Le Tissier Designs

Of Larks and Linnets and Flying Fingers

Tag: 7 hats more

  • It’s a New Year

    It’s a New Year

    And its a new plan. There is no Retreat this year. It is kind of odd to have that space vacant. I have no planning to do, no sample knitting, my time is free.

    Not that I won’t knit, or plan or even have that much free time. I am bound by my creative nature to keep on creating – a new yarn, a new colour, an idea that blooms as I experience a walk, or a book or a conversation – I never lack for ideas! But I won’t have that event to shape any of those ideas around. Some what freeing from my regular focus at this time of the year!

    So what shall I knit in the next months? I do have a couple of projects that I need to finish.

    Serenity Wave – the pattern is complete except for the cover picture – I need to finish the edging. It will be done before the end of the month.

    7 Hats More – there are a couple of small projects left to finish for that book. They also will be done before the end of the month.

    I need to complete the patterns for two shawls – Roamin… or Lizzie’s Hap and the Georgia West Hap. I am also aiming to have those done by the end of the month.

    Hmmm…. Busy month! Maybe I should add a few extra days to the timeline – anyone know how?

    I did muck my initial plans up a little by adding another shawl. A Shetland styled lace stole in BC Garn Bio Shetland. Scrumptious wooly wool with a great crisp hand that creates well defined stitches. I gave myself this last week to work on it and I am almost halfway. It will be hard to put down as I work on the planned completions!

    I am not sure what happened to the last couple of months of the last year – not really sure what happened to the last year. I have been struggling to cope – keeping busy does help me deal with the stress I feel. Writing usually helps – but I was too busy knitting – I am working on a balance. Funny – when I read my last post I was working on balance then too! Maybe this year I will be more successful.

    My Schiehallion yarn has become Failte – a cozy beanie!

    What are you working on? How do you balance life and stress right now? I would really like to know.

    I haven’t walked every weekend – but more than I was before. I am watching what I eat! Way more than I should this last month! But it is my favourite time of year! And I did do some Christmas baking – I have a little dark cake and shortbread left. Just a little lingering sweetness to extend the Christmas Season. The tree and decorations came down yesterday and the lights today.

    So today I start my planning for the New Year – you are part of my plan! Talk again soon!

    Be Well and Knit Happy!

    Lynette

    PS – I baked a blackberry pie today – my husband picked the berries this last Summer. So we are smelling the sweet smell of summer blackberries as the pie cools on the counter. I hope that you can smell the sweetness of the pie and of life too.

  • Every Cloud…

    Every Cloud…

    … Has a Silver Lining!

    Right now, as we are looking for the light at the end of this Covid tunnel and only finding deeper gloom, we need to hold on to the good things that we know are there! We need to hold on to our own Silver Lining!

    I think that the silver lining for most of us might be time. The extra time we have at home while we are not doing the busy things that we usually do.

    Time to reconnect to our families from work and home. Our extended families as well. Many of us are getting in touch with those that we have lost contact with.

    Time to rediscover our hobbies – those that we maintain or those that we have revisited (my bread baking skills are much improved!) now that home is our remaining haven. And the things that we do in our homes.

    My haven is knitting! Always has been! It got me through a bad marriage and a worse divorce, it was my sanity as a single mom going back to university, it helped me deal with the death of my mum and myriad other life experiences. So I knit!

    Knitting is helping me deal with Covid – in the most positive way I can. Making things helps occupy my mind so I do not dwell on the things that I cannot change!

    Covid Be Damned was my first response. The happiest colours, a rainbow of course, and 10,000 of the most sparkly beads.

    And right now the Serenity Wave KAL. Calming colours and a few less beads, and wavy repeating patterns.

    And in progress as well are many hats and accessories in 7 Hats More. Lots of quick gift knits, Lots of finishing, lots of satisfaction – again keeping mind and hands busy.

    So, on Thursday, I released,

    Every Cloud… the third hat in the 7 Hats More collection. It is knit with Milano, a light as air Merino/Cashmere blend fingering weight yarn.

    Every Cloud… is a lace patterned hat embellished with silver lined beads and topped with a little bead pom-pom. It is lined with a bright white to make the patterning pop!

    Right now I am knitting a pair of gloves for 7 Hats More. I haven’t knit gloves in a couple of years – it is time.

    These are the Mendenhall Gloves, very much still under construction. Lace, beads, a slouchy long cuff, they are going to be so elegant. They will have a hat and small shawl to co-ordinate with them, and even though this is a hat book – I feel that these glove are the feature item of the Mendenhall collection, not the hat! Sometimes the accessories are the most fun to knit. They are already my personal favourite item from the collection to date – and I haven’t even finished them!

    I love gloves. Yes – they are a little fiddly to knit – but they fit! I have broad hands and short fingers and no commercial glove has ever fit me. I make all gloves to fit my hand. They simply make me feel well dressed.

    There is something so elegant about gloves, even the most basic. They look great, keep your fingers warm and in me evoke thoughts of the classic fashion photography of years gone by… When no elegant dresser was seen without a pair of gloves – women or men!

    Be Well and Knit Happy!

    Lynette

  • A Busy Weekend

    A Busy Weekend

    It all started with a glorious Saturday morning walk at Piper’s Lagoon Beach. In front of us we saw the sun rise through the low clouds and spill across the Georgia Strait and behind us the moon was bright full above the ridge line. The birds were singing on the branches and the mist was low across the lagoon. It was so calm and quiet that even the waves meeting the shore were only marked by the low sibilance of the pebbles moving against each other beneath the lazy waves. It was a powerfully relaxing time that set the tone for the day.

    …. And the day just kept getting better.

    Some weekends, usually the quiet weekends end up being special nowadays just by being quiet. There were no plans, just what I felt like – which was – you guessed it – knitting, pattern writing or something to do with knitting!

    I worked on patterns. Got some good photo’s of some of the hats on Elise just as the store was opening, knit a little, maybe knit a lot, and basically had an awesome quiet day at home!

    Today, Sunday, is a little different. My morning has been full, I finished the small sample for Textured Toppers, my next release for 7 Hats More. I also finished adding the final small notes to the pattern. I am making split pea soup from a ham bone for my lunches this week. And I am planning on making a roast chicken for dinner – with stuffing etc. – a tune up for next Sundays’ Turkey – I can’t believe that Thanksgiving is almost already here! And Tom requested a Pineapple Upside Down Cake – so I will be baking as well.

    I still need the front page for 7 Hats More and I will need to start a Table of Contents as well. That is this afternoon’s task, in between the other things.

    I released 7 Hats More on Thursday Oct 1 as planned. It was a very quiet release. But I was happy. Tomorrow morning I am going to release the second pattern, Textured Toppers, and suddenly my ebook is no longer a single pattern it is now becoming a small book. A book that will grow every 4 days with a new pattern until there are over 20 patterns! This is so exciting! Which is why I now need a Front Page and Table of Contents!

    Meet the Toppers – a family of chunky knit hats and my next release for the 7 Hats More ebook. Textured Toppers in 4 sizes! I love embellishments so they all have Pom-poms but you could leave them plain or add a furry topper or a tassels or a button or whatever you can think of. They are fun and quick to knit! The baby version took only 2 hours! Not including the pom-pom, that took another hour!

    Soup is done so I have lunches for the week, the cake is out of the oven and the chicken is ready to go in, Time to relax with a little knitting. A full and satisfying day! I hope that you had just the kind of day you wanted as well!

    Be well and knit happy!

    Lynette

  • New Toy!

    New Toy!

    This weekend my fathers toaster died. It was old and it needed replaced. Well I took that as a sign.

    I had been wanting a convection toaster oven for myself for a while and it really wasn’t high on the “list”. But now – I could take my toaster downstairs to my father (he lives in a suite in my basement) and get that toaster oven for myself. And so I did!

    First thing I decide to make is Yorkshire pudding (something as finicky as Yorkshires should be a good test of the oven) to go with the supper roast beef! I had always make the Yorkshires while the roast sat. That made the timing never quite right. My husband was aghast. He loves Yorkshire pudding – what if it didn’t work!?

    It was a little tricky. The toaster oven doesn’t hold the heat as well as a regular oven and when I turned the heat down the Yorkshires all fell! I wasn’t happy, but I put the temp back up immediately and was relived to see them all slowly rise again and brown! So the oven will really cook just about anything that I want it too! I will need to take a little time to get to know its quirks, but I think that it was a good addition to my kitchen.

    I finished the tenth hat for 7 Hats More. This one is called Every Cloud… . It is a lined lace and beaded slouchy and I am very pleased with it. It has a lovely little bead loop pom-pom that just finishes it beautifully.

    It was my Grandson’s birthday this weekend. We drove up to Campbell River and had a lovely visit. In these Covid times everything seems a little more poignant as every visit seems that much further apart. My grandson and I played a little in the garden and I admired my daughters sunflowers and collected some acorns.

    It was a quiet visit, not rushed, yet I cherish these moments all the more now. He is growing so fast.

    Be Well and Knit Happy

    Lynette

  • …7 Hats More

    …7 Hats More

    One hat, two hat, three hat, four. Five hat, six hat, seven hat more.

    So about a month ago I designed this hat. And then I designed another hat and all of a sudden I had designed 7 hats and had more in my brain that were begging for release…. So why not create an e-book to hold all of these ideas and here we are! Above are the first 9 completed hats – two more are already under construction and the third is still to be started.

    It is not just going to be a hat pattern book. There are going to be some coordinating accessories. Some of the hats will be stand alone projects, single size and no accessories. Some hats will be sized to fit the whole family. Some hats will come with a slew of accessories and some will come with only one accessory! There will be 12 hats in 7 Hats More and currently an unknown number (eight and counting) of accessories.

    There are hats in almost all yarn weight catagories:

    • 2 hats in fingering weight
    • 1 hat in heavy fingering weight
    • 1 hat in sport weight
    • 1 hat in double knitting weight
    • 2 hats in worsted weight
    • 1 hat in aran weight
    • 2 hats hat in chunky (bulky) weight
    • 2 hats in super bulky weight

    There are all all kinds of techniques to choose from, slip stitches, mosaic stitches, lace stitches, cable stitches, stockinette stitches, fair-isle stitches and one hat with beads. Two of the hats are lined, one hat is knit with fingering weight yarn plus a laceweight mohair – there will be something for every interest!

    The accessories planned include a cowl, a small shoulder shawl in worsted weight, fingerless mittens, full mittens, and a few other, yet to be decided options!

    I am so excited! 7 Hats More initial release date on Ravelry is only 5 days away, Oct 1. I am going for a gradual release of the hats over a nine week period, a hat or accessory every 4 days or so.

    These patterns will be available on their own or in the book. So why a book if I am going to sell the patterns separately? Because a book gives you the opportunity to have the all the patterns for a much lower price than the separate cost of each pattern. I know how frustrating it can be to want only one pattern from a book so I am planning on alleviating that particular stress.

    The patterns themselves will range from $4.00 to $6.00 US and the book will be $24.00 US. For the first two weeks of the 9 weeks of releases the e-book will be available at $18.00, a 25% discount 😀

    Be Well and Knit Happy!

    Lynette