photo copyright Jane Heller

Candlewick is a knitting pattern that can be purchased via Twist Collective for $7.00.

C fixed my computer for me, and I have now backed up everything I’ve worked on in the last three months AND committed to moving things over to my external harddrive on a regular basis [pausing here to add an Event with reminders to Google Calendar] so now I have access to all the photos I snapped back in December!

This sketch was first submitted to Twist Collective for Fall 2011 (when they chose Boundless and Asher (!!)), resubmitted for Winter 2011 (when they chose Corinth and Thornia (!!!), and then held for Spring 2012 (!!!!!) The mood boards prepared by Kate and her team are always so inspiring that my head is overflowing with ideas. Sometimes I will be sending them just a ton of swatches and sketches, other times it will be photos of a fully-made thing (like my purple Boundless) that fits their theme.


My original design idea was something like, “If a Bond girl wore handknits, what would it look like?” - I think I had been watching Casino Royale while working on another project, and this began drifting around in my head. It would be black, it would be close fitting, it would have a high collar but a plunging neckline, and it would be sexy. I had also been noticing that the lace patterns on Ravelry that were sticking in my head were those with a fair amount of texture to them, made by combining decreases, plain stitches, and yarn overs in ways that created changes in fabric height, not just opacity.





My laptop had been suffering from a cracked case for several months, and just before it was time to start writing up the pattern, the screen decided to die… so my new glam writing space was a table in our living room, with a HUGE old monitor taking up most of the table while I still used the laptop’s keyboard for typing. (my current setup is slightly better, still have the busted laptop in use, but with a flatscreen monitor and external keyboard and mouse hooked up - much more elegant!) The pieces of graph paper you can see here are bits of chart that I had printed and cut apart, so I could figure out the spacing for every size that would keep the main Honeybee motif in the right place while removing or filling in extra stitches for larger or smaller bodies. Sandi Rosner and the tech editing team at Twist Collective deserve special credit for this pattern, as it got a major rehashing of the charts that resulted in each size having its own page, instead of YOU the knitter having to do all the manual cutting and pasting!





Candlewick is written to be worked in pieces, from the bottom up, and then the fronts are joined to the back with a saddle extension from the sleeves. This is what the piece will look like when you get to the blocking stage.





To get the collar to stand up during blocking, I propped it around the lid from a small wicker basket that has been living in my collection of containers for years… see? There’s a reason why I don’t like to get rid of things, they might be useful some day!





Post-blocking, the sleeves are ready to be set in, then seams worked from hem to armpit and cuff to armpit. (do you know that trick? Start at the outer edges because they are most visible, and leave any end-of-seam fudging for the hidden armpit area!)





I love these buttons. I wanted something with a bit of subtle glam, but knew that cut glass would be too heavy for the sweater. These are made from mussel shells, and I found them at the glorious Button Button shop in the Gastown section of Vancouver. The yarn from Elann is wonderful too - I’m making a second version in MY size, using the same Peruvian Baby Silk in the same colour.

Final photos here were taken on the shop mannequin at Three Bags Full (thanks Francesca and Zoe! [best bosses ever]) You can see that the stitches are expanded a fair bit, especially on the upper back.. the mannequin is a 36 bust, the sweater is a 34ish, and the model that Twist Collective used for Jane Heller’s photos was probably a 32! This is the joy of knitting for yourself, getting to choose the size you make based on the amount of ease (positive/extra ease aka bigger than your real chest measurement = looser fitting, zero or negative ease means it will be skimming your body or stretched to show off your curves! The size I am making for myself is the 46″, with short rows in the front to give my 38Es a bit more length but not adding any extra width (I’ve made that mistake too many times before, and have the baggy-busted sweaters to prove it!).. so it will be fairly close-fitting at my bust, and hang from there. Photos can be found on my Ravelry project page whenever I finish it!

Are you thinking of making Candlewick? I’d love to see your projects! Please share your photos on Ravelry (I watch for User Activity on my patterns pretty regularly so I will spot them when you post) or drop me a note in the comments if you are sharing your photos and project notes elsewhere!

(Okay, I wrote this a couple months ago, but forgot to post it, sorry! Another catch-up post about the Bandha Hoodie is on its way too.. but in the meantime, if you want to see the other neat knitting-related thing I’ve been doing lately, check out the video ShopCasts I’ve been shooting for Three Bags Full!)

I’m so happy to announce that I have another pattern up at Twist Collective! This is Lara, from the Winter 2010 issue:

Lara Hood, photo copyright Jane Heller 2010

I have been playing with hood designs for a couple years, both those attached to sweaters and stand-alone versions that in the past hadn’t really worked. When the Mood Boards for this issue were sent out, I was inspired by the skating story to try again, so my submission included a sketch of a hood along with a couple other hat ideas… and the hood was accepted, yay!

When I learned that I would get to work with Unwind Yarns Merlot, I was especially happy – Shannon (the dyer) is from the Vancouver area as well and I have actually met her in person a couple of times at the LYS where I work and at mutual friends’ parties! Her yarns always get rave reviews at the shop, and I love her semi-solid colours. Though I wouldn’t have chosen bright golden orange for ME, I totally understood Kate’s editorial vision of high-impact colours that would really pop against the white background of a skating rink, and the Glow colourway does a great job of showing the stitch patterns!

This is where my design story goes downhill a bit: When the yarn for Lara arrived, I was already working on meeting the deadline for a sweater for another publication (the Bandha hoodie for Knitscene Winter/Spring 2011), so I didn’t jump into working on it right away. I knew that I was going to be flying out to Toronto the weekend before our designs were due, so I thought that if I started it a couple weeks before that, I could have it done and pop it in the mail from Toronto for a quick delivery to Montreal.



Lesson Learned from Lara: don’t leave things until the last minute!

I started swatching… and swatched… and swatched… and swatched… I was struggling with a couple of things: my original idea and sketch had the vines starting at the bottom corners of the hood and growing in both directions (towards centre top and back neck), and I just couldn’t get the vine AND the background to both increase in a satisfactory way… and then I was also having issues with choosing background stitches that would lay flat rather than curl the edges around, but that would also let the delicate vines stand out without being overwhelmed by a lot of extra texture. An email to Kate came back with her approval to move away from the original construction concept, and a suggestion that a simple purl background (like the one used in Red Oak in the Fall issue) would block flat if it was kept in scale to the vine patterning.

More swatching included working on the corner design and general construction, and testing different versions of the leafy vines. So the deadline is now looming.. but I’m still feeling pretty okay because I have the whole day of flying to Toronto, plus the weekend at my in-laws, to finish it up and get it blocked. Great! Only one problem: I’m a perfectionist.

I was still swatching on the flight over, and through the first day of our visit… and then continued knitting like a fiend for the next two days to get it done! (An apology to my niece and the rest of Chris’ family: next time I’ll be more available for hanging out and playing, promise!) I-cord added, leaf tassels done, blocked, charts done and notes written… into the mail it went! Whew!


And then came the email.

I have give Kate a lot of credit: she has excellent taste (I LOVE so many designs in every issue), the drive and skill to get issues of Twist out on a regular schedule, AND the ability to write very clear and straightforward emails when she’s not satisfied with a submitted design!

Lesson Learned from Lara: refer back to the original sketch frequently, and consult early!


Kate pointed out that my hood had morphed to a point of being unrecognizable from my original sketch: it was bigger, the vine pattern was scaled larger in relation to the overall hood, and I had changed the shape of the front bands dramatically to the point where it reminded her of the plastic rain bonnets that our grandmothers used to wear! Whoops, so NOT a good thing! A few more emails back and forth, clarifying sizes and shapes and timeframes, and then I was in a flurry to get the rework done in time to make the original photoshoot deadline.

I had to wait for the original hood to come back so I could frog and reuse the yarn, so in the meantime I started swatching again for smaller vines. You can’t see this from the photos, but the vines on both sides of the face point UP, due to being worked in two pieces and a quick graft at the centre top… I thought this was a decent solution rather than having upside-down leaves on one side of the face! Another construction tweak kept the hood smaller - the point on the first version was a huge thing reminiscent of Lord of the Ring costumes! (The fact that a lot of my friends are into costuming and Faerie World gatherings made this seem like a good thing at first…)

With Kate’s guidance, the second version (what you are now seeing as Lara[Ravelry link]) got finished, and shipped back in time to make the ice rink photoshoot. I agree with her that this smaller version is really cute, and from the response I can track on Ravelry, it is obvious that many knitters think so, too!


Lesson Learned from Lara: an initial rejection is not the end of the world, and the acceptance of critique and feedback can result in the creation of a really cool thing!

These lessons (and a couple others I learned during this project) will serve me well as I continue building my career as a knitwear designer – thanks so much, Kate!

For those of you who will be knitting Lara: there is one technique in the vine charts that I may have invented (or unvented) called a Combine. This came to life after hours of swatching leaf variations, trying to keep the edge of the increasing leaf body clean and crisp, while also managing a decrease somewhere so the stitch count wouldn’t change. The result is a combination of a left-lifted increase worked with an immediate SSK decrease: the Combine!

(Have you seen this technique before? Let me know, I’d love to see how other designers use it!)


Here’s my latest version: knit following the pattern, still using Unwind Yarns Merlot DK but in a yummy green this time. This one hadn’t been blocked yet when I took the photo, so you can see the issue with curling edges that I was worried about..but blocking really does make it go away! (see more photos on Ravelry)

I always enjoy seeing my patterns worked up in different colour combinations and yarns – the variations on Piper and Lallans posted on Ravelry are neat! I really appreciate your support for my designs, and can’t wait to see your Laras!

Whee!

I have such a hard time keeping secrets, but here’s another can’t-tell-until-it-is-live project: Lallans for the Fall 2010 issue of Twist Collective, a fabulous online knitting magazine (but you knew that already, right?)

The picture above is of the prototype - see the Lallans pattern page here or on Twist Collective for photos of the real version (this length of ribbing didn’t work out with the short rows).

The mood boards for this issue included three stories: a woodland shoot, with the words “walk along quiet byways, wander through the woods”; What Would Mary-Heather Wear, a colourful and quirky tribute to the stylish Mary-Heather Cogar who is a knitting designer and Ravelry employee and lover of cute German Shepard dogs (hers is named Charlie); and then a black and white selection of glamourous, edgy, strong rocking women.

I submitted ideas for all three stories, and Lallans was chosen - this was the one that had already been fully knit, and perhaps my completed hats are easier to judge than my sketched ideas! (Piper was submitted in the same way, with photos of a completed hat along with drawings of other concepts.) I thought that design would work particularly well for the woodlands idea, as it had a bit more of the kicking-around-in-the-fields flavour and less of Piper’s glam or the playfulness that I’d associate with Mary-Heather!





The design itself was a sideline project that came after I finished my NaKniSweMo hoodie in January. I had used the braiding technique to trim all around the bottom, front, and hood edges before applying the final ribbing band, and I really loved the way it looked! (Note, however, that I did NOT love applying it to the hoodie! Lesson learned: braid is good on small things, like hats or mittens. That much twisted yarn as you work on hundreds of stitches, not so fun.) I wanted to use piping again (yes, I’m still on that kick) and also throw in a bit more texture, so that’s where those garter ridges joined us. The slip stitch pattern was tougher: I consulted a few different stitch dictionaries, but didn’t find anything I liked, so I started playing around. This pattern that resulted is the colourwork equivalent of the textured stitch in Picker’s Delight, balanced for easy shifting between colours and rows, and simple to remember! There’s a bit of fiddly work at the start and end of some of the rounds, but I think it does a good job of helping to minimize the jog.

This hat had the original working title of Hound, since I thought that the slip stitch patterning looked like the weave structure called Houndstooth. In the second or third round of edits, Kate suggested we rename it Lallans, the Scottish word for Lowlands (the region that developed the Houndstooth pattern). I always find naming patterns hard (read about Piper’s process here) but was content with Hound.. but Lallans is a lovely fit! I have a friend visiting Scotland right now, so I’ll be getting coached in the proper pronunciation.

Knitting the two samples was fun, and I loved the colour combinations that Kate chose for me. The Caledon Hills Worsted Wool was delicious to work with, too! One of the things I really enjoy about designing for publications that provide yarn support is that I get to experience a wide range of fibres, not just what the local shops carry..

And finally, I really love the photo shoot with the model digging around under the hood of a vehicle - my sister and I both spent a lot of time in our teen years working on motorcycles or my dad’s truck, as he tried to give us some good mechanical basics. It obviously stuck with my sister (she’s an electrician, working towards becoming a millwright in a sawmill in the middle of BC), but didn’t have as much of a lasting effect on me. I’m happy that Chris is a handyman and will help me out in that area when needed! As pretty as it looks on the Twist Collective models, I’m planning to get some photos of men wearing the straight ribbing version as I think this pattern can be pretty masculine or unisex too!

Bandit is the third asymmetrical hat that I have designed in the past three years.

The first hat hasn’t made it online yet, though one version (in Malabrigo Worsted) has seen a season of snowboarding under my helmet, and another version (in Green Mountain Spinnery’s Alpaca Elegance) went home with Zoe of Three Bags Full because she loved its flattering fit.

The second hat has turned out to be popular: Piper, published online in the Fall 2009 issue of Twist Collective.

And this, the third? Well… I have high hopes that it will do as well as, or even surpass, Piper.

Piper IS pretty cool (okay, I’m secretly THRILLED at how many people like Piper…) but it is also a fairly girly, dress-up-ish hat, with a strong vintage flavour. Bandit is also cool, but in a more daily-wearable way: the saucy styling will go well with a sporty outfit when knit in something tweedy (as shown) or you could choose a smoother yarn in a glam colour and knit a sleek hat for dressier occasions!

Bandit is also flexible in the way it can be worn, and I wish I had thought to take a picture when Francesca of Three Bags Full popped it on her head with the narrow part forward. Again with the comparison: if you did this with Piper, the turban effect would be pretty powerful. With Bandit, it is a much subtler flavour: is it a turban reference? Or does it suggest the bandanna of Rosie The Riveter? Or something rockabilly?

I’m looking forward to seeing the photos that will be appearing on Ravelry soon, from all of my test knitters. This round of pattern production saw two hats and a hooded scarf all ready to go in early September, and I made use of Ravelry’s Testing Pool, Hats Hats Hats, and Just A Scarf groups to find testers. 24hours after I posted a request for testers, I had 20+ responses! A couple of testers haven’t returned my emails since the initial pattern sendout, but the rest have come through with questions, comments, suggestions, red and blue and green ink, and a glorious amount of support for my designwork.

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the work these people have done on my behalf, and just for the love of knitting (and as many of my patterns as they’d like…), the challenge of working through a possibly-glitchy pattern, and the desire to mark up other people’s writing with red ink all over the place! Bandit in particular was suffering from some small holes near the top of the band, where I had failed to write down the correct type of short-row wrap, and both hats had issues related to lazy cut-and-pasting - when I start writing up a new pattern, I’ll often begin with an older pattern of mine and just replace the instructions - in these cases, some uncorrected issues included confusiong statements about which size of needles to use (even though the hats only use one size) and how to use the cast-on tail to do something that it really really can’t.

I feel like my brain is overflowing with design ideas.. and I’m glad to have brought this one to life! I hope you enjoy

Visit Bandit’s pattern page for more details on the project, and for the link to purchase and download through Ravelry.

Several months ago, a shipment of Koigu arrived at Three Bags Full. Luckily I was working that day, so I got to spend most of my five-hour shift unpacking the boxes and rearranging the new colours up on our Wall of Glory (which is what I call the Koigu section in my head)!

We have a Charlotte’s Web shawl in the shop, so I began playing with combinations of colour, in groups of five skeins each. I started adding extra skeins (since that shawl is a bit undersized for me), and wound up with a group of nine that I really loved. Turning to Francesca, I asked if I could design something using the nine, in a beginner-friendly pattern. She gave me the go-ahead, and off I went! About a week later, the wrap was complete and blocked, and it was AMAZING!

Did I mention that the project is all-knit, all-the-time? Yes, NO PURLING!

The double-stranded Koigu blocks out to have a lovely drape, but still springy and stretchy and cozy and full of OOOOHness! (technical term there, “oooohness”) Since the sample wrap has been living in the shop, many of our customers have put together their own colour choices, and getting to see each new wrap has been a lot of fun!

Some hints for choosing nine colours: pick a skein you love, pick another one that you think will look good next to your skin, and pick a third that will be a darker anchor at the hem of the shawl. Now, fill in the gaps: find colours that bridge the gap from one to the next, sharing a few colours in common with the skeins on each side. Don’t be afraid if one colour seems to jump out a bit - this adds a visual sparkle to your wrap!

This is a free download, available through Ravelry (though you don’t need to be a member). If you ARE a Ravelry member, it would be great to see your completed project photos! If you aren’t on Ravelry, what’s keeping you?!

Click here for Free Download of ColourFlow Wrap pattern.

Go here to see the Colourflow Wrap project page on Ravelry. Hopefully others will post their projects quickly so we can all ooh and aah over the glorious colours!

Many thanks to Megan McPeak for allowing me to take photos during the final stage of her project!

Now, the tutorial! Please note that this does not include enough information to create the wrap, you will need to download the PDF and read through the pattern to get started. This WILL help you out when it comes to the final stages of cutting and fringing. Enjoy!

After you unravel the final 10 stitches, the 11th loop should be at the top of the column of twisted stitches.

The tail end of yarn has been threaded through the last live stitch, so all cast-off stitches are now secured and will not unravel. Live stitches on the left will be unravelled after cutting, to become the fringe!

The white arrows indicate the columns of wrapped stitches. The cut line is 10 stitches away from each of these columns.

The pink line shows the column of knit stitches that you can follow as you cut. Untie any knots as you come to them, and trim these after the fringe has been knotted.

Starting at the end with live stitches, pull out one row of stitches at a time until you have reached the cast-on edge (which gets pulled out, too!)

Whee! Isn't it nice to have this happen on purpose, instead of by accident?

Make the first layer of knots close to the knitted fabric, using 8 strands for each knot. Fudge the number of strands as you get close to the end if needed (your row count may differ from mine). You can see how the first bundle in the second row of knots is thicker than the rest - this will be true of the first and last bundle, as they will have all the strands of the edge bundle plus half of its neighbour. You can choose to knot all of the first row before beginning the second row, it won't affect the final outcome.

PS - wondering about the spelling? You say Colorflow, I say Colourflow - ’cause I’m Canadian, eh?

When the Spring 2008 issue of Knitty with Laminaria appeared, I fell in love with the lace edging of this shawl. I tried swatching it, using some fingering weight hemp. It didn’t go well. (I’m sure you are surprised.)

I did have other yarn possibilities in my stash, of course, but nothing that was the same teal-green as the hemp… and the whole seaweed-like look of the shawl was what I found so appealing. So, this project didn’t really get off the ground.

Last night I was browsing Ravelry, looking at patterns for tank tops and camisoles (and having a good laugh at the other projects in the ‘Naughty’ catagory). A few caught my eye, but I realized that I would probably have to strike out on my own path to make the lacy summer top I was searching for: large, graphic motifs with an interesting border. Hm. Sound like a shawl we know?

Today wound up being a vacation day for me: no work, no commitments (”no, honey, you go buy seeds for the garden.. I’m going to stay in bed and read until I feel like getting up!”), just doing whatever amount of puttering through chores I felt like (which means the studio is much closer to done, but not done, and the living room hasn’t fully recovered from the Triple C craft night on Thursday), and making stuff for ME! (okay, I admit that the spinning has had more photos of it taken than usual, while I ponder whether I want to write something for Knittyspin, and I swapped a few emails about pool work back and forth with my supervisor, but that was it)

The result? I’ve got a generous swatch of the blossom and border charts knit up on 4mm needles in SeaSilk (in a off-white, cream and pale gold mix, possibly destined for overdyeing) and now blocking overnight. The last few rows seemed to take forever, but the pattern looks awesome, and I’m looking forward to plotting my summer top.

Veronique? Well, she got a few more inches done during the Triple C, but I’m a bit fed up with having to pay attention while I knit. Knitting, all knit stitches, I can usually do without looking. The lovely boucle yarn is unfortunately too easy to snag, so I would catch a loop instead of a stitch if I dared look away, so… it may become a second-string project for a while. Then again, watching knit stitches is still easier than reading a chart line-by-line, so it may not be fully doomed after all.

I guess we’ll see! Oh, PS: new episode of the ChristaKnits podcast is out - check iTunes (it has been so long, I wouldn’t blame you if you had unsubscribed) or visit the Podcast page for the link!

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?