*Juniper Moon Yarns released 8 shawls onto Ravelry that I had designed for them over the last few months. Each one is a different. Knit with different fibres, different weights of yarn and different shapes. Below are the covers of each pattern.
My personal favourites – the ones I would have in my wardrobe and wear over and over are Tradition. I may have to reknit that one for myself. Dewey – just so pretty with the beaded edge and Grand Pennant – simple and elegant!
So yesterday was an exciting day – to see the patterns professionally done and available to all!
I hope that you have a fabulous day today!
Be well and knit happy!
Lynette
PS – header is a detail from Tradition. It is fully reversible with flowers on one side and stripes on the other! Definitely my favourite!
Today I submitted my last pattern to Juniper Moon Farm Yarns for a Spring Collection of shawls, eight in all. Pretty much the bulk of my knitting for the last eighteen months has been patterns and samples for Juniper Moon. The first 16 pattern are now all available from Ravelry and your LYS – if they carry Juniper Moon Yarns. I am not sure when the Spring patterns are released but I will certainly write about them at that time!
It has been a very productive time for me personally as well. I have so many patterns half written and with samples knit that I am not sure quite where I am going to start….
Though usually I start with the most recently knit and work my way backwards…. LOL!
So Recent Knits include the class samples: They will be out first, before anything else! Needs must after all!
We are in the middle of our Winter Classes at work so I did a couple of new pieces. A couple of hats. A new fair-isle hat for a fair-isle class and a redo of an older hat pattern – Burka Leaf, now called Galadriel’s Gift. Galadriel’s Gift is one of my favourite patterns, a beautiful beaded lace cap. And a new shawl, a small Shetland style Hap with the beautiful striped border and simple lace edging.
So these things are completed! And patterns will be available in a couple of weeks.
A busy start to the new year! I hope that you are completing some old projects and contemplating some new ones!
Never quite sure how to acknowledge this Season. For me it means Merry Christmas, not because of any religious meaning, but because it was a merry time of the year for our family. One that included presents, good food, and many friends and family and laughter, there was always laughter. It was my Mother’s favourite time of year and the whole house reflected her joy in the Season. Because of this – it is also my favourite time of the year!
So Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukka, Blessings this Solstice or however you and yours celebrate this Season of Light – I wish you all much joy and love.
Every December for the last 7 or so years I have published a pattern on Ravelry that I make free for the month of December though January 1. It is my way of thanking you and wishing you all a Wonderful Holiday Season.
This year’s pattern is the Mendenhall Shawl. This Shawl took a couple of years to come to fruition. It was going to be a joint project between Selena Miskin of Wayfaring Yarns and myself. Selena’s yarns and my patterns. We were the Sweater Sisters.
Beautiful Mendenhall Glacier – those colours!
Selena used to dye the most beautiful yarns, but due to health problems she hasn’t been able to dye any beautiful things for a couple of years. I kept hoping that would change – but life doesn’t always work that way. So, I am releasing the as a gift from us both.
Included in the Mendenhall Shawl pattern is the code to purchase the co-ordinating Mendenhall Hat pattern. If you have purchased the 7 Hats More ebook you will not need to the code as the hat pattern is already in your ebook – the shawl will automatically be added to your ebook in your Ravelry library. This will be the last pattern of the book.
Good Health, Happy Holidays and a very Merry Season to us all!
It is official – Spring is happening here. The Indian Plum bushes are starting to green out and the birds are singing a bright and happy song. This is the time of renewal and rebirth; of flowers and leaves emerging from the dark earth; of ideas bursting forth from our heads and fingers in much the same way!
My brain is buzzing with idea’s tried and new ones waiting! I have yarn to knit and patterns to write – but the knitting is calling out more loudly. Old projects are begging to be finished and the new projects are waiting impatiently for their turn. While I contemplate how to bring order to my ideas I watch the world outside my windows change with the the advent of Spring.
Squash Blossom Dreams in Buffalo Wool Co. Sexy, hand-dyed by Lorna’s Laces is on the short list to be finished this year.
The Robin’s next door are busy building their nest in the evergreen ivy on the tree out side the window and I love watching them flit back and forth as they bring bits of string, grass and tiny twigs that all disappear into the green leaves of the Ivy. These Robins have been coming back for many years – I imagine that they are the same birds – and build their nest in the same spot every year.
We walked around Buttertubs Marsh this morning. It was humming with life, birds, robins, starlings, chickadees, Canada geese, mallard and white headed ducks mostly, but I watched a fat brown squirrel as he leisurely crossed the path in front of us. He did a good job feeding himself over the winter! The people were out too! “Good morning’s” and “Hi’s” making the air happy, and the smiles on most faces, those smiles, making the heart happy!
I have just about finished work on a big project and I am starting to look forward to and plan the next project. I can’t say much about the big project – except that it involves a big yarn company, pretty yarns and quite a few patterns!
Butterflies and Bees Hat under construction.Butterflies and Bees Cowl
The next yarn project will involve finishing up a couple of shawls. One I haven’t looked at for over 2 years and the other I started last year! In between I will be working on patterns for the hats I started last fall! Oh Yeah, and the Japanese Lace cowl and hat that I sort of snuck in there! No rest for the wicked! And I do so love doing what I do!
I have been receiving a great deal of support for my creative journey lately – and from some new and unexpected sources! Life is good!
I hope that you are all well and moving forward in your individual creative journeys.
Happy New Year! It is so hard to believe that it is February already!
Life has been busy, chaotic, and generally a little off kilter of late. So what is new you might ask? That is sort of how life has been generally for most of us right now. That is the feedback I get from many!
So I have been creating, working on patterns and waiting for the last bits of the kitchen to be finished. One cupboard is holding us up!
The kitchen redo is done – except for the one cupboard and the tiling. Tiling won’t be done until the cupboard is in. The missing cupboard is my fault – I decided I needed it after the other other cupboards went in. So the one cupboard went into the queue and we wait. I will share before and after pictures when the kitchen is complete.
I finally finished writing the pattern for Lizzies’ Hap or the Roamin’ Hap. It is now up on Ravelry. And I hope that you love it!
This shawl was a long time coming.
Lizzies’ Hap was an idea that I had been toying with ever since I knit the Roamin’ Hat for Kate Davies in 2018. It came into being in 2019/2020 as a result of Kate Davies’ design competition on “Place” and what it means to you. And then Covid hit and it languished as I struggled with the changes that Covid imposed and the emotions brought about by the concept of place and what it meant to me.
Place for me meant family. My Grandmother Elizabeth, Lizzie to her friends, was part of my place.
When I first started knitting, I would ask Granny what she would like me to knit for her. She asked me for a shawl, a shawl like the ones from home, Scotland. She loosely described it as a big square with a striped edge that was knitted. At this point I had no idea of where to begin. Instead, I knit her a sweater with thistles in pink and grey, her favorite flower and in her favourite colours.
I wasn’t a skilled enough knitter at that time and didn’t know quite what she meant. She passed away before I had learned. Since then, I have learned both about the type of shawl she had wanted and how to make one.
This is my second shawl for her, the first one was a very basic hap that I knit in 2010. Only the center square with the simple lace pattern was kept from that hap. This shawl has a “thistles and heather” fair-isle insert, a striped border and a fancy edging – just for her – because she was just that important.
This shawl features a totally reversible fair-isle insert that acts as almost a collar detail when wearing the shawl.
In most ways this is simply a traditional hap shawl, in the stitches chosen and the construction techniques used. How this is not a traditional hap shawl is in the insertion of an additional border between the center square and the lace border. This fair-isle border is what sets this shawl apart from a more traditional shawl. The fair-isle border basically gets knit twice to keep the backside neat and the shawl reversible.
Lizzies’ Hap is the second pattern in the ebook Shetland Fusion. The third pattern, Shetland Fascinator should be out by the end of the month. Lots of knitting has been finished and coming together in the last couple of months.
Shetland Fascinator, knit with Juniper Moon Farms Findley Lace
And I am working on new things – like this cool stitch pattern that I found in a Japanese Stitch library! I am knitting a cowl first – an easy way to learn and practice a new stitch and then I will make a hat to co-ordinate with it! It is a variation on the bee or butterfly pattern, which I have used in a couple of other pieces – I really love the look. But I have never seen it quite like this, as part of an all over pattern.
Below is a video how-to bridge the gap that is created while knitting. The rows before are a set-up for this row.
Of bees and butterflies 🦋
And I just had to buy this new set of interchangeable needles from Lykke – the Cypra copper needles. They are beautiful! I love copper things. I have several of my grandmother’s pieces. And when these needles became available I, ahem, felt the need to own them. I was not disappointed.
Copper and VerdigrisSwans island organic merino in the verdigris colourwayCovid be Damned – beaded randomly placed butterfliesShimmering Spring – butterflies in a columnBees and Butterflies!
So life keeps on giving gifts, always new ideas and new opportunities, I am so lucky to be able to work with what I love and be able to create with my hands!
I hope that you have a wonderful day! Be well and knit happy!
Hello All! Tomorrow I release the first phase of the pattern for the High Summer KAL! I am so excited!
I have decided to release the pattern in 5 pieces instead of 4 – the edging really is two different sections and is fairly detailed do I am separating that up! But nothing else has changed!
Here is a sneak peak at one of the prizes!
I am very fond of pretty, sparkly stitch markers and friend of mine, Joan Hoye, makes them for me! I have got her to make up a few sets just for this KAL! All of the markers are sterling silver and beautiful crystals – All in pretty garden colours – 2 Blue Austrian Crystals, 4 floral toned Swarovski Crystals and 1 each of a natural clear quartz and a natural green quartz stone. I found the perfect little pouch to put them in and they look like a bouquet of flowers!
Prizes will be based on participation in the ravelry thread or facebook group or both – pictures, knitting or gardens, comments, questions, sharing and helping each other out! I am also on Instagram! Hashtag your pictures with #highsummerkal or #hskal or #sundialshawl or #letissierdesigns
What do knitters do when they want to play with fibre but really don’t feel like knitting? I am primarily a knitter, but I can sew, but that isn’t quite the same is it? And I have dabbled at hand-dying yarns and hand-painting my knitting with dyes, two very different approaches to adding dye to your knitting. I love them both.
Hand-dying yarns is much faster to do, but takes longer to get to the finished product. Hand-painting your knitting with dyes gets you a finished product quite quickly, as you have already done the knitting! However painting your knitting takes longer to do than painting your yarn. For a quick fix – I like to paint my yarn!
Two years ago I started to play at dying with Darlene – my co-worker and friend. She is an old hand at it and basically held my hand as I learned the in’s and outs. We worked with Wilton Cake Dyes – non-toxic – bright colours – inexpensive to play with and a hole lot of fun! Take a minute and google dyeing with Wilton Food Dyes – there are lots of great how-to instructions!
We painted a sock blank and then we painted some hanks of yarn. I had some fine alpaca laceweight and then some fingering weight non-superwash merino, a good basic worsted wool and some mohair/silk blend yarn. Darlene had a similar collection.
We had a ball!
Alpaca lace weight – hand-dyed and then knit.Merino Sock blank knit into a small shawl called Shoulder Blade
More Fruits of our labour!
Why am I thinking about this now? Well, now that covid restrictions have been loosened, we are thinking of doing it again! Maybe with more traditional acid dyes this time! I will have to start collecting some undyed yarns to play with – stash diving here I come!
I have already made a bit of a start – I do have a fairly extensive collection of undyed yarns – always thinking that I would do more knitting and then painting – there is never enough time in the year or all of my ideas! What do you think?
Last time the alpaca went from undyed to Wow! I think that this time I will go for a more subdued sultry kind of vibe, reds with black and gold highlights maybe – or maybe not – dyeing is not a precise craft when you are learning – but we must have goals. I will need to wind off a couple of 100 gr hanks first though!
I have about 1500 yds of the brushed cashmere and silk, I will need to wind those as well! I am really curious to see how this takes the dyes. Cashmere is usually a little subdued when dyed, but silk takes the dye vividly and glows. The combination is intriguing. I know the Mohair and silk, Maidenhair from Handmaiden will be gorgeous. I have painted this one in knitting many times! But I have never dyed it in the skein before. A good start don’t you think? What else should I try? Any suggestions?
Well back to my knitting and it is also time for tea. I am going to try a new (to me) tea, It is Whittard # 12, English Rose flavoured black tea. I bought it this morning and when I opened the cannister! Isn’t it beautiful? I hope it tastes as good as it looks! The aroma is that of old fashioned blooming Summer Roses!
Are you competitive? Have you participated in sports your whole life and love the “high” you get by participating and even winning? Or are you an observer, standing on the side lines and enjoying the movement and energy on the field? Until about 10 years ago I would never have considered myself competitive! But now I know myself differently. I have found that I enjoy the challenge of competition. My area of expertise is not the playing field however, it is in the area of design, knitting design. Offer me up a design competition and I am in there with needles flying.
Who knew?
In 2011 Vogue posted the Magic of Mohair design competition. A friend sent me a link and said I should try. Another friend printed out the information with a post it note and said I should try. And another friend….
So I tried.
Images from Vogue Early Fall 2011, images copyright Rose Callahan
And I came in Second!. Which won me an interview and publication in a Vogue Magazine. I went on to publish for quite a few more issues of Vogue. Maybe you have seen them?
VK Winter 2011 photographed by Rose Callahan at Alina’s loft, Brooklyn, on Oct 18-19, 2011
VK SS12 photographed by Rose Callahan on Dec 7, 2011 in Staten Island
And then the Buffalo Wool Company was looking for a design…. for a very special yarn, a 100% buffalo fibre threaded with a 24 K gold thread! limited amounts of yardage and a western theme – what could I do with those parameters? And so Yippie Ki Yi Yay! was created and submitted. And I won that one. Which lead me to become their in house designer for the next 5 or so years. And I made some wonderful friends to boot!
Yippe Ki Yi Yay! knit with 100% bison yarn with a 24 K gold thread running through the yarn, embellished with 24K gold delicas
While working for the Buffalo Wool Co, Which is owned by Ron and Theresa Miskin, there was a call to design, to create a “showstopper” shawl for Stevie Nicks to wear in an upcoming concert. Ron and Theresa ecouraged me to enter and helped me every step of the way! For the shawl Ron dyed 2,400 yds of Sexy, 50% buffalo and 50% silk laceweight yarn, in a deep blue/purple called Rhiannon, plus we ordered 20, 000 24K gold delicas and gold washed crystals. So with the yarn, beads and a couple hundred man hours later, Rhiannon was born. This was truly a show stopping piece. One that I could never repeat. One that was never considered, everyone has a different idea of “showstopper”!
But for me, for us – it was perfect! It was seen at quite a few Stitches runways over the period of a few years. It was and is truly a showstopper.
There was something of a break between this flurry of competition and there were a couple of others that I contemplated but never found the time to try until a couple of years ago. And it was a Kate Davies design competition for her new yarn Milarrochy Tweed. A fabulous fingering tweed in a wool/mohair blend! She was looking for hats to showcase her new yarn.
It was the colour of the yarn, a glorious purple called Gloamin’ that pulled me in. Purple is my favourite colour, Roamin’ in the Gloamin’ was my Grandmothers favourite song, and so “Roamin’” was born. And it was one of the hats included in her book Milarrochy Heids.
I am always looking for inspiration. I find in many places, images, feelings, comments and in calls for designs – the mood boards they include – and sometimes in the call to competition. To surpass the basic and look for the special, the unique, the unexpected and to rise to the occasion.
Who knew! That competition for me was in the knitting needles, in the ideas in my head and hands and in the sharing of those ideas!
July 6th was our 25th wedding anniversary and the Covid restrictions loosened just enough so we could have our celebration in the back yard. My husband had been working on this event for almost 2 years, continuing to plan and hope all the way through Covid! Many of the original attendees plus family and friends all came for dinner under a couple of tents. It was a wonderful time. We were all so glad to be visiting and sharing the ours stories from the last 16 months. For many, especially our senior relatives it was their first time out in months!
Then we went on a short trip to Kelowna in the Okanagan. We stayed at the Eldorado Hotel on the Lake and had an absolutely wonderful time. Swimming in the morning, reading or visiting in the afternoon and eating most of our meals on the Lakeside Boardwalk of the Hotel! The service was wonderful – there was a beautiful little cake waiting for us in our room! The room was comfortable and air conditioned – very important in the heat!
Our second evening we went out to Mission Hills Winery for a special dinner on the Terrace Restaurant – wine and good food – what a fabulous pairing! I really love the Mission Hill grounds. Every view is beautiful and there is Fine Art everywhere. It was what artists call The Golden Hour as we were leaving – so beautiful.
Their store is fabulous, full of unique items and of course wonderful wine. I purchased a new cookbook – Wine Lover’s Cookbook by Fiona Beckett It has great pictures (it has to have great pictures) and appears to have quite a few promising recipes. We also purchased some Rose for the wine rack.
On Friday afternoon I did a Show and Tell at the Kelowna Yarn and Needle Craft Shop! The ladies and I had a wonderful time! I showed off some of my knits and told the stories behind the items. The ladies got to play with the samples and try things on. It was a win/win for us all. I hope to go back in a year or so and maybe teach a workshop.
The only thing that we didn’t get to do was take a trip on the Kettle Valley Train. It was cancelled a few days before due to the high fire risk in the Valley, well all over B.C. right now. Sparks from the wheels and rails could ignite a fire! That will be a definite for next time!
I am about a week away (maybe a little more) from finishing the Sundail Shawl. The extreme heat we had delayed its progress and did the trip to the Okanagan, but it is looking great! I am organizing the prizes and can hardly wait to get the High Summer KAL started. I have been collecting pictures of my favourite flowers and have ordered another colour of beads for the shawl. Well if my idea works there will be some more beads added to the shawl. As you know, beads are always optional!
Be well and knit Happy
Lynette
PS The test knitter for Crystalline is working on the edging now! It won’t be long before it is released!
Did you know that knitting only moves in one direction?
That you can only knit “up” even when you are knitting “down”?!
When you are knitting you are creating both fabric and garment at the same time and the action of knitting takes “up” the yarn always in one direction. Your knitting will only frog in one direction, will only “run” in one direction and often will only allow you to design in one direction.
The other day Greta, a friend of mine, asked why certain patterns were upside down when wearing them as a shawl. For example the butterfly pattern in my Covid be Damned Shawl. Why couldn’t they be the other way around?
Unfortunately, that particular pattern that cannot be reversed, the lines that make up the shape of the butterfly only move in one direction. To make the butterfly right side up, we could have cast-on the stitches, knit the butterfly and then graft the stitches to the body of the shawl to make the butterfly right side up. This would have been a lot of work with certain drawbacks and not worth the effort. Most of the interesting patterns, especially ones with distinct shapes and line are literally irreversible.
It can be easier to reverse the simpler patterns, but even they can be stubborn. I remember a young designer trying to make a simple sprig go the opposite way in her knitting as she wanted it to go “right” side up, but in the end she bowed to the knitting.
I just went through the same kind of process.
I wanted to knit a pattern that was representative of my feelings of shock, grief and sadness. The announcements coming out about the residential school properties and the bodies of the children they were finding were hitting me hard and I know that there is more to come. I decided on a top-down poncho, knit with a stitch that always had reminded me of tears. I wanted to knit the poncho top down and still keep the tear drop shape of the motifs, the stitch pattern did not co-operate. This pattern was a pattern that I could not reverse, after a day and a half of trying I gave up and went to a bottom up version of the poncho.
The pattern immediately started to behave itself and it knit up in no time at all!
Tears for the Children
Knitting this pattern was a type of catharsis for me. I felt compelled by my emotions to knit this idea out. I stopped my other project for a moment (Sundial Shawl) and knit this out of my system.
The announcements about the Residential Schools and the unmarked graves has hit me very hard. I am not a particularly political person or one who has strong opinions on most political topics, but this, this was very different. As a mother and now grandmother, the thought of my children or grandchild being forcibly removed from my care and culture was a gut blow. That this happened in Canada, my Canada, has really caused me to think and feel things that I had never before considered. I am humbled by our past and want our future to be better thought out and more caring of each other.
Tears for the Children is the name of the pattern. It is free for all. There are links to donate on the Ravelry Page in lieu of payment. It is very little, but it is a start.
Below are a couple of links if you are interested in learning more about this issue or donating to the funds to support the healing process for all indigenous Canadians. I am sure that there are more.
