I am never happy with a plain jane anything. I always have to tweak things to make them my own. Complete Crochet border Designs is the perfect book to help me with this… Great designs to add to the edges of your project. I can’t wait to add it to the cuff edge of the cardigan I’m planning to knit. <

I am never happy with a plain jane anything. I always have to tweak things to make them my own. Complete Crochet border Designs is the perfect book to help me with this… Great designs to add to the edges of your project. I can’t wait to add it to the cuff edge of the cardigan I’m planning to knit. <

I love to create… it doesn’t matter what the medium is, I’ll give it a try… Well with that wall of yarn behind me, I have no choice but to create something out of yarn. Hence the process began in designing a sweater. Last fall we had received an email from a group of ladies asking that Knit Picks would have more patterns in larger sizes using DK weight, well I couldn’t resist the challenge! Fraulein Zippered Vest is the result. It was a little harder than I thought it would be. Well maybe not harder but more steps than I realized and a little hand holding was needed. The design was done with the larger woman in mind: vertical stripes, longer length in DK cotton yarn. The Fraulein got her name from the German Ribbing that was used to create the “stripes”. I …

As you know if you’ve read my staff picks in the past, I love cotton yarn. I wear it year round (wool is just too warm for me). Cotlin yarn is at the top of my list! (except for the new yarn, Comfy, that will debut this spring) Cotlin is DK weight and washable. I used it the the Fraulein Zippered Vest. It’s great to knit with and has wonderful colors to choose from. <

(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 …