Gawain's Shield release

This month, my knitting book, Gawain's Shield, was released. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work putting this book together, and opening the box of print copies was an incredible experience. I've gotten so many compliments on the book, and I'm looking forward to seeing the shawls knit by others.

The book was put together with the help of Stitch Definition, who provided the photography (Anne set up and styled the photo shoot and the photos were taken--and are used here with permission--by JS Webb Photography), tech editing (Maureen), and graphic design/layout (Elizabeth). I highly recommend their business and services.

The inspiration behind the book is the medieval story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Within the pages of the book, I provide a summary of the tale as well as an analysis of the importance of Gawain's shield, especially the knightly virtues it represents, and the replacement of the shield by the green girdle at the end of the story. This book feels like a true combination of my two halves: medieval scholar and knitting designer.

Just look at the gorgeous interior pages Elizabeth designed:

The book contains patterns for five crescent-shaped shawls, which use German short rows for the body and knitted-on borders for the border. Each can be done in either one color or two colors (one for the body and one for the border). The yarns used are all from my Round Table Yarns line, but provide a variety of yarn weights: two shawls use fingering weight, one uses sport, one uses DK, and the last one uses worsted.

The book is available both in electronic and print formats. You can find it on Ravelry for the PDF version and in my online shop for the print version (shipped directly from me, so let me know if you'd like me to sign it!) or the combo of print + PDF.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you make with it. Happy knitting!

Fiber Weeks in Review: May 18-June 1

Last Monday was a holiday, and my husband was off work. I spent the whole day thinking it was Sunday, so I was a bit surprised on Tuesday to have "skipped" Monday. I thought about doing a post on Tuesday but decided to wait until today to post about the two weeks. And it's been a pretty busy two weeks!

Knitting: I did indeed finish the fifth shawl.

 Now all five are complete!

I even worked up a bonus project to go into the collection. It's something super simple but I think it ties everything together. It took me a couple of days to knit it, but I'm not going to tell about it as I want it to be a bit of a surprise.

So since I finished with the collection, I was finally able to get back to the baby blanket! I ended up needing two more repeats that I thought I would to get the right size, so I'm only just now at the halfway point. But now that I know for sure how many repeats it takes, I think the second half will go much faster (although faster is relative--the cotton yarn, even blended with wool, just hurts my hands, so I can't do too many rows in one knitting session).

And I got back to the sock I had been working on and turned the heel:

I know I've been doing a lot of knitting this past month and a half or so, but since it's pretty much all been on the collection, it somehow feels like I haven't done much. But according to my Ravelry page, I cast on for the first shawl on April 16 and finished the last shawl on May 18. So one month and two days to knit five shawls. Yeah, that was just a little bit of knitting. Nothing much.

Spinning: I finished the grey bamboo/alpaca blend! Two-ply at 18 WPI and 235 yds (3 oz).

As soon as I finished, I dug into my fiber box and pulled out some color. I started on some Polwarth dyed by Brazen Stitchery in the Hello Sweetie colorway, and I'm enjoying it so far. I'm going to do a 3-ply and use the fractal spinning technique. I've finished one single and started on the second.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how this one turns out.

Also, some good news in the spinning world. Jacey Boggs Faulkner, spinner extraordinaire and managing editor of PLY Magazine, has announced a spinning retreat to be held next April (she wrote on Ravelry: "April 21, 22, 23, 24, 2016 -- Kansas City MO!") I'm hoping to be able to work things out so I can go. By the way, if you haven't already subscribed to PLY (and why not??), you can get a free trial issue (outside U.S. does need to pay for shipping). Go here and use the code NEWEYES. At the moment, the free trial will be the Fall issue on Texture.

Designing: I need to get through the baby blanket, but since I've gotten to the halfway point, it's pretty clear sailing from here so I don't have to put too much brain power in it. That means it's time to get my design notebook back out and look through it to see what I want to work on next. Also plot out some new ideas that have been bouncing around. I think what I'd like to do is get a few designs under my belt so they are ready to release pretty steadily come fall. Summer is such a bad time with selling knitting patterns and I think I'd rather hold off on new releases until the weather is more appropriate again (unless I come up with something super summery).

There are just a few more days left in the Pubslush campaign for Gawain's Shield, so make sure to get your pledge in if you have been thinking about donating but haven't yet (and essentially, a donation means you are pre-ordering the book--and maybe some yarn to go with it).

Dyeing: I've done a couple more color combos with self-striping yarn and then I ran out of sock yarn to dye! I've placed an order for more and just got the shipping notice today so I should have more undyed yarn by the end of the week. I actually ran out of almost everything so I just got another order a few days ago. I'm still waiting on two bases that were backordered, but by this weekend, I should have a bunch of yarn to dye!

I did take some of the skeins (such as the leftovers from the shawl collection) and broke them up into sample skeins of 20 grams each. I'm offering those sample skeins for free (just pay shipping) to people who might be interested in Round Table Yarns but are hesitant to buy online without getting to see and feel the yarn in person. So in addition to the sample skein, it will come with a coupon code for 15% off your first order in the Etsy shop. If you're interested in getting a sample skein, you can find out more information here.

And finally, my knitting group got together on Saturday for a Dye Day! Some people had dyed before and some never had. It was a lot of fun and there was some super gorgeous yarn that came out of it. I dyed a sock blank (and only took one picture!) and then mostly just helped out. But I did learn some new things to try at home, so I'm looking forward to doing that!

Fiber Week in Review: May 11-17

The work on the knitting for the shawl collection is almost done, so I hope next week to be able to have more to talk about than just that--definitely the week after for sure.

Knitting: Finished the fourth shawl, blocked it, and wove in ends.

Lancelot base in Lady of the Lake and Knight colorways

And I came very close to finishing the fifth and last shawl this week. Last night I was just 5 repeats away from the end and possibly could have pushed on and finished it, but my hands and eyes were getting tired to I decided to go to sleep and finish it later.

The Pubslush campaign has been doing well. We're almost to the halfway point on the time of the campaign and we are over the halfway point on the funding. Thank you so much to those of you who have contributed already and those who plan to contribute. Your support is very much appreciated.

Spinning: I did a little spinning this week! I got through more of the alpaca/bamboo blend that I've been working on. Probably only need 20-30 more minutes of spinning and the singles will be done. Then I just need to carve out some time for plying (I like to ply in one session rather than starting and stopping several times).

Although this fiber is beautiful to work with, I'm really craving some color, so I'm going to pick something next with lots of colors, maybe something from this box:

Designing: I had a new release this week: the Chauntecleer Cowl. I had fun picking out the colors for this one.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to be doing next. I have so many different ideas running through my head. I know I want to finish the baby blanket, but what comes after that? More cowls? A shawl? Hat? Maybe try some socks? I already have a name for a sock pattern but no actual pattern yet, so maybe I should try coming up with a sock to fit the name. I think that after working on the shawl collection non-stop and having to push other ideas to the back of my mind, it's going to be difficult to change gears and work on something else. Maybe it's good that I've got the baby blanket going. Working on that might give me a little more time to sit down and make some future plans.

I think I'm going to hold off on releasing any new patterns until the fall since summer is not a huge time for pattern sales. So if I can get a few patterns ready over the summer, I could have a steady stream of releases come fall, alongside the shawl collection. So I think that's going to be my overarching plan.

Dyeing: The dyepots weren't quite as active this week. I got a lot of Camelot up in the shop and I had planned to work on Avalon next, but I want to knit the Brynhild Cowl first and see if I can get it out of just one skein of Avalon or if I'll need two. That will help me figure out if I should dye the skeins of Avalon in pairs or if single colors in a wider range is an option.

I took stock of the undyed yarn I still have and, well, it's not very much at all. I'm not completely out of anything, but most bases have just 1-2 skeins remaining. So it looks like I'm going to need to be placing some orders soon. I need to sit down with my current inventory and see which bases to focus on although I'll be getting at least a little of each.

I am still working on the self-striping and have two new colorways that I tried this week. It's been super rainy here so hard to take good pictures, but as soon as I reskein the one and get good pictures of both colorways, I'll post them in the shop.

Hope you have a great week! I'm looking forward being finished with the shawl collection!

Fiber Week in Review: May 4-10

Once again, most of my crafting time has been taken up by the shawl collection as well as dyeing. But I do have a big announcement. I've started a Pubslush fund for the shawl collection as a way of allowing people to pre-order (in a way) the collection: Gawain's Shield: A Shawl Collection. I recorded a video in which I talk about the collection and share the three shawls that have been finished. Even if you're not interested in contributing to the fund, if you're at all interested in learning more about the collection, I hope you'll take a little time to watch the video. I'm almost to the halfway funded point (which is where I have to be for the funding to go through), so I am so grateful and thankful to those who have contributed so far--as well as though who will contribute.

Knitting: I'm almost finished with shawl #4. I did run into a snag--I ran out of yarn with less than one repeat of the border remaining! Argh. I'll be reworking the design so that it uses less yarn on the border (I don't want others to run out or have to use just a tiny amount of another skein), but for myself, I've thrown some more yarn into the dyepot so I can finish this one off as the sample. I'll work it again with the new numbers once I've finished the fifth shawl, but I want to be sure they are all completed in time for photography.

Teaser of Shawl #4

Spinning: I did a tiny bit of spinning on Sunday. I was doing some copy editing for PLY and got an itch for some spinning. So I spent about 20 blissful minutes working on the second single of the bamboo/alpaca I started a while back.

Dyeing: I've been working on adding the new colors to the shop and dyeing them on other bases. I've also been working on more self-striping sock yarn, but I've been frustrated at the transition between colors as they want to mingle a lot more than I intend and thus the transition is not "neat." I think I'm so worried about leaving white space that I'm instead making them way more overlapped than they should be. For my next batch, I'm going to worry less about white space since the color creeps up into the yarn anyway, and see if that helps. But I'm really happy with the way four of the new spring colors look together on one skein of self-striping, so I'll definitely be doing that one again.

More new colors as a result of playing around with the pink-red-orange spectrum

Way too much overlap in the pink/green created a dark grey section in between

Fiber Week in Review: April 27 - May 3

This week has been all about designing and dyeing, so no other knitting (or spinning) projects to talk about.

Designing: I'm knitting my fingers off on the five-shawl collection. This week I finished shawl #2 and started and finished shawl #3. Whew! I'm well underway on shawl #4. If I keep up this speed (which I don't think I can maintain for too much longer), I'll finish well in advance of the mid-June deadline. But with just one and a half shawls to go, I'm feeling like this project is actually doable. At first it seemed almost insane, so it's good to feel a little less pressure. Of course, I've been saving the hardest shawl for last, so we'll see how long that one takes when I get to it.

Sneak peek of the three finished shawls

Dyeing: I've also been dyeing up a storm. I wanted to experiment with some new colors and focused on spring colors. I got a good chunk done on the weekend; there are some new colorways coming to the shop as soon as I can get them dry (almost there), reskeined, photographed, and labeled. I'm having a lot of fun experimenting with mixing different colors together to get something new.

Names from left to right: Dindrane, Lunete, Sir Gromer Somer Joure, Orkney, Pelleas, and Dinas Emrys

So there's not a whole lot to say about this week, but I have been doing quite a bit!

Fiber Week in Review: April 20-26

I've been working on an upcoming shawl collection that I don't want to reveal too much about, so there's not a whole lot to report this week.

Knitting: I'm knitting like the wind on the shawl collection. I finished the first one this week and am coming close to the end of the second one. I have five planned so three more to go to meet a June 15 deadline. If I can keep up this pace, I should make it.

Of course, that means very little time to work on anything else (like the baby blanket). I do have a pair of socks on the needles and have picked those up a little this week.

Spinning: None. *sigh*

Stash Enhancement: None. And I think I need to do some serious stash dehancement. I mentioned that last week and I think that needs to be on the agenda for this coming week. It's time to get all of the stash out and seriously decide whether or not I'm ever going to use it. Look for additions to my sale tab on Ravelry. I've also got some needles and other supplies that I should destash as well.

Designing: As already mentioned, I'm working on a collection of five shawls. I'm working with the wonderful ladies of Stitch Definition to get the collection ready in time to debut at STITCHES Texas in September. To do that, I need to get the patterns to the tech editor and the samples to the photographer by June 15. It's a tight deadline, but I know I can do it as long as I stay on track. I have written out each pattern and now just need to knit them to make sure the actual shawl works out as planned.

I do have other ideas that I want to work on, but those are on the back burner for now. The Chauntecleer Cowl is in testing and I need to send it to the tech editor and get pictures. I hope to have that ready for release in a couple of weeks so that I'll have something new coming out before too long.

Dyeing: I wanted a golden color on one of the shawls I'm designing, so I did some experimenting this week and am happy with what turned out. This will be the Yvain colorway and it's a tonal that has shades of golden brown. (I'm already putting the first skein to use!)

I also dyed some Tristan on the new Avalon (50/50 merino/silk DK weight) base. Boy, that base does not like to let go of water. I think it's going to take days to dry. I'll have to keep that in mind when I dye some for the shop.

And that's the plan in the upcoming weeks: dye up the two new bases (Avalon and Camelot which is a fingering weight MCN) so I can add them to the shop. I also need to prep some skeins for more self-striping. I got some good suggestions for color combinations, so I'm eager to try them out. It just takes a while to get the skeins ready to dye. I think I'll also develop a few new colors for spring.

I also decided to do a few updates on the Round Table Yarns website, particularly for the colorways. I wasn't happy with the way that page looked, so I split things up so each colorways gets its own page and the main page is divided into tonal/semi-solid, variegated, and self-striping colorways. That way it should be easier to see at a glance what is available, and then if you want to see more, you can go to the individual color pages.

Fiber Week in Review: April 13-19

Technically two of the days in this week in review (Monday and Tuesday) were covered in my previous post about the Strung Along Retreat. But I didn't talk about the projects I was knitting during the retreat, so there are still some updates from that time to discuss in this post.

Knitting: I did finish the Puplicious Socks before leaving for the retreat. I love them and got to wear them at the retreat. Yarn is from Brazen Stitchery.

I had dyed my first skein of self-striping sock yarn so that's what I took with me to the retreat. It has two stripes: grey and blue. They are actually the same grey and blue (Uther and Igraine) that I use for the Don't Blink Illusion kit. This colorway on the self-striping sock yarn will be Once and Future. I knit on the first sock all through the retreat and almost finished it there, but did finish it when I got back home. I haven't decided yet if this is going to be a sample sock for my booth (so one I won't be able to wear) or if I want to knit the second sock and wear them. Well, I know that I want to wear them but having a sample for my booth seems to be the wiser option. We'll see.

In the meantime, while I'm making my decision, I started a new pair of socks with some self-striping yarn from Fishknits that I picked up during DFW Fiber Fest. I haven't gotten very far on these yet.

The other project I worked on during the retreat, and finished right after getting home, was my new sample for my Lyones Cowl in my Lancelot base (Morgan le Fay colorway). I'm getting new pictures taken of some of my patterns and I wanted to change the color of the Lyones and Lyonet from yellow to red. I'd already knit Lyonet, so finishing Lyones means the set is complete.

The other major thing I've been working on this week is a new design. And this is the first item in a collection, so I'm going to be working on this collection a lot in the next two months. But I want to keep it semi-secret, so the pictures I post will be more teaser pictures than detailed ones.

And I think I never posted a finished picture of my Dorigen Cowl. I got it done just before the retreat but didn't get pictures until today. And since my son saw I was taking pictures, he wanted to be in them, so here's one with him and Dorigen.

Spinning: The spinning wheel has been gathering dust again, but yesterday I brushed it off and did about 15-20 minutes of spinning. Ah. Relaxation. I keep telling myself that I need to make time for just that 15 minutes a day (surely I can do that), but I keep being "busy." But I love the feeling of spinning so I really truly need to make it happen just a little each day.

Stash Enhancement: After everything I got at the retreat, there's no way I can do more stash enhancement for a while! I actually may need to do a little stash dehancement.

Designing: The Chauntecleer Cowl is current with test knitters and I need to send it to the tech editor soon. I also need to get some pictures taken. But I'm looking to release that pattern in about 3 weeks.

Although I have a lot of other ideas for things I want to design, my current focus is on a collection of 5 patterns. I've discussed the production of this project with Stitch Definition and have set up a production schedule (sounds so fancy!) to get all of the tech editing, layout, photography, and everything else taken care of. I need to have the patterns and samples to the tech editor and photographer in mid-June so that gives me just under two months to get those done. I'm almost finished with the first one and have the other four sketched out. But because I want to keep this project a little bit under wraps, there might be some quiet on the designing front for a while. But even if I'm not talking much about it, I'm still very much busy doing it!

And I've still got the baby blanket going. Just not much progress on it this week.

Dyeing: I have two projects I've been working on with dyeing this week. The first is to dye the yarn for the collection I'm working on so I did a bit of that (but have a little more to go). But the big news in dyeing is the self-striping sock yarn.

I totally get now why dyers love to hate self-striping yarn. It's pretty darn awesome, but it's also a pain in the ass. A giant pain because you're working with a giant skein. I've been using a warping board to set up the giant skein, which takes a while but isn't to terrible to set up. I do rather dislike putting in all the ties just because it takes quite a while (and you want a lot of ties because if this giant skein gets tangled, it's hard to recover. The actual dyeing isn't too bad. But then there's getting the yarn from the giant skein back into a regular-sized skein. Here's the true pain for me.

I tried putting it back on the warping board the first time I reskeined. I think it took me almost two hours to get it reskeined. Yeah, two hours. I've heard that some people use a warping reel to reskein but I don't currently have one of those. So I decided to try just putting the loop on the floor and gently winding into a ball. That way mostly working but I got the bright idea to use my ball winder and put it on that. But it was hard to keep tension on the winder and when I was about a quarter of the way through, I got the yarn wrapped around the gears of the ball winder. I tried to remove the yarn but it was pretty well enmeshed into the gears. I wanted to cry. I almost did. But I did a little breathing and tried to calm down and figure out how to save the yarn.

I tried removing the stem part from the base. Not happening. I noticed some screws on the bottom of the base and thought that if I removed those, I might be able to take it apart and get to the yarn. The screws were a little difficult to get out but I finally got them out--only to discover that they didn't actually allow the unit to be taken apart so I'd done all that work and still couldn't get to the yarn. More deep breathing. I finally got the yarn almost removed but couldn't figure out how to get the last two loops off. It looked like the only way to do it was to actually take the yarn through the gears. I was worried that I would damage the yarn but couldn't see any other way of going it, so I gently worked the yarn out through the gears--and it worked! I'm glad this was a sock yarn with nylon in it as I'm sure that helped to protect the yarn a bit. I examined that area of the yarn really closely and couldn't tell any difference or any defect. So I went back to winding. And hopefully put my ball winder back together correctly.

I now have two more skeins of the Once and Future self-striping ready to go (shop update planned for this Thursday evening. Join the mailing list to get specific updates). And I have another colorway currently drying (I think it's dry and I'm just avoiding the reskeining part--not sure what method I'll try this time). If you want to see that colorway before it hits the shop, join the mailing list. Otherwise, I'll post about it next week here.

As of right now, my self-striping sock yarn will have two colors. I've borrowed a 4 1/2 yard warping board from a friend and it's really only large enough to get a loop for two colors (adding more colors would mean very short repeats and I'd prefer not to do that). So it looks like I need a bigger warping board or warping reel to make bigger skeins so I can add additional colors.

I'm using a yarn base that is fingering weight with 75% merino and 25% nylon. I really wanted the heavy nylon content to help make these socks wear well. I was a little worried that the yarn might not be very soft, but after finishing the first sock and putting it on my foot, I am very very pleasantly surprised and happy. It feels super soft! I also picked a yarn with 4 plies (I saw so much sock yarn with just 2 plies) because I wanted to stitch definition to be good. This base will be the Merlin base (because self-striping yarn is magic--perhaps a little cheesy, but I like it!).