July club project: Full Spectrum
It's time to share our July project from my summer yarn + pattern club with Andrea Rangel: Full Spectrum!
It's a reversible toque with two different approaches to colourwork - a self-striping rainbow on one side and stranded colourwork on the other.
Behind the Scenes: Shadow Prism
The first pattern in our 2018 Summer Club, Shadow Prism, started out with this text between me and Andrea:
It's a picture of a skylight, with the recessed wall reflected against the blue sky in the window. It definitely needs to be a shawl. A 2D shawl with the right colours and angles to create a 3D effect.
We talked about a few practical limitations - 600 yds of fingering weight, needs to be a wearable shape, stitch pattern should help emphasize the construction and the 3D effect. Nothing too fiddly, let the yarn do the colour changes for you.
Andrea did a few swatches while I worked away at a colour palette. I don't have pictures of Andrea's first swatches, but she started with a mitered square construction and then considered how to join in other colours without using intarsia.
For the colours, we both liked the blues and yellows in the original skylight picture, but they felt too close to North Shore, one of our club colourways from 2017. So instead I aimed for a sunset-inspired colourway.
A couple coffee dates later, we had these:
Not bad, right? I especially like that first one with the ribbing, but we didn't feel it had enough 3D oomph to it. A little more pondering and sketching:
We finally decided on a shape that had the effect we wanted, and that made sense on the technical side of writing a pattern and dyeing yarn.
SHEBAM!
And then some more back and forth, ironing out details. The two of us living in the same city made this collaboration possible - being able to physically touch the same samples and hand off skeins of yarn at the coffee shop made it happen.
And then, whala, a scarf! (Andrea is a fast knitter.)
June club project: Shadow Prism
I'm excited to share June's project from my summer yarn + pattern club with Andrea Rangel. Shadow Prism is a scarf but it's also an optical illusion - Andrea and I collaborated on the design and colours so the finished object looks like a 3D box.
This is exclusive to the club until fall 2019 but the good news is that our patterns and yarn from the 2017 club will be available in a couple months.
Azurite is here!
It's a gradient/fade shawl shawl in a single skein. And if shawls aren't your thing, I've used the same colours to create striped socks with a built-in mini skein for your sock heels. Come take a look.
Summer Club signups open May 1!
The details are here, and signups open tomorrow, May 1, at 8 am PST.
Trunk Show at Beehive!
5 Tips for Working with Kinda Magic Sock Yarn from Wool and the Gang
Having trouble getting your Kinda Magic Sock Yarn to knit up like it shows in the pictures? Here are five tips for how to adjust the pattern and fit to get the most out of your socks!
