super cute little babies (my friends’ girls)
in sweet little star topped hats.
well then, you can’t beat that.
purple toned yarn is raventwist’s sloan in colorway ‘nights in marrakech’
with photos by darcy lyons photography.
photos by kiki taboh
of the blue toned yarn is zitron’s unisono in color #1220.
in the dead of winter,
when i begin to feel that i might never get warm again,
i remember summers with my family near the ocean.
i think about
walks on the beach,
the sun warming
the back of my neck.
these thoughts
bring to mind
that spring
is truly coming.
all the while,
i smile at the
memory of
the childhood hope
that every clam shell
in sight
held a pinkish pearl
patiently waiting
for me, and only me, to find it and set it free.
this scarf, ‘pearl’, was born of those memories
and how i long so for spring.
‘spring’ taken from 29:23 of job.
photos courtesy of classic elite yarns and meg myers.
‘pearl’ is a new pattern by me, available for free in issue #329 of the cey webletter.
a squeeze of slouchy,
with a little
extra dash
of ribbing
(i find that to knit
ribbing in the round
calms & soothes
me to no end).
add in a pinch of spice
(that would be the cables that make up the crown),
and be sure to use a yarn with skads of personality
(i used a bit less than one full skein of ‘farm blend’
from romney ridge farm yarn co. for size l/xl).
mix it all together
and you wind up with ‘zari’, the hat i’ve been dreaming of.
no matter
my mood, it fits.
a little edgy?
this works with
black jeans
and motoboots.
a granola-head
boho spirit
kind of day?
this still fits the bill.
for the way
too common
‘bad hair day’?
absolutely this is the hat i’ve grabbed.
i’ve worn it day after day this cold, frosty winter
and as of today, it’s available here on ravelry.com.
maybe i’ll knit another…
‘calm’ taken from 15:18 in proverbs.
sometimes i challenge myself.
sometimes someone else fuels the fire.
this time elizabeth, owner of lys “auntie zaza’s”, asked for a cowl pattern.
‘something,’ she said, ‘for a beginner, but interesting. maybe with a cable.’
it’s funny how working to simplify this cowl
down to the very basics and
finding the most straightforward ways to construct it around the cable
was harder than designing a more complex piece.
i think that’s because i wanted every stitch to count.
if you’re learning to cable,
you want bang for your buck, you know?
long, wide cables are minimal on fuss
and maximize the drama.
if you’re going to try your hand at knitting in the round,
you want to not get two rows in
only to realize that you twisted it into a mobius by mistake.
since this cowl’s ribbing is knit flat,
by the time you join to knit in the round
it’s easy, almost foolproof, to see when you’ve got the twists out.
problem solved. now if only there was an easy way
to do gorgeous colorwork with 5 shades per row…
‘time’ taken from 15:32 in job.
this is the chair
beside susan’s desk
as creative director,
her space fills quickly
with color cards,
various mood boards,
swatches
and nearly endless
fresh design possibilities.
to begin something new,
one morning just over a week ago
this lemony vintage chair was filled with, well, me.
we talked of ideas and angles, palettes and themes, and of course, yarns.
by the time i had to drag myself away to get the kids off the bus,
we had finalized everything down to the color choices
(ie: all the colors warming the chair above)
for an indie collection of my new ideas
that cey and i are collaborating on.
i admit,
that as the stack of colors grew,
i began to feel a bit giddy with the excitement of it all.
to be given such freedom of choice and professional support
was moving to the creative side of me in a way that i find hard to describe.
what i can say clearly, is that the practical side of me went
right home and eagerly cast on for the first sweater.
‘clearly’ taken from 6:42 in luke.
(this is to be an ongoing series of posts
chronicling the process of this collaboration from swatches to release.
to search, all post titles will include ‘cey & i:‘ and be tagged with ‘artistic differences‘.)
textural adjective
:a characteristic quality; essence
:relating to a surface that is other than smooth
:the visual and especially tactile quality of a plane
:the characteristic structure of the interwoven or intertwined threads, strands,
or the like, that make up a textile fabric
okay. so,
i like to touch things.
cozy soft or heavily textured.
a flat surface turned 3 dimensional or silky smooth.
and all the better if my eyes feel like they can ‘touch’, too.
rough old tree bark, the surface of water at the hands of the wind;
these things really catch me and hold my attention.
what started as this: 
which made me think of this:
was ‘captured’ in the stitches of this:
grew firmly in my mind into this:
and with the help of classic elite and their mountaintop ‘crestone‘ became this:
‘tasa’ now available here as a free pdf download courtesy of classic elite yarns.
‘smooth’ taken from 3:5 in luke.
seriously, is that even a question?
it’s a luxurious yarn, a free copy of a new pattern and some other little goodies…
of course you should enter.
i’ve just released a new pattern knit up in
galler yarns’ heather prime alpaca.
this stuff is amazingly soft
and there’s enough in
just one skein to
to knit this.
‘this’ being valleys of the sea
a rectangular wrap with wave like edging
along the right and left edges as it’s knit end to end.
really now,
does it get any better
than high altitude alpaca
(‘the cashmere of alpacas’)
that you can contentedly
knit an entire wrap in
out of a single
600 yard
skein?
did i mention that this means
no yarn ends to weave precariously into the lace pattern?
leave a comment to this post saying
which galler yarn you would most like to try and why
on or before saturday, december 8th.
i’ll choose 5 winners by rng.
(one for each skein shown)
winners will be announced on monday, december 10th.
check back this week for posts on my fav galler yarns,
and which one i so very badly want to work with next.
‘valleys of the sea’ taken from 22:16 of 2nd samuel.
after a few e-mails
,
a small envelope arrives.
different widths,
different to the touch,
all silk.
i can pick three,
& then the colors that
each will be dyed.
i’ve stood at
many a yarn shop
and had certain colorways
call out to me.
i usually know what i like and what i don’t.
but, this time i can choose any of the colors shown here.
my mind is speechless.
my ability to choose freezes in the waves of the near endless possibilities crashing
again and again inside my head.
i head to rocks (me and my thing for rocks) for inspiration.
but should i choose the colors in turquoise, or lapis or one of the agates?
i stumble across this ring on etsy.
this is it.
i know it.
wow, ruby agate.
when applied to the silk strands i chose,
it looks like this.
now the hunt begins: to find
,
or to plain old make-up,
a stitch pattern of some sort
that will do it justice.
nothing else feels like silk.
nothing.
it has its own personality,
its own flair.
most of my cousins were ready to tear the needles and skein from my bare hands
as i worked three or four inches of one idea after the next,
each was frogged.
they were not quite right.
not for this yarn…
until finally, intertwined cables
(the result of graph paper
paired with more
than a few sharp pencils)
fit the playbill. ahh,
corriente‘s ‘born’.
the colors of this yarn
(south west trading company’s oasis in the colorway ‘purplexed’)
remind me so much
of pictures i’ve seen that captured
the sun just as it was sinking over the plains of africa.
and i have never seen anything else like balboa trees.
they are different enough from the trees
of my homegrown new england
as to look surreal outlined against the vast stretches of that foreign sky.
go ahead and ask … why the buckle?
i have friends
who moved their family to mombasa, kenya
and shortly thereafter taught their 7 yr old son
how to aptly maneuver a slingshot
so he could scare the monkeys
off the roof of their house.
monkeys,
(daily) on the roof of their house…
sometimes, it seems,
you have to be a little tough
to earn the right to live surrounded by such incredible beauty.
this is my newest scarf, mnara,
(pattern is now available here on ravelry).
see how it’s climbed a tree to get a better ocean view?
come on. use a little imagination…or just ask my 6 yr old.
he’ll explain to you in great detail exactly how it could happen.
‘mnara’ is swahili for ‘tower’ taken from 8:9 in the song of solomon.
