Me and this thing about peacocks

So last year I wanted to spin a peacock, which turned into a dragon, but that's fine. Well, now I want to make a lace yarn over pattern shawl like peacock feathers. Here are my raw materials.
I'm so excited. I have the chart and everything, I just have to do some test swatching, see if it lives or not.
Of course, that was not to happen last night, because I spent most of my evening taking apart the bathroom sink.
Wow, that was fun.

But here are some pictures of Bittersweet. The pattern is basically done, but the shawl is only half finished. The plan is to knit each half separately and then kitchner them together in the middle. Pattern should be available next week, along with some finished pictures.

Bittersweet and ferns - here's the actual shawl

And the best part, it's kitty-approved (see last picture). These aren't the best snaps ever, I'll try taking some outside this week. I'm using Gloss in Pumpkin, with orange and red size 6 beads. The colors and the climbing patterns remind me of bittersweet - I started designing this with the idea of something with leaves, because the color was so autumnal. I can also see redesigning this into a cardigan pattern, I think it's interesting enough and uses beads sparingly enough.
Any suggestions out there?

Bittersweet and ferns

See if you agree with me - I should have a picture loaded later today/this evening.

I have a couple ideas for this

It's a test for the shawl, but I have an idea for a cardigan also . . .
Beads are a little hard to see.

I have a couple ideas for this

It's a test for the shawl, but I have an idea for a cardigan also . . .

Finishing things

Had quite a weekend for finishing things. The little one's mittens (which we needed because of the 4 inches of snow!) the lined mittens finally got the rest of their embroidery and the entrelac socks are done.
So I started a new pair.
Next stop, knitting some swatches of the latest shawl design.

Close ups that look slightly less like a Dead Head convention was hanging out on our back porch

Coming soon - pattern for dragon mittens

If you were very ambitious, you could probably just use the jpg and reproduce these. But you don't have to. I'll be posting this pattern soon.

Stalled out shawl idea

I have a date with Barbara Walker to see if I can't design a nice shawl for my pumpkin Gloss and the orange beads to go with it. Maybe something with a frame design around the outside with a leaf design in the middle?
My crazy socks are nearly done, and I'll take some snaps of that yarn tomorrow, something that looks less Grateful Dead. I'm flirting with selling it, but I have so little time to do any dying and since I usually want to play, my dye lots would be so small and infrequent as to make me a poor source of supply, I fear.
Oh, and I'm working, slowly, on the Dragon mitten pattern. This will include instructions for child's medium, woman's small/med and woman's med/large. I wanted the pattern to reverse on the right and left hand, since it's pretty pictorial, but wanted to put out my own eyes at the thought of re-charting the second hand. That's what Adobe professional is for - I discovered I could rotate the picture on it's axis and flip it again. Only now, all my row and stitch numbers were backwards. I then figured out I could dump the pdf back to an image file, cut out the pattern part and paste it back onto a copy of the first mitten, using the right way round numbers of the original.
One small victory for the spacial-relations challenged and lazy! More tomorrow.

Dying

Pictures from over the weekend and some random thoughts about what the music industry might have to teach us

So, the small one wanted some mittens - he liked the flower mittens, but of course they were too big. So he helped design these. It's a dragon, based on an early 20th century fillet crochet pattern. It kind of looks like a knight in chess, too. Anyway, I'll chart these up and this time I'll chart them for multiple sizes. Hopefully in the next week or so.
I've also finished the first entrelac sock and the back of the white sweater. I have this bad picture of the purple Gloss with some lovely purple beads, but I still have to chart that and the pumpkin.


So, my husband reminded me of this story of a bunch of record executives were doing some user testing. They invited in a bunch of teenagers and after all the testing was done they thanked the kids for their time and help and told them that there was a table full of CD's and they were free to take any, as many, as they wished. None of the teenagers took anything and that told the executives just how much trouble their industry was in.
One thing about the age of Ipods and MP3 players that makes me a little sad is that often, back in the dark ages, when you bought an album, you buy it for one or two songs and then grow to love the others. Sometimes even discover something you really loved that never got airplay. Today's digital music consumers are no longer forced to also pick up all of what the artist, or more likely the record company, had put on the album. While my husband has a point when he says that think of all the dreck and filler you don't have to buy, I think of what you'd miss out on if you only bought, say, "Run like hell" off The Wall.
So what does this have to do with knitting?
What's your work worth? How is it consumed?
I've started posting my patterns on Ravelry for free. People have been downloading them, which is a great source of happiness for me. I'm so pleased people like my stuff. I hope they enjoy these patterns and make some of them. (I have no idea what the rate of download to knit is when it comes to free patterns on Ravelry, I'd be willing to bet it's pretty low. After all, the thrill of potential is so much cooler than any single thing, frozen into reality once you commit to the yarn and color. . . ) But at some point I'm going to start charging for at least some of my work. Will people want it, how much are my original ideas worth? How original are they? I've read so many books, magazines, websites by now that I don't think I can claim any of my ideas are totally my own - so how much borrowing is okay if I want to charge for my idea? And finally, would I be better off if my work was in a book, either with many other people's ideas or just all my own? Do I need an editor? Probably. Would people have a better chance of coming to love my patterns years after purchase (like I do with so many of my books) and so preserve my ideas longer if they were in this more durable form, instead of easily downloaded and easily lost?

It looks great; as a graph

So, my pumpkin and orange bead shawl idea.
Yeah.
I graphed the whole thing out and now I've started a swatch.
I have this bad feeling that the graph looks cooler than the shawl will.
Hermmmmm. Must say, this is a first for me.

Grackles

We get these huge waves of grackles that come down our street. They swarm in the yard, making lots of this glassy, chirrup-y cackling (you kind of have to hear it to understand) and it drives Indy nuts.
Here's our teenage cat, so wishing he could go snack on a tasty bird. The birds didn't photograph so well.
I have high hopes of cleaning my house and charting the orange shawl today.

Lined mittens are done . . . and

Okay, I'll post the pattern for these tomorrow. They're really, really simple to make. I decided to have fun with this pair and do some silly embroidered flowers on them. I won't include directions for repeating my extremely crappy embroidering - you can freehand your own if you like!

Okay, and for my next project, Entrelac socks. These are something I do every so often - they're a lot of work, and yes, again, I don't like making things that have to match, but since these are so colorful, you don't have to make them match and they cans still match.

I'm having a lot of fun with this bag of Gloss bare the small one and I dyed last spring.

SO DUMB!

Yeah, I finally got my head out of my armpit and noticed I could load my pdfs onto Ravelry.
Who lets me drive a car and dress myself?????!!!!!!
Better late than never, I suppose.

Things that are slow in coming

Okay, writing up patterns is slow going for me. Kind of obsessive work. But I'm posting a link to the latest one - it's for the Linen Stitch Pullover. Yarn or Death asked if I had a larger size and I said "no", but I'm happy to write it for anyone not my size who will send me measurements. I'll add that disclaimer to my pattern widget. So what's new? I'm working on coming up with a new shawl pattern for silk/wool and glass beads. I think this one is going to have leaves in it somehow. The yarn isn't quite this bright in real life; more dignified. It's Knitpicks Gloss fingering "pumpkin".
Also, here's an old favorite of mine - Cable and Stockinette Pull from Reynolds sometime around 1995, knit in Knit Picks Andean Silk. I love the finished sweater, but I find I fight with this pattern every time I knit it (this is my third time). This time I've just gone off on my own with the cable part - the pattern as written doesn't work at all. I promise it's more interesting once I get further along.

Wow

My designer status on Ravelry came through on Friday and I've gotten a ton of requests for patterns! Thanks!
I'm going to chart up those dragon mittens next (I'll probably give the demo pair to Yarn or Death) and I have a whole note book of mitten patterns from the 90's I can commit to electronic format.
Anyway, thanks to those who've asked for my patterns, and please, feedback (especially critical) is most welcome!

New Pattern available - Flower Mittens

Good morning!
If you're interested, the stranded Flower Mitten pattern is now available, listed in the "Request a free original pattern" section on the left side bar of this blog.

Slowness

I'm working on patterns - this is almost as addictive as the knitting part - but it's slow. I make it slow because I really dislike shoddy patterns, so I'm trying to write good ones with clear instructions and machine made charts and make them into PDFs. Anyway, slow and steady I guess.
Flower mittens should be up this week, then I'll put up the lined mittens next. Those should take very little time as there aren't any charts involved.

Mittens

I finished the flower mittens - I try to make sure I work them a little loose and then block them and put them in the dryer for 4 or 5 minutes on low. It makes the color work come together nicely.

And the lined mittens are coming along, this is my close up of picking up the scrap cast on stitches to start the opposite facing mitten.