Winners!

I even picked on time!  ;)  Hayley and Lauren won a copy of my Blueberry Torte Capelette pattern, and Monica won the pattern and the yarn!  I will be contacting y'all shortly with the contact information you left me.  Thanks for playing, everybody!

Contest: Curio and Blueberry Torte Capelette

If designing has taught me one thing, it is that I am occasionally epically wrong in my estimated yardage for a project.  In this particular case, I thought that my Blueberry Torte Capelette was going to take two balls of Curio.  It actually only took one (with some left over, even!).  This left me with the problem of what to do with the extra ball of thread.  Of course my first impulse was to squirrel it away in my stash, but anyone who has ever been to my house knows that I have something of a stash containment problem, so that wouldn't be a good idea.  Then it occurred to me: I can give it away!

There will be three winners: two first prize winners will get a copy of the pattern, and one grand prize winner will get a copy of the pattern, and this lovely ball of Curio #10 crochet thread in Bluebell (plenty to work the pattern):

You also get three ways to enter.  First is your gimme entry: just comment on this post.  You don't have to answer any questions or anything, just leave me a way to get a hold of you if you win.  Second, if you like my page on Facebook, and leave a second comment on this blog post, you will get another entry.  Third, you can follow this blog, and leave a separate comment on this blog post, for yet another entry.  The winners will be chosen by random number generator on August 10 (by which point the finished pattern will almost certainly be published).  Good luck everybody!

ETA:  Gah I forgot all about Twitter... if you tweet my contest, and comment here, you can have ANOTHER entry.  :)

Yarn Review: All For Love of Yarn Luminosity Fingering

First of all, can I express my amazement that Angela has managed to get pink, blue, purple, and green into one ball of yarn, and have it be such a lovely tonal?  Everything from All For Love of Yarn comes in these special limited pooling colorways, and they are a delight to work with.  You can have festive yarn and festive stitches, and be able to see both at the same time!

This specific yarn (Luminosity) is 70% superwash merino, 20% bamboo rayon, and 10% nylon.  It has great drape and a lovely sheen to it (so great stitch definition!), and is holding up to all my frogging beautifully.  It would make a really luscious pair of socks.  One thing to remember about it is that bamboo rayon is still rayon, so it tends to squeak a bit on plastic needles/hooks.  If that's the sort of thing that bothers you, you should use tools in a different material.

Also, that's the swatch for my upcoming Tea Party Stole, which is included in my book.  It's turning out really pretty, isn't it?  I love star stitch for showing off nice yarn.

Suddenly I'm glad I didn't tell you about this last night like I was going to (instead choosing to veg out in front of junk tv).  I just found out that tomorrow is Angela's birthday, and so you can get 38% off any in stock purchase with the code BDAY38.  Tomorrow only!  Buy yarn!  (I'm probably going to!)

Now in Preorder: Blueberry Torte Capelette

I think it turned out pretty nicely.  Available for preorder for $3.99.  The finished pattern is expected about the ninth of August, at which point it will be available for $4.99.  This is the second pattern in my ebook, Cake (Because It Has Layers).

Yarn Review: Curio

One of the awesome things about being a designer is that sometimes you can get yarn support in yarns that are not available to the public yet.  That is also one of the not so awesome things about being a designer - you have to keep it a secret until the yarn is released.  Case in point: Knit Picks Curio.  I have been wanting to talk about this stuff for like two weeks now, but it is finally released, hooray!

Curio is a #10 crochet thread, in 100% cotton.  For you knitters out there, that is a lace weight.  I would bet my last biscuit it is mercerized cotton (because it is so smooth and shiny), but the label doesn't say it is.  It is smooth, shiny, and has a very tight twist, as crochet thread should so that it doesn't split on itty bitty hooks.  It feels a little bit stiff in the ball, but softens beautifully on washing.

All that, however, is fairly standard for good quality crochet cotton.  The thing that makes Curio stand out is the colors:

Seriously, they are even better in person.  I have always kind of had a thing for colored crochet thread, but it is often difficult to find it in any colors other than white, ecru, baby pink and blue, and Christmas colors.  Curio comes in a nicely varied palette.  I'm particularly drawn to some of those softer colors in particular.

And now on a related note, a preview for my book:

The next pattern, Blueberry Torte Capelette, is in Curio, in Bluebell.  So if any of you were wondering why I hadn't put a planned yarn next to this one, when I have one for all the other patterns, now you know.  I am good at keeping secrets.  I just don't like it.

16 oz of yarn is a lot of yarn.

This is going to be one of those posts where I do something crazy and take lots of pictures so you can laugh at me.  I swear, when I started this seemed like a great idea.  But getting to the point, anybody remember this picture?

That is a sixteen ounce skein of yarn - a whole pound. It is Mountain Colors Weavers Wool, which is very nice and squishy and will be a very nice sweater.  (To be specific, it will be Chocolate, the Sweater in my ebook).  It does create the problem of how to wind it tho.  See, this is how a normal skein of yarn looks on my swift:

This is how a sixteen ounce skein looks:

Problem number one, right there.  Problem number two:

I think it's afraid of that much yarn.  So I decided to make it bigger with a paper plate with a hole in it and a paper towel tube:

The little yarn guide thingy was too close in, so I tried to guide the yarn with my hand, but that largely resulted in the yarn getting caught in the gears of the ball winder.  Also, when it gets to spinning the paper plate acted like a little wing and tried to launch the whole assembly across the room.  So I decided to take off the paper plate and use the yarn guide:

It... kind of worked?  Sort of maybe?  But you see that blob at the bottom?  Yeah that just got bigger and bigger until I had to put the little yarn guide down again so it wouldn't put the yarn down in the gears again.  But I kept winding until it looked like this:

That's about when the gears in my ball winder started to skip.  Bad sign, that.  Unfortunately the swift still looked like this:

I finally had to take it off the ball winder and finish by hand, which was tedious, but at least I didn't have to worry about breaking my ball winder any more.  I don't think I'm going to get that paper towel tube out of there until the yarn is used up, but it is all wound now, without cutting or anything, as you can see:

It's also bigger than my kid's head.  The really sad part?  I have another one of these I'm going to have to figure out how to wind.  Beam me up, Scotty!

I present as proof I have not been slacking...

...a beautiful new pattern!

My Strawberry Cream Shrug combines a fun wagon wheel stitch with simple cables, to make a figure flattering faux-cardigan shrug.  Faux-cardigan because I love the look of buttoned shrugs, but can never get them to fit properly, so I made this pullover to look like it is buttoned.  For cuteness.  Now available at a discount preorder price of $3.99.

It is also the first pattern in my cool new ebook, Cake (Because It Has Layers).  It is also currently the only pattern, and yes technically still in preorder, but let me tell you, this is super exciting and my hooks are on fire, baby!  Keep checking here or on my Facebook/Twitter feeds for continuing updates.