kimley knits

Here in sunny Southern California, that doesn’t happen all that often and frankly I rather like the somewhat monotonous continued sunshine. But the nice thing about a bit of precipitation and temps below 70 degrees (yeah, we’re wimps here!) is that I can finally don all the lovely wool items I’ve been knitting up the last several months.

This Arcadia scarf is one of my favorite things that I’ve ever knit…

A nice blocking close-up that really showcases the pattern…

This is a gorgeous pattern designed by Janel Laidman and one of the many lovely patterns in the first issue of The Sock Report.

I had been admiring this pattern for a while and was a bit intimidated by what looked like some complicated lace but I was very pleasantly surprised at how easy and quick this was to knit up. Certainly not a beginning lace pattern but if you have knit a few easy lace patterns then this is an easy next step up.

[button link=”http://www.ravelry.com/projects/Kimley/arcadia” color=”#c2ebb1″ text=”dark” window=”yes”]My Project Details on Ravelry[/button]

And coming soon… I finished my Nanook sweater and can’t wait to reveal it in all its wooly glory although I still need to find a nice button for it. It’s a fantastic pattern. Unfortunately all the rain we’ve been having has left my sweater wet from blocking for over 3 days now. But it’s just a tiny bit damp at this point and I think it will be dry by tomorrow.

I rarely manage to actually finish knitting an entire sweater so to celebrate I immediately cast on for 3 new projects. Ha!

I’ve been starting too many projects lately. I just can’t seem to help myself. Evidence to my growing affliction…

I’ve been admiring Heidi Kirrmaier’s patterns for a while now over on Ravelry. I love her clean easy style and there’s always something a little different that makes all her patterns special. So I’ve finally cast on her Nanook sweater pattern and am really enjoying it. It’s fun and so far it’s knitting up pretty quickly. I’m notorious for not finishing sweaters but I think (hoping I don’t jinx myself) I just might finish this one.

I’m using some scrumptious MadelineTosh DK in the thyme colorway that I got for Xmas two years ago. It’s about time! Quite a treat.

[button link=”http://www.ravelry.com/projects/Kimley/nanook” color=”#c2ebb1″ text=”dark” window=”yes”]My Project Details on Ravelry[/button]

I was happily knitting along on a Boneyard Shawl (by Stephen West) for myself with the super lovely Wolle’s Color Changing Cotton when I made the mistake of showing it to my mom two days before Mother’s Day. Well…  you can guess what happened. She loved it. And then I also made the mistake of showing her my other skeins of Wolle’s in my stash and she made a not so subtle hint about what she’d like for Mother’s Day. Unfortunately, I’m one of the slowest knitters on the planet so she got to preview a tiny fraction of her Boneyard Shawl on Mother’s Day proper and then we had some champagne and I packed it up and only just gave the completed project to her last week. At least it was worth the wait if I do say so myself. It was not easy to part with.

[button link=”http://www.ravelry.com/projects/Kimley/boneyard-shawl-2″ color=”#c2ebb1″ text=”dark” window=”yes”]My Project Details on Ravelry[/button]

So now I’m back to working on mine and eagerly anticipating having my own ombré-colored boneyard shawl.

My mom’s is in the amazing Dante colorway and mine is in the Sand colorway which goes from an eggshell blue to a darker grey-blue to an olive-khaki color. I can’t tell you how much I love the way this yarn knits up. Practically every shawl design I see now I think how would it look in some Wolle’s color changing yarn???

The pattern is a lacy, graphic scarf called Zigzag Wanderer knit in super yummy Malabrigo sock.

I’m so thrilled to be part of the launch of such a beautiful new publication. The editor, Janel Laidman, and her spectacular team have done a fantastic job of not only presenting such a great collection of patterns but the photography and styling are stunning as well. Magical!

So if you like socks and/or sock yarn then get your yarny self over to The Sock Report and check out the glory of all that is sock yarn related!

This blog has been in desperate need of a facelift ever since I moved it over to WordPress a few months back and have just been using the generic default template. It’s a case of the cobbler’s children having no shoes. As a graphic designer, I never have time to design my own stuff…

But some exciting events prompted me to get it together and finally do something about this. My first pattern is coming out in the new publication The Sock Report which comes out sometime this week. It’s all about socks and anything else that you can make with sock yarn because even if you don’t like to knit socks, sock yarn rocks and makes tons of other lovely doo-dahs! I’m fairly confident that we can all agree on that.

There are some pretty impressive designers in the collection and I am honored to be among them. It promises to be a fantastic collection. And the nice thing is that you can buy the patterns individually if you only want one or two or you can buy the whole collection at a deep discount. So it’s a win-win for everyone.

Go and check things out – there are contests and prizes leading up to the launch.

You know it’s got to be cute!

This is one of the sweetest patterns I’ve knitted. Super cute, super fun, easy to memorize. Just loved knitting it. And the tassels are the icing on the cake. The pattern even comes with excellent tassel-making instructions. Now I’m not normally a tassel or big yarn pouf on the hat kind of girl but this hat really works with the tassels. Gotta have ’em!

This is my first time knitting with the much lauded Brooklyn Tweed Loft yarn. It’s gorgeous yarn though a bit fragile. I snapped it pretty quickly when tightening the stitches while switching from one needle to the other doing magic loop. But once I realized I needed to be a bit less rough with it and after doing a quick spit (well, I ran it under the tap) join of the break, all went smoothly. I love the tweedy colors.

And as an FYI, the designer, Gudrun Johnston, answered a query on her Ravelry forum about the source of the pattern’s name (which I was also wondering) and it’s the name of a beach on the Shetland Islands where the designer grew up. It just sounds huggable to me but I’m sure it’s a lovely beach.

MORE PROJECT DETAILS ON RAVELRY >>>

As a graphic designer, one of my favorite parts of the job is playing around with color and seeing how different colors interact with one another. It can be quite shocking at times just how different colors will look against a variety of other colors. A very intense color theory class that I took in college taught me all the ins and outs of this while doing all those crazy Joseph Albers exercises. Fun!

So now it’s great to see this working up in my knitting. No doubt, Joseph’s wife Anni Albers, a textile artist enjoyed this kind of fiber excitement too! I don’t normally do a lot of color work so I don’t really get to play with color combos that much when it comes to my knitting but I’m having a ton of fun with my Spectra Scarf watching how the Noro is working up next to this dark reddish brown color (the Kale colorway in Madelinetosh Merino Light) versus how it looked in the ripple scarf I crocheted a while back. The photo above shows the two photographed together and there is a very noticeable difference in how the Noro colors look. They seem so much more saturated surrounded by the darker color than on their own. Love it!

It was my father’s birthday the other day and after having to look at his pathetic excuse for a scarf for some time now, I decided it was my knitterly obligation to improve his sartorial flair. As many knitters know, it’s never easy knitting for men. They don’t want anything too fancy and us knitters don’t want to knit anything too boring. I concocted this pattern so that it was simple but had just a little bit of zing to make it both interesting for me to knit and hopefully interesting to look at as well. Knit three rows, purl one and a four stitch cable along one side. Knit in beautiful MadelineTosh Merino Light in the Boxwood colorway. My dad said he loved it. Now if only it hadn’t been 80 degrees on his birthday…

>>> Details on Ravelry

I’ve been wanting to try my hand at some intarsia for a while now but having muddled at my short-lived attempt at stranded color work (too fiddly) I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy it. But I’ve had several Stephen West designs in my Ravelry queue for a while now and I just conveniently happened to have 226 yards of leftover Noro Sock yarn in my stash which is only 4 yards short of the 230 yards required for the Spectra Scarf pattern so I think it was meant to be.

I took my Noro to my LYS and found a good matching skein of the Madeline Tosh Merino Light (currently my favorite yarn!) and can happily say that so far my first attempt at intarsia is quite enjoyable. Although this is probably about as easy as intarsia can get since you only have to wrap your two colors of yarn on one end due to short rows on the other. Even though this is a simple-looking pattern, it’s very cleverly written. No doubt I’ll be knitting up a few other Stephen West designs in the not-too-distant future.

OK, so I knit this big wooly cowl several months ago and absolutely love it. I mean what’s not to love – nice soft Malabrigo worsted knitted in the round in a big eternal circle with lots of yummy textures that snuggles up nice and scrunchy or hangs more like a scarf.

Well, it’s 78 degrees here in Southern California in February! Sheesh. Now, don’t get me wrong, I actually love the warm weather but it is an ironic predicament that it means I get very little use out of my lovely woolies. What’s a wool-lover to do…

ETERNITY SCARF STATS
PATTERN: Eternity Scarf by Michele Wang (Ravelry link)
YARN: Malabrigo Worsted in Stone Blue 99
NEEDLES: US 9/5.5mm