Moving Day

Hello, dear blog reader. I've moved! If you're looking for the Blue Peninsula blog, you'll find it on the new Blue Peninsula site. Hope to see you there!

Tour de Fleece 2017

Just as the Tour de France begins today, so does the annual Tour de Fleece. If you're a spinner, are you in?

This year, I've joined Team Spindlers and I'll be spinning up the Foxhill Farm Cormo/alpaca that I got at Rhinebeck last fall. My goal is to spin 30 minutes a day (more on challenge days)—I want to spin and/or ply as much of this lovely fiber as I can.  There are 111 grams left after my preliminary spinning/plying/swatching. 

I'm aiming for a fingering weight two-ply, hopefully enough to design and knit a cowl or other neckwear accessory to wear with my Spindler Mitts.

We aren't having an official Blue Peninsula team this year, but a few of us who are participating in the Tour de Fleece have started a discussion thread where we can share our progress, photos, questions, tips, etc. If you're spinning and want some company, feel free to join in. You'll find us here.

P.S. Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian readers! 

Yarn Over, Yarn Over

The Yarn Over KAL in the Ravelry Blue Peninsula group is off to a great start. The focus is on lace for this "choose your own project" KAL—you can make any of my designs with yarn overs, everything from socks and sweaters, to scarves, cowls, shawls, or mitts. And there's still lots of time to cast on. This leisurely summer KAL continues through Sunday, July 30.

We already have a few finished projects, including a pair of Con Brio mitts, a beautiful Golden Valley shawl worked in two colors, and a Birchleaf cowl knit up in a gradient yarn. You can view all of them in the FO thread, and check out the prizes in the discussion thread.

I might cast on another pair of Plumtree socks for the KAL, but first I'm focusing on a new shawl design.



Knit in a small-farm wool/mohair blend that I purchased at Rhinebeck last fall (Thelma & Louise from Wing and a Prayer Farm), this shawl will have the same kind of asymmetrical triangular shape as Notch. But, it's worked in the opposite direction—you cast on at the wide end and then decrease until only a few stitches remain. After the lace section, there's a transition to mostly garter stitch, which will make the project really zip along.



More on the shawl later this summer. In the meantime, I hope you'll join us for the Yarn Over KAL. I started a fun "mini challenge" yesterday, asking folks to share photos of their WIPs with a pet. Here's Snickers, lounging next to me as I worked on the shawl the other evening:



She looks pretty relaxed, doesn't she? I hope your weekend is just as relaxed, with plenty of knitting time!

Indie June Sale at Loveknitting

Every June, the UK knitting site Loveknitting celebrates independent designers and their contributions to the fiber arts. There are blog competitions, designer features, plus a great big Indie June sale.

Those of you in the U.S. might be more familiar with Ravelry than with Loveknitting. The two sites both are great platforms for finding patterns, discovering new designers, and sharing your finished projects. One difference: Loveknitting offers supplies as well. While browsing patterns you can also get needles, crochet hooks, notions, and yarn. So it's kind of a "one stop shop" for everything you might need for a project.

Five of my most popular patterns are discounted $1.50 during the Indie June sale:

Pomegranate

Birchleaf

Shallows Mitts

Meadow Road

and Hop Brook

Lots of patterns are on sale—from baby items to shawls, socks, sweaters, and more—by many, many talented designers. 

If you aren't yet acquainted with Loveknitting, the Indie June sale is a great time to explore the site! Maybe you'll find inspiration for your summer and fall knitting—while also supporting independent designers like myself. The sale and other Indie June activities continue through June 30.

New Pattern: Plumtree Socks

Summer's just about here—always a great time for knitting socks. They're light and portable and don't involve large amounts of wool (which is never too comfortable on hot summer days).

So I'm pleased to announce a new sock pattern for the start of the summer season. Worked in the round from the top down, my Plumtree socks feature an appealing mix of lace and knit-purl textures. They're now available on Ravelry.

When I ordered the yarn months ago, I wanted a color that said, "summer," and when the skein arrived I was thrilled. To my eye, this Elderberry colorway of Altair sock yarn by Luna Grey Fiber Arts really embodies the sweetness of warm weather and sunny days. A blend of superwash merino, nylon, and Tencel, Altair has great stitch definition. The purl stitches and decreases are nice and crisp and the stockinette is beautifully even. I love when I take a chance on a new-to-me yarn and discover a new favorite!

Like Hulst and Pomeroy, these socks are named after a street in my hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts. We shot the photos at one of my favorite Amherst spots, the Mount Pollux conservation area (you may recognize it—it's also where I shot Pomegranate and Wonderberry). It's a quiet, peaceful place with lots of trails, meadows, apple trees, and beautiful views of the surrounding Pioneer Valley and nearby Mount Norwottuck. I always feel refreshed after spending time there.

Check out the #plumtreesocks hashtag on Instagram to see Plumtrees in other yarns and colors. I'm really grateful to the test knitters who responded to my call and enthusiastically knit up the socks! (Their speedy knitting confirmed these socks are really a quick knit.)

I'm also grateful to my sister Jackie for being such a terrific sock model and to Jenny for editing the pattern. Another Sennott Sisters production! And a shout out to Betsey, too—she and Jenny are both knitting their very own Plumtrees (you need to be logged on to Ravelry to follow these links to their projects).

Since the socks have plenty of yarn overs, they're a perfect project for this summer's Yarn Over KAL. Join the fun in the Ravelry Blue Peninsula group—you can cast on anytime between now and July 30.  We have some lovely prizes—including a skein of the same yarn and colorway I knit Plumtree with. 

Thank you very much for reading. I hope your summer is off to a beautiful start!

Countdown to the Yarn Over KAL

Are you up for some relaxed summer knitting among friends? The next Blue Peninsula knitalong starts in a week, with a focus on lace. For the Yarn Over KAL, you can knit any of my designs with a yarn over in it.

Socks, sweaters, shawls, scarves, cowls, mitts—all qualify for this KAL. The dates are Sunday, May 28 through Sunday, July 30.

There will be some lovely prizes, too. One is a skein of Luna Grey Fiber Arts Altair sock yarn, a blend of merino/nylon/Tencel. I'm knitting my next sock design with this yarn and am so pleased with its striking color and stitch definition, I decided to order another skein for a KAL prize.

Another prize is two skeins of Stitch Sprouts Yellowstone, the sport weight wool/silk blend that I used for my Meadow Road pullover. Yellowstone works beautifully for lace, so it seemed like a natural choice for a prize. Two skeins are enough to make many of my cowl or shawl designs; see my Ravelry designer page for ideas.

I'll be announcing one more prize later this week in the KAL discussion thread. You can join now or anytime during the KAL, and WIPS are welcome, too. So if you started a sweater or a shawl a while ago and need incentive to finish up, this KAL is for you. 

Hope you can join us! Thanks for reading—and have a beautiful day.

Flash Sale! Mitts for Mom

Now through Wednesday: Save 25% on all fingerless mitts in my Ravelry pattern store with the coupon code MOM.

There's still time to knit a pretty pair of mitts for Mother's Day, especially if you choose a style without a thumb gusset, like Fee-bee or Shallows.

Happy knitting and happy Mother's Day!

Tra-la, it's May!

Here we are in May, possibly my very favorite month of the year. My sinuses don't love it, but my eyes are drunk—absolutely tipsy—on color. Flowers, flowers, everywhere!

I'm posting a flower photo every day in May on Instagram. Care to join me? Use the hashtag #floweradayinmay. 

Next January and February, when the world seems bereft of color, it will be such a balm to scroll through #floweradayinmay and dream of the beauty that lies ahead.

New Pattern: Spindler Mitts

Today I'm pleased to share the first design I've created with handspun yarn: the Spindler Mitts. They're now available on Ravelry.

A pretty mix of lace, garter stitch, and stockinette, the Spindler Mitts are just right for small amounts of handspun yarn, or for those partial skeins of fingering weight yarn we all have in our stashes. Using only 125 yards for the small/medium size (140 for the large size), they're a quick knit—perfect for a last-minute Mother's Day gift or for end-of-the-year teacher gifts. (You could get three pairs out of a typical skein of sock yarn!)

For the sample pair, I used Ashland Bay Mixed Bluefaced Leicester, spun and plied with drop spindles (16 wpi). As I mentioned in my last post, I found BFL pleasant to spin and was really excited to see how the 2-ply developed a soft, attractive halo after I blocked the mitts. 

At Rhinebeck last fall, I picked up a bag of Cormo/alpaca fiber from the Foxhill Farm booth. I've started spinning and plying it, with good results. So now I'm pondering design ideas. Maybe a cowl to go with the Spindler Mitts, in time for Rhinebeck 2017? We'll see! Stay tuned here on the blog—or follow me on Instagram—to see how that works out.

Heartfelt thanks go to Jenny Sennott for editing the pattern and Betsey Sennott for modeling. (Another Sennott Sisters production, yay!)

I hope you enjoy the pattern. Thank you very much for reading.

Pretty, Pretty BFL

What a busy month! With Calliopsis just published, a large secret project for a magazine under way, a new sock design in progress, and a new fingerless mitts pattern almost ready to publish, I basically have knitwear design on my mind 24 hours a day.

The mitts—a pretty combination of lace, stockinette, and garter stitch—are my first design with my own handspun yarn.

The fiber is Ashland Bay Mixed BFL Top, which I spun and plied with drop spindles; the resulting two-ply yarn is fingering weight, 16 wpi.

I had about 140 yards to work with. So I weighed the yarn carefully as I knit, making sure I wouldn't run out. In the end, the small/medium size used about 125 yards. There's also a large size, which requires about 140 yards.

I think there will definitely be more BFL in my spinning future! I enjoyed both spinning and knitting it. But what I loved most was how, after a good soak in Eucalan, the fabric developed a really pretty halo. And it's so soft!  A delight to feel against your skin.

My sister Jenny, an accomplished spinner with years of experience (far more than me—I'm still a newbie), says BFL is her current favorite sheep breed because "it is a pleasure to spin and finishes up soft and lustrous, not as fussy or pill-prone as merino." So far, with my limited experience, I'd have to concur.

They're called Spindler Mitts, and I hope to publish them next week. To get news about these and all my new patterns delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for the monthly Blue Peninsula newsletter.

New Pattern: Calliopsis (and Cowl Sale!)

I'm excited to share a lovely new cowl for spring: Calliopsis.

Knit in two colors of Fibre Co. Meadow, Calliopsis is a light and airy lace confection. It can be styled lots of different ways, depending on your mood, your outfit, or the weather.

The pattern is on sale—along with my other cowl patterns—through Sunday, April 9. Use the coupon code COWL25 to save 25% on cowls in my Ravelry store (magazine patterns are not included). The code can be used as many times as you like.

Named after the flower Coreopsis (also known as Calliopsis or—less romantically—Tickweed), Calliopsis features two pretty lace stitches, each knit in its own color, separated by striped bands. These bands, knit back and forth on a circular needle, employ a really fun technique of sliding the stitches across the cable and knitting them again with the other color on the same side of the work. I first encountered this technique back in 2008 when I knit Norah Gaughan's Almost Garter Scarf. It's so clever!

Calliopsis is worked flat from end to end, from a provisional cast on. After blocking, the two ends of the piece are joined with a three-needle bind off to form a loop. Instructions for these techniques are provided in the pattern, and the lace stitches are given in both charts and line-by-line written instructions.

It's easy to customize this design. Aside from choosing any two colors you like, you can also vary the lengths of the two lace sections, to make a cowl that's uniquely your own. 

Knit in a laceweight or light fingering weight yarn, Calliopsis is the perfect accessory for spring. I knit the sample in Fibre Co. Meadow—a luscious blend of merino, baby llama, silk, and linen—in Prairie (for the main color) and Bergamot (for the contrast color). As I mentioned in my previous post, after I swatched with Meadow I felt no need to look at other yarns for this design. It has an exquisite softness and drape—it's almost weightless—but a really pleasing rustic quality, too. This was my first time knitting with Meadow and I'm sure it won't be my last.

If you get bored knitting scarves or cowls that are "the same thing over and over," you'll love Calliopsis. The lace and color changes are engaging and keep the knitting fun. 

As always, I am grateful to Jenny Sennott for her careful tech editing. I'm so fortunate to have her eyes on my patterns, making sure they come to you error free.

Thank you very much for reading!

Unrumpled

Lace looks so unimpressive while you're knitting it ...

The rumpled stitches are like ugly ducklings, awaiting their transformation ...

But once lace gets a good soak in wool wash and is blocked, it's an ugly duckling no more. How I love that part of the process! It never fails to make my heart leap just a little (sometimes a lot).

This is a new cowl design I'm working on, knit in Fibre Co. Meadow, a light fingering (almost laceweight) yarn. Usually, I like to audition a few yarns for a design, to get a feel for what fiber content and weight might be best. But once I made a couple swatches with Meadow, I felt no need to look at other yarns. Without a doubt, this rustic blend of merino, baby llama, silk, and linen was "the one." 

There's still some work to do on the pattern, plus photography, but it won't be too long a wait. Look for the pattern in early April.

P.S.  Did you know that free patterns are one of the rewards for my Patreon page? For a pledge of $2 per month, you'll receive a coupon code for one free pattern of your choice. For a $3 pledge, you'll get two free patterns. To learn more and see the progress of my Stitch Journal 2017 project, follow me on Patreon.