Rose Window Beret

Have you seen Interweave Knits, Spring 2010 yet?

This photo is copyright by Interweave Press, LLC.

I am proud to say that I have a pattern in this issue: Rose Window Beret. Favorite it or Queue it on Ravelry here.

This is a relatively easy lacy beret that is worked from the top-down. It features a floral lace pattern that expands as the circumference of the beret grows. The pattern for the lace motif is charted and it’s worked in a DK weight yarn. When working the beret, I recommend placing markers between each pattern repeat.

The original sample in the magazine is worked in Reynolds Rise & Shine, a cotton yarn. Because the cotton might be difficult on those of you who may have hand problems or who simply just find it hard to work with cotton, I’ve listed some suggested yarns that might work well as substitutions here. I usually like knitting my own patterns, but I have to be honest in saying that due to the tendonitis in my own hands, it was bit hard and a little frustrating working with a somewhat splitty cotton yarn. Nonetheless, I am still quite happy with the results and I simply loved the color the editors selected.

A redacted copy of my submission to Interweaves.

When I first pitched the idea to Interweaves, I had no idea what to call the design, so I tentatively titled it “Amsterdam” because the motif I came up with reminded me a little bit of the tulips I saw during a trip to the Netherlands (went to Amsterdam and a couple of smaller towns). I correctly suspected that IK was probably going to rename the pattern ro something that probably fit better with the issues’s theme and probably with a name that would not conjure up images of hash for folks. 😉

In addition to my pattern (of course I like my own pattern!), I also really like the looks of the Double V Cardigan by Melissa Wehrle and the Lattice and Hollow Cardigan by Kim Hamlin.

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Outlandish Injury, Eleanor Roosevelt & TNNA

I’ve been a little behind in my blog posts lately. I am so smare that I managed to injure myself in my sleep – I somehow injured my trapezius and perhaps deltoid muscles on my left side. The injury has been rather painful and debilitating to say the least, but I suppose things could be a lot worse. Nonetheless, thus for over 2 weeks now, I have not been able to move much, let alone type or knit.  The only thing that kept my sanity is that prior to the injury, the hubby passed on his 1st generation Kindle to me and I’ve at least been able to read and manage the Kindle with one working arm. If it weren’t for the Kindle, I could not have been able to escape staring at the ceiling and finished those fat books from the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. Visions of the adventures of Jamie and Claire have also saved me hours of infinite frustration and boredom. (Ahem, so okay, I admit to having fantasies of Jamie Fraser, but little good it did me since there was little I could to do enjoy my fantasies since I could barely even move my head, arm or shoulder without excruciating pain.)

Anyway, I finished the last 3 books during this time: The Fiery Cross, Breath of Snow and Ashes and Echo in the Bone. Now that I’ve finished the entire series, which is a departure from my normal reading list repertoire*, I am not quite sure if I want to reread them now or to reward myself later after I’ve caught up with some of the things that got delayed as a result of my injury, which is still a long ways from being 100% recovered. (* I’ve been know to read mostly nonfiction and fiction works by Asian-American and foreign authors and none of those books have ever been categorized as “romance” though I’d say the Outlander books aren’t exactly easily classified as that either.)

New Pattern Release

I have a knitting update. I released Eleanor Roosevelt, the 5th pattern in the Liberation collection. The hat named after the 1st lady, is a slouchy beret-type hat with a visor. It features 2 shirred panels and is worked flat.

More TNNA Updates

I’ve also be remiss in my Winter TNNA updates.  I mentioned before that I was on a Designer’s panel at TNNA. The experience was rather interesting and being that this was the first panel of its kind, I think that it went well. We received quite a lot of interest and positive feedback, as well as a request to continue the panel in June at the Columbus trade show, which is much larger and better attended than the Long Beach one.

My friend Kristie (also my helper and awesome sample knitter), was kind enough to allow me to share a photo she took of the panel:

Panel Members, from L to R: Chris DeLongpre, Anne Kuo Lukito, Kate Gilbert, Clara Parkes, Eunny Jang and Laura Bryant (click on image to enlarge)

One of the many exciting moments of walking the TNNA trade show floor is meeting new and old friends and acquaintances. Another giddy and silly excitement as a designer is when you unexpectedly spot one of your garments in a booth. Granted, I had some samples in booths of which I was aware, such as Alice Paul and Septima Clark at The Fibre Company booth and Orinoco at the Frog Tree booth, which is exciting in itself. However, it’s not the same as an unexpected good surprise – two in fact!

First, something that I had not expected to see was flyers of the Spring 2010 issue of Interweave Knits featuring the Rose Window Beret (Pattern page link for Ravelers here). Unfortunately, I forgot to take and scan a copy of the flyer to show you all. There was also a galley copy of the issue at the Interweave Press booth.

Image Copyright by Interweave Press. See Spring 2010 preview: http://www.interweaveknits.com/ preview/spring-knits-2010.asp

Another unexpected sight was seeing my tunic on display at the Interweave Press booth. This tunic (I don’t know what the official title of the piece will be yet) was originally supposed to appear in the Spring 2010 issue of Interweave Knits as well. However, just last week, I received an email from editor Eunny Jang (and fellow panelist!) that due to space issues in the Spring issue, she’d like to move it to the Summer 2010 issue. So bar any other delays, consider the following a super sneak preview to the Interweave Knits Summer 2010 issue. 🙂

One of the Interweave staff members luckily didn't think I was too wacky in my excitement (thank goodness!) and volunteered to take a photo of me with my garment. Click on image to see Flickr notes.

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Bad Things/ Good Knitters – Part 2

After an attempt to squish and reblock that elephant hat, I realized it was useless.There were too many oops in it to fudge: the gauge was really off AND it was over-stretched in the blocking process. I had to undo and rip everything out.  Just look at the difference between the visor section and the template. The knitted part of the visor should not be about 25%-30% bigger than the template. The gauge in the Oops Hat was about 6 sts x  9 rows. The pattern gauge should be 7.5 sts x 11 rows.

After I ripped out all the pieces, I measured the hat body. OMG it was huge, at about 9.5-9.75″ for one piece. The hat is constructed of 4 pieces: 2 wider hat body pieces and 2 skinnier panel pieces.  The shirred panel measured at about 8-8.5″ each, which means that the Oops version had a head circumference of about 35-36.5″ (89-93cm) around!! Seriously, elephant!!

After I ripped out the hat, I wound the yarn only my swift and blocked the skein to get all the kinks out. To restore some of it’s springy qualities, I beat the wet hank of yarn a few times on the counter (got some good agression workout), then hung them to dry in one of our guest bathrooms.

To make things easier when I reknit, I kept each section in its own hank and marked them using different-colored ties.

When I looked at the pattern for reknitting, I realized that while there definitely were some knitter error with the gauge, there was also some designer-error. The designer-error probably would have been caught had my test knitters finished on time. Due to unforeseen reasons 1 dropped out and 2 were really late on their deadlines. They were supposed to finish right when the sample knitter was about to start, but apparently that did not happen. Maybe this hat had a hex on it.

Anyway, the designer-error occured in the miscalculation of the CO sts. My error would have made the hat bigger – probably make the medium-sized sample fit an Large or X-Large head rather than a medium head (unless the medium head has big hair).

After I fixed and recalculated my errors, I reknit the hat and even remembered to take some photos of the finishing work so that I could put up a tutorial for Amelia Earhart and I have photos to do the tutorial for this hat when it’s ready for release. BTW, this hat is called Eleanor Roosevelt.

A sneak preview of Eleanor Roosevelt, which I wore when I went to the American Film Market trade show on Nov. 8 (I’ll write about that in a later post).

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