Oh so cute tea cozy

Check out this Cottage Tea Cozy pattern – the September 2007 “Stitch of the Month” from Have a Yarn, Mahone Bay, NS — it is just adorable! Even if you’re not a tea drinker or even own a teapot, check it out!

Knitting Graph Paper: a new resource

Raveller susiec1974 shared this great resource on Ravelry.com today — thank you so much! 

Knitting on the Net , already a wonderful resource, now has a great knitting graph paper generator — I’ve put the link on the Cable Knitting Resource page too.

I just tried it out and…..

Here’s what I found:

• Graph paper prints true (the printout measured exactly 20 sts and 26 rows over 4″ [10cm]),
• there are stitch and row numbers along the bottom and right edges (every row and stitch is numbered)
• a ruler on the left edge (in cm and inches)
• darker grid lines every 10 rows/stitches;

Things to watch for:

• be sure to select the proper paper size on the website and when you print the pdf
• make sure that Adobe isn’t shrinking the page to fit (this can skew the measurements)

Disadvantages:

• a small one: in the row numbering, if you like to have the wrong side rows numbered on the left hand side, that’s not an option

Wordle, the Word Cloud creator — oh so cute!

created at http://www.wordle.net/

Today I found Wordle, a totally accidental discovery as I was really hunting for pictures of gauntlets — go figure!

Here you see a word cloud created from some of the words from this blog.

Wordle allows you to:

• choose an oval or square shape for the overall cloud
• choose the orientation of the words
• customize colours
• choose from a variety of fonts (example at left used “Loved by the King” font)
• type words, paste them in from another source or have it access a web site (has to have Atom or RSS feed)

And, the creators are GENEROUS!!!    from the FAQ section, “The images you create with Wordle are yours to use in any way you choose. You may print T-Shirts, business cards, brochures, what have you.”  … “

You may take a Wordle, put it on your book cover, your t-shirt, your campaign poster, what have you. You may get rich off it. Just tell people how you made the image, or, if you’re using one from the gallery, where you got it.

If you use a screen-capture, PDF, or other image representation of a Wordle on this site, you must attribute the image to http://www.wordle.net/.” … and there’s more you can read re their Creative Commons License.

Cowls blocking

Just to show you I have been busy

Here’s a picture of the newest South Mountain ~ Naturally design that’s “in the works”: a set of cowls — all the same pattern but using different yarns to create the various sizes.

They are happily blocking

Yarns:

Mission Falls 136 superwash wool (colour: 536 Aster)

Patons Classic Wool (colour: Grey Mix)

Briggs & Little Heritage (colour: Dark Green)

The pattern will hopefully be published with 2 weeks.

A Coming Together

Some of you may know that I publish patterns under a few different labels: currently South Mountain ~ Naturally, PurpleSage Designs and Cranberry Ocean Knits.  It all started with one little pattern — a celtic knot I had envisioned for the Celtic Jenna Rose pattern — I wanted to chart a closed-ring cable and with the patient assistance of  Jenna H of Knits ‘n’ Wovens, it came to be.

I love yarn. I adore hand spun, hand-dyed yarn from indie dyers and designers; the talent that abounds in that community awes me! I could spend days in a yarn shop like Gaspereau Valley Fibres and have to be dragged out!  However, I am a practical person who fully knows that yarns that utilize economy of scale are a very important part of the knitting world, too.

The three pattern lines just slowly emerged — all on their own, honest!!  Because each line focuses on its own special types of yarns:

~~ South Mountain ~ Naturally patterns are written for 100% natural yarns;

~~ PurpleSage Designs patterns are natural yarns /blends and

~~ Cranberry Ocean Knits patterns focus is on easy-care, easy-on-the-pocketbook acrylic and acrylic blends

My intention was to keep them separate. However, as the pattern lines expand, the thought of keeping 3 websites up-to-date seems a little daunting and will take way too much time away from my knitting

So, over the next few weeks/months you’ll see some changes to the PurpleSage Designs website as it becomes the portal to all three pattern lines.

Pictures for Judy’s Magic Cast-on gone tubular

There are a couple of other pictures now on the original post as well.

I really like the rounded edge that this cast on gives to the garment — a hat in this case.

Knitting Font for Self-Publishers

I’ve just added a link to the Designer Resources page for this generously shared knitting font from arDesigns. If you are a self-published designer, the author of the font gives permission to use this font in your publications free of charge. What a generous soul!

I have installed this on my Windows machine but haven’t tried this extensively yet, but let me know what you think. Multiple stitch cables might be an issue but looks like it would work great for lace and twisted stitch patterns.

Added Intro to Travelling Loop Tutorial

Thanks to blog-reader Karen who asked about this, I’ve added a short intro to the Travelling Loop tutorial, to show how you can start this method right from the cast-on stage.

Tubular Cast-On using Judy’s Magic Cast-On

Oct. 26, 2009 edit:  added images

It is like magic! I’ve put some new links on the Techniques page including ones to Judy’s Magic Cast-0n and how it can be incorporated into a tubular cast-on. This makes a great cast -on for hats — beautiful edge, firm but with give and good resilience. It does not stretch the same amount as the 1×1 ribbing I’m using, though.

So, I’m experimenting with larger needles (first option) / varying stitch counts (if option 1 doesn’t work out) with this cast-on.

Currently I’m working with a baby/sport weight yarn (pink). I’m using 3.25mm [US3] needles for the ribbing and for my third try am using 4mm [US6] needles for the cast-on and first round only, then switching to the 3.25mm [US3]. I’ve only done about 5 rows of the ribbing, not quite enough yet to test and see if this is the magic combination!

ETA Sept 24.09: That combination of needle sizes worked great for this project!

Men’s Standard Sizing Charts

For quite a while I’ve been meaning to consolidate all of my men’s sizing information into one chart and I finally did it! It just takes so much out of knitting time

So, I’ve just added the following charts to the Designer Resources page:
–  men’s standard measurements (in inches)
– men’s sweater measurements (in inches)
– men’s standard measurements (in centimeteres)
– men’s sweater measurements (in centimeters)

The charts represent averaged numbers from various sources in chest sizes 34″ – 52″ (86 – 132cm). Please read the caveats, limitations and source information on the Designer Resources page. Please feel free to use the information in these charts in your designing if you find them useful.

I’ve also added some resource links to other sizing information for preemies, babies, children and adults.