new spring knit patterns to keep the chill out just in time for Mothers day

I love spring with all the flowers and new growing plants outside.  What may start out to be a glorious day outside, may cloud up and get chilly.  This is the time of year for sweaters, shrugs, capes or ponchos to keep the chill out.

I grew up in the Southwest and ponchos were my go to sweater to throw over any outfit.  Well, they are back in style.  My daughter, who loves hearts, suggested I design a poncho for this current trend.

This poncho is now available made for you using a wonderfully soft and warm Merino wool and silk yarn at my Etsy shop.  If you would like to make it yourself, I now have the pattern at my Ravelry store or for Canadian buyers it is available at LoveKnitting shop.  I should be available by the weekend in my Etsy shop. Or you can use the buy now button on the right.

 

This pattern works up quickly.  You will need 614 yards (562.m) of yarn to make this poncho and uses size US 11 - (8.0 mm) knitting needles which are oversized to add to the lacey affect of the poncho. 

 

This poncho is constructed differently than traditional ponchos.  It is made from two rectangular lace panels that are half as wide as they are long.  These two pieces are sewn together in such a way as to create the V-neck and the point at the bottom.

 

I also made a wonderful shrug that can be warn at night to add flair to any outfit.  I have it for sale at my Etsy shop in a variety of sizes.

If you like to knit and would like to make it for yourself using the colors and sizes just for you, it comes in size small all the way up to 5 extra large.  You can find the pattern at my Etsy shop, on my Ravelry shop or for European Union buyers I have the pattern on my LoveKnitting shop.

 

What a great gift for mother's who have trouble staying warm during the cool of the night or early morning sunshine.  I love to knit in the winter. 

 

Now that it is warming up it is time to get out my crochet hooks and work with cotton thread.

 



Summer surprises and newest knit pattern

Yesterday was the warmest day so far (heat index if 100+) so, of course, our air-conditioner decided to die.  Our little house heats up like an oven and we were all very well done.  Luckily, we were able to buy another one and my husband was able to get it in and working.  Today, I am very comfortable and very thankful.  (I think our old air-conditioner had been going for a while, judging by how much better the house feels with the new one.)

I have got my newest knit pattern back from the pattern testers and it is now for sale.  The response has been amazing and one of my biggest sellers to date.  I held an informal survey on Facebook and combined a couple of suggestions for the name and the De-Vinely Bohemian Lace Shrug was put on my Ravelry store, my Craftsy site and my Etsy shop .  This pattern has both written instructions and charts to follow.  It can be made for women's sizes small clear up to 5 X-large.  There is a shorter version for people who are shorter in stature and a longer version for taller people.  The lace edging is a vine pattern that I designed and should flatter most figures.

For people who do not enjoy knitting, I have a women size small to medium longer version in my Etsy shop.  The yarn I used is a luxury merino wool (which is so soft) and silk blend.

long lavender shrug

 

I also made a shorter version in the same size with the same luxury yarn in a different color combination.

burgundy and grey shrug

 

The main section is made using a right twist on a two stitch ribbing pattern.  Right twist are not hard and are a way to add a cable look without using a cable needle.

 

After working a knit 2, purl 2 ribbing for 4 rows, you create the right twist on the knit stitches on the 5th and 6th row.  This adds some interest to a plain rib design.

 

To work the right twist on the 5th and 6th row, when you come to the knit 2, knit the in the 2nd stitch on the needle, without taking it off the needle.

 

 

 

Next knit the first stitch. 

 

Finally, you take both stitches off the needle and you will see you have a pretty little twist in your rib.

This stitch adds some interest in the design without taking out the stretch and shrinking of the rib so that the garment fits your particular body shape.

 

I want to thank everyone who has bought this pattern from an independent designer which is what encourages us to design more.

 

I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer and  staying comfortable in the warm summer temperatures.  I am going to be crocheting with a cotton yarn tonight next to my new air-conditioner.  What do you like to do in the summer heat? 



 

 

  

 

 

Winter knit patterns to help keep you warm outside.

This year, winter has really hung around.  With the cold hanging around the country we have burned more wood this year than in previous years.  I love to knit and crochet by the fire.  Lately, I am working on a new pattern for a shrug.  Here is a picture of the completed project.

 

It fits women's XS to Medium.  I made it with Merino wool and silk and it is the perfect accessory for adding warmth and flair to an outfit.  This link takes you to the completed shrug.  long shrug.  I am currently working on another for larger sized women in teal and grey.  The results are stunning and I am excited to get this listed in my shop.

 

Hopefully, I will have the pattern ready to be tested soon and it will be available in several sizes.  All my patterns are tested by at least two others and the knit patterns include charts.

 

A scarf is also needed in this weather.  Here is a design for anyone who is dreaming of flowers.

Iris scarf pattern

You can find it already made for you in my Etsy shop and I made it again with a wonderfully soft and  silky Moreno and silk wool.  long lacy iris scarf.

 

Here is another scarf that I designed using Suri baby alpaca and silk yarn.  I love how nice and warm this design keeps the wearer.



 

pine-trees-and-cones-scarf-or-scoodie pattern

 

Of course I had to design some fingerless gloves to complete the set using the same yarn.

 



pine-tree--cone-fingerless-gloves pattern

 

When I was designing the women's gloves my husband asked for something that he could wear so I had to design some fingerless gloves for him and other men.  I made a cable stitch that looks like a winter tree.

 

winter-tree-cable-mens-fingerless-gloves pattern

mens-winter-tree-cable-knit-fingerless for sale



 

Stay warm and be sure to bundle up when venturing into the frozen out doors.

 

victorian-carolers-wall-hanging pattern

crochet-victorian-carolers-wall-hanging already made

 

What do you like to do when it is too cold to go outside?















luxurious lacy iris scarf pattern

April is such a busy month at our house.  Not only is it tax season but this year was Easter.  Now add my birthday and my grandson's birthday and it is hard to get anything else done.  My husband delighted me this year with a gift that brings out the girl in me.  He got me an entire fairy village.  Of course I had to set it up with a carosel horse to visit the village.  Here is how it is set up right now. 

Anyway, April has been fun (except for taxes).  My wonderful niece asked me to spin some angora and Merino wool into yarn and design a scarf for her.  Her favorite color is purple so I decided a lacy iris scarf would fit the bill.  This is my new favorite spinning wheel.

It spins so fast the yarn was made in no time at all.  Then came the design process.  I love lacy knits and my niece lives in Phoenix so I thought a little lace in this warm and soft angora/merino yarn would be appreciated.  Here is her scarf finished.

  

 

When it was time for the making a pattern, I looked around for some yarn that would be as soft as the yarn I made, since pattern buyers don't all spin.  I found a new yarn that I love on sale at Craftsy.com for a excellent price.  You can get your own here: cascade-venezia-sport-yarn

 

They even had the perfect color of Orchid Haze.  I love, love, this yarn.  It is so soft and it really shows the stitch definition.  It is 70% Merino Wool and 30% silk to add that shimmer.

 

I will be buying more.  Well the pattern is finished and back from two separate testers.  One of them is using the pattern to make a pillow top.  Here is a picture of the finished scarf.  I still am looking for a model.  The mannequin works to start the process.

 



 

The pattern is for two sizes: 

8 inches (20.32 cm) wide by 67 inches (170.2 cm) long or

    Long Scarf: 8 inches (20.32 cm) wide by 100 inches (254 cm) long. 

I love how it came out.  What do you think? 

All in all, April was a wonderful month.

 







Valentines day lace knitting and crochet patterns

It is almost the end of January and still very cold in Kansas.  I love it.  We have a wonderful fireplace and I love to sit near it and design a new lace design. I adore lace knitting.   I am currently working on a purple lace knit scarf out of some home spun Moreno wool and angora bunny fur.  I love how it is coming out.  I will show pictures of the new design when I have it all blocked out. 

With Valentines coming up, I thought, why not showcase some lace knit and crochet designs that have roses and hearts as a theme.  I designed a warm wrap few year ago using Moreno and  angora bunny fur.  Any lace weight yarn will work with this pattern and I used size US 11 - 8.0 mm needles.  Hearts and Diamonds wrap is a simple design for anyone who has done lace knitting before.

Along the same theme I designed Pretty in hearts using Kid Seta yarn and size US 8 - 5.0mm needles.  It is a wonderful wrap that will take the chill out of summer evening and dress up an outfit with no sleeves.

 

The next wrap pattern, 2 hearts together, is just as light and airy using the same Kid Seta yarn and needles but uses nupps in the design.  This pattern is for the more experienced lace knitter.  I think either this pattern or Pretty in Hearts would make a wonderful wedding wrap for those strapless wedding dresses in a white lace yarn.

 

 

I also love to crochet and I love roses.  Unfortunately, I do not have a green thumb and have had a hard time getting roses to bloom outside my home.  So I designed a sun catcher using roses as a theme.  If the crystal prisms are added to the pattern as suggested then all winter long I have rainbows on my walls from the drop crystals.  I love the effect and it certainly brightens a winter home.

 

 

Finally, I created a thread crochet doily pattern that includes both hearts and rose buds.  I love how this pattern came out.

 

 

 

What is your favorite activity for this time of year?

 

 









Christmas knit and crochet patterns.

Time has zipped by here in Kansas and it is now my favorite time of year.  The weather is very nice and cold and I get to sit by my fireplace and knit and design another scarf, fingerless gloves and other warm accessories. Here is the set I designed last year.



Right now I have these two patterns at a special price for those who would like to buy them both at my Etsy shop bundle price sale.  I have several patterns at special bundled prices in this section including the wizard of oz series of bookmarks.sale patterns

 I love the lights on houses and Christmas trees.  I love getting the nativity sets out and using them all over the house.  I have so many that I had to design a new one that can work as either ornaments or as a wall hanging.

 

 

I  love the old Christmas carols that are playing everywhere. Naturally, I had to make a wall hanging to commemorate that love.

 

 

What makes Christmas so special to me?  I think it is the wonderful and very powerful message sent to us via angles to the shepherds on a hill many, many years ago.

 

 



 

The gift that our family celebrates at this time of year is God's gift of His Son to us.  What a miracle He gave us. When the world looks like it is spiralling out of control, I have learned to lay it at God's feet and sit back to wait and see how he weaves it into a beautiful solution.

 

 

What is your favorite part of this very special season?





Washing red yarns and threads

I love the color red and so many of my thread crochet and even my yarn knitting includes red.  When I was young, (many, many years ago) red thread was color fast.  In the past 15 years I would not say that is true.  Nothing is more discouraging then getting a red and white piece done, washing it and having it bleed all over the white.

Here is another example of the red and white I love to use.

I always hand wash my crochet so that I can pin the shapes and just take the 'rumple' out of a piece I have been working on.

I have finally come up with a recipe for laundering reds that has not gone wrong on me yet.  I start with a bowl of cool filtered water.  I have a filter on my faucet.  Most city water has chlorine in it to kill the germs.  Unfortunately, it can also cause problems with letting reds bleed.  If I didn't have a filter I would set the water out on the counter over-night.  That would take care of the chlorine which will evaporate.

Next I add a small amount of laundry soap.  Now here is the magic ingredient:  white vinegar.  I add about a half cup or cup (depending on how big my bowl is) and stir it into the water.  Vinegar acts as a dye fixing agent.  It will help keep the red from bleeding.  I put the newly finished item into the water and let it soak overnight.  When I get up in the morning, everything is clean and the white is still white and not pink.  I allow it to dry in shape using pins if necessary or it can be ironed with a cloth over it to keep it from scourging.

This recipe has worked for me in the past.  If you know of another way to keep reds from bleeding, please let me know.  Since I love and use it so much I am always interested in other ideas.

Making Nupps

I love 3 dimensional crochet.  I also love to knit especially when the weather is cold outside.  A few year's ago I disovered nupps in knitting and designed a heart wrap for Valentine's season.  These little "bobbles" in knitting add an extra dimension to the work but can be a real challenge.  Here is the easiest way I found to make these little jewels.



Nupps are made using two rows. On the first row (the knit row on a stockinette stitch) where a nupp is located is simply made doing a (knit, yarn over, knit, yarn over, knit, yarn over, knit) all in one stitch. The first and last stich is always a knit stich. They need to be as loosely made as possible, by pulling the yarn up.



In thicker yarn nupps usually are made by adding 5 to 7 extra stitches in this one stitch.  In really fine yarn they are usually made with 7 to 9 extra stitches in one stitch.  The pattern will usually tell you how many extra stitches to add.  Because this yarn is so fine, this pattern calls for 9 stitches in the one stitch.

The rest of the row is worked and the work is turned over for the second row.  (In a stockinette stitch, this is a purl row.)  In the second row all these extra stitches are purled together as one.   This is the hardest part of nupps and I found a great trick to making these.  Purl on the row until you come to the extra stitches.  Find a crochet hook that will work with your yarn.  Put all the nupp stitches on the crochet hook.

Yarn over with your working yarn and pull it through all these stitches.

Finally, place this one stitches back on your right hand needle and work across the rest of the row.

The other thing I learned to watch for on the purl row is to be careful not to purl the first few stitches of the nupp into the row as this will cause your stitch count to be off.  Using this method really made nupps a whole lot easier for me.  I really like the end result of that extra dimension to the design.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Valentine's day.



Winter Tree Cable Men’s Fingerless Gloves

I love winter trees.  They are beautiful in the spring, summer and fall but in the winter against a winter sky you can see just what they have to stand against to make it.  Most of the trees out here like this Osage-Orange tree have a real bent to them to stand against the Kansas wind.

My husband asked me design some fingerless gloves for him.  Since lace knitting wouldn't work for a guy's design, I thought of cable.  In thinking about my husband, he often reminds me of a winter tree. He is steadfast and true and has weathered amazing storms in his life, and yet he stands.  I am sure that there were times in our marriage that it would have been easier to leave then withstand  the storms but because of his promise to God and me on our wedding day, he has chosen to stay and grow through it.  The character that is his because of his choices, has made him a truly amazing, loving man.

This is the design I came up with for his gloves.



 They were probably my hardest design to date because the broad part of the tree kept getting in the way of the thumb gusset.  I had to design each glove a little differently since the thumb gusset was on opposite sides, but I am really pleased with how they came out.  I used a soft acrylic yarn so that they would wash easily. He is really pleased with the design and how they fit his hand and that makes me really happy.

Here is a pair I made in a cotton thread.

I am pleased to say they work up in about 10 hours or less after I was able to get the design figured out.  They are worked in a worsted weight yarn and worked in the round so there are no irritating seams to be felt by the wearer.

Trees and Men's Fingerless Gloves

The weather has been glorious this year and I have gotten some pictures of the trees in our area.  The bright yellow one is a cottonwood.  I love the feel of the air and the cooler temperatures.  We have even gotten rain this week which is almost always an event in this part of Kansas.  During this time of year, I am always wanting to knit.

When I was working on the Pine Tree and Cones Fingerless Gloves, my husband said he would love a men's pair as it would allow for warmth in the hands but dexterity and feel in the fingers.  I thought, "Why not.  That should be relatively simple."   If I had only known, I am not sure I would have started this project.

I love knitted lace but that wouldn't be something my husband would be interested in.  So I thought maybe some sort of cable design.  That seemed like more of a male design that I could get into.
I started looking through patterns to see if I could find something.  What I found is that just about every cable stitch I would come up with has already been done in fingerless gloves.  So then I thought I will just have to come up with a new cable design.  Silly me.

Also, he can wear his clothes pretty hard so I needed to find some yarn that would wear hard and be much thicker so that he would not snag the glove and break the threads.  So I went to our local yarn shop to look at what I could find that would wash easily and wear well. (I love doing this part of the design process.  I usually have to stop myself from buying out the store)  I thought worsted weight should be heavy enough to handle his hard use.   I found a light worsted weight in tan that should wash easily but was really soft next to the skin.  I also found some rust cotton that would work.  Both colors are good for him.

With the yarn colors and the cable design I set down to draw out different ideas.  I love trees of all seasons and I thought of the gnarly hedge rows around the wheat fields in our area.  In the winter with no leaves, these Osage-orange trees are really fantastic to see.  We appreciate their wood for burning in our fireplace as it burns hot for a long time.

With this in mind I set out to design a cable that would twist and divide into the branches that these trees do.  I have been working on this design for 2 + months and have been tempted to give up on it.  However, I hate to admit defeat and have had to take it out, try something else, take that out, try something else, etc.   I am excited because I think I have finally figured this design out.  I will be introducing this pattern for others to make in 2 or three weeks.

Have you ever had a project that you just refused to give up on? 

Fall and knitting

I love Fall.  It can be so beautiful.  This year it sure is.  Some years in Kansas we have one or two weeks of cool down from the extreme heat and then it is winter.  Naturally the early frosts and ice storms makes all the leaves on the trees drop immediately.  This year we have had almost a full month of cooler weather and the leaves on the trees are stunning, especially the Cottonwood trees.  I think the Cottonwood is the Plains version of the Aspen.  They turn vibrant yellow.  The leaf shape is very similiar but they are larger.  They even quake in the wind which is almost always blowing in Kansas. 

With the cooler temperatures it just makes sense to try to knit.  I have been working on a pair of men's fingerless gloves.  Since it is for men, I decided to make something with cables.  I just about have the pattern figured out.  This has really been a challenge for me and is taking longer than usual to figure out.  I thought I had it and then last night I had to take it all out again to make some changes.  I think they will be really fun when I have got all the kinks worked out.

I love working with wonderful yarns that feel so nice in my hands.  Yarns can really add the touch to a pattern that can make all the difference.  I love my local yarn shop and have to keep from visiting too often or my house would not have anymore room for us and our 3 dogs.  I love to spin moreno and angora rabbit wool together to make some wonderful yarns.  All of these things take room and we live in a very compact house so I am using yarns I already have so that I have room to purchase more.

What are your favorite things about Fall or knitting?