Upcoming appearances

Sorry for the string of non-project-based posts. I’m sure you’d like to see what I’m working on, but I don’t have new photos yet. Suffice it to say, the book is out, the buzz is good, preorders are shipping and my trips to Rhinebeck and Stitches East were fruitful. I am now about to take a much-deserved vacation to a cabin in central Vermont with my wife for a long weekend, and before I go I wanted to make sure you know when I’ll be popping up next.

In November, I have a bunch of appearances in the Boston area. Please come and visit your LYS, buy my book or bring your copy for signing. The first appearance will be at Windsor Button from 12-3 on Saturday, Nov 5. Then I’ll be doing a presentation at the Common Cod Fiber Guild on Friday night, Nov 11 at MIT, followed by a Level 1 and Level 2 workshop at Mind’s Eye Yarns. The following weekend I’ll be doing trunk shows and book signings at Gather Here in Cambridge and at Newbury Yarns‘ new location in Boston. For more info, please check out my calendar. December will be mostly virtual appearances for me, and I will be planning workshops for the Spring.

And now, for the curious among you, project updates. I am still working on the 52 pickup scarf; I am starting the 11th repeat (of 18). If you last saw it at TNNA, it’s about 3 times longer now. Parallax 1.0 is creeping toward completion but is still about 1/3 to 1/4 done. I have started Parallax 0.5, a lower-res version, in Bijou Basin Lhasa Wilderness (a yak and bamboo blend). I have also accepted yarn to design a new necktie and a belt in Findley for Juniper Moon Fiber Farm. The necktie I will most likely release on Ravelry although I am tempted to see about releasing it as a kit; the belt should be in an upcoming Juniper Moon book.

Extreme Book Touring

Extreme Double-Knitting should be out at the end of the week, and by coincidence (not really — by design) I’ll be heading out to Rhinebeck at the same time. The first physical copies will be sold there (come see me at Bldg C, Booth 37 from 1-2pm Sat and Sun — I will be there other times but those times are guaranteed).

I had workshops at Webs and Fiber Lab set up, but neither one panned out. Because the workshops didn’t run, my publisher decided to scrap the trunk shows and book signings at both places too. So I will be having a slightly more relaxed travel weekend — but I’m sorry to those who had hoped to find me at one of those locations. You’ll just have to head to Rhinebeck or Stitches now.

The following weekend, I will be heading to Stitches East (Hartford, CT) and hanging out in the Market with Cooperative Press. Apparently we’re sharing space with Bijou Basin Ranch in 1005, 1007 and 1009. More info on that as I get it.

Visit my full calendar for more event details.

Hope to see you there!

The book is alive … (nearly)!

No fire, but a pretty picture nonetheless

OK, so there aren’t print copies yet (folks at Rhinebeck will get the first taste of these) but those who preordered are getting their PDF copies and initial impressions are good. In addition, we’ve finally got the patterns listed on Ravelry, so people are starting to see the new content there too. The preorder period is now officially over; the promotional price is done and the book is now selling at list price. If you want it, you can go to Cooperative Press’ order page, Amazon (showing as currently unavailable until the print copies arrive), or request it from your LYS or bookstore. I will also be making appearances at various places around the northeast in mid-October, and will have books available as I go. I will be posting a calendar of my upcoming appearances and workshops soon.

To those who are sad to see that the final cover does not have the firebreathing photo on it, I do apologize. However, that photo and several other fire photos are inside.

Double-Knitting.com is now live

We’re working on putting the finishing touches on the book, which is slated to head to the printer this Tuesday. In preparation for this, I’ve finished the website at double-knitting.com. No, we still don’t have doubleknitting.com, so I have to tell people “double hyphen knitting” but I’m OK with this for now. I’m kind of used to it, given my last name is hyphenated. I guess it sort of fits. Hope you like the new site. It won’t take the place of this one — this will still be the blog, with more frequent updates, RSS feed access, etc.

Extreme Double-Knitting now available for pre-order!

I’m going to take the easy way out and just copy some of the text from my announcement email list:

After much ado, Cooperative Press is ready to take pre-orders for my new book, Extreme Double-Knitting: New Adventures in Reversible Colorwork.

For those of you unfamiliar with the book’s content, this is poised to be the go-to reference book for anyone looking to push double-knitting to its limits in his or her own designs. At nearly 200 full-color pages, with over 170 technique illustrations, this book will take you from basic double-knitting through some of the most unusual things that can be done with the technique, with 14 patterns to give you practice in the new techniques. It is my hope that people will take these techniques and use them to begin designing their own “extreme” double-knitting patterns.

If you’re like me, you’ve been eagerly awaiting the day you get your hands on a copy of my book. If you play your cards right, however, you might even be able to get your hands on one before I do! For a limited time, Cooperative Press will be taking pre-orders for the Print + PDF pack at $23.95 plus shipping. Once the books begin shipping, the price will go up to $29.95. So order now, get your book before all your friends, and save some money to boot! This offer is available only to direct customers. Retailers should be in touch with Shannon at Cooperative Press for wholesale pricing.

As soon as I have a print date, I’ll post it up here. For now, however, just rest assured that it’s coming soon.

Shuti samples complete!

Everything else I'm working on just seems so ... scratchy, somehow

Today I finished the samples for the hat I’m doing for Artyarns‘ One And One Hats book. I still have to get the pattern done, but most of that is already done too, it’s just a matter of compiling already-written stuff. I’ve had uniformly great feedback from folks at my various knitting groups, both on the yarn and the pattern.

There are two sizes here — the smaller size for an 18-21″ head (so it’d be suitable for older kids up to some adults — and really, are you going to be giving a young kid a hat in cashmere and silk?), and the larger size for a 21-24″ head. The great thing about this particular pattern is that the smaller size is 6 repeats of the pattern worked for 6″ before the decreases, and the larger size is 7 repeats worked for 7″ before the decreases. Neat, eh?

Also, I weighed the remaining yarn after each hat, and there is enough in a pair of 100g skeins to do either hat twice!

See the opposite sides here. The darker sides don’t show the light background as well, but I think under natural light we’ll see a difference.

Greetings to Interweave Knits readers!

Hello! If you’re new here after having seen my article in Interweave Knits, it’s good to see you!. Please feel free to leave a comment to this post — I’m curious to see how many people are coming in after reading IK. I didn’t realize it was out already until I started hearing kudos from subscribers.

I’ve also been getting a number of questions asking after patterns pictured in the article. Since it’s evidently not clear, let me just reiterate: All the patterns you’ve seen in the article and most of the ones you can see on this blog (except those for which I expressly say otherwise) will be published in the book. If you want to be among the first to know when the book is ready for pre-order (and when it’s shipping), you can join my mailing list in the upper right corner of this blog.

Thanks for your interest and stay tuned!

Another feather in my hat

Cold-weather lace, anyone?

I promised I’d show this when it was far enough along to get photographed, so here it is, in progress. This pattern will be called Shuti, after the Egyptian hieroglyph depicting a two-feathered headdress. Yeah, it doesn’t look like said hieroglyph, but given that it’s a two-sided feather-and-fan hat, it’s appropriate.

This is done in Artyarns Ensemble, as mentioned in my last post, and is slated for submission to a book they’re working on. The deadline is Sept 1, and I’m sure I’ll have the knitting done well before then. The pattern will be a change for me — entirely in text, not charted, because it’s just a lace pattern. OK, it’s just a lace pattern adapted to double-knitting.

Here’s a neat thing about double-knitting lace. I can make both sides the same color but the nature of the yarn-overs means that the two sides are locked together at the yarn-overs — not at the color-changes, as with normal double-knitting. Sure, I can make the yarn-overs not lock the sides together, but then why would you double-knit it?

More on this pattern later. In the meantime, I’ve been blogged about by Audrey of Audknits.com, who I met at TNNA! I promise not to post every time I get blogged about, but I’m excited!

Hello Artyarns, my new friend

It’s been a few weeks since TNNA, and the book is still in progress. On target? I’m not sure. In any case, it’ll be out before the big October events. While I’m waiting for word from my publisher, I’m also working on some new patterns.

I mentioned earlier that I had approached Artyarns with interest in submitting a pattern for one of their upcoming one-skein pattern books, this one specifically on hats. Iris was immediately enthusiastic about a submission from me — I have had in mind a concept for a double-knit lace hat, and since Artyarns is often associated with gorgeous lace patterns (but Iris clearly aspires to have more reversible patterns in her yarns), I thought it would be ideal to try one of her yarns for this project.

I chose Ensemble — a luxurious silk-cashmere “blend” (really just a strand of each held together) because I wanted something without so much “aura” and I wasn’t sure I could get a full hat out of a skein of Ultramerino 4. The latter yarn will be great for more traditional double-knit patterns, but the Ensemble lends itself well to the sort of work I wanted to submit. While at TNNA, I selected a couple of skeins of each, deciding to try the Ensemble first and if it didn’t work out, try the Ultramerino afterward.

Yarn for artistic inspiration!

But that wasn’t the end of it! Iris emailed me about a week after TNNA and told me she’d sent me some other yarn to play with, and get inspired by. A little while later, I got this in the mail. The 4 horizontal ones are Ensemble, and the rest are Ultramerino 4.

Iris, I am so grateful that you’re so enthusiastic about my work, and thankful that you value my artistic integrity enough to give me free rein with so much lovely fiber — and I am so looking forward to incorporating more of your yarn into my future designs. The selection you sent me is gorgeous, and I’m already having so much fun with the ensemble of Ensemble I got at TNNA. It’s wonderful stuff, and unexpectedly extremely durable in addition to being softer than anything I’ve ever designed with before.

I don’t have a photo of the piece I’m working on yet — actually, I had to rip it out last night (next time: lifelines! but here’s an unexpected bonus — the yarn doesn’t “kink” after being ripped out!) but I’m really happy with the way it’s coming out and I’ll be posting it up here once I’ve gotten far enough to show off the pattern well.

 

Help me get doubleknitting.com!

OK, this has grated on me for some time now. Some internet domain troll (read: someone who buys up domains they think will be worth money someday and sells them for exorbitant prices) has their hands on the domain doubleknitting.com. The domain is parked, meaning that it’s not being used for any productive purpose, and is currently selling for $1349.00 You know, I’d be OK with it if someone had legitimately beaten me to that domain, and was using it for their own knitting-related business — but to have the domain just sit there unused is an insult.

I can’t justify the cost on my own — but maybe with some help I can put it to better use. For example, if everyone in the Ravelry double-knitting group threw in a dollar, I’d be just about there after Paypal takes its cut.

I understand that, as a donor, you get nothing out of this deal except the satisfaction of taking a domain out of the hands of an internet squatter and back into the community that rightfully owns it. I promise that, should I ever decide to abandon the domain, I will sell it only within the knitting community and at a reasonable price. Most domains go for about $10 or $15, depending on where you purchase them.

So if you want to help, donate any amount you see fit here. When the money gets to the amount needed, I will purchase that domain. If someone grabs the domain before me, or they raise the price much higher (it was at about $2000 last year, so I’m optimistic), or something else happens that stops me from being able to attain my goal, I will remove the donation link and I will redirect whatever money has come in to a knitting-related charity of my choice.