(lovely photos courtesy of Alison – thank you!)
Yarn: Bare Essential (75% superwash merino, 25% nylon)
Dye: Jacquard Acid Dyes Burnt Orange, Burgundy, Chestnut
Needles: 40″ nickel plated fixed circular, size 0
Pattern: my own – toe-up, standard heel flap, slip stitch heel and back ankle, knit until the yarn is gone. I’m working on writing the pattern up for our sock catalog in June/July. Anyone want to test knit for me?
Whew, they’re done! It was so nice to be able to show the finished product to my class. I started the class teaching both the two-socks-on-two-circs method and the magic loop method so the students could choose which way they wanted to knit. They are all very new knitters; most have only done a scarf or two. After a couple weeks of frustration, all the two-circ ladies switched to magic loop, …

I started the Curved Shawl from Victorian Lace Today back in August. It is my first real, full-sized lace project. I set it aside for a few months because I was worried I would run out of yarn (Autumn Heather Alpaca Cloud). I made the body of the shawl a little wider and longer than the pattern states, so I’m not sure I’ll have enough yarn to finish the border – aarrgh! I was hoping to avoid the potential problem by just not working on the shawl, but I just realized the only way I will find out the answer is if I knit it. So, now, the joy of lace knitting is renewed – it’s amazing how addictive it is, and yet I forget how addictive it is if I let it sit too long. …

Spring fever has reached record highs here at the Knit Picks office. Samples of the soft, yummy, new spring/summer yarns are finally here, and we’re all a twitter trying to get photos taken, catalogs printed, new ads designed, new patterns tested, and of course, before any of that can actually be completed, we have to swatch, swatch, swatch!

Being the most inexperienced knitter on staff, I’ve excused myself from swatch duty and appointed myself as head documentarian instead. That means I’ve been taking photos of all my frantically knitting co-workers. I’m sure they’ll look back fondly on this week and be thankful I took pictures once the mania dies down. If not, I hope the rest of you will at least appreciate the sneak peek into the inner workings of Knit Picks.

Christy has (almost) singlehandedly wound every ball of …

Oh no! Knitting catastrophe!

Just kidding. I’m writing a two-at-a-time sock tutorial, and the test knitter just returned the samples. Inside that pile of treacherous circulars and Essential sock yarn are six sock stages, knit in duplicate, all ready for photography. <

It’s moving day at the KP office. Actually, what was moving day is dragging into more of a moving week or two. We’ve got a LOT of stuff.
“Now where in the world are they moving to?”, you might be asking yourself. That’s a fair enough question. And it’s kind of hard to explain. See, this used to be Tina’s office downstairs,

but now she’s in this office upstairs.

And all of KP used to be downstairs right here,

but now they’re moving upstairs into this room,

and almost everyone who was in that room is moving to this room,

except for the few random individuals who belong to no specific department and are being peppered liberally throughout the building where ever space allows.
I think it’s …

Wow, the office move is on Tuesday, but we’re already almost done! It’s amazing what you can do when you all work as a team. It’s also amazing what you discover lurking in some mystery box – and how these random things can be a little spot of inspiration.
As a garment designer, I’ve always got an eye on fashions and trends (whether good or bad!) and after a while, it kind of blends in together. It can get to be difficult to glean inspiration out of something you’ve seen a hundred times! But, going through all of our yarns, notions and random bits and bobs of office accumulation, I found some real gems of inspiration.
One was the project yarn wall. When you see our yarn in a catalog or online, it’s arranged in some order – often in rainbow order. It’s easy to gravitate toward colors you like that way, …