2011 in Review

We became homeowners on Dec 31 of 2010, and a lot of this year was learning the in and outs of being homeowners. We removed what didn't want and started building in what we did. We peeled wallpaper and painted walls.

Shoveled snow and learned the importance of roof-rakes.  (Hint: don't pile that much snow that close to your house)

Perennials were planted in the spring and bulbs were planted in the fall. Lawns were moved and leaves raked. Floors were swept and appliances replaced. And at some point along the way it stopped being their house and started being ours.

Starting the day after we moved in, we filled our home with friends: Pie Day, poker games, dinners and documentaries. The highlight was inviting over all our friends for a summer time barbecue and concert.

And we saw a little doggy online and decided to invite him to stay for the long-haul.

During Lent I wore skirts for 47 days and visited Washington D.C. for the first time.

In sewing, I got my own studio space and made a thing or two.

Fiber-wise, I learned how to dye and needlefelt.

I bought a loom and made a total of one scarf.

I also did a fair amount of spinning, but haven't quite met my knitolution of knitting anything with handspun yet.

Knitwise, this has been a huge year for me. I've released three patterns with Quince & Co., one with Twist Collective, and six on my own. I started a mailing list.

It's amazing to me how much has happened in one year, and how quickly that year has gone. There's snow on the ground outside now and it's a few days to Christmas. It's been a helluva year in the best way possible.

Merry Christmas everyone, and a Happy New Year!

A Stocking for Steiny and Other Makings

I was trying to not to be one of the those crazy pet parents who gets their pets Christmas parents (which seems to be a largely American thing - yes?), but I gave in and not only got Steinbeck a gift, I sewed him a stocking.

In my defense, it only took me the baking time of about 2 dozen cookies to get the whole thing done from conception to completion and it's totally cute. The fabric was leftovers from my Valentine's skirt and a wreath I'm still trying to finish up.

In addition to the aforementioned cookies, Ive made my annual batches of dark chocolate mint fudge and peanut brittle.

The goodies are baked, the house decorated, the packets shipped, and the gifts (mostly) wrapped, with three days left, I think I'm good to go!.

Second Annual Ornament Swap

I think by now it's well established that I spend my Tuesday nights (and regularly weekends) in the company of a bunch of creative and talented knitters (not to mention funny and kind).

This past Sunday we held our second-annual holiday party and ornament swap at Aimee and Eric's charming home.

I love the ornament swap because 1) I only have to make one thing for it,

2) these ladies know how to throw an amazing potluck

and mostly 3) everyone's ornaments are different and wonderful. I've managed to pull Lynn's ornaments for the past two years and they have places of honor in home, but I'd be equally happy to have taken any of these home.

As for me, I needlefelted this holiday beaver, complete with stylin' holly accessory. I'm pretty proud of the little dude.

And I may have made a few more ornaments since then, but you'll have to wait a bit longer to see those. :)

Introducing: Dolan

I'm a bit late in introducing this pattern, because honestly it came out mid-November, within a week of threeotherdesigns, and I didn't have another blog post in me that week, but it's no knock against the pattern, because I love this one too.

When I dropped Ferrous off at the quince Offices, I said I was feeling a hat for my next design.  I'm a sucker for textured stitches, so I thought it would be fun to do a sampler hat of knit/purl textures.

I swatched a bunch of patterns in both Lark and Osprey and settled on using Osprey as the bouncy nature of the yarn really makes the texture pop. Also, Osprey is totally my new favorite Quince yarn.

Dolan is knit in the round and uses one skein of Osprey (shown in Leek here). Because of the large gauge (size 9/5.5 mm needles), it's a super quick project - if you have any last minute Christmas gift needs. The pattern can be purchased for $5 USD via Quince & Co or queued up on Ravelry.

(PS - aren't these photos by Carrie Bostick Hoge the dreamiest? I love them!)

Introducing: Bradac

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned here before that I learned to knit from a teddy bear kit in 2005 and many of the first things I made were another bear, an elephant, and a flying pig. Though I moved on from my initial focus on knitting softies, stuffed animals are still knitting comfort food to me.

While my usual excuse for knitting an animal is an impending birth, Bradac is just for me. I got the notion in my head to knit a Polar Bear and I went to Purl Diva in search of some yarn. I wanted a slightly off-white, superwash wool and the Lambs Pride worsted from Brown Sheep fit the bill perfectly.

Named for a college roommate who's fond of the creatures, Bradac is knit seamlessly in the round from nose to tail.  Most details, like the ears, are worked in short rows, while the legs are knit with scrap yarn and then picked up and worked in a similar fashion to an afterthought thumb or heel.

The bear is stuffed as you go and measures approximately 12 inches from nose to tail and takes 200 yards of worsted weight yarn, plus some additional contrast yarn for the face and scarf.

Bradac is available for purchase for $5.00 USD

or you can queue it up on Ravelry.

To find out about pattern releases and sales right as they happen, sign up for the mailing list or follow me on Twitter. Sign up for the mailing list by Dec 15th and get access to an exclusive free pattern.

A Sock Story

The first pair of socks I ever knit I made for Mr. Cleaver and to the joy of any crafter who gives a handmade gift, over the last 4 1/2 years he has loved them to death. I mean, look at these things.

I've darned them twice, and tried to appease him with a new pair of socks, but to no avail.The new socks were nice socks, he wanted another pair of house socks.

So in the past month or so he has taken to wearing that first pair over another pair of socks, just to keep wearing them.

As touched as I am by this, decided that a suitable replacement must be made.

I mean, look at these things!

For the past few months, I had been on the lookout for a suitably thick and suitably manly sock yarn, but didn't find anything just right. Then Quince released their winter heathers and I though"bingo!" and picked up a skein of kumelien's gull and kittiwake in chicakdee at Knitwit, with a plan to do some kind of stripe.

Eventually I decided on this salt and pepper pattern, which had the added bonus of making the insides double-cozy because of the floats and I ended with up just enough of main color to finish two man-sized socks.

Technically, I knit three socks, but sock #1 didn't fit right, so  I ripped it out. Fortunately try #2 and its mate received full husband approval.

And since I am the nicest of wives (particularly with grateful recipients such as these), I let Mr. Cleaver have this Christmas gift a whole month early.

He's worth it. And a girl can hope these last over 4 years too!

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PS: Did you know you can get 20% of any the patterns in my shop through the end of the day Monday (November 28 at Midnight EST) Just use the code "smallbiz."

PPS: And did you know you can find out about pattern releases and sales right as they happen by signing up for the mailing list or following me on Twitter?

PPPS: And did you know that if you sign up for the mailing list by Dec 15th, you'll get access to an exclusive free pattern? I'm knitting it up right now and it's going to be pretty awesome. Just sayin'  :)

Introducing: Ferrous

Like I said, last week was a big week for me and today I'd like to talk about the inspiration behind the third and final design released last week, Ferrous.

Ferrous is my second design, and shawl for the locally-based Quince & Co. yarns. Going into fall, I wanted this shawl to be a little bit denser than Alaria and I wanted to feature strong lines.

So my first thought went it came to motifs for the lace was wrought iron fencing (hence ferrous= iron).

The yarn is Quince's brand new 100% wool fingering weight yarn, Finch, in kumlien's gull, one of the limited edition winter heathers.  When Pam asked me if I wanted to work in a yet-to-be released yarn, in a yet-to-be-released colorway,  I was super excited and Finch is springy, cozy and lovely to knit with.

The shawl uses two skeins of the Finch, but if you wanted a larger shawl, you could continue out the lines until the desired length then complete the arrowhead patterns.

Ferrous is available for $6 USD from the Quince & Co. website, or you can queue it up on Ravelry here.

Introducing: Wetherell

It's been a big week for me a designer, I've had not one, not two, but three designs come out in the past four days. The one I'm perhaps most excited is Wetherell, which came out in the Winter 2011 issue of Twist Collective.

This design started way back in the early days of 2010, when I challenged myself to design a sweater as my 2010 knitolution. I've knit plenty of sweaters, and adapted a few, but I wanted one that was all me.

As with most deadlines, I procastinated and didn't even start thinking of my design until early October, when I was doodling during a meeting and came up with this (and promptly dripped water on it):

The big question was how to do the diagonal feature on the yoke. After flipping through some stitch dictionaries, I deciding on modifying a slip stitch pattern. I love slip stitches because their woven-look texture and I find them less commonly used than other stitch patterns (though it is my second Twist pattern featuring slip stitches).

The downside to this heavy of a slip-stitch pattern is that is takes almost twice as many rows to get get the same length as Stockinette stitch. The upside is that it looks great and since it's confinded to the yoke and the cuffs, it isn't overwhelming. The name for the sweater came when Bristol Ivy and I did this photoshoot in March. It comes from the copy of The Wide, Wide World, I'm holding in the shoot, a 1850 novel by Susan Warner, published under the pseudonym Elizabeth Wetherell. According to Wikipedia, it is often acclaimed as America's first bestseller  (if you're interested you can read the whole thing here.)

The front and back of the sweater are knit flat, while the sleeves are knit in the round until the sleeve cap, then everything is blocked and seamed to together. The sweater is finished off with a knitted hem on the bottom. All together it's a simple sweater with the right amount of detail.

Both my prototype and the Twist sample were knit in Valley Yarn's Williamstown, a worsted weight wool/acrylic blend in a lovely range of tweedy shades. I even found matching buttons 8 months apart in the button box at Z Fabrics.

The pattern is available for $7 USD via Twist Collective or you can queue it up on Ravelry.

Photos 1-2: © Jane Heller, via Twist Collective

Photos 3-5: by Bristol Ivy

Introducing: Oakdale

When it comes to my own designs, I never wear them until I have a chance to do the official photoshoot because I want to keep them as pristine as possible for the pattern photos, and for this particular design the weeks between completion and photography were super tempting.

I designed Oakdale as my dream sweater, and it turned out pretty much exactly as I hoped: as in crazy-close to the original sketch. The only difference is the neckline, which is more boatneck than crew (which I prefer).

Still in my colorwork period, it started off with an acorn motif and a desire to do a 40s-50s style sweater.  I wanted it to be seamless and easy to knit, so I decided to do it as a raglan sweater, and since I hadn't decided what I wanted the neckline to be I started at the bottom and worked my way up, figuring I'd decide by the time I got there.

There's no shaping in the body of the sweater, but 1-2 inches of negative ease, plus the nature of the colorwork stripes, makes for a shapely-looking sweater. If you wanted to make it even MORE shapely, you could switch the Stockinette stripes for corrugated ribbing easily.

The front and back are entirely the same until after the yoke decreases are completed, then there are a little over an inch of short rows on the back neck to raise it up a bit higher than the front for comfort in wearing. The sleeves, neck and hem are all finished off in a K1, P2 rib that mirrors the striping pattern.

For the sample I used Cascade 220 in Chocolate Heather, Smoke Blue and Straw. But it would work in any worsted weight yarn with a reasonable color range.

A big shout out must be given to Bristol Ivy, fiber artist, who served as color consultant, photographer and tech editor for this pattern.  And a mini shout out to the Canal School in Westbrook, which served as a charming autumnal backdrop, when our original location fell through.

The pattern is written for sizes 30 (32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 48, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58)”/ 76 (81.5, 86.5, 91.5, 96.5, 101.5, 106.5, 112, 117, 122, 127, 132, 137, 142, 147.5) cm at the bust and is perfect for your next sock hop or pep rally.

Oakdale is available for purchase for $7.00 USD

or you can queue it up on Ravelry.

PS - Did you know about the new mailing list? You'll receive notification about all new Ms. Cleaver Creations patterns as well as special discount codes and offers.  Sign up Now!

Sneak Peaks

I just wanted to pop in to show a sneak peak of a design currently on the needles

and shot from my photoshoot with Bristol Ivy yesterday that was too fun not to share!

November's gonna be a big month for new designs for me, which is a good a time as any to introduce a new mailing list. I promise I will never share your email address and there won't be any spam, just updates on new pattern releases and sales, giveaways, etc.

Sign up Now!