Random bits and pieces

Random bit #1: Having finished the sweater that would not end, and weaving in all the damn ends (!), I am now having a really tough time finding the will to photograph it on Himself. This is unfortunate, because I would like to show you pretty pictures and bask in the glow of having it really, totally, finally finished.

Random bit #2: This has not stopped me from suffering the acute pangs of sweater start-itis. In the last two days I have spent far too much time online looking at patterns and yarns and poking around in my Ravelry stash to see what might work, not to mention getting out the Vine Yoke Cardi yarn and my Timber sweaterlot and fondling them longingly. This trend is not helped by the fact that it is a) raining (again FFS!) and b) 10 degrees out. In mid-May. Thank you, London.

Random bit #3: My swearing I was never going to knit a fingering weight Fair Isle sweater again, ever, has been sorely tested by my discovery of Kate Davies' designs and blog. Actually, I'm currently coveting a sheepy blanket knit in nine natural shades of Shetland. And maybe a matching hat. Would this not be the perfect thing to cuddle under next winter while I'm knitting and watching TV? Le sigh...this might have to be a birthday present this year. Look, there's even a kit!

I have also been enjoying Kate's blogging about textile history and recovering from/living with stroke (she had a stroke two years ago at age 36). And her pictures of everything (flowers, knitting, steeks, yarn, Scotland, her dog) are absolutely extraordinary.

Random bit #4: my grand plans for knitting design domination are going to be complicated not only by the fact that, as Aquaphilic pointed out in the comments, I've only got 7 months to finish them off (and really only 6 months if you count that I want to get the hat collection out in November), but by the sad fact that we are going to be moving at the end of July. Not out of London, just out of the lovely (huge!) house we've been in since we got here. It's been coming for a while, but is now definite. And next week, I get to spend a couple of days with an estate agent looking at new possible homesteads.

Oh joy.

Random bit #5: I am a lucky little shite, because when I checked last night at 8:30, there were 5 spots left for P3. 40 minutes later? All gone. Thankfully,

I am going to Wales in October to hang out with Brenda. And Amy. And a whole host of other people. So. Excited!

Persistence

Sometimes being a stubborn, thick skinned bugger pays off...

I have spent the last seventeen years submitting as many grant applications as I could manage (to be fair, it's more accurate to say the years from 1995-2010), and in that time I managed to get two funded. Two. Whole. Grants. Out of probably about 25 or 30. Not the best track record, right? But it has had a very welcome side effect: I take rejection really, really well.

This has served me quite well on the designing side of things. To date, my designing experience has gone something like this: come up with an idea, spend a few frantic weeks really excited about it and working up a prototype, get stuck, put design away for a while, eventually come back to it, finish prototype, write up pattern, hopefully get some test knitting done, submit, get rejected. Submit somewhere else, get rejected. Then maybe submit somewhere else, or self-publish, or sit on it for a while longer.

In the past few months, I've gotten two designs accepted for publication that had long histories of rejection. The first one I submitted to Interweave Knits (I like my rejection to come from the top, thankyouverymuch), then to a book, then to Knitty, then to the magazine that is publishing it this summer. The other upcoming design was first submitted to Sanguine Gryphon, then to one book, and then finally to yet another book that will be coming out next year with my pattern (hooray!). In both instances, it was a question of finding the right home. For both successful submissions, I sent the proposals in mainly on a whim, and lo and behold...

The take home message from all this? Well, if you're reading this, and you've been submitting designs (or you're thinking about submitting designs) and getting lots of "No thank you", take heart. First things first: don't take it personally or think they don't want your pattern becauses it sucks. It is far more likely that your pattern is just not what they're looking for at the moment. Then put the proposal away for a bit, and look at some other options. After a while (several weeks? A couple of months? You choose), you can take it back out and reevaluate - maybe you can improve your presentation a bit? A better swatch or FO photo? Revamp that proposal and send it back out. Because if you don't submit, you aren't giving the editors the opportunity to say yes. And that's the opportunity they need.

So, with brimming optimism on the design front, I'm putting out my tentative goals/schedule for the rest of 2012:

1) 2 proposals to Knittyspin for fall, May
2) self-published mitt pattern, June
3) shawl proposal to Knit Picks, June
4) lacy cardigan, self-publish (or to #5), August
5) shawl proposal to Twist Collective, September
6) Hats ebook, self-publish, November

Oy. Time to get cracking!

The light dawns

This morning I woke up waaaaay earlier then I wanted to (sidebar: why is it that I have to pull my lovely daughters out of bed at 7:20 every school morning, kicking and screaming, but on the weekends they pop out of bed of their own accord before 7:00 AM? WHY? Who have I pissed off in the godly pantheon to make this my reality? I'm really sorry, whatever I did!), and stumbled downstairs for coffee only to discover something really, really exciting.

Those right there? Real, honest-to-goodness, shadows through the skylight in the kitchen from the cherry tree in our back garden. Glory hallelujah!

Now, for many of you, shadows may not be such a big deal. But believe me, for those of us in southeastern England, it has been a loooooong time since we've seen shadows. At least shadows due to sunshine rather then lights after dark. In fact, I think the last time we had an entire day with shadows was the day I decided to wash all the handknits because spring had arrived. Hah bloody hah, weather gods.

Anyhow, the sun is out - finally - and two weeks of no experiments (the upside to having all my cells get contaminated and die - yay!) plus a daily 1000 mg of NSAIDs and a wrist splint means that my wrist has massively improved. So much so, that I finished off these lovelies last night.

Pattern: Fallberry Mitts, by the incomparable Anne Hanson of knitspot.com, published in Knitty Winter 2011.
Yarn: madeleinetosh tosh DK in "Sugarplum", less then one skein (225 yds/skein). This is the first project I've ever done in madtosh and OMG now I understand the rabid fangirls. This yarn is simply gorgeous to work with - nice twist, bouncy sproingy feel, and the colors are glorious. I may or may not be spending ludicrous amounts of time trying to decide how to justify a sweater's worth of this stuff. It is lovely.
Needles: US 2/2.75 mm bamboo double points
Start/finish: 11 April 2012 - 12 May 2012 (did the first mitt in a couple of days though, so they would have been done in a week)
Comments/mods: Disclaimer - I love Anne Hanson's patterns, both in terms of the objects she designs and the way she lays things out. This pattern was no exception - clear, concise, gorgeous pictures, the works.  I like the lack of ribbing at cuff and hand, and I also really like the stockinette thumb gussets coming out of the deeply textured hand. It's a gorgeous design.

Mods? Are you kidding? I wouldn't dare on one of Anne's patterns! They are perfect as they are.

So, the scoreboard now reads:

Weeks of more-or-less-continuous rain/grey skies: 6
Full days of sun in that period: maybe 3
Finished fingerless mitts: also 3
Likelyhood I will need fingerless mitts in the next few months: hopefully miniscule, but it's Britain so summer is really just a state of mind.
Degree of difficulty in restraining myself from knitting everything in sight and totally wrecking my wrist again: 10.0 out of 10.0

That's it - I'm off to take the children and the dog for a walk in the sun. See y'all later!

Distraction by recycling

Despite big horse pills and a wrist brace, knitting is not really on my agenda at the moment. However, I have been un-knitting at a furious rate. Behold:

This is a sweater I knit when we lived in Tucson/Houston, back around 2002, when I really got back into knitting in a obsessive-compulsive serious way. It was the first sweater I'd made for myself in a long time.

I had great fun knitting it, with all those cables, but there were some issues. Number 1: the drop shoulder look is not a good one for anyone with shoulders wider then about 18 inches.

Number 2: nary a whiff of shaping in sight. Nada. Which was great when I was pregnant, but now that I'm past that stage of life, it is not such a flattering look.

Number 3: a finished chest measurement that resulted in about 5 inches of positive ease. I've learned a lot about what type of sweaters look good on me, and it's simplest to say that zero or negative ease is definitely my friend.

Finally number 4: this was clearly before my discovery of the greatest finishing technique ever, aka mattress stitch. Oy...

So, I took some scissors, and after a little while I had this.

And then I took the spinning wheel and ended up with this,

and this.

So now I have a large pile of 75% acrylic/25% wool (that will actually felt!), and no definite plans for it. Some of it will probably become a baby sweater or twelve. And maybe Angostura for me. Not that I can knit at the moment. Not that I'm bitter about that. In the meantime, I can think of two more sweaters hiding in the warddrobe upstairs that could use a trip to the frog pond. Ahhhh, recycling!

Fiber Saturday: Presents!

The girls and I left the house this morning to go to the farmer's market, and there was a wee package waiting on the doorstep. When we got back, I examined it more closely.

Hmmmm....

What do we have here?

Stitches South? Jealous (eleventy million).

Is it? Could it be?

Oooooooo!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...


Thank you so much J (has this been a week of my referring to you, hasn't it?). I need to scour all the dead skin off my hands before I start in on these, but they are gorgeous and the perfect colors and I can't wait to spin them up. Mwah!