Errata: Barley Twist cardigan

Barley Twist baby cardigan
There is an error in the version of this pattern that appears in Knit Now Issue 65.

At the end of the yoke instructions, Rows 1 and 2 should be worked 8 times in total, not 8 more times after the first repeat. This will give you 144 sts and the sleeve separation row will work correctly.

If you find errors in any of my patterns, please email me and I will do my best to rectify the error.

New pattern: Rose Garden cowl

Every few months, Knit Now magazine has a call for submissions with a difference. Rather than the standard series of mood boards and theme suggestions, these calls give you some specifics about a yarn (a yarn weight, an amount of yarn, sometimes a combination of colours) and a weekend to come up with an idea. Yes, one weekend. Every time one of these calls comes up, I submit at least one or two designs, usually based on a stitch pattern that has been stuck in my head with nowhere to go. My Codebreaker cowl was a response to one of these calls, and here is another: the Rose Garden cowl, published in issue 49 of Knit Now, which is available today.

The Rose Garden cowl is based on a two colour slipped stitch pattern that I loved the texture of when I first saw it when I was browsing Pinterest one rainy afternoon (and here I discovered one massive disadvantage of Pinterest: every pattern for this stitch was in Russian, with no charts! I figured it out in the end!). When I knitted the swatch and sent it in to Knit Now, I was calling the pattern the Thistle cowl as I knitted the swatch in purple (my favourite colour), but when the yarn arrived, I had two fantastic shades of blue. I named the pattern the Rose Garden as the spikes in the stitch pattern remind me of Rose thorns.

Some patterns jump straight from the swatch to the final design with no further thought. This was not one of them! The design started off with a rolled stocking stitch edge, but when I started knitting the sample I realised that the yardage wasn't going to stretch to the original plan, so I had to make some modifications. The edging became ribbed and the tension loosened a little to make the yarn go a little further. And after knitting a third of a second sample I decided the rib I'd chosen didn't work with the rest of the design, so the whole thing had to be unravelled again, argh! But I got there in the end (with a bit of frantic 2am election night knitting thrown in for good measure as the deadline drew closer), and I hope you all like the finished result.

 

Need another reason to buy the magazine? It comes with this free gift: a rather cute little tin

 

Code Breaker Cowl

I am very excited to share a new pattern with you today. My Code Breaker Cowl pattern is in this month's issue of Knit Now magazine, which went on sale in the UK yesterday.

The cowl is a feast of intertwined cables (I designed it during my cable obsession at the start of the year). The cowl looks complex, but the cables are only every fourth row, and the pattern has both written and charted instructions, so if you have any experience with cables you should be able to knit it - I called it Code Breaker as without the key it looks tricky, but once you have that, it's actually pretty straightforward!

Knit Now's Patterns of the Year

Thank you to everyone who voted in Knit Now's Patterns of the Year that I posted about a few weeks ago. My copy of issue 44 came through the letterbox on Saturday morning and I was delighted to see that my Fantastical Fox set came joint first in the accessories category! It's wonderful to receive such recognition, and I'm really excited that someone other than me likes my patterns!

Fantastical Fox set

 
As well as coming joint first in one category, my Fluffy White Clouds blanket and Spring leaves cardigan were runners-up in the home and baby categories, respectively.

Fluffy White Clouds. Image copyright Practical Publishing

Spring Leaves. Image copyright Practical Publishing

Want to knit your own? My Fluffy White Clouds blanket is available now in my Ravelry store. I'm currently working on adding the other patterns to my Ravelry store (and I'll let you know via this blog when they are available), but you can still buy a back issue or electronic copy of issues 34 (Spring Leaves cardigan) or 39 (Fantastical Fox set, note that this pattern was featured in the supplement that came with issue 39 and may not be included in the electronic issue) direct from the publisher.

Awards season

The Golden Globes ceremony earlier in the week marked the start of the big film and TV awards for the year, but those aren't the awards I'm thinking of. I'm talking about the Knit Now Pattern of the Year!

In 2014 I was lucky enough to have rather a lot of patterns (11 to be precise) published in Knit Now magazine. I still think of getting a pattern accepted by a magazine as winning a competition, and it's always exciting to see my patterns printed on other people's pages, so I was very excited to see that some of my pattern shave been nominated for Knit Now's Pattern of the Year 2014. Voting is now open in all categories, and the survey can be found here. By voting you'll be entered into a competition to win one of three yarn bundles worth £50, so what are you waiting for, get voting!

Individual images copyright Practical Publishing

VOTING IS NOW CLOSED.

Fluffy White Clouds

In June, Knit Now magazine published the pattern for my favourite of my designs, Fluffy White Clouds. The design had been in my head for a while, as I originally submitted it in a previous round of submissions, but it wasn't accepted as it didn't fit in with any of the themes in that submissions round. I knew that I loved the design, and when the themes for the Summer 2014 issues were released I knew this design would be a good fit, so I re-submitted the design, successfully this time.

The design is simple; the blanket features a repeated cloud motif, but sometimes simple is best. The blanket is knitted in gorgeously soft Bluefaced Leicester, which makes for a wonderfully snuggly blanket. I was very excited when the sample was returned to me a few weeks ago - I'd forgotten that it was due to be returned. It's taken me a few weeks to get round to taking photos of it as we've all been super-coldy, but I finally did this afternoon, and I think it looks perfect. This is one baby blanket that isn't being given away!

 

If you'd like to make your own Fluffy White Clouds blanket the pattern is now available in my Ravelry store. Happy knitting.

P.S. While this pattern is not eligible for the giftalong2014 discount, it can be knitted as part of the Indie Design KAL on Ravelry (for more information, read my previous blog post on the Indie Design Gift-A-Long). And remember, there are prizes to be won!

Arabella scarf

Today sees the release of Knit Now magazine, issue 41, which contains my final third party publication for a bit, the Arabella scarf.

Arabella scarf. Image courtesy of Practical Publishing

The scarf is knitted in Malabrigo Rasta, a beautifully variegated super chunky weight yarn, and features a stitch pattern that combines both cables and some lace work. The scarf itself is huge and works perfectly for this season's blanket scarf trend, doubling up as a cardigan, scarf and potentially a coat; it's certainly warm enough! I love the way it's been styled by the Knit Now team, especially when worn as a cardigan and held in place with a belt. I was 8 months pregnant when I cast it off in the summer, and didn't manage to look quite so stylish!

Worn as a cardigan. Image courtesy of Practical Publishing.

The design isn't quite what I submitted earlier in the year. I had seen a cowl in Accessorise and adored the stitch pattern, it had just the right level of complexity and the shapes within the stitches were beautiful. However, I wasn't so keen on the colour or styling. So when I saw the call for submissions for this issue, I spent an afternoon reverse engineering the pattern and reinventing the pattern as a chunky cowl to fit in with the issue's theme 'Go big or go home'.

My original swatch

I gave the cowl the name Arabella after a friend's daughter; the friend lives in Switzerland where super-chunky items seem completely reasonable as they have proper winters over there. This friend has always been a great supporter of my knitting endeavours and her daughters have received several prototypes of my designs, so this design is in their honour as a thank you. I shan't name the friend here, she knows who she is.

After I had submitted the idea, I had an email from Kate (Heppell, editor of Knit Now) requesting that the design be re-imagined as a huge oversized scarf rather than a cowl, which I obviously said yes to. And the end result is beautiful, so I'm glad I said yes. The yarn looks amazing, and I love the variegation in the shades of blue, so a huge thank you to Malabrigo for supplying the yarn, their yarns had been on my wish list for a while, so I'm glad to have finally tried something by them out.

The point has been made though that not everyone can afford the yarn for this scarf; at £16.95 per 150 g skein (Love Knitting), 10 skeins is beyond many people's budgets. There are a couple of suggestions in the magazine on the amounts of yarn needed to make a smaller cowl or scarf, thus reducing the amount of yarn needed, so you can get away with using the luxury yarn without spending quite so much money.

However, as this scarf is not size-critical, using a substitute yarn is fairly straight-forward. My swatch was knitted in James C. Brett chunky with merino, and I loved how well-defined the stitches are. It's not a super-chunky weight yarn, so you might have to cast of a few more stitches, but the chart in the magazine makes it obvious how wide the repeat it, so just cast on an extra multiple and get knitting.

Essentially any super chunky yarn that takes your fancy could be used; I'd recommend something with a high wool content and plied for good stitch definition. A few options include Drops Andes, a wool/alpaca mix, which is a bargain at £3.90 per 100 g ball (Wool Warehouse, and Drops currently have a sale on their alpaca blend yarns with 25% off until the end of December, reducing the Andes to only £2.95 per ball); Drops Eskimo, which is a 100% wool single ply yarn (£1.70 for 50 g, Wool Warehouse); Stylecraft Life Super Chunky, a wool/acrylic mix, which is £2.99 for 100 g (Wool Warehouse); or Rico Essentials Big, another wool/acrylic mix, which comes in a fantastic array of colours (£3.49 for 50 g, Wool Warehouse).

All prices were correct on the date this blog was published. I have no affiliation with any of the stores mentioned; they are only included for sample price purposes.

Can't Catch Me!

I'm currently taking a bit of a hiatus from design work while my daughter is small, but there are still a couple of things I designed before she arrived that are still to be released. I've been designing for about two years now, and have had several designs published in Knit Now magazine, but I still find it ridiculously exciting to see my new designs in print. So I was delighted on Monday when the latest issue (issue 40, on sale from Thursday 16th October 2014) fell through the letterbox and I spotted my Can't Catch Me! children's jumper within its pages.

Image copyright Practical Publishing

Can't Catch Me! is one of my favourite types of knit: a children's picture jumper. I used to knit them for my sister when I was a teenager (I find all the colour changes keep my attention and stop me getting bored, and the child-size scale makes the project pretty speedy to knit), and am loving their current revival. Can't Catch Me! is a festive jumper, inspired by a toy I bought my son for Christmas last year. The gingerbread man is actually a bath toy, but my son takes him to bed frequently, and I find him adorable; he definitely didn't get put away once Christmas was over!

I really enjoyed designing and knitting this one, even if I did feel a little silly doing Christmas knitting in May. I made life a little easier for myself by knitting just the ginger bit of the gingerbread man into the jumper, then added the buttons, bow tie and eyes at the end using Swiss darning (duplicate stitch), which saved a few ends being darned in. The yarn it's knitted in (Wendy Merino DK) feels nice and wooly to knit with, then softens up beautifully when washed. It is machine washable, with care (I made the mistake of washing one piece at 40 °C on a standard cycle and it did shed a bit), and the colours have very subtle colour variation within them. I'll definitely be using the yarn again.

The sample is still with Knit Now (they keep them until the rights for the pattern return to me) so it won't be worn this Christmas, but hopefully it should fit my daughter in a few years time. She'll be wearing it even if the current trend for picture jumpers has passed. What kid doesn't look cute in a picture jumper?!