Monthly Archives: September 2009

Musings, The Designing Day

Re-energized and productive

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I took off for a good part of the summer — Mainly it was to escape the excrutiating high temperatures and > 90% humidity, so our trips took us to the Colorado rockies in July (mildly cool and only 16% humidity – yay!) and to Vancouver, WA in August (fortunately just missed the heat wave; ‘hi’ to Ann and Bob of Elann – thanks so much for the wonderful dinner and company). Along the way, there was plenty of time to ‘smell the roses’ . I think we all owe it to ourselves to sometimes just escape and do something totally for ourselves. I am now feeling more energized and productive than I have in quite some time. We shall see how long this lasts before reality sets in, lol.


new HeartStrings knitting designs in the new Tilli Tomas Symphony Kid Lace yarn
 I am really pumped up about the new Tilli Tomas Symphony Kid Lace yarn. This yarn is a very soft brushed kid mohair plied with a soft glittery metallic thread and tiny glass seed beads.Tracy Robinson (owner and creative director of Tilli Tomas) asked me to design one-, two-, three-skein projects for this yarn. It’s been great fun to create designs that showcase this yarn.

Watch for these new HeartStrings patterns to be released soon: Lace and Cables Scarf, Lace Starlight Stole, and Put on the Glitz Shrug.

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The Designing Day

12 Years in the Making

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Sweet Melody Vest in handspun yarn
 This project was more than 12 years in the making! It actually began around 1996 as the prototype using some of my own handspun yarn of the Sweet Melody Vest design that I just recently officially published. I was off to a great start in 1996 with my idea for the vest. Then when most of the way through the lower body, I got stalled over the fear of not having enough yarn to complete the vest in my size.

There was no more fiber to be had of the same kind, and it wasn’t like I could just go down to the store and get more yarn.

You wouldn’t believe how many times I picked up and put down this project. I really loved the yarn, loved the color, and loved the way the vest was coming out. But I kept trying to figure out a fall-back plan if I did not have enough yarn.

I did proceed on the project design for publication using the commercially available Lorna’s Laces Green Line DK. So now having proved the design and gotten final yardages, I felt I would at least be comfortable in finishing the handspun version for me(!) with the fall-back (literally) plan of using a similar color wool yarn I had hand-dyed on the back of the vest where it might not be as noticeable (at least to me when wearing, lol).

As always when I am concerned about running out of yarn, I just knit faster. So actually, when I got re-started on this ufo, it hardly took me any time to finish. I completed the remainder of the lower body, both upper fronts and upper back in just 2 days!

I did run out of yarn, but not until I was part way through joining the shoulders to the back. There’s a bit of difference that can be seen upon close inspection, but nothing that will bother me now in the least. Yay!

I think I am going to have fun wearing this vest a lot as it is going to be perfect to go with blue jeans that I usually wear these days of ‘retirement’. The yarn is so soft and feels good. I always loved that yarn I had spun and now am so glad I finally was able to complete what I envisioned — even if it took me over a decade, lol.

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