Here’s a summer pattern for you! This is something I’ve been working on for some time now.
Strawberry is a summer shawlette worked in fingering weight yarn; perfect for chasing away the chill on cool summer evenings. The shawl is designed to be shorter but wider than the traditional triangle shawlette.
Strawberry
Strawberry
Strawberry
Special thanks to my two wonderful testers, Irina and Sairy!
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Strawberry
Strawberry is available on Ravelry (no account needed)! Purchase the pattern for $4USD |
Luz Mojito
Check out Crafty Detour for details!
For the last two days I have been jumping around crazy with excitement over my first published pattern. (I say published meaning by someone else, not self-published.)
This has been a secret project since the beginning of the year, actually the proposal submission was about a year ago. Let me tell ya, it’s been very hard to keep it hush hush. And now that it has become public, I have been shouting about it all over the internet. So here’s a sneak peek, a preview from Interweave.
(c) Interweave Knits
(c) Interweave Knits
I have also added it to Ravelry HERE.
Check out Crafty Detour for details!
CSI
It’s almost time! For the latest news and more details, check out CraftyDetour.com.
I have a confession to make. I have a strong aversion to “cowls”. Knitters everywhere are enamored with making and wearing “cowls”, and I just cannot get into this spirit. I have two reasons.
Reason the first
A cowl is defined as a hood. Most, if not all knitted “cowls” are not cowls at all.
See how the front of the cowl forms a drape around the neck? That’s called a cowl neck, the drapey part of the hood. Some sweaters have cowl necks, which imitate this drape.
Reason the second
“Cowls” remind me of dickeys and wimples. I dislike dickeys very much.. I used to be forced to wear such things under sweaters etc. Mom used to say it was the warmth of a turtle neck without the bulk. Which is fine, but I didn’t even like turtle necks. I have nothing against wimples, except that I don’t care for them. It’s not a dislike, I just don’t see myself looking very good in one.
In conclusion, most “cowls” are really neck warmers. If you like to make and wear neck warmers, by all means go for it. However, I still think they remind me too much of Dickeys. Personally I would rather make and wear a scarf or shawl.
It’s official! Crafty Detour has announced CSI: Criminal Sock Investigations!
This is a not-a-club club which will span 10 months with one pattern a month. Patterns are available all at once (for a discounted price) as an e-book (patterns are added to the book monthly) or for those that don’t like surprises, individually.
Patterns will be hosted via Ravelry, but you don’t need a Ravelry account to participate! However, if you do have a Ravelry account, we have started a Crafty Detour group which will house discussions, project sharing, and all that fun stuff.
Wow, I cannot believe it is June already!
I’ve been mega busy in May with what I call Deadline Knitting. Deadline Knitting is bittersweet. It’s awesome because it means I have a project (or two) appearing in a magazine sometime in the future. However, it is underlined with huge amounts of stress. This stress is two-fold. First and foremost is the need to knit fast while maintaining high quality (this is going to be in print, archived forever as a testament to my knitting prowess). And second, I am constantly worried that people will not like the design.
When a magazine comes out there is a brief time of first impression judgment. Usually this occurs on an issue level, meaning that often the entire magazine is declared excellent or poor. People say things like, “I didn’t find anything I would want to knit, a terrible issue” or “I loved almost every pattern and am going to knit them all!” Of course there are the in betweens, “Eh, I found one or two things I would like to make.”
The hardest thing about pattern writing is accepting the fact that not everyone is going to fawn over your design. It’s a brave thing to put your work out in public. It’s going to be both praised and ridiculed; you cannot please everyone. The problem with the online community, well, not just online, is that most people feel the need to express the negative, and not necessarily the positive. The negative people can be so strong in fact, that many positive people cower in silence, afraid to voice their opinion in fear of getting cut down.
Anyway, this weekend I finished the knitting portion of my Deadline Knitting and will now do the writing part. I hope to get my projects in the mail tomorrow. And then I have a few months to brace myself for the oncoming storm of online judgment await public praise.
Also something good in May, my good friend Kim gave me an awesome thank you gift! Thank you Kim for the thank you! I already have plans for the yarn 
Yarny Awesomeness
Recently I received a friend invite on Facebook. I have so far stayed under the radar from any persons from my high school. This was the first. I have no qualms with this person, I barely knew him. He was a popular fellow, football player. And he is friends with just about every person that has ever passed through that school. But honestly, I have no desire to rebuild bridges once burnt down. I don’t care to reminisce about the good old times, or laugh about so-and-so, or see who became what.
Then I started thinking…what does this say about me? It sounds like I have this huge grudge against people I haven’t seen in 10 years. Why should this bother me? Why am I concerned that if I accept this request, 300 more will come flooding in? Maybe it’s just that I don’t even remember most of high school, and really don’t care to try.
Must think more about this. Maybe if I ignore him, he will go away…
I’ve been quite inactive lately. My day job requires me to be in a chair for 99% of the work day, I have a long commute, and by the time I get home all I want to do is sit and knit. Let’s just say exercise has not been on my to-do list for a long time.
Over the weekend my Mom mentioned that my sister has been using a workout game on the Wii, and has lost 20 lbs so far! And that was it, the gauntlet had been thrown. I determined at that moment, that I must get that game and lose at least that much weight; I attribute this to some subconscious sibling rivalry. I really would like to lose at least 30 pounds, but we will see.
So, yesterday I headed out to Walmart and picked up the game Active, by EA. I already have the balance board. I got it when it first came out with the intention of using the game Wii Fit, but quickly lost interest. Active is a serious game, less cutesy and supposedly much more focused on getting you in shape. It even came with accessories: a resistance band and a leg strap for the nun-chuck.
This morning I used it for the first time. The result? Jello legs and sweating. In 20 minutes today it said I burned over 100 Calories. So far so good! My goal is to work out for 20 minutes every morning before work. Soon I hope to feel less jello-y and more pumped – we will see.
