I think I’ve finally found a new project. There’s been a lot of knitting around here lately, it’s just stuff I can’t show, and I’m cracking without a personal project to work on. So, two cones of Shetland 2/8 in Bluegrey and Loam were purchased from Webs . These cones are hilariously huge! I laughed out loud when I opened the box.

I like the small, subtle (well, a pattern of that size will be more subtle in the colors I’m using) patterning on the body of this sweater, with the bolder borders at the bottom and shoulders. Add in a little waist shaping and more of a scoop neck, skip the bands at the arm join, and it’s a winner.

from Tradional Scandinavian Knitting by Sheila McGregor

The patterning will be insects, my old favorite. I knew I had a book somewhere with illustrations of bugs that fit together in rows, and I found it.

from Seguy’s Decorative Butterflies and Insects in Full Color by E.A. Seguy

Now, all I need to do is distill this into a readable two color knitting pattern, plot the borders, and I can cast in between frantically getting ready for the fiber fair and working on my super secret knitting. Heh.

Finally, a toe as cute as a Knitting Iris toe.

Valentine colorway

It’s so chubby! I winged the heel, short rowing down until it looked good to me, but when it was all “long rowed”, it ended up being too pointy. The whole reason I started doing short rows was because I coveted the toes at Knitting Iris. Now I can have them all to myself. Short row until 20% of the stitches remain. I guess from now on, I’ll actually be doing math for short row heels and toes. The horror! (I kitchenered that toe, too. Without looking at a book or video. FINALLY.)

I’ll be teaching at a Fiber Workshop at the fabulous Harveyville Project in October. If you’re interested in creating a finished object from fleece with all the steps in between, you should come. Harveyville’s a beautiful place and you will be fed like royalty, I can assure you. Add that to fibery fun and you’ve got a rockin’ good time. I’ll keep you updated with specifics as they’re decided, and you can watch Nikol’s blog for the same.

Have a lovely holiday weekend, everyone! I don’t know about you, but we’ll be trying to do something about this. It looks so pitiful!

Shop all the new stuff. I added handspun by Maisy Day and Hello Yarn, both fingering and sport weight sock yarn, spindle kits and hand-dyed Merino wool fiber, a wonderfully soft Merino/silk shawl kit, and new handspindles and nostes by Maisy Day Handspun. All fingering weight hand-dyed yarn now comes with a free pattern card for these socks in two adult sizes.

See what’s new this week in the Flickr photo gallery. This is where you can look at everything we made, even after it’s sold out. Dye-O-Rama swap pal, the above yarn’s what you’re getting!