Indie Designer Day

Designer: Zoë Scheffy
Blog: Seaside Knitting
Etsy Shop: Seaside Knitting
Rav ID: Luome-Cloudberry
Some Great Designs: Luome-Cloudberry's Rav Designer Page

Evocative of oceanside beauty, tempests and mists, this week's designer Luome-Cloudberry presents us with a lovely catalogue of attractive knit designs.

Her Agean Sea Shrug (pictured) gracefully mimics waves and texture; I can almost feel the undulous gathers and bumpy stitches beneath my fingers!

By now I'm sure everyone knows about my extreme love of autumn, and Luome-Cloudberry's Enchanted Forest Fingerless Gloves are perhaps the most beautiful of their kind I've ever seen. There's been many-a-time I've wanted to incorporate various lace trim into my knitting, and I think these gloves are the perfect solution.

Lastly is the lovely Box-Pleat Top. The shape and texture are so interesting, it's fantastically graceful.

Make sure to stop by her Rav Designer Page, as there are many other of her designs to ogle!

If you really love her work, she's published a volume of 9 patterns at Blurb.com
You can preview the first 15 pages at Blurb.com or through a link at http://www.seasideknittingpatterns.com.

Bird Love: Bird Hate; Or, Canary Personality Profiles

Generally things don't change in the bird world round these parts, but every once in a while the urge to share feathered cuteness overwhelms.

Herein is writ the fascinating personality profiles of my wee feathered dudes.

My good bud Butters.
He's made several appearances on this blog, since he's the most patient of all the boys. Sweet tempered, loves to eat, and has an annoying habit of never taking baths.

Butter's orange neighbour, and constant posturing opponent, Ives.
He has no time for humans, and instead likes to stay in his cage and (during louder times) bark territorially at Butters. He has zero patience for cameratime, and so had to be held for this here portrait. And, as you can see, couldn't even keep still (yes, this was the best of the entire session).

The pretty-boy Mats is all squawk no action.
I think he knows he's pretty, since all he ever does is wash his face and sit moodily on his favourite perch. Here you see him pouting for the camera.

The Greatest Escapist Hilts.
Being the tiniest, perhaps he has that "little dog" syndrome - feels he must compensate for his size through toughness. He's always one to fly out of his cage, any chance he gets.

Indie Designer Day

Designer: Ashley
Etsy Shop: Oh Ashley Love
Rav ID: ohashleylove
Some Great Designs: ohashleylove's Rav Projects Page

The gorgeous atmospheric photography employed by this week's designer, ohashleylove, is wonderful in its mood-setting abilities and complimentary qualities for her attractive and fashionable pieces.

Working in crochet, ohashelylove creates designs of my happiest crochet dreams. Pictured here is her cozy cowl - never before has a simple garment done so much on its own!

Her adorable little round owl is certainly worth a boo, and the sienna cowl is a different and interesting take on the autumnal wardrobe staple.

A teasingly small photo of her puffy slouch hat displays her very cool aesthetic.
And check out her etsy shop - full of beautiful work!

Nom de Plume; Or, How I Like Palette

Pattern: Nom de Plume - Leggies
download now
Yarn: KnitPicks Palette (Cream - 2, Suede - 1, Brindle Heather - 1, Doe - 1, Camel Heather - 1, Bark - 1)

I really love the look of swatches of colour. I have, indeed, since I was a very wee one. I can recall tagging along with my dad to the hardware store, gleefully claiming various bright and tempting paint sample cards for my very own.

The same impulse takes over every time my new KnitPicks catalogue arrives. Hooray! I think.

I mean, mostly, the colours and yarns stay the same, but oh, the swatches! The hues! The Palette!

And so, I have a bit of a Palette collection - not every colour, certainly, but many. Probably more than I'll use any year soon. But my big plans most recently included creating peacock feather inspired knits using the same intarsia chart, but with different colour schemes.

First came the cream/natural shaded leggings.

They mostly turned out how I wanted - though I was disappointed by their lack of willingness to stay up.
The remedy came in the form of some savvy ribbon usage, threaded along the inside top ribbing.

I knew I also wanted a more true peacock-esque scheme, and tried that one out on the arm warmers.

Pattern: Nom de Plume - Arm Warmers
download now
Yarn: KnitPicks Palette
(one each of Black, Suede, Cornmeal, Teal and Navy)

These ones, one the other hand, turned out just as imagined. As per usual, I'm too lazy to add thumbs to the armwarmer tube itself, and instead just left some cast off stitches as an opening.

I tried to plan out the colour placement based on the KnitPicks site. Dicey, I know.
And verily, mistake I did make.
There's supposed to be a third colour surrounding the central "eye" of the feather. But the yarn I chose for that purpose, Pool, clashed something awful, and was thus axed from the knit.
You can see the missing part much better on this close up.

I'm planning on publishing the chart, and if anyone wishes, I could give the pattern(s) a go as well.

I'm also hoping that some day I push myself to make the fiery orange ones and soothingly green ones that I've sketched out in the numerous balls of Palette still sitting patiently in the yarn city that is my cedar chest.

But for now, I'm off to knit on my new knitty crush - the sock yarn sweater.
More to come on that one soon!

Apples Apples Everywhere (and a Canary)

Being autumn, the many lovely apples growing happily on my dad's farm are ripe and ready to be plucked from the nefarious clutches of various voracious birds and critters and delivered to my now very sweet smelling kitchen.


The wonder that is Ravelry gave me a hankering for apple butter, and so I whipped up a few jars of that, along with some applesauce (well, much applesauce. So much that I need to invent ways to use it. Any good applesauce recipes?)

Here I play with a selection of the jarred purée, accompanied by a few apples and my wee Butters.

Indie Designer Day

Designer: Asami Kawa
Rav ID: winterwren
Some Great Designs: winterwren's Rav Designer Page

With gorgeous designs related to nature, it was knitlove at first sight with the patterns of winterwren.

Pictured right is her Chamomile Tunic (this version knit by Rav member rarato), a wonderful example of her fashion aesthetic (also comes with a matching design for children, Little Chamomile). The delicate gathering details around the neckline, waist and sleeves makes me want one. Right now.

One can never get enough lace shawl eye candy, and Feathered Wings Shawl fits the bill perfectly. With yarnny wings like that, I think I might even make my wee yellow-bellied pets envious :)

Her Perseids design is what my Rowan Kidsilk Haze dreams are made of. All I can think of when I look at it is stars dancing across the night sky.

As always, check out the designer page on Rav. She has many more lovelies that I haven't mentioned!

Turkeymen Go Marching On

Thanksgiving happily brings me excuses to knit and bake.

Here you see three of six happy and adorable turkey dudes I knit up for the family dinner I've just had tonight. You can find the pattern here on Team Knit's blog. I wanted them to join us on the table, and so stuck them on small sticks and jammed those into pretty squashes.

Hope your weekend, whether holiday or no, was frantastic.

Indie Designer Day

Designer: Betsy Farquhar
Etsy Shop: Good Egg
Rav ID: elf518
Some Great Designs: elf518's Rav Projects Page

I'll make notes along the way when I'm looking into who to profile for these here Indie Designer days. The initial notes I made for this kickass designer were:

So Funky and awesome
need a micro sweater NOW!

And how :)

Our fashion-creator extraordinaire this week is elf518 - a person with incredible style, bright aesthetic and items that she wonderfully sells on her etsy shop (listed above).

Pictured is Ume Blossom Shrug, and believe me, it was difficult to choose which pattern to post a photo of. On her profile page on rav she sort of denigrates her photo-taking skills (using the timer is so what I do too!) but I don't think she could have chosen a better background and top to wear for the showing-off of this cool wee shrug (there's also a version of this beautiful item in monochrome, so check out the project page).

Riffing on the same fair isle shapes but in different garments are Cotton Candy and Lemon Drop Stem and Leaf Cowl and Stem and Leaf Sweater. I don't think I can say how much I enjoy her colour palette.

And now to the Micro Sweater. Clicking on that link will show you why it's way awesomecool. Her idea of knitting a sweater in parts is innovative, unique and fascinating. Check it out in the notes on that project page too.

The pretty Faux Bois Cowl Natural is so inspiring - I find all her work inspiring!
Please have a look at her etsy shop, projects and designer pages on rav. They're brimming with eye-candyful designs.

Indie Designer Day

Designer: veera
Blog: 100% Rain
Rav ID: veera
Some Great Designs: veera's Rav Projects Page

Despite its summery name, August (pictured) is a perfect example of what caught my eye about veera's wonderful designs.
Browsing through her projects page shows you garment after garment of classy, fuzzy warmth!
For a long time now I've been semi-obsessed with big sleeves, and August is pretty much perfect with its deep ribbing and herringbone texture.

Modern Garden is a very cool use of big wool and big lace. I find it particularly fantastic that she utilized the added stitches of the YO lace to step in for increases and decreases. I need this cardigan right now.

There's also the adorable and aptly named Dipped in Honey. Garter stitch cuffs with great buttons and colour-change detail make for a quick, functional and beautiful knit.
I'm planning on a big stash dig to find yarn for all three of these! Veera, you have incredible taste :)
(and as a side note: her Oct. 1 /09 blog post has the most adorable felted acorns. I need to find me some acorn tops so that I can have these for my very own!)