Slumberland

Photo by Carolyn

The lovely purple wristwarmers pictured here are by Carolyn, and they were knitted from my Warm Braid Cable Wristwarmers pattern, which can be found in my pattern category. I love the purple color, and the yarn she chose looks really nice!

Also knitting-related, and also pictured here: I just knitted the Airy Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts.

The scarf was looking kind of ratty while I was knitting it, but once blocked it looks really nice. The yarn is Douceur et Soie, mohair and silk, laceweight. I knitted it on US 10.5 needles (the pattern calls for 10s; I wasn’t too worried about gauge, since it was a scarf, but I knit tight so I usually go up a size automatically. Incidentally, even with the stretching I did while blocking, the final length is one inch shorter than expected, and it’s a bit narrower than the pattern suggests as well.)

One skein makes two scarves, so there may be another Airy Scarf in my future. In the meantime, I am working on the second sock of a pair I started all the way back in December. Yes, I am a slow knitter. No, I am nowhere near that slow. I set the sock aside for a looooooong time while I worked on Clapotis and various other projects.

Speaking of which. I submitted a pattern to Knitty.com. That was a week or so ago, and it was a bit… stressful.

I knitted an item as a gift for someone, a last minute thing, last month. And I loved it so much, and it was such a hit with those who saw it, that I decided to submit the pattern somewhere. This meant I had to make another one, because I had given the first one away. I realized the object matched the theme for the upcoming Knitty (Extremities), and so I planned to submit it… only a few days later. I finished the object parts two days before the deadline, blocked it, sewed it together the next day, edited the pattern, then spent the day of the deadline trying to get a proper photo or two.

This was complicated. You see, first, it was a terribly dark and gray day, even for Seattle. I needed to get a good photo with natural light. Light was scarce. I was getting worried.

Second, the item in question needed to be modeled by a certain type of person (and by that I mean a certain age and size). I do not know anyone who fits. The gift one I knitted first was for someone who is, um, not available yet. (See, I’m not supposed to publish information about a pattern I’ve submitted yet. Hence, the coyness.)

I would feel awkward approaching random people about modeling the object. And though said object is completely innocent, I’d still be afraid people would think I was a perv.

So I would have to photograph the item flat, which is disappointing because knitted things always look best when they are worn. I needed props to shoot along with the item, at least.

I ended up with… baked goods. And oh so tasty ones. (There was a fringe benefit to this whole “finding props” thing.) The pattern title is the same as a kind of baked good, so it made sense.

I couldn’t find any place to take the photo that had any sort of decent light. And it was HAILING out, of all things. So I brought everything back home and set it up on the porch, using my lightbox for added light since the light from outside was kind of sickly.

After all of that, I did get some tolerable pics. I wish I could have done better, but I ran out of time. I submitted the pattern that evening, and now I wait. And wait. And hope I get published.