifiable labels (such as size, color, and shape) to start with before branching out into more abstract concepts (like animal/not animal or found on Earth/not found on Earth) but this turned out to be a problem almost from the start

I also made a few starfish, but not only could my children not really identify what it was, even after I

told them, they also weren't doing to good at the "easily identifiable" qualities either. Turns out very very few of the children in this class had ever been asked to sort anything (not even in the sense of "bring me something green," or "Find the biggest one") and several parents expressed disbelief that this was something 3 and 4 year old children had the ability to do. Instead, my parents were urging me to teach their children to write their names and read, as well as do arithmetic using numerals only. I'm not going to get too into the technicalities of why this bothers me, since that's a topic not really in keeping with the theme of this blog, but suffice it to say that if you don't know how to sort green from not green, you'll have an incredibly difficult time sorting 1 from not-1 in order to do 1+1=___. So away went those.

I also made some Hilda Vintage-Inspired Headwraps which were really cute and I would totally make more of those. I wish I could show you the picture I took of one of my little boys wearing it, he was so adorable! And one of my girls wore the headband under a hat I made, which I thought was some adorable, fashion-forward thinking.

It was under this hat, in fact, which was one of those "sure, you could find a pattern but that won't keep you nearly as occupied as if you had to reverse engineer it" projects.  It was a lot of fun trying to find a stitch pattern that would do what I wanted it to, and the swatching was good practice for me, since I'm going to have to be doing a lot more of it going forward.

Same for this tie. I saw a bunch of pretty patterns online (mostly done in silk!! sigh) and decided that following a pattern would take about a day, but swatching and doing math and trying things out would take at least two. Maybe more. So I did that. It came out all right, I think. I intentionally made it a little too short to keep the kids from being able to tie it more than once. They've nearly choked themselves on a shoe lace before, so I wasn't about to design something they could choke themselves with easily. It makes for a kind of poor looking necktie, but at least nobody was choking themselves or others with it.


Right now I'm working on what I'm calling a "cookie blanket" because I don't know another word for this thing. In fact, I don't know any word for this thing. It's a cloth you wrap cookies or a hot tupperware or similar. I've seen them all around growing up, but nobody ever named it, aside from maybe "the cloth" or "that cloth". Probably there's a name for this?

I made some other things, too, but I haven't gotten pictures of those yet, so that's all for now. Hopefully I have some smaller posts more frequently coming up in the near future, as opposed to these big long ones after a long break.