Lemons, as far as the eye can see

Every so often, my knitting takes a wrong turn and I end up in the not-so-enviable position of having to figure out how to fix it. When this does happen, it is almost invariably due to knitter-error, rather then a mistake in the pattern. To whit, my current knitting dilemma:

There is nothing sadder than a too-big colorwork sweater body...

This is the finished body of my Insight Pullover, designed by Kate Heppell. The pattern is fabulous, and I've been enjoying the colorwork pattern immensely. However, unlike Alli's Gauge Goggles, which we discussed on a recent podcast, clearly I have been investing in a stunning pair of Realistic Body Shape Googles, through which I am far more curvaceous and shapely then in reality. The problem is this: the pattern is written for someone whose bust and hip measurements are both larger then their waist measurements. Not too surprisingly, actually, as this is a pattern written for a women's sweater, and women, as a general group, tend to be shaped that way. 

Tend being the operative word in that previous sentence. And while I have a waist that is smaller then my bust and hips, it's not all that different then my bust. So a sweater with an outline like this:

does not work so well with a body shaped like this (i.e. mine):

There is way too much fabric around my bust on this sweater. Waaaaay to much. I knit the size that would fit my full bust measurement, but upon reflection, I should really have gone with one size down, which would be closer to my upper bust measurement.

This brings up a tricky point in garment sizing: when looking at a pattern and deciding what size to make, how do you know where is the right place to measure to get the proper fit from your finished sweater? Lots of things come in to play here - ease, fabric, shape of the armholes and sleeves. For this sweater, which is meant to be very close fitting, I decided to do the slightly larger size, thinking that the stranded colorwork would be a bit less stretchy then a fabric worked in a single color. It is less elastic, but as I am not exactly amply supplied in boobage, it turns out I don't really need that extra stretch. It also turns out that my gauge is very slightly larger then that given for the pattern: I'm getting 22.5 sts/10 cm instead of 23 sts. I haven't blocked the body yet, so my gauge might end up being spot on, but over the body of the sweater, that extra 0.5 stitch means I've got an extra 2.5 cm around the chest. 

In any event, my dilemma is thus: what do I do?

Choice A: rip out the entire thing and start over again one size smaller.

Choice B: rip out back to the waist increases and increase up the number of stitches for the smaller size, which should fit me better around the bust, but would still leave room in the areas where I am more amply supplied with heft (i.e. the back forty, as the Knitmore Girls like to call it).

What do you say? I was initially leaning towards B, if only because the thought of starting over makes me want to cry hot tears of woe and despair. Even though I am loving the colorwork. Although now that I've tried it on again, I am thinking that maybe it's a bit too loose through the hips too?

Aaaargh! And sadly, this is only the first of two sweaters I have to MacGyver into fitting. Woe, misery and woe.

Spinworthy

"Knitworthy" is a term that gets discussed a fair bit in the knitting world, particularly in the run up to the winter holiday season. What makes someone knitworthy is an ongoing, and sometimes contentious debate - the recipient's appreciation of and understanding of the value of handknits is dissected within an inch of its life, their ability to care appropriately for said handknitted gift is considered, and the giver's ability to "let it go" (it being the knit item in question) is discussed and pondered. It's a tough thing, putting all the time and energy and work into a handknit present when you're not sure what will happen to it in its new home.

What you don't hear discussed very often is if someone is "spinworthy".  For me, spinning a gift for someone is a different undertaking then knitting something. When I spin, part of the enjoyment is in being early in the creative chain that begins with the sheep growing the wool and ends with the finished object. I take a raw-ish material (the "ish" being reflective of the fact that I'm usually working with already processed but not always dyed fiber) and create something that, while beautiful in and of itself, isn't actually the finished product. There is still potential in that skein of handspun - it might grow up to be a hat, or a cowl, or some warm cozy mittens. It might end up as a square or two in a big blanket, or an edging on a sweater, or just about anything at all. The final fate of that wool is still up in the air.

All of this is a rather long and indirect way of saying I've finished a big spinning project. For Christmas in 2013, I gave Alli a sweater lot of handspun, fiber and colors TBD. After much back and forth and a bit of sample dyeing/spinning, she decided that she wanted yarn to knit the Gradient Pullover by Amy Miller. We went back and forth on colors, but she finally decided to go with the same pale to deep orange as shown on the pattern page. After some disagreement about fiber (I was pulling for BFL, she was enamored of merino-silk), we finally found a solution (that is, she got her way), and the project was underway.

Sadly, this was sometime in late May or early June that all this got settled, and the rest of the summer was pretty much a wash (what with the moving and all). I finally got the fiber out to dye and realised that I was short by about 10 ounces. Thankfully, my parents came to visit in October, and brought some more fiber with them (thanks Mom!). Much singles spinning and plying later, I present this:

Fiber: 80% merino/20% tussah silk, dyed in three different shades of orange

Spun/plied: singles spun at 12:1 on a ST folding Lendrum, plied on a Hansen miniSpinner (hence the ginormous skeins!)

Yardage: 455 yds/6.8 oz of light orange, 645 yds/7.9 oz medium orange, and 660 yds/9.4 oz dark orange. Plus a couple of mini skeins of medium and dark so she can swatch. Total yardage 1760 yds/24.1 oz, approximately 1170 ypp. The medium orange is a bit lighter in grist then the other two (sport vs. DK) but I think they'll be ok all together.

One last beauty shot:

There's a bit of odd plying going on in some places, but that can be fixed if needed down the line. I'm hoping it will be a non-issue when knit up.

So - Happy Late Christmas A! You are definitely spinworthy, but no, I will not knit the sweater for you. 

What's in a name?

I've got a yummy new design that's almost ready to be released into the wild, and I'm running up against my old enemy: Naming the Thing.

Sometimes the name for a design is obvious: the Shard Hat is named for The Shard, surprisingly enough. The Ja'ali Stole name came from the ja'ali screens I saw in Moghul palaces on a trip to India. The Harpswell Pullover is named for the seaside township in Maine where I spent summer holidays as a child, and where my parents now live.

But sometimes picking a name for a design is like pulling teeth. Bonfire Night was called "The October Cowl" in all correspondence and files until I realised that it was going to be published on Guy Fawkes Day, and the name came to me out of the blue.

Handspun Shetland

Luscious, luxury sock yarn

I'm really, really hoping something similar will happen for this piece. It's a garter stitch crescent shaped shawl with a lace edging. The first prototype was done with the leftover handspun Shetland from the Fjord Mitts (also quite easily/obviously named), and is easily big enough to wrap around me twice (note to self: must get final measurements soonest). The second, smaller version was worked out of approximately 350 yds of fingering weight merino/silk/cashmere blend from Spirit Trail Fiberworks. It's a really nice shawlette size - it sits on the shoulders without sliding off, but won't stay closed at the front unless pinned shut.

Sooooo....anyone have any good name ideas they want to share?

Poor, nameless shawl babies

Please?......

Accountability

Happy New Year everyone! I've had a lovely break over the holidays with loads of family time and rampant socializing. It's been something of a relief this week to have work and school start up again just to provide some semblance of structure to the days. Or structure that is not comprised of lots of cookies, adult beverages and staying up far too late.

Every year, I think about making New Year's Resolutions, and every year I turn up my nose in disgust at the idea. "Resolutions" to me implies that I've been doing it wrong (whatever "it" is), and just generally feels negative in addition to setting me up for failing: a resolution gets broken, there's no turning back or saving the situation. Instead, I like to think of goals for the year ahead, as I do much better when I'm working towards something specific rather then trying to move away from a less-optimal tendency. And I also know that I am much more likely to stay on track if I'm accountable to someone outside of my own brain (and Alli), so here, in no particular order, are some goals for 2015:

1. Organize the stash: we moved to a lovely house over the summer that has afforded me my very own room to hold the stash(es). In typical fashion, this has meant dumping everything into boxes and piles scattered around the room. One of my main goals is to sort out and quantify the Yarn Stash (by the end of January), the Fiber Stash (maybe alongside the YS) and just generally get a better handle on all the Stuff that I have, so I can use it. I'm not a huge buyer of yarn, but I have been known to have brushes with major stash enhancement on occasion, so this year is going to be about knitting from stash as much as possible. Exceptions to the yarn/fiber diet will be: already existing fiber and weaving clubs, visits to foreign countries (but only if I by yarn that is local to the locale), and trips to fiber festivals (so far on the tentative schedule are Unravel, Wonderwool Wales, iKnit Fandango, Fibre East, an as-yet-unannounced event in September and Shetland Wool Week. Lest that seem like a lot, at at least 3 of those I will be very, very busy and probably won't have a chance to pee, much less go buy yarn).
2. Design goals: I'd like to continue to get out about a pattern a month this year in the self-publishing venue. I didn't manage to do that last year (that whole moving unexpectedly thing), but I had 6 self-published designs and three others in various places. Another design goal (that goes along with the fact that I discovered multiple sweater lots of yarn in my stash over the weekend) is to get some of the sweater designs percolating in my brain actually out into the world. 
3. Knitting goals: a) knit up 2 of the 3 sweater lots of handspun that I have in stash. b) knit up a bunch of Porpoise Fur colorways into samples.
4. Spinning goals: I got a new Turkish spindle for myself as a birthday/Christmas present last autumn, and I've decided I want to spindle myself a sweater over the course of the year. Initially I wanted to do this by mid-May, but I'm revising that in the face of, well...reality.
5. Sewing goals (really!): finish quilt tops for the girls' birthdays. Then they can help me pick backing fabric and binding so I can finish them up by the summer. Better get going!

I think that's going to have to be it for the moment. Some concrete, short term goals and some longer, more fluid ones. Who's with me? If you've got goals and resolutions for 2015, share them - the more accountability the better, as far as I'm concerned.

What I'm doing about the VAT mess

Last week on the podcast, Allison and I talked about the upcoming change to VAT regulations in the EU in regards to the sales of digital goods, and interviewed Louise Zass-Bangham of Inspiration Knits to get an overview of what's happening. Things have continued to change since the interview (and even since the podcast was released!), but here's the issues, from my perspective and current state of understanding:

1. As of 1 January 2015, sales of digital goods (e.g. pdf knitting patterns) will be taxed based on the location of the BUYER, not the SELLER. So if you live in Germany and buy a knitting pattern from any independent knitwear designer anywhere in the world, someone is responsible for paying the appropriate VAT to the German government for that sale.
2. The threshold for being required to remit VAT varies depending on the country AND the product being purchased. Some countries have a zero threshold for VAT on digital goods, which means that VAT must be charged from the very first sale in that country.
3. There is an EU-wide online portal, called MOSS (mini one stop shop), to allow businesses to handle all of the fuss of remitting VAT payments to EU member states using one website. This is all good. Except...
4. In order to use MOSS, you have to be VAT registered.
5. In the UK, the threshold for being required to register for VAT is high (£81,000) as compared to many other EU countries, so a huge number of micro-businesses are not VAT-registered. And therefore can't use VAT MOSS (as of recently - this may change. It may have already changed in fact, but I've read so much stuff about this craziness that my brain is broken).

So the bottom line for independent knitwear designers like yours truly is that sales of my patterns are going to get a bit more complicated in a couple of weeks. Here's what I'm planning to do to address these issues:

1. All of my patterns will be available to EU residents in at least a couple of ways. First off: Casey at Ravelry has worked an absolute miracle with the help of the fabulous people at Loveknitting to allow designers to redirect EU customers to the Loveknitting website where they will be able to buy the patterns; the pattern pdfs will still go into customer's Ravelry libraries. There are a couple of issues with this solution: prices on Loveknitting have to be listed in GBP, and they will be VAT-exclusive. That means that VAT will be added on to the pattern price dependent on the location of the buyer - the final price of the pattern will be the listed price PLUS VAT.
2. My patterns will also be available via the Designs page of my website. One of the workarounds for this whole mess is for sellers to individually attached pdf files to emails and send them on to the buyer. As long as the email isn't automatically generated, and the pdf isn't automatically attached, the transaction will be VAT-exempt. I will very gladly also gift you a copy of the pdf into your Ravelry library if you have a Ravelry account.

If you are in the UK, or anywhere else in the rest of the world that is not part of the EU, nothing will change for you. I'm well under the UK VAT threshold, so UK purchases are still VAT-exempt. If you are in the EU, but outside of the UK, you'll have two choices: if you need instant pattern access, you can go to the Loveknitting pattern listing from Ravelry and get the pattern immediately. If you're willing to wait a little while (probably well under 24 hrs in most instances), you can come here and buy the pattern. I'll email you the pdf. The first case will be more expensive, as you'll be paying VAT on top of the pattern price. The second case will mean that more of the pattern price comes directly back to me, the designer.

If anyone has any questions or concerns, there are a number of resources online you can access. First off, there is a huge long thread on the UK Shopkeepers group about the whole mess, and a much shorter thread from Casey about changes that Ravelry is making and various updates as they occur. Ysolda has blogged about this issue, and Louise has a number of posts on her blog for knitters and designers. Please bear in mind that this is new for (I would venture to say) all of us, and there are bound to be some growing pains in the first few months. Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions or problems with purchasing my patterns, and thanks for your patience as we get this all sorted out!