Anatomy of a Mitten (Or Mitts)

Recently I was contacted by a knitter who had some questions regarding the construction of my Wine and Roses Mitts. I could tell by her question that she either did not have experience with charts, or with basic mitten construction or perhaps even both. Which is why I decided to write this post. While my patterns are not designed on their own to teach a concept or technique, Mittens themselves are not really complex.

If you look your hand, you can see essentially a tube at your wrist, and then where your your hand joins, it is significantly wider. There are different methods for accommodating this difference in width.  Another area where you will see an obvious need for an increase in stitches is at the thumb. Again, there different methods for accommodating the difference in width caused by the difference in width the thumb generates. Once you are past the thumb, it is straight to the top of the mitten where the top is handled again in different methods.

Essentially, these are the steps a pattern will take you through:

1. Knit the cuff.

2. Begin the body of the mitten, also begin the thumb gusset (widen at the base of the thumb to accomodate the extra width at the thumb unless knitting folk mittens that do not have thumb gussetts, such as Latvian or Norwegian Mittens).

3. Knit the body of the mitten, up to the number of added stitches needed for width of thumb. If working mittens that do not have thumb gussetts, such as Lavtian or Norwegian Mittens, this is where stitches for the thumbs get put on hold. Put stitches for thumb on hold and continue with the body of the mitten. When length for the body of the mitten is reached, finish the top according to the pattern.

4. Place thumb stitches that were on hold on needle, and pick up additional thumb stitches as instructed and finish thumb according to pattern.

Peace and Knitting, JoLene Treace

Knitted Gifts by Ann Budd: Animal Crackers Errata

I have had two delightful knitters email me regarding a couple things that had apparently dropped off the directions for this design, the last bit of the directions for the garment back and then there was a question regarding the finishing directions.

First, here is the bit left off on the garment back:
It should read “Maintaining selvedge sts, work Rows 1-4 of spot patt across center 81 (89, 97) sts 18 (20, 22) times (The schematic on page 112 does give the measurement). This has been verified by both Ann Budd and the tech editor, so this is the official version for the book.

I have not seen the book yet outside of TNNA, as I have not received my copy yet, but it has been relayed to me that instructions are missing on the finishing of the hem. I don’t know how it is worded in the book yet. When I get the book and or hear back from Ann (I will be emailing her today) I will update this post. At any rate, There is a line of yo, k2tog worked across the row in the contrast color in the hem. This is the fold line for the hem. It will fold naturally there, and creates a sweet little scalloped edge. Worked in the contrast color it gives the effect of just the scallops themselves being in the contrast color. The hem is whip-stiched in place, taking care not to constrict the fabric. For the sake of the continuity of the book, however, there will be stylistic wording that they use. As I said when I get the official word I will post it here.

When I have both I will add it to my FAQ and Errata page on my website.

I want to thank these two knitters for their kindness and gracious way in which they contacted me. In some communities, errors such as this are cause to heap accusations on the publisher and designer. In reality, everyone has worked hard to bring a fine book to press and sometimes things happen, or they get missed. It is unfortunate, but it happens. Thank you for bringing this to my attention in a respectful and friendly manner. We were both able to have our dignity intact and I so appreciate that. I also appreciate the fact that the same courtesy was extended to Interweave. I am as always proud to be part of their publications.

Peace and Knitting, JoLene Treace

Black Bunny Fibers Flutter Laceweight

I met Carol at TNNA in Columbus this past June when having dinner with Julia of Pattern Fish. We had a blast, and we ate dinner at the Schmidt Restaurant and Sausage Haus in German Village, minutes from the Convention Center. T’he highlight of the Dinner was (besides the excellent food and fine company of course) the tuba and accordion players playing Freebird at Carol’s request. Carol gave me her card and I contacted her after TNNA regarding some lace designs I am working on.

I am swatching with a skein of the Flutter Laceweight, a very nice 80% Merino / 20% Silk blend. I really like the yarn, it has just enough silk in it to give it a different hand than “plain old wool”, not that there is anything wrong with that, there isn’t, and there is beauty in those too, but sometimes you just want something with a little more in it. The silk adds to the drape of the finished lace. It has a very nice hand as well. It knits up nice, the colors are pretty, and while it is more varigated than what I am used to (look at my designs and you will see that handpaint is a departure for me, although Squirrel Moneky in Interlacements Toasty Toes is a semi solid type of Handpaint). The colors are more suited to lace than many other handpaints out there, so that you can see the stitch patterns. Carol did a good job with that.

Now, as to what I am swatching. I am happy to say as soon as I saw the yarn I knew I had to swatch the design I had worked on for my Grandmother when she passed away, Whisper My Name. I had not found the right yarn for this very special design. The yarns were all too fine, or too thick, or too fancy, or too plain. The colors were not right. Too this or too that. When I opened the package and saw the yarn, I knew I wanted to try it in this design. Sometimes it just works that way, it just tells me it wants a particular yarn and I am not happy with it in something else.  I have swatched it in probably 4 other laceweight yarns, all perfectly lovely yarns but ones I was not happy with for this design.

My Grandmother was very special to me. She was a loving woman, who never had a bad word for anyone. She was a strong woman, and was a profound influence on her children and grandchildren. She touched our lives and we miss her greatly. We treasure our memories of her, and are deeply grateful for the values that she taught us. She was an amazing woman.  I wanted a lace piece to remember her by as it seemed fitting, and it was a good way to work through my own grieving. And I wanted it to be either a stole or a shawl, so that I could wrap myself up in it, like wrapping myself up in her memory, her warmth, her love. Like the memory of her hug.

I think she would love the stole. I chose elements that I felt reflected not only her personality but our family as well, and the many colors fit that well too. There are a lot of us when we are all together. Over 30 just with Aunts, Uncles and Cousins…not including the Cousin’s Spouses or Children. And we have so many different interests and talents. Yet my Mother’s family is a close one, a loving one…Grandma was a good teacher. In the end, the hospice nurses were amazed at how well cared for she was. Even in her last days, her Sons and Daughters tended her well. There is a verse in the Bible that talks about a three-fold cord not being easily broken, and that is certainly true. We draw strength from each other in difficult times. And even in times that are hard, joy does come in the morning.

Peace and Knitting, JoLene Treace

As Good As It Gets

This is as good as it gets…glad I know Photoshop and Illustrator. If any of you have seen my blog over the last hour or so you may have seen it change in front of your eyes. The title was hard to read so I changed the header in Illustrator by putting in my own title. Then of course, I couldn’t use any color I had to experiement and see what I liked best and of course in the end I went with black and white for the fill and outline. It is what the other text in the rest of the blog has. Nice that the theme has the choice of hiding the text if I want, so that I had the option of putting my own title on my image and saving the file that way.

I really should get dressed.

I have other things to do now, so will bid you all a fond good day.

Peace and Knitting, JoLene Treace

How’d I Miss This One?

Wow, Linda in Oregon…glad you were having trouble with your display. I like this look better. It is cleaner and I still have the display of the pictures. If you still have trouble with them loading, it could be that the image quality is set too high on my end, although they are set at a resolution of 72 ppi which is screen resolution, I may need to try saving it at a faster optimization for web viewing.

Let me know how it looks, for all you folks out there. And when you do report in, let me know what browser you are using too. Not that it matters, much but it might be helpful trouble shooting on my end.

Cheers, and if you are on Twitter or Face Book, look me up. Make sure you let me know you read my blog so I know where you are from!

Peace and Knitting, JoLene Treace

See Me on Face Book

Okay, I am figuring out the whole social networking thing. We’ll see how far it goes. Anyway, for those of you who would like to know more, come see me on my Facebook page.  If I can figure out how to put the link in, I will. Otherwise look up my name.

Peace and Knitting, JoLene Treace

News from Kristmen’s Design Studio

Well I am done tinkering with the looks of the blog for now. It needed a little more visual appeal, and while I liked the layout a bit better on the other, this version gave me the option of doing a custom header. I will be using that custom header to switch out photos of new designs as they come available.

I so love Adobe products.

I am not all that keen on the fat links above the banner, but when you don’t design it yourself, you take what you can get. Personally, I think it competes with the header a bit. We don’t host our blogs ourselves, they are on WordPress’s site. They can be hosted on our web site but we have not investigated that and frankly I don’t know how the transition works, whether or not the content already on WordPress would be lost or not.

At any rate, that is it for the blog.

New designs coming out: Sugar and Spice, a baby blanket, and Animal Crackers, a set of baby sweaters, are in Knitted Gifts by Ann Budd, published by Interweave. I saw the advance copy at TNNA so the book will be out shortly. It has a lot of really great projects in it, just like Simple Style.

Simple Style of course has not been out that long, and I have a design in it. Again, it is by Ann Budd and published by Interweave. Kazumi is the name of the design I have in it.

Bramble Berry All Seasons was shown at TNNA for those of you in warmer areas (or who don’t want a worsted weight wool sweater). Knit out of Merino Cotton 90 from Schulana, distributed by Skacel, it is the lovely red violet sweater in the banner above. It is the first of the worsted weight wool designs being redone and released in either a Cotton Wool blend or a DK weight yarn (which is like a light worsted). All of the original worsted weight wool designs will continue to be carried as well.

Lush and Calliope were also previewed at TNNA in the booth of my distributor Up North Fiber Art Supply, and they pre-ordered all three new designs. I will be photographing those today and will write up a feature on them like I have for my other designs.

And of course, I am working on some other new things as well…

If you would like to see the fashion show from TNNA this summer, they post it on you tube. It is hosted by the Yarn Group. I thought it was well done, and attended with the ladies from PatternFish. I met Julia last year at TNNA, and I will be offering pdf downloads of all my patterns through PatternFish. As they become available on pdf I will announce it on my blog.

There are still a few shops that are resistant to designers offering pdf patterns. For designers, it is another way to offer our designers to customers, in a format that a segmant want. From the conversations I have had with other designers, it seems that shoppers tend to fall into these groups: those who don’t go online and always purchase from B&M (brick and mortar – any retail shop), those who purchase from mail order and online, with those who purchase online being as likely to order a download pattern as a hardcopy. It is that online segment that doesn’t want the paper copy that I am trying to be able to reach.

Those customers are not likely to purchase a paper pattern. What others have found is that when paper patterns are displayed well in the shops, the patterns tend to do well also. If the patterns are shoved in an obscure corner where they can be forgotten about, they don’t do as well. There is a certain amount of marketing responsibility on the shops for their own product. A pattern in itself can be a good impulse purchase leading to a yarn sale. Some shops even display new patterns with a hot new yarn, where they can be seen together. One shop had a felted purse with some patterns for the purse stuck in it. The wondered why they had trouble keeping the pattern in stock.

I recently had someone in Norway contact me regarding a design of mine and wondering if it were available in pdf format. I told her not yet, but soon.

The prices on PatternFish will be the same as the other retail outlets, as PatternFish is essentially like selling patterns to another store and they in turn sell them to the customer. They, however, sell the digital format with the ability to provide some security to the pdf and take care of all the details that go with that, along with tracking sales and so on. They earn their percentage.

There will be a link on my blog when the patterns go live on PatternFish.

Peace and Knitting, JoLene

All Seasons Bramble Berry Released

The last few years at TNNA I have heard comments from the warmer states along the lines of “the designs are lovely but they would be too warm here”. So I am beginning to offer the worsted weight designs in a lighter weight version, beginning with Bramble Berry. Bramble Berry has always been a popular design so it seemed  to be a good choice to start with.

Skacel generously provided yarn support which I appreciate immensely. It has been an expensive month with the different garments coming due that were test knit, and then designs needing tech edited. I don’t even want to think about it.

At any rate, here is a picture of Bramble Berry in Merino Cotton 90 by Schulana, a Merino Cotton distributed by Skacel. It is a wonderful yarn, lighter in weight and also the fiber content makes it friendlier for warmer climates as well.

Peace and Knitting, JoLene Treace

A Little Organization is Good for the Soul

I just wanted to let you all know that I added a page to the Special Pages section to the right, called Tutorials and How To: Knit and Design. I went through a couple categories to find some of my previous blog posts (including the Channel Island Cast On Tutorial that I did) and am organizing links on this page to make it easier to find at a glance things that might be of interest.

Right now the only tutorial with pictures is the Channel Island Cast On tutorial. The content under the design category is mostly of an essay nature, as many of you know. Anyway I will also be going through the Business of Design category and adding that content later, in my copious free time. VBG.

I have perhaps 2 hours before I need to be at work at the Hospital this evening. I was supposed ot work day shift but they did not need me. So I asked about evening shift and they do need help on evenings, unfortunately I have not gotten much done yet today and it is noon. I work evenings tomorrow as well, so hopefully tomorrow is more productive. I have three designs to finish up and get to test knitters as the items need to be done in June. Fortunately I am more than halfway through each pattern and if I have some time to work on them in the next few days they should not take long to finish.

One is an Interweave project for another book. Which reminds me…Knitted Gifts will have a baby blanket (Sugar and Spice) and a set of baby sweaters (Animal Crackers) that I designed. I am not sure when that one will be out exactly, this summer or fall. I will keep you posted.

Peace and Knitting, JoLene Treace

A Little Inspiration for your Knitting

Blue Eyed Honey Eater

This picture is of a Blue Eyed Honey Eater that I took at our zoo, the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo a number of years ago. I thought the colors were simply amazing and I had to take the picture.

When I take photographs of animals at the zoo, I often look at colorways that I would not always think of, and this is a perfect example. Pea green, Black, Creamy White, Royal Blue, and a Pale Turquoise Blue. If you look close in the shadows around the toe of the bird, you can see a touch of pink that I think is some reflected color form the rusty bracket holding his food dish.

I have a fairisle planned for this colorway, in Rauma Finnulgarn. Rauma is a good Norwegian yarn, and Finnulgarn is the only yarn I could find that had the right colors. You would not believe how many yarns I looked at in that weight to find the right color, and color for this design is critical. The colorway was an obvious choice because it is a distinguishing characteristic of this animal. It also has a prominent beak but I did not feel particularly inspired by that.

My cat, oddly enough, will not leave that yarn alone. Whenever it is out, every morning when I get up I find balls of it scattered about the house. She has learned not to hide it or desecrate it or she is banned from the room.

Gathering up the balls of yarn does get tiresome though so I do try and not to leave a colorway of it sitting out where it can tempt her.

Orangutan

This picture was taken of one of our Orangutans.  I happened to be at the right place at the right time and snapped this picture. Since it is behind glass I had the flash off. For those of you wanting to take pictures of animals at the zoo and they are behind glass, take the flash off and put your lens right up to the glass. The lens won’t “see” the glass then and you will get a better shot.

Orangutans tie knots in vines in the wild, and in the Tropical Rainforest’s exhibit they have some samples of knots they have tied. It made me think of Celtic Knot work, so of course for this design I came up with an Aran design.  A feminine one, befitting this lady of the Rain-forest.

The Natives in the areas where the Orangutans live call them “Man In The Woods”. If I were going to do a men’s sweater, which I was at one time outside of the book submission, I would call it Man In The Woods. It would make a great name for a design. This particular design could go also with color as inspiration, it would make a beautiful colorway as well. Yellows to oranges to Rust Reds. Then there are the leathery Browns.  Bring in some greens from the background foliage and it would be quite magnificent.

Or, if you wanted to focus on texture you could go with Mountain Goat from Mountain Colors. It has a bit of a hairy texture to it, and they have a number of interesting colorways: I liked Yellowstone, Harmony Woods, Juniper, Ladyslipper, Moose Creek and Red Willow. A distinguishing characteristic of this animal is it’s hair, so a handpaint yarn in a simple stitch pattern would also be a good choice.

She is quite beautiful, isn’t she?

As you may have picked up, when you are inspired by something there are a number of ways you can go from your inspiration to your finished item. In knitting, our design elements are our yarns and by extension the properties the yarn brings to the party in texture and color. We also have as design elements stitch patterns, and the lines that are created by the stitch patterns which impact how the design is viewed and how it feels to us as we view it (does it feel energetic, restful, sporty, playful, majestic, etc). Do the stitch patterns lead the eyes to certain parts of the body that are flattering or unflattering?  Do the parts of the design transition well from one area to the next? Is it an anomaly because it is supposed to be an anomaly?

For example, when I plan out a sweater, everything is a design element. I do mean everything. Right down to the ribbing. That is why you don’t see plain ribbing slapped on every sweater I do. If I put ribbing on a sweater, it is because ribbing is the best solution, in my mind, for that design for the edge of that garment. And then I don’t just slap ribbing on it. Yes it takes a little planning to have a transition from your ribbing to your pattern, but it looks so much better.

Later on when I have more swatches with stitch patterns with ribbing, I will have to scan them and post them so I can better illustrate what I am talking about.

Peace and Knitting, JoLene Treace