Spring Lace Knitting

As always, I am obsessed with lace shawls for spring. This spring it seems I am especially obsessed with bottom up lace shawls and lace I can knit in 400 yards (maybe 450) or less- a typical skein of sock or lace weight yarn.

  I even broke down and knit the same shawl twice! Though not by choice, my charting software deleted the entire pattern AND charts for the white shawl, so I had to recreate it from scratch and knit a second version to be sure it worked. Sigh. I am NOT happy with my charting software right now (it deleted/saved over several other items as well, losing multiple days of work, not to mention knitting time).

 I took a break to play with knitting shortrows!

And finished the stainless steel scarf I was working on (turned out even better than I hoped, pattern coming soon!)

Joey has been quite "helpful" in the process- I have been working more at my desk than my couch (when not coworking, more on that later), with the unfortunate result that he jumps up and knocks things over or gets tangled in the yarn.  He has been very interested in my hula hoop though (and no, I am not very good at it!), to bad cats can't learn to hula hoop!

 And one more shawl...the bind off took forever, even though it was only a couple hundred stitches!

Even just getting ready to be blocked, the picot border already looks much (much!) better than it did straight off the needles.  Blocking makes all the difference in lace!

My fave Lace Edging, Knitting with Stainless Steel Yarn, and a New Knitting Program

My favorite lace edging! You will see this on several upcoming patterns I am working on...if my charting software stops deleting my charts- 3 days of work down the drain earlier this week.

Also in the video:
-What Habu silk and stainless steel yarn looks like. (mini video of it here: knitting with ss yarn
-A look at the new KnitXpress software. I was a beta tester for it, but haven't gotten to play with the "real" version too much yet, but so far it is pretty handy for condensing knitting patterns!

Changes to the Midnightsky Fibers Website

You may have noticed tons of changes happening at Midnightsky Fibers- the shop was even down for a couple days! It's all back up and running now though, and more awesome than ever!

This is by far the most awesome change. Google checkout! I have switched to using Google Checkout and Paypal (may add Amazon Payments at some point, let me know if that is something you would be interested in, I have the account all set up, just have to have someone set it up on my site!). This is a switch from the Paypal + a separate CC merchant I was using- but almost everyone paid via paypal anyways.

 

(Yea, I am so excited about it I added it to my payment FAQ. Remember you can also use Paypal even if you don't have a paypal account!)

You can also now check out without creating an account!

A typical product page- notice that you can now view PDF previews of the pattern! I am slowly adding this (and the option to buy the knitting patterns through Ravelry) to the patterns. Most of the new patterns and eBooks already have the previews up!

Ok, this is something not exciting to anyone but me- but notice how the pictures all line up below the add to cart button? Yea, they didn't before. And the type was below the pics, so people didn't realize they had a print option.

PS- both Midnightsky Fibers site and patterns are readable on the Ipad- this is what it looks like:

 

(That's the free knitting pattern Blocky being shown)

The Dark Side of Cabling

 

(Forgive the pictures, it was night and dark, and I am not one for waiting for the light of day to fix cabling errors- best to bite the bullet and get it over with!)

See that? O man o man, not good, there's about 9 rows of cabling that was messed up by crossing 2 cables the wrong way- at least I noticed it relatively quickly so less serious surgery was involved!

O yea, can we talk about how fun it is to undo cables and reknit them in the same gauge without having the edge stitches tighter or looser? The figuring out the knitting part is the easy part- tension is always harder for me, making sure that the cables look the same as the ones above and below will.

All better! At least it wasn't the side with the buttonholes!

Now back to trying to make pleats and fabric cooperate! Love the idea of this tunic, but not so sure about the extra fabric at the shoulders- most of us don't need to make our shoulders and wider (or at least, I don't!).

Knitting a Cabled Cardi

The cardigan I am knitting right now is going really slow, despite the fact that I am loving the cables! Probably not helped by the fact that I just knit a baby cardi in the same cable pattern. 

So bored with it (but not enough to put it aside!) that I knit a plethora of baby slippers, testing out ideas.

Joey has been enjoying the fact that I have been getting up earlier- I open up the blinds in my bedroom during the day, and he has a new perch to sit on where he stares out the windows at the birds.

Site Updates

Just an FYI that the site is undergoing some changes, so will be offline for a bit (hopefully not more than a couple days!).

Happy knitting!

Cross your fingers the updating is successful!