Lee Does Stuff

Pattern sale, tumblr, and studio organization!

Hey guess what! February is my birthday month, so I’m inviting you to celebrate with me by offering a 31% off coupon code!

Enter the code leethals31 (that’s “leethal’s 31” without punctuation) into the coupon box in your shopping cart, on ravelry or leethalknits.com, and get as many patterns/ebooks as you want for almost a third off! This code will be valid at the start of February 1st, through my birthday on the 11th.

Moving on… I made a couple of proclamations over on my tumblr at the beginning of the year, and I wanted to address them both here. First, I claimed that for 2013 I’ll be posting a tumbl-a-day. I have stuck to it for most of this month, but not completely… as the days went by, I found that some days I had something personal to post about, or something knitting–related, and those were all good, but other days I didn’t have anything to post, so I’d just waste a bunch of time looking for something to reblog. This ends up being a bad thing for multiple reasons – the time wasted, and the littering of my tumblr with reblogs, which I want to mostly avoid doing. So, no more strict post-a-day plan, I’ll just try to post things over there when I have something worth posting.

I do like using tumblr, as a kind of halfway between a tweet and a full on blog post over here, and I think I’ll continue with the posting of pattern sneak peeks (like I posted last night!), so if you want to see those you might want to follow me over there. And, I do plan on doing some monthly tumblr based projects, like I mentioned in that first tumbl-a-day proclamation post… I’m going to try listening to and posting a record a day in February, so we’ll see how that goes.

If you want to help give me things to post about over there, you can ask me a question. Also, if you know of any of those photo-a-day projects for an upcoming month (in which you’re told what to photograph each day), let me know – I did one of those for a month last year and it was fun!

So then, the other thing I announced at the beginning of the year was that January would be the month that I finally get my studio in actual proper, functioning, usable order. I have made some progress, but damn, it’s been a busy month. I actually have a chunk of time set aside for this afternoon/evening to get it as far along as possible before the month is over, but it’s far from finished.

These photos were taken 20 minutes ago. In my defense, I have done a lot of more internal organizational work, like figuring out where certain things can live, projects which aren’t really visible behind all the clutter. A couple months ago, there wasn’t close to enough room for all my yarn, but then I got some new yarn organizing systems set up and now all my yarn has a place to live! Even all the small leftover balls. Organization feels so good!

I’ve lived in this house, with that room as my studio space, for over 2.5 years now, so it’s embarrassing that it’s always been used as basically a storage space, with rarely a surface clear enough to work on. The thing is, the room is significantly smaller than my studio room in our old apartment, and I’ve accumulated a ton more ~~crap~~ stuff over the last 3 years or so… Doing my old quick knits mail-out club encouraged me to buy lots of random crafty stuff, and then doing Remixed encouraged me to buy lots of sweaters to unravel, and this and that, and excuses excuses… basically, I am cursed with hoarding tendencies and I just have too much stuff to easily organize it in that one small room. But I’m doing my best, really.

My old studio space was never really organized either, always a work-in-progress, just like this one… until we bought a house and moved. About a month before we bought our house, I was told the Oregonian wanted to include me in a story about studio spaces, which would mean them sending a photographer into my space. I used it as a motivator to get my room in order for the first time ever, succeeded, was featured in the paper, then immediately packed everything up to move!

During all the house buying and moving chaos back then, I managed to take photos of the studio before packing, but I never got around to editing and posting the photos… until last night! I got them all sorted, edited, and up on flickr; so here and now, I’m showing you these photos of my old space, because I always meant to, and so that they might motivate me to get my current space as functional!

Got pretty good light in that room!

(Coffee can cubbies tutorial is here.)

Gotta have a record player in any decent studio space 😉

Some areas looked messy, but they were actually in order.

Thrifted wine rack (I think?) as yarn storage/display.

Reclaimed CD cases (from my old photo lab day job – I didn’t go through all those discs myself!) as yarn storage. And Ikea plastic bag storage units as yarn storage.

I’ve been sewing at the kitchen table for the last couple years… I can’t wait till I have space to actually craft in my craft studio!

Yeah, I like Ikea. I’ll leave it at that… there are more shots on flickr if you want to see more. I do have more to post about, but it can be for a later day… For now, you can be expecting the new stripy pattern release next week! I’m aiming for Wednesday morning… it’s a fun pattern, I’m excited about it! Yay!

New Cabled Haka Hat + Cowl!

You may or may not remember my old hat pattern called Haka, one of the first patterns I ever wrote waay back in 2008. Well, it was super simple, it was cheap, and no one really seemed to care about it, but I liked the idea of it and decided it was worth a major makeover!

So I turned it into a cabled hat, to go along with the basic version, and then I recycled the cable chart to make a matching cowl as well!

So it’s all updated on my site and ravelry now as kind of a mini-ebook, with the basic hat, cabled hat, and cabled cowl, altogether in the pdf for $6. All items use super bulky weight yarn, or 3 strands of worsted weight held together, which is what I used on these cabled samples.

Just like the original Haka, the hat can be worn with the strap four different ways… loose and hanging earflaps:

…fastened around your chin (Haka is Icelandic for chin, by the way):

… fastened up behind your head (this is my favorite way to wear it most of the time, still plenty warm but a bit out of the way):

Side note: one of my testers had the smart idea of putting a second button on the other side of the strap, so when it’s fastened this way the button can show on the outside instead of hidden underneath like you see here.

…and lastly, fastened behind the neck, so the strap is out of the way but the ears are still super cozy:

The cabled hat is the same pattern as the original hat, but with the cable chart for the body (the cables are only charted, not written); the cowl is just a simple tube cowl using the same cable chart:

This sample is the large size, which is huge and flops/folds over. The small size is more fitted and will stay up around the neck more (see some testers’ versions here!).

The pattern pdf includes a tutorial for cabling without a cable needle (same as this one on my website)… here’s a better view of the cable pattern on the hat:

And then of course there’s the basic Haka as well, which is suuuper quick, easy, great for beginners or for last-minute winter gift knitting:

It will work in any super bulky yarn, finer weights held multi-stranded, or it looks fabulous in handspun!

And the pattern also includes full instructions for jog-less stripes, like in this sample (2×1 stripes like this one, or any other width stripes you want to make):

Many many thanks to my awesome test knitters for your quick knitting and thoughtful feedback!! Happy knitting, all!

Junction shawl pattern!

Oh hey remember how I had a mystery shawl knit-a-long last month? Well, it’s long over and here is the mystery revealed!

Junction is a modular shawl, made up of 5 parts worked in different directions, all connected with short rows, no picked up stitches or seaming.

It can be made in any weight yarn, and in any size, in as little as 2 colors, or in as many colors as you want!

You can use the same color for the whole background, or switch between 2 different background colors, like I did in this main sample:

You can even used a subtly variegated or a self-striping yarn for the main color throughout, like this variegated sample I made, or like this self-striping by feistykitty, or this partially self-striping by craftzone.

The way the sizing for this shawl works is that the length you work to in the first section determines the final size of the whole piece… so while 3 sizes are given in the pattern, you can actually work to absolutely any size you want! (Helpful sizing notes are included.)

This sample of mine is in Anzula’s For Better or Worsted – in Curry and Pesto as the main colors, with bits of Bark and Navy. I love this yarn oh so much, yes!! For this color combo in the large size, 2 skeins each were needed of the yellow and green, but you could totally use this yarn in a different way and/or make a medium size and not have to get multiple skeins of a color. I think you’d be able to get away with 3 skeins total in the large size and a similar look (but with 3 colors instead of 4) by using 2 main colors (like I did) but not use those for the contrasting at all, and then the third color as the contrasting throughout the whole thing. You’d definitely be safe doing that in a medium size, or you could go kind of halfway between medium and large…

And then this small size sample is in beautiful Black Trillium Merilon sock yarn (Star colorway), with a recycled white silk used as the contrasting. I love it! The small size shawl makes a great 1 skein of sock yarn project (though you can use any weight!), for a special yarn that you want to show off; you could probably even get a medium size out of 1 skein, depending on how tightly you knit it up.

So… want to see my crazy design process for this one? It started with lots of swatching, and then once I had a basic concept figured out, I made up a first prototype, which looked like this:

At first I thought I was going to make garter stitch eyelet lines for the contrasting design details, but after using them in the center section, I didn’t like the look, and moved on to what became the chains in the later sections.

And I started to try this final sideways section across the top, but quickly decided against that, leaving it in the prototype instead of frogging it just for fun:

The shape of this one needed some major adjustment, but it’s sort of wearable… sorta kinda…

Then I made all my major adjustments to the in-progress pattern, to make for a better shape, and use the chains throughout, etc, and I had this thought that it could be cool to stripe 2×2 stripes throughout the whole thing. I had some Quince & co yarn I’d been wanting to use, in 4 colors, so I played around with striping ideas in photoshop and came up with this plan. Each of the 4 colors are used in 3 out of the 6 sections, paired with each of the other colors, so each section has its own unique 2×2 stripes, blending into the next (from sections 1-6, colors used are A/B, B/C, C/D, D/A, A/C, D/B).

For my first try, that plan became this:

First, the stripes were a bad idea. Second, the shape was still way off. But this time, it was only the top 2 sections that needed adjusting. So I frogged the whole top half, re-worked the pattern some more, and this final shawl turned out like so:

The design features are totally hidden in those stripes, so I knew that idea was out for the actual pattern. But this prototype served multiple purposes, and it was successful in its final shape/size. So this became pretty much the exact pattern for the small size, as worked in worsted weight…

And while it’s no good as an official pattern sample, I do like it as a personal accessory, so it will most definitely be getting some use!

So, next, I decided to make one more prototype, with a solid background, to finalize everything, before casting on with my good yarn. So I grabbed some aran weight Cascade Soft Spun (which knits up more like a chunky weight, I think), in order to whip up a quick medium size version. I switched between 4 different contrasting colors for this one, rotating A, B, C, D throughout the entire piece.

Well, finally it was a complete success, and my prototyping was complete! The medium was a perfect fit for what I wanted in a medium, and I loved it!

For my official large size Anzula sample, I wanted to show it in a 2 main color version. While the 2×2 stripes didn’t work, I was convinced that there was a way to use 2 different main colors, and I wanted to make that idea work, so I did more color-planning sketching (messy touchpad sketching in photoshop)… I tried lots of different ways of switching between the colors, and using the contrasting colors, and this is what looked best:

So I knit it up and that plan became this shawl (I love how almost exactly right on my sketched plan was):

The large size is nice and cozy!

I like how the 2 color version kind of appears as mostly one color from some angles, and mostly (or entirely) the other color from other angles.

So that was my design process! The only thing left to do was to make a small size sample, for which I chose to use sock yarn. I’d been holding on to this Black Trillium skein for awhile, waiting for just the right design… and I think I made a good choice! Love how it looks!

The small size is more of a kerchief than a shawl, really, depending on how you wear it. But in wool yarn, it keeps my neck a good amount of warm…

And that’s that! Junction! It was a bit tough as a mystery pattern, and I know there were a lot of drop-outs, but I think it’s a much easier pattern when you know what you’re supposed to be doing! The pattern includes lots of photos, step-by-step shots of how each section should look, and tons of notes to help you along the way. As long as you follow each line as it’s written, and trust it, it’s not a hard pattern. It’s all just knitting, after all 🙂

Holiday gift knitting! (plus mega sale, today only!)

It’s been a busy month! With all these new patterns, I want to offer a sale on this cyber Monday, so you can collect whichever ones you like with some major savings! (Like my newest Flying V’s, and Junction, which still has yet to be blogged officially, pictured below.)

So, today only, add as many leethal patterns/ebooks to your cart as you want (through ravelry or my site), and enter coupon code leethalmonday to save 40% off your entire order!!

This code will work for the whole Remixed collection (knocking it down from $20 to a mere $12 for all 8 patterns!) and all the quick knits ebooks, Game Knitting, the Flying V’s collection, etc…

And since it is now indeed the holiday season, I will go on to point you to my many patterns which might make for good (quick) gift knitting! All of my any-gauge patterns can be made as a quick gift knit if you choose a chunky yarn, like Wobble Bass, which looks very nice in bulky yarns (pictured here in worsted) and is a great gift for a hat-wearing person of any gender:

(Note: I’ll link to the ravelry pages for all the patterns throughout this post, since it’s a little easier and is probably preferred by many, but you can also find all the patterns on my website, and buy them through there with the coupon code if you prefer.)

Any-gauge mitts include Either/Or and Rumours (both from Remixed), which are both quick in chunky yarns:

Any-gauge cowls include Flippable and Parallel Lines (another Remixed pattern)…

…and hooded (or optionally hooded) cowls Shapeshifter and Skoodlet both work excellently in bulky or super bulky yarns:

Custom Tritops and Wild is the Wind (from Remixed) can both be made not just in any weight, but also as either fitted or slouchy styles (both shown here in slouchy), though if you choose to make either super quick in bulky yarn, the fitted style is probably the better choice.

Other Remixed any-gauge hats include Gentle on My Mind, shown here in an oversized super bulky version, and Freak Out! (a hat with a surprise hidden underneath!):

I also have some simpler bulky weight patterns, like Brimming with Color and Haka, which is the ultimate quick knit hat, in either super bulky yarn or 3 strands of worsted held together – perfect for one-night gift knitting!

And Twisted Ankles are cabled legwarmers knit up in bulky weight:

And then there are my official quick knits patterns – those hats and other accessories might be quick compared to shawls and sweaters, but these projects below are QUICK! There are the Ten 10 yard Cuffs:

Lots of good potential gifty items in my quick knits ebooks, like these Drink Sweaters and Pen Tube Bookmarks…

…and the Guitar Pick Keyring Pouch and CD Gift Case, which are together in the same ebook:

And then there are my older quick knits patterns, compiled into 3 volumes – these Pinwheel Earmuffs and Cabled Frame are from vol. 2, the Garter Strip Light-switch Cover is from vol.3…

…and these Stiffened Chevron Bookmarks and holiday-themed Wee Gift Bag below are from vol.1. Browse through ravelry or my site to see all my quick knits patterns (47 of them!).

Lastly, if you need to stick to freebies, I have some of those as well! My new hat Scant knits up quickly, especially if you choose a chunky yarn. Cassady and Buttonhead are also simple knits for any gauge, and the Buttony Chevron Cuff is super quick and fun:

And then there are these Gradient Mitts and leethal Mary Janes, both in bulky yarns for quick gift knitting.

Hope I gave you some good options if you are trying to pack in lots of knitting over the next month! You should be able to whip up several of these in time, no problem! Happy holidays, and happy knitting!

Scant, a free pattern!

Happy holidays! I have a gift to you all, a free hat pattern! It all started when I offered to knit my brother any accessory he wanted for his birthday, and he requested a plain “brown beanie”. Well, if you know me, you know I wasn’t exactly excited about the thought of this project… but I decided to use it as an opportunity.

While making this plain, brown beanie, I wrote it up as an any-gauge pattern for you! It serves as both an easy, simple pattern for a basic hat, perfect for using up a single skein of a special yarn, like this one, made from this handspun that I’d been saving for just the right project:

And also as a good introduction to any-gauge patterns. I know my patterns for any weight yarn can be intimidating to some knitters, who have only had experience with traditional patterns, but this basic hat pattern may serve to show that it’s not difficult to use an any-gauge pattern. And it’s fun to pick out any yarn you want to use, and then make a custom fit item with it!

This twisted rib brimmed hat is knit from the top down, so you don’t need to make a gauge swatch. You just started working outwards, and measure your gauge when you have enough fabric to do so, then determine your stitch count using that, and your own head measurement, continuing on to your ideal height.

The pattern is all on my website itself (something new I wanted to try out), and the notes include sizing info for gift knitting, and for making either a fitted or slouchy style. I’ll stop talking about the pattern now, since you can just click over to see the whole thing for yourself. And it’s on ravelry here. Enjoy!!

Flying V’s!

New pattern collection! Flying V’s fingerless mitts, full mittens, legwarmers, and cowl! 4 different items, all in your choice of chevron block colorwork pattern (all the same stitch pattern, just changing colors at different points). Any color pattern works for any item, and 16 different options are charted for you!

The collection is all together as one pattern – make the mitts/mittens in fingering weight or the legwarmers or cowl in worsted weight. All items are given in 3 sizes, and lengths are easily adjusted for all of them.

Because I had so many samples to show all the different items and a variety of the chevron patterns, I took a ton of photos (with much help from my awesome husband/assistant!!) – I’m taking this blog opportunity to show a bunch of the shots that didn’t make it into the actual pattern or rav pages…

So yeah, colorwork, that’s new for me! A few months ago, I had this vision for making a chevron stitch pattern in which the V’s are off-kilter, at first thinking maybe I could make it happen with slip stitches (more my knitting style) but I eventually decided the only way to make my vision really come to life was to teach myself stranded colorwork. Like, for reals.

I’d done bits of colorwork here and there (like in Wobble Bass, and in some game knit items), but I’d always done it with the drop-and-pick-up method, slowly and awkwardly. The thing is, I’m a thrower, and I’ve never been able to work the yarn with my left hand well, so I’d tried two handed stranded knitting a little and couldn’t swing it.

So I was determined to figure out a way to really knit stranded colorwork, and after trying a few different holding techniques, I found that the best for me is holding both strands in my right hand, one strand over my index finger and the other over my middle finger. After much practice, I’m still slow, and get some hand cramping if I’m not careful, but it works!

I made my first prototype of the design idea in some scrap yarn, in my original off-kilter chevron block idea. (I later decided not to do the thumb in stranded colorwork, as I’d done here!)

And in the process of making that, I realized there could be so many more possibilities based on that concept of working a chevron stitch pattern and changing colors for each V. So I started sketching! Well, I made a couple chevron base sketches, then had fun with photoshop color filling:

Then I had more fun plugging specific color block patterns into a chart spreadsheet, eventually ending up with the 16 different chevron block color patterns which are included in the pdf. 7 of the options are shown in my samples (and the pattern tells you exactly which ones they are), and my testers worked from some of the other charts as well, so you can see more patterns by looking through the ravelry project pages. And you can even play around and come up with your own variations!

The different color patterns can use anything from 2 colors up – the charts go up to 5 colors, but you can easily stash-bust leftover mini-balls by making non-repeating color rows of chevron blocks / V’s. Or use self-striping yarn for one or more of the block colors!

As for the samples, all the mitts are in Knit Picks Palette yarn, which is an affordable way to use lots of different colors. All the colors I used are listed in the pattern.

The legwarmers are in Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Tweed – I used exactly one skein of each of the 4 colors (I had about 20 inches left of the green!), so if you’re making the legwarmers in this yarn and might want to add some length or just be safe, I’d recommend doing a 5 color pattern…

The large size green cowl is in Knit Picks Swish merino and Chroma self-striping for all the V’s. By using the same self-striping yarn for all the V’s instead of different solid colors, you can carry the yarn up the entire thing and have hardly any ends to weave in!

Side note about the large size (especially if done in a floppy yarn like this soft merino) – it will want to flop open, revealing the wrong side, which you may or may not care too much about… a way I found to solve this problem is to fold it over on itself and stick a pin in it (a button like this, or a shawl pin), holding it up, and preventing it from flopping open:

The medium size cowl sample is in gorgeous Quince & Co Lark worsted weight. I had small leftover balls of these colors, so I bought a skein of the Egret for the background, and I absolutely love how it turned out!

The mitt/mitten thumbs are worked modularly, with some picked up stitches to close up the hole where the thumb joins the hand. The fingerless mitts thumbs have a garter stitch edge to match the top and bottom edges.

The mitten thumbs are worked at an angle, and the then grafted closed, making them thumb-shaped at the tops. The mitten tops are also grafted closed (grafting instructions are included; none of the other items require grafting).

Some colorwork experience is recommended going into the project. While shaping is minimal, making it a pretty simple pattern, working the colorwork along with the increase/decrease chevron pattern is a but tricky, especially if you’re new to colorwork. Once you get the hang of it, it’s not hard, but it is important to carry your strands evenly across the back, and catch floats as you work each color block.

The sizes can vary a bit depending on how tightly/loosely you carry your strands, and you can make size modifications by slightly adjusting your gauge if you want. Sizes of all the items, and fit notes, are all included in the pattern, and also on the ravelry pattern pages for each item.

The pattern collection pdf is 17 pages total – the written pattern is on 5 photo-less pages, the charts are on 3 pages, 1 page of abbreviations/chart notes, and 8 pages are notes and photos (not meant to print). You can buy it through ravelry or my website (and next week through Knit Picks as well).

Happy knitting!

Knitting-related events and updates for this busy time of year…

Quick post here to just show+tell you a few things… first, super last minute, but I’ve mentioned it before, if you’re in Seattle I hope to see you at Knit Fit! this weekend! I’ll be teaching Self-Publishing on Saturday (tomorrow) afternoon, then hosting a Game Knitting night Saturday night, then teaching the Sideways Edge Cast-on and Bind-off techniques on Sunday morning. I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to sign up last minute for any of these if you want to (this doesn’t go for all Knit Fit! classes, but I believe mine have room for last minute students), plus the market is open to the public all day Saturday and Sunday.

This is the dishcloth I made last night in preparation for the Game Knitting night – I game knit this to Say Anything… using short rows for my game pattern. I really like how it turned out!

Moving on to other stuff… I was recently interviewed for the Happy Knits blog! Go check that out to read me talk about my love of knitting, design, music, and more.

I finished a minor update to leethal.net! (which includes the blog) I need to give it a major update, but can’t find the time this busy season, so I settled for changing some of the colors and the headers for now. Now the colors match leethalknits.com (sort of, not totally) and the headers feature these drawings, just to mix things up, hooray for change!

Another bit of news for pacific northwest locals – I’ll be heading down to Corvallis for a trunk show at Stash later this month! I’ll be hanging out (with my knits) for the knit night on Wednesday, November 14th, and then my stuff will continue to hang at the shop for about a week. So, if you are in the Corvallis area, come by on the 14th if you can, or stop in any time for the following week to see my knit goodies, yay!

You know how I’ve been talking about how I’m working on my first stranded colorwork design? Well here are some peeks at my first samples! It’s still very much in progress, but I’m hoping to be able to start having it test knit next week, and release it mid-month if all goes well! (If you are an experienced stranded colorwork knitter and are interested in test knitting, check out the testing info here and let me know!)

And lastly, the mystery shawl knit-a-long is coming to an end! These are some peeks at my small size Black Trillium sock yarn sample…

All 5 sections have been released, and you can see lots of finished shawls in the forums and the project pages… if you like what you see, you can buy the pattern now and get all 5 sections in the separate mystery pdfs (totaling the complete pattern). Next week (hopefully on Tuesday), I’ll be releasing the final complete pattern, all in one file with photos. I think this knit-a-long went pretty darn well, I hope everyone had tons of fun!!

Woolly Wormhead blog tour! Classic Woolly Toppers! Yeah!

This is a first for me, here on the ol’ do stuff! blog – I’m a stop on the Classic Woolly Toppers blog tour! Which is, of course, the new hat book by the wonderful Woolly Wormhead (on ravelry here):

This is exciting for me, I’ve never been part of a blog tour before! And what a fabulous one to be a part of! I’ve always greatly admired Woolly’s hat patterns – the diversity, the creativity, the whimsey, they are oh so great! Yes! And this book is fantastic; a bit less of the whimsey and more of the classic, but not boring, that’s for sure!

This book – available in print and/or digital format – has 44 pages packed with 10 beautiful hat patterns as well as technique tutorials, sizing info, styling tips, photos of the hats on different models to see them with different face types and hairstyles… As with all Woolly’s hat patterns, all the designs come in many sizes, so you can get a perfect fit.

While the designs are inspired by classic styles, they are definitely modern patterns, and feature lots of innovative construction ideas and knitting techniques. One of my favorite bits is that the Camden Cap (pictured on the cover above and below) uses a recycled plastic bottle to make the brim insert! Smart! And she gives plenty of detail about how to make the piece and insert it into your hat as you knit it.

And speaking of recycled materials… I didn’t have time in my knitting schedule to actually knit one of the classic toppers for this post, but I did manage to make one of them! (Not really but kind of sort of…) One of my favorite designs in the book, Imagiro, is extremely beginner-friendly for the actual knitting part, as it starts off as a plain rectangle… then it gets folded and sewn in a mind-blowing magical way to turn it into this awesome turban!

Woolly’s description: “A delicate yarn calls for a delicate shape and this turban works both to glamorous effect. Worked flat, this piece is all in the finishing with fascinating folds and turns that turn simple garter stitch into a sculptural masterpiece.” I took a look at it, wanted to try it so badly but didn’t have time to knit the rectangle (oh so many projects on the needles!!), so I grabbed a thrifted sweater from my for-crafting stash, cut out the sleeves to size, and I had my rectangle!

Now, this is a far from perfect way to make the hat, as this stockinette fabric, seamed down the middle with the crocheted edges to prevent unraveling, is much different from the intended garter stitch piece. But, I got to try it out, and it worked!

I love my new tweed turban! (Doesn’t look its best styled with my newly cut, too-short bangs, but once they’ve grown out for a couple weeks it’ll look great!)

Some of my other personal favorite designs from the book are the pillbox style Taboosh, the button-embellished cozy Karenin, the asymmetrical cloche Ravine, and the bucket style Corbelle.

What’s your favorite design from the collection? Tell me and you might win the pattern!

Yup, it’s giveaway time! Woolly has generously donated giveaway copies for this blog tour, so leave a comment telling us which is your #1 favorite hat from the book – check them all out here on ravelry or here on Woolly’s website – and I’ll be picking 3 winners! 2 will get the pattern for their chosen favorite hat, and the grand prize winner will get the entire ebook, plus a copy of one of my hat patterns, just to make the giveaway a little bit leethal!

I’ll pick the winners in a week and a half-ish, on Monday November 5th. And, if you’re just dying to get your hands (literally or digitally) on a copy of this book, you can buy the print version for $16.99, the digital version for £9.00 (which is $14.50-ish), or both print+digital for £16.50 ($26-ish) – see Woolly’s site for all the buy links.

Unfortunately (and infuriatingly, for me), my website/blog has been down all week – this post was supposed to go up on Tuesday, and as I was finishing it up Monday afternoon my site stopped loading… anyway, so the next stop on the blog tour was going to be Knitspot, but that’s happened already now. Now, the next tour stop will be my buddy Cirilia over on bricoleur knits – you can find links to all the blogs and podcasts on the tour, past and future, over here! Check them all out for different perspectives on the book, interviews with Woolly, etc, fun stuff!

Happy hat knitting!!

Knitting technique tutorials, new charts, and other knitting stuff!

I haven’t talked about knit stuff in awhile, and a lot is going on! (And I won’t even talk about my sweater yet, that will be its own post later.) Since I got back from our trip I have been knitting and working on knitting/pattern-related stuff nonstop!

In newest news, I’ve just started up a new section of my knit website – leethal knitting technique tutorials!

I started out with some make 1 increase tutorials (including right & left, and purl-wise both ways), beginning with a simple one to figure out my layout template and stuff… then this morning I just updated it with a cabling without a cable needle tutorial!

I’ve been putting photo tutorials in a lot of my pattern pdfs for awhile now, and a few months ago I started thinking, there’s no reason for those tutorials to be exclusive to the patterns – people don’t buy the patterns for those tutorials, right? They are just like an extra bonus. So, I might as well re-post them on my site for all to see! I put the effort into making the how-tos, I’d rather more people get to use them. So yeah, the m1 tutorials were first made for Either/Or, and some were also included in the current mystery knit-a-long pattern; the cabling tutorials were first made for Freewheelin’, and some were also included in Wobble Bass.

More tutorials from patterns which will make their ways into this section include twisted stitches, crochet provisional cast-on, weaving in your ends while knitting, grafting… and then more in the future… I’ll mention in the blog when I add new tutorials over there.

Another thing I’ve just completed is updating the charts on a couple of Remixed patterns. When I designed Wobble Bass, I made a new cable chart font for it, which looks much nicer than what I’d used for cables in the past, as well as for twisted stitches. So, I updated the charts in Wild is the Wind (on ravelry):

Here are the old chart symbols versus the new chart symbols:

And I updated all the cable charts in Freewheelin’ (on ravelry):

A bit of one of the old charts versus a bit of one of the new charts (the charts aren’t smaller, it’s just the way I cropped the screenshot):

The original charts worked fine, but these should be a bit smoother and easier to follow, making for a more pleasant knitting experience! Enjoy!

In other knitting news, the mystery shawl knit-a-long is in its second week right now, and going very well!!

There are 79 projects on ravelry (at the time I’m writing this) and lots of them have spoiler photos, so click over there, or to the spoiler forums, if you want to see how it’s looking! I won’t show any spoiler photos here, but you can also click over to my rav project pages for my 3 samples – in Anzula worsted weight, in Black Trillium sock weight, and in Cascade aran weight – to see my section 1’s. I’ll post my section 2’s on Sunday night when I release section 3.

If you like what you see, there are still 3 sections left after this, so plenty of mystery knitting still to go if you join now!!

Besides all that knitting-related stuff, I’ve also been actually knitting a ton! I am working on a stranded colorwork design, something I’ve done very little of in my 10 years knitting. So I spent many days figuring out the best way for my hands to hold the 2 strands at once and work a colorwork design – one strand in each hand does not make my hands happy! Ouch! What ended up working best is holding both strands in my right hand, one over my first finger and the other over my middle finger… It’s tricky at first (and at second, and at third), but after several days of practice I got much better and faster at it, loosened up, and my hands stopped hurting. Yay!

I don’t want to show you too much of the design yet, since it’s still in the beginning phases, but here are some super-cropped peeks of my colorwork:

And I’ve been working on another pattern as well, which is also still in the very early stages, swatching and note taking, more swatching and more note taking… Here is some swatching in progress (in lovely Knitted Wit yarn left over from this hat):

One last bit of news – I’m excited to be a part of the Woolly Wormhead blog tour, for her new book Classic Woolly Toppers! So in a couple weeks that’ll be happening… I’ve never been part of a blog tour before, so it should be fun! And if you read my blog, there’s a good chance you like to knit hats, so yeah, good stuff!

I think that’s all my knitting news for now. Happy knitting, dear readers!

Our trip to the UK + Ireland!

As you know if you’ve been following the blog, or twitter, or instagram, or tumblr… Pete’s awesome parents just took us across the pond for most of September, traveling in a big loop through southern England, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and northern England. I could write a separate long blog post on every single day of the 20 day long trip… but I don’t have the time for that and you don’t have the time to read that, so instead…

I scrolled through the 5000ish photos I took, picked out a couple from each location that caught my eye, edited those and stuck them on flickr, and will take you through the trip very quickly in a whirlwind adventure blog post right now. Then, over the next several months I’m sure, I will sort through and edit all those photos (probably cutting the 5000 down to around 500 maybe, we’ll see), put them up on flickr as I go, and tumbl individual photos that I want to share beyond flickr. We instagrammed a bit while traveling, so I’ll link to some of those shots here as well. I’ll also be blogging a few more specific trip-related things, like the Tourist Sweater I’m making (at which point I’ll talk about all the yarn shops I visited!), at some point in time.

So, if you are interested in more photos and stuff beyond this, follow my tumblr and/or flickr and see bits and pieces spread out over time…

And off we go! We started in London, arriving early in the morning for one extremely sleep-deprived weird first day, then 2 full fun-packed London days. We squeezed in the British Museum, V&A museum, Tate Modern, National Gallery, Westminster Abbey, Harrods, Liberty (where we had a very fancy afternoon cream tea), Savile Row, briefly explored lots of different areas, curry lunch in Camden, dinner at a pub, I’m surely forgetting other highlights but yeah, tons of London fun was had.

(I love taking self-portraits in interesting reflective surfaces, so there will be more of these as we go on…)

On the fourth day we started by taking a train to Oxford, where we explored the town, loved it, and ate lunch in a pub a bit off the beaten path, where they offered a vegetarian version of sausage & mash! As a non-meat-eater, I didn’t think I’d be able to try many traditional foods on this trip, so I jumped on the chance here, and it turned out to be delicious (thanks to good quality veggie-filled fake sausage, which wasn’t trying to imitate real sausage too closely and therefore be gross).

Then we started our rented car adventures part of the trip and drove through the Cotswolds, stopping in the towns of Stow-on-the-Wold and Chipping Campden, then eventually ending up that night in the country outskirts of Bristol where we were staying for the next few nights.

I made these maps of each day that we traveled the most, or through the most places… color coded for different travel modes: red is car, pink is train (orange will be bus, blue will be ferry). They are not super accurate, but I had fun making them. So here’s day four, Oxford/Cotswolds day:

Day five was Bath – Pete and I were just along for the ride and didn’t think we had much interest in Bath, but we were both surprised to love it!! The town was great, and the Roman Baths turned out to be extremely interesting and cool! Two thumbs up to Bath!

The next day was spent in Bristol, which we also LOVED! Having just one day and wanting to see as much as possible of this city, we decided to do a hop on hop off guided bus tour – cheesy and touristy, yes, but it allowed up to see and learn a ton in one day! We ended up doing these tours in a couple other cities as well, when time was limited, and it works out well, I totally recommend it 😉

Bristol highlight: we didn’t know it was Banksy’s hometown until we noticed that wall and had a minor flip-out moment! We saw a couple more Banksy pieces in the art museum, but the street art was the coolest to see in real life!

Day seven was Wales day – we drove from Bristol, across the water to the southeast Wales, then diagonally, through 2 different national parks, and past about a million sheep (yay!) up to the northwest. Those little white dots below are sheep…

We stayed in Criccieth that night, then drove about an hour further north the next morning to Holyhead at the northwest tip of Wales, and took the ferry across the Irish Sea to Dublin!

We spent that day and the next exploring Dublin – the highlight being Trinity College Library, the Book of Kells and all the other amazing old books! One of my favorite things was the flower patterns in the French Book of Hours, which you can see a couple pages of here – those pages are not big; those flower designs are super intricate and beautiful! No photos allowed inside the library, but Pete kinneared this one with his phone.

On day ten we took a train straight across Ireland to Galway. We loved Galway!! Loved it. There was a highlight involving yarn that I’ll tell you about later; another highlight was all the street musicians scattered all throughout the town playing all different traditional and non-traditional instruments and music. The harpist was playing a lovely cover of Mad World by Tears for Fears! ❤

After Galway, we spent another half-day in Dublin, then on day 12 we headed up to Belfast for a partial-day. We took the guided bus tour in Belfast to see and learn as much as possible with our wee bit of time in the city, it was great! The bummer was that this was the day I started to feel a cold coming on, so with the cold+rainy weather we called it a night early, but not before spending a good several hours in the unhealthy weather, not good.

The next day we took the ferry from Belfast to Cairnryan, Scotland, then a bus to Ayr and a train to Glasgow. We got to see a lot of the beautiful west coast of Scotland on the bus, yay!

Once in Glasgow, we had lunch and tea at a cafe then walked through a big chunk of the city to the modern art museum, in the cold rain. This is what killed me; upon arrival at the museum my health was shot and the cold hit me full force. We saw the museum, walked back to the hotel, and I sadly watched tv for that half-day and the entire next day, since I woke up the next morning much worse. That was the saddest low point of the trip, considering how much I loved Glasgow when I was there ten years ago and how excited I was to go back. This is in the museum:

On day 15 I was partially recovered from the brutal cold, so after traveling to Edinburgh in the morning I was up to exploring the town a bit, before calling it a day in the afternoon and resting up so I wouldn’t get worse again. We managed to squeeze lots of Edinburgh amazingness into those few hours – LOVED Edinburgh!! I even got to visit Ysolda briefly while yarn shopping and see her new studio, and I also had some shopping fun at Avalanche Records and Armstrong’s Vintage, and Pete got an extra special souvenir.

The next day was Scottish Highlands bus tour day! I love Scotland so much! We saw lots of hairy coos, including Hamish in Kilmahog, tons of amazing views, multiple castles, and we took a boat around Loch Ness!

The tour went northwest, up along the lochs to Inverness, then down southeast back to Edinburgh. The only thing I wish had been different is that I’d wanted to spend a bit of time exploring the towns we passed through. Since we traveled so much distance and spent a couple hours on Loch Ness, we didn’t get to spend time in any other towns or anything, we just had rushed meal stops and we didn’t even stop at all in Inverness, just drove through. I’d love to take a Scotland trip sometime in my future life and spend time in lots of towns all over the country!

The next day we took a train down to York, along a big chunk of Scotland and northern England coast, which was beautiful! Saw lots of coastal sheep and cows!

York turned out to be another of our absolute favorites! We knew nothing about York and didn’t have any particular interest in it, but we ended up being so happy to spend a day and a half there, it was fantastic! Everything was walkable, which is always great, the medieval-ness of it all was so cool (winding narrow streets, the whole town surrounded by medieval walls, etc), the sinking buildings (that’s Shambles street below), everything, we just loved it. But that’s not all! There are more craft shops in York than almost all the rest we saw throughout the whole trip put together! Seriously! Multiple yarn shops, many craft shops with yarn and other stuff like embroidery, needlepoint, etc, bead shops, buttons shops, they just kept popping up every time we turned a corner! So I’ll talk more about those when I post separately about yarn shops… There was also a great little record shop, lots of handmade stuff and things in cute stuff shops, vintage clothes, basically everything we love! So yeah, York was our kind of town!

On day 19 we headed back down to London, where we stayed our final 2 nights in a fancypants hotel in the middle of the city, right next to the tower of London, with a rooftop bar and amazing views! (We stayed most nights at little b&b type places out of the main cities, so this was an exciting change.) Our last full day was supposed to be spent in Brighton, but we collided with a hurricane traveling through England, so we decided spending a day outside in a coastal city might be a bad plan…

So we spent an extra day in London, getting drenched in hard rain, drying off, then enjoying the late afternoon and evening in the dry eye of the hurricane, when we walked around the Notting Hill neighborhood (loved it!) where we did a little shopping, ate one last Indian dinner, saw the lit up London Bridge from the river docks, and had drinks in the schmancy rooftop bar.

Here’s Pete and his wonderful parents in front of the bridge on that last night, all wearing Wobble Basses! Oh so many thanks to them for taking us on this incredible adventure!

And I’ll leave you with a couple tea shots: