Tag Archives: Knitting

Meet Caridwen!

Caridwen is an Aran Lace wrap, written in two sizes — a scarf featuring the main cable and side cables, and a stole featuring additional secondary cables.

The entire stitch pattern is both charted and written out line by line for each version (scarf or stole).

You can purchase a kit for Caridwen from Craftsy — your choice for the scarf or the stole.  I’ll add a link when I find out that option is available!

Sizes
Scarf (Stole)

Finished Measurements
Width: 7 (13) in / (18) 33 cm
Length: 66 (72) in / 167.5 (183) cm

Yarn
Cloudborn Fibers Wool Worsted Twist (100% Fine Highland Wool; 222 yds / 203 m per 100g skein); 2 (4) skeins.
As worked, samples used 418 (823) yds / 382 (753) m.
Shown in Violet Heather (Turquoise Heather).

Needles
US6 / 4mm needles, or size to obtain gauge

Gauge
24 sts and 25.5 rows in 4 in / 10 cm average over cabled pattern, blocked
The cable pattern is quite stretchy.
Precise gauge is not necessary, but alterations in gauge will affect yarn requirements and finished size.

Notions
yarn needle, cable needle

Skills
Cabling, increases, decreases. Both charts and line by line instructions are included.

The Mrs Crosby Reticule Shawl (which will get a real name!) is the other shawl I’d like to get knit up prior to the June summer TNNA show. The picture, left, is of my initial swatch.

This shawl is a companion piece to Isn’t It Romantic?, but worked in laceweight yarn and a totally different shape. It starts with a few cast on stitches, then grows into a wedge/curled shape shawl. The main body of the shawl has a simple stockinette and lace panel design that flows into the lovely flowers of the edging.

Normally I try to finish one design sample before starting another, but I chose to work up this design right before going out of town 2 weeks ago, so I would have travel knitting.  The Cumbria Fingering shawl has four balls of yarn attached, and was fairly large by that point — not quite as easy to knit on the road!

I can finally tell you what I’ve had to be so quiet about!

Guys, I’m doing a class with Craftsy!  It’s about teaching you how to modify colorwork stitch patterns to create your own personal fingerless mittens, and I am beyond excited.

The tentative name is Custom Colorwork Techniques: Mitts.

It should be out in early May. I can’t wait!

End of January I started working with the acquisitions editor, Stefanie Japel. She was looking for a colorwork class, and had seen and liked my designs – specifically the fingerless mitts patterns like Dragonfly Mitts and Surf’s Up Mitts. She guided me through developing the class, and presented it to the rest of the Craftsy team. I found out the class was green lit – the class was a go! – a week later.

I had no idea of how big the whole Craftsy process was until I was part of it.  I got to work with several different people on developing the class (and more behind the scenes that I didn’t have a lot of back & forth with) even before flying out for the filming.  Apparently, by the end of post production, over 18 people will have been involved in creating, producing, and editing the class.

I can’t say enough how wonderful everyone was. I’d heard that Craftsy does everything they can to let the instructor just teach the class and not have to worry about anything else, and that’s absolutely true.

Here are some pics from the set.  It was the last day, so a lot of stuff had been neatened up already.

It was very dark in the room, except for the actual area where I stood or sat for filming. Those lights were very bright!

I’ll be following up with more information on the class itself — and the chance to win it for yourself!

The Sand Ripples Shawl features a lovely bi-colored cable pattern, complementary lace edging, and short-rowed garter stitch body.

I love this one!  I’ll likely be sending it off to Anzula for their trunk shows (which means you all may get the chance to see it and try it on!) but this is one I’d love to keep and snuggly up in. The Anzula Cloud yarn is so luscious.

The edging, worked as a combination of stranding (for the cables) and intarsia (for the lace), is worked first.

Stitches are picked up along the edge for the short-rowed body.  The body is in garter stitch, so once you’re picked up the stitches along the edge it turns into TV knitting .

Finished Measurements
Depth (edge): 6½ in / 16.5 cm
Depth (center): 14¾ in / 54 cm
Edge (inner): 68 in / 170.5 cm
Edge (outer): 80 in / 203 cm

Yarn
Anzula Cloud, 80% Merino Wool / 10% cashmere / 10% nylon (575 yds / 526 m per 4.02oz / 114g). 1 skein each MC and CC (545 yds / 498 m MC; 195 yds / 195 m CC). Shown in MC Victoria and CC Seaside.

Needles
US2 / 2.75mm, or size to obtain gauge

Gauge
28 sts and 32.5 rows = 4 in / 10 cm in edging pattern (blocked)
28 sts and 56 rows = 4 in / 10 cm in garter stitch
Precise gauge is not necessary, but alterations in gauge will affect yarn requirements and finished size.

Notions
yarn needle
cable needle

Skills
lace; simple intarsia; stranding; cabling; short rows; reading charts

What would you like to see on this blog?  I’ve set up a survey here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/X3LMBHJ

It’ll only take a minute or two!  Thank you so much.

If you’d like to be entered in a drawing to win a pattern as thanks for doing the survey, please post in this thread that you did the survey.  I’ll be giving away a pattern for each set of 10 responses through 3/17/2016.