Holiday Stocking pattern by Barb Brown

30 minutes of knitting a cute, cute top!

Holiday Stocking pattern by Barb Brown

30 minutes of knitting a cute, cute top!

Update on Intuitive Knit Sweater Vest

Here are some pictures of the decisions made on the neckline (good decisions as it turned out), and on the hem (not so good!). The hem will need to be unravelled and a turning row of purl stitches inserted. You can see how easily and neatly the neckline hem turns with that one row of purl defining the edge.

Because of the square neckline, the front of the neckline is formed with double decreases in each of the two front right angles. After the purl (turning) row, all shaping is reversed, and so the inside corners now are formed with double increases.

The back of the neckline was raised with three shortrows. They were placed at 10 stitches on either side of the center stitch, then at 15 stitches, and finally at 20 stitches. After the turning row, when all shaping is reversed, the short rows were worked first at 20 stitches on either side of the center stitch, then at 15 stitches, and finally at 10 stitches on either side of the turning row.

Tacking down of the live stitches is shown in one closeup below, and makes for a neat and clean finishing touch.

No room left in the studio!

Overdye experiment

We have been making up new wholesale sample packets. Each one contains a butterfly mini-skein of about 12 yards of undyed yarn and wrapped in a sample of the same yarn which has been dyed and dried. This allows our customers to see the difference between the natural and finished yarn.

On Ravelry one of my customers has started to show several shots of her overdyed yarns. She loves to use a mild solution of black dye liquor and has achieved some beautiful results. Here is a shot of my first overdye experiment on Sheila's Sparkle. The yarn on the left, Cash DK 50/50, was dyed with Sparkle in the same pot, but not, of course, ovedyed.

My new colorway looks like the greyed down 50's aqua tones to me, and is OK, but not fantastic like my customer's work. I'll keep trying.

Sweater from Sock Yarn Sheila's Gold

Here's how far one skein of Sheila's Gold goes on size US 7 needles in a top-down, ragland style, square neck sweater.

new yarns ...

Sheila's Sparkle ... coming soon.