Month / January 2024

by TechnicolorMom

Design Process Spotlight: Dilution Cowl

I was participating in a general cowl knitalong (KAL) with my local yarn store, Eat.Sleep.Knit, in early 2023 when the idea for the Dilution Cowl came to me. I was originally choosing colors for a different cowl project by one of my favorite designers – one where you hold a strand of DK weight yarn with a strand of fingering weight yarn, but alternate out the fingering weight yarn to create a marled fade. I made several swatches and could never settle on a good fade using only stash yarn. Eventually, I realized that I needed to choose something different because I felt like I was forcing the colors.

I loved how the DK weight yarn diluted out the speckles of the fingering weight yarn, and after I found a pair of yarns from my stash that I loved together, I knew I had to make something really special with it and started sketching. An asymmetric shawl is my favorite shape to knit for a shawl, and when this yarn spoke to me, I knew it wanted to be a cowl that had that same asymmetric shape. I wanted it to have a cable that was featured on the front and to have an interesting but easy texture for the drapey part of the cowl.

The earliest sketches of this cowl just had the cable along one side, and I just started knitting. This literally flew off my needles and was only slowed down by me stopping to take photos to share with a friend and admire my work. Do you do that? Stop to gaze lovingly at your knitting or crafting? If not, you should totally try it! Be impressed with yourself! You are creating something amazing!

Now, as I approached the length that I wanted the neckline to be, I started to think about how I wanted to finish off the live edge. I considered a simple i-cord bind off, and while I think that would have looked really nice, I decided to try something crazy and attempt an applied edging, where you knit an edging perpendicular to the body of the fabric. The idea was that I’d try to make the cables meet at the corner, but if I couldn’t make it work out, I’d just overlap them and call it a day. Usually I don’t put a lot of pressure on myself to just finish and prefer to figure it out, but I was on a relatively short deadline for the cowl KAL that I wanted to submit the project for. After several hours on the floor with a notebook, a calculator, and a measuring tape (which my children call “measuring snakes”), I ended up with a tentative plan.

I did not get the corner right on the first try. I got down to where I was ready to start intertwining the cables and started taking very meticulous notes. After the first attempt failed, I realized I needed to switch to a swatch so that I wouldn’t wear out the yarn with multiple frogging and reknitting attempts. I am a problem solver, though, and I just knew that I could solve this problem if I stuck with it. It took me about three tries to get it right, and let me tell you, I was just over the moon with pride at how clever I was when I did.

Once I had a good idea of how the corner was going to go, I switched back to the main project, finished out the corner, blocked the fabric, and seamed up the back, and there it was, the Dilution Cowl! I just love how this project turned out.

The last time I had published a pattern before the Dilution Cowl was in late 2019, so I was a little nervous about putting this design out into the world, but I’m so glad I did! Once I got back into the swing of things, I managed to publish seven patterns in 2023. Some of my design processes have been much more intentional than how the Dilution Cowl design process went, and some of them have just been the kind where I start knitting and see where it takes me. I can’t say that I have a strong preference for one over the other, but the laissez faire type definitely seems magical.

If you love the texture and cables in the Dilution Cowl, check out the Concentration Shawl, the Solution Socks, and the Solvation Hat. I’m also in the process on working on a baby blanket version where the cables go all the way around the perimeter of the blanket, and let me tell you that figuring out how to do the corners and cables on that one was even more satisfying than finishing up the corner on the Dilution Cowl. (That one took about seven tries, and I ended up with a whole pile of swatches.)

Solution Socks
Concentration Shawl
Solvation Hat

What do you think? Do you ever start knitting a project with a yarn and realize that the yarn wants to be something else? In a way, I think this is very similar to an author whose characters start taking them in a different direction than the author originally intended. The yarn is a character, and sometimes it needs its own adventure!

by TechnicolorMom

No Scraps Left Behind

When I knit a pair of socks, I rarely use the entire skein. I almost always have 20 to 30 grams (80 to 120 yards) of yarn leftover. In the past, I’ve just stuffed these too-large-to-discard leftovers into a drawer, but lately, this drawer has been making me feel overwhelmed. Maybe it’s the chaos? The unknown? Not having a plan? The tangles don’t bother me too much.

There’s definitely a hesitancy to throw the leftovers away because what if I need them one day? What if I need to darn some socks? Let’s be real, I’ve never darned a pair of socks. I’m sure that I am capable and can figure it out, but I’d just rather knit a new pair of socks and enjoy some different yarn for a while. So the holey socks go into a drawer of their own. I’m sensing a pattern here.

One of my goals for this year is to leave no scraps behind, so I’ve got a plan for my leftovers! I’ve got two different types of sock yarns that I typically work with: two-ply yarns that are 400 yards/100 g and 80% superwash merino/20% nylon and four-ply yarns that are 463 yards/100 g and 75% superwash merino and 25% nylon. I’ll typically use the two-ply yarns for socks for my children and the four-ply yarns for myself, but once upon a time, I only bought two-ply sock yarns, so I’ve got tons of them around.

My most recent FO is a pair of Dragon Fairy Socks using Kim Dyes Yarn Sourdough Sock in the colorway Leaves.Drizzle.Fiber.Friends. The yarn was an exclusive colorway for Eat.Sleep.Knit back in October 2020, so this skein of yarn has been hanging out in my stash for quite a long time. The Dragon Fairy Socks pattern is one of my upcoming designs, so you’ll see a bit more about it over the next few weeks (check out the sneak peek in the photo below!). The design looks fantastic in any dye style. These socks are for my grandmother, who will be celebrating her 81st birthday next week. She wears a US Women’s 9, so I had about 72 yards of yarn leftover after finishing these socks.

To use up the rest of my yarn, I’ve got three projects going on. The first is a crochet Hygge Burst Hexie Blanket by Mallory Krall. I’m holding leftover two-ply sock yarn double for this, and I’ll make a starburst hexagon for each pair of socks that I make this year. As I’m feeling up for it, I’ll also fish a leftover skein out of the Chaos Drawer to turn into hexagons as well. Each of my hexagons uses just under 12 g or 48 yards of yarn. I think this will be a fun way to use up some leftovers and create a memory blanket using yarns that will primarily go into gift socks.

The second use of the yarn is to make crochet granny squares for my Battenburg Blanket by Sandra Paul. I’ve been making four squares for each color that I use, and I’ve got about 100 colorful squares done so far. I’ll need about 500 colorful squares total for this blanket. I started it in September 2020, so it’s been in progress for quite a while, and I’ve used mini skeins from past advent calendars and other leftovers for this project. Each square uses 6 to 7 yards of yarn, and I’m only using leftover two-ply sock yarns for this blanket.

Finally, if I have enough leftover after this, I’ll wind up about 4 g of yarn into a tiny ball to save for December this year. Instead of purchasing an advent calendar of yarn minis, my plan is to save tiny balls of yarn leftover from socks that I make this year to craft tiny socks as holiday ornaments. This will be a great way to remember and revisit all of the socks that I’ve made throughout the year, even if they’ve been gifted away or so well loved that they end up in the Darning Drawer of Doom.

What do you think? Do you have a Chaos Drawer like the one I shared? What do you do to manage leftovers? Let me know in the comments!

by TechnicolorMom

Aspiring Professional Knitter

Concentration Shawl

A few years ago, I taught a first year college seminar class to help introduce students majoring in chemistry and biochemistry to some essential skills for succeeding in college. One of our major units focused on career exploration, and I tasked the students with thinking about three career paths:

  • The career path they were on, if everything went according to plan.
  • An alternative career path, if things did not go according to plan.
  • Their path if they were unbound from societal and family pressures.

The first two paths were pretty typical for students, with many students focused on healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and chemical industry. The third path was always the most interesting, with students choosing anything from “food blogger” to “freelance artist” to “baker.” This was how I really got to know my students and what their interests were, and it was so cool to learn all of their unbound plans.

Of course, I always shared how I would have answered those questions. The career path that I was on in college was to be a college chemistry professor and involved earning not only a bachelor’s degree but also a doctorate. Following graduation with my Ph.D. in organic chemistry, I enjoyed working in that career path for almost a decade. My alternative career path, as I answered when I was starting college, was to go into banking because I loved math. Now, of course, my answer would be to work at my LYS (local yarn store).

My “choose anything” career path is to be a professional knitter, so I always say that I am an “aspiring professional knitter,” even back when I was introducing myself to my organic chemistry students.

These days, I am a very lucky stay-at-home-mom to a 7-year-old and a 3-year-old and wife to the incredibly talented TechnicoolDad, and I couldn’t be happier. I am still an “aspiring professional knitter,” and I spend just about every free moment knitting (or reading, sometimes both at the same time!). The car line to pick up my daughter from school is one of my favorite places to knit, where I’ve got about half an hour of quiet time when I can really focus on my projects. My spouse makes it a priority to be home when possible so that I can attend my local knit night and spend THREE WHOLE HOURS knitting and chatting with my friends, making me feel spoiled and refreshed.

Sometimes, inspiration strikes, and I design my own patterns. I love this creative outlet, and in 2023, I managed to design, knit, write, and publish SEVEN new patterns, including four pairs of socks, a cowl, a shawl, and a hat. I have a few designs lingering from last year and on the needles that I hope to finish up soon and get published as well, but my family is my top priority and I am a “mood knitter,” so my design process can be somewhat sporadic. All of my paid designs are professionally tech edited to ensure maximum clarity and minimum confusion, and each pattern is tested by generous fellow knitters to catch anything that my editor and I have missed.

I’m planning a series of posts to discuss the origin of each of the ideas for these designs. The design featured at the top of this post is my Concentration Shawl (yes, it’s a chemistry thing) pattern that I absolutely adored knitting and designing, so look for a post about it soon!