French Girl Knits, by Kristeen Griffin-Grimes, is a glorious book. The buzz was already high, (Kim Werker was the one who told me how she snatched it up for all the beautiful projects… five minutes after saying goodbye, I was at the cash register at Urban Yarns buying my copy) and it is all well-deserved.

Veronique caught my eye for its delicate design done in the simplest of knitting. The photos confused me a bit, as I saw seams on the sleeves that weren’t accounted for in the pattern, (visit the Veronique KAL on Ravelry to read Kristeen’s explanation) and it took me a few minutes to understand the construction diagrams, but I knew that I wanted to make it.

Off to check my stash! After a trip to Japan last summer, I had cones of lightweight yarns from Avril (aka Habu) that I had thought to hold together for some future, non-laceweight project. Would any of them work for this, instead? Lightweight, teeny boucle mohair (I think) - floats like KidSilk Haze, check! A quick gauge swatch on 5mms, and I knew I was good.

I started thinking about the construction, and pondering a good selvedge for seaming purposes, and THEN I started trying to figure out if it could be made in the round. I could picture the “T” diagram with horizontal stripes on it, and then picture those stripes as they would meet in the seams, and realized it could be done. All of this was BEFORE I joined the Veronique KAL… when I had gotten through my cast-on and had it working, I looked around to see if I could share the technique, only to discover that everyone in the KAL was already talking about it, but they were working it from the outside in with plans to graft across the centre back and gathers at the end!

These photos aren’t my project, in case you’re wondering about the yarn. This is Francesca’s, the co-owner of Three Bags Full, worked in Kidsilk Haze.

Comments are welcome - Please let me know if you have any questions about this!

Provisional cast-on over cable of spare needle, using 1/3 of original cast-on stitches as pattern calls for.

Provisional cast-on over waste yarn, using all of stitches in pattern's first provisional cast on instruction.

Slide spare cable through stitches so needle tip is pulled into stitches at the same end as Step 2's stitches.

Pull working needle around so it is in position to knit stitches off spare needle.

Stretch armhole stitches around curve of working needle before beginning increases across stitches from spare needle.

Increases (K1, Yo, KI all into every stitch) across all stitches from spare needle complete. All stitches on working needle only.

Second armhole: provisional cast-on over waste yarn again, same number of stitches as Step 2. Yarn at bottom left of photo is NOT working yarn, this is tail from original cast on.

Curve working needle around to point at its other end, to begin working in the round. Slip knot from original cast-on now removed.

Hard to get stitches stretched around enough? You can use the Magic Loop method of pulling extra cable out between stitches to get around the corners eaiser. This won't be required once you have knit a few inches.

For those of you who like diagrams!

Francesca's Veronique - after 1 day!

I had forgotten the joy, the wonderfulness, the excitement….

Maybe you know it: when you sit down to record your podcast, get all the settings right, have notes at hand, sip some water, and then hit the little red button and start talking? And then, after a great stream-of-conciousness flow of verbal glory for 30 minutes or so, you stop recording, hit the save button… and it crashes?

Yeah, that joy

That was last night, around 8:30pm. Another half hour, and I had located the temporary files Audacity had saved during recording, downloaded a crash recovery program (didn’t work), updated to the beta version of Audacity (with auto-recover), finished cursing, and was back at it.

After another 10 minutes of fiddling with the settings, I resumed recording, stopped and saved often, and got the job done.

Tuesdays are my day of admin work: I have 4.5 hours between knitting classes, and if I take my laptop with me, I can park myself in a nearby cafe (with free Internet, woot!) and work uninterrupted for most of that time.

On today’s work list: edit the audio, get it uploaded to Libsyn (my host, who pushes it out to iTunes and everywhere else), post it on here and Ravelry, and then switch gears and do some work on my next submission - involves steeking a bit of knitting that didn’t work in its current location but will be the glorious base of my next design, teaching myself to crochet bobbles, and getting a start on the writing for the package.

If I still have time after all that, then I’ll do some more website tweaking.. but since Wednesdays are also a major day of work-at-home time, it won’t be a big deal if I don’t get there.

C woke me up this morning, because I was apparently making unhappy moaning sounds. He asked if I was having a bad dream, and once I sorted out in my brain that that was the first sentence in our real conversation, I was able to figure out that I had just been dreaming that I was showing him my latest pattern. My latest pattern that had been FORMATTED INCORRECTLY! Oh, the horror.

This is the sort of thing that I think about, as I try to build my work as a self-published designer: are my patterns easy to read? Are they nice to look at? Are they consistent, so I don’t have to continually decide what goes where each time I sit down to write one up?

One of the decisions I’m faced with right now is whether I want to go back and rework all of my old patterns to fit into my current formatting, or just make them available as-is. On the one hand, it would feel good to have a library of work that I’m totally happy with. On the other side, it will be a chunk of work time that could be spent elsewhere, on new designs or finishing this website or working up another submission for a magaine.

Comments are welcome, what do you think?

Making good progress, but currently the blog comments aren’t working… and I want to tweak some stuff around the navigation menus… and then figure out how many widgets I could ever possibly want to use!

This is destined to become the new home of Christa Knits online… where I will blog, link, and post patterns for sale and free download, and it will be awesome!