Just an update that at the moment I’m concentrating on finishing up my various works in progress (WIPs). First up, my sister’s Pimlico Shrug, which is just over halfway done. After that I’m going to get some patterns done, which I hope will work out as nicely as they appear in my head. Small knits for kids and adults, with little or no seaming…

I’ll be CO another Grand Mal Moebius today, and with a little luck, I’ll have the design complete and available as a pdf shortly thereafter. My yarn this time will be the colorway curacau.

It should be quick once I get the project CO.

My first pattern is up for sale a few hours from now, and I really like how it turned out!

The lace pattern is picked up from a book that has been out of print for several years, but is in my local library.  I have a lofty plan to modify all the written instructions and turn them into cowls, but the more reasonable plan is to just do that with the patterns I think will work best for the variegated yarns I prefer using.  Or to learn new tricks with yarnovers and decreases, and come up with my own lace patterns. 

The one I chose here, #54 in the book, was a really fun knit, and fast, but nothing approaching boring.  Plus it’s got easy repairs as you go along in case you lose or gain a stitch along the way.  Can’t beat a no-frogging project, can you?

I have some more designs in the works at the moment, but this is the one for today. 

The price is $3.50US, and all proceeds from the sale of this pattern are going towards the purchase of Knitting Lace: A Workshop with Patterns and Projects, by Susanna Lewis, which is currently out of print and very expensive to buy used.
 

You ever have a night where you’re really, truly exhausted, but you have thoughts going through your head a mile a minute, and the’re all “what if?” thoughts?  I haven’t had a night like that since I was pregnant, and I was last pregnant in fall of 2006.  At least, that’s the last time I was pregnant with a human baby.

Yesterday, just before dinner, I had a really fantastic response from a testknitter of my Grand Mal Moebius.  So good that my face hurts from smiling.  A knitting pattern, it’s a different kind of baby, one in which the pride and joy is not adversely affected by sleep deprivation, dirty diapers, or colic.  To have a germ of an idea, to conceptualize it, to write it out, to think “yes, I think this will work, this will be good,” is one thing.  To find out for sure that someone out there knows for sure that it *is* good, it’s a big, wonderful feeling.  For me, this early in my role of “designer,” it knocked me for a loop.

Last night, I was pregnant with ideas.  I still am pregnant with ideas, in fact.  All yesterday afternoon I worked out a pattern for a cowl.  It was all mental gymnastics (this is yet another Ravelympics 2008 project, so I won’t get testing until tomorrow), I visualized and imagined and really got the creative juices flowing.  It was very tiring, and I was quite happy when my head hit the pillow.  Only to discover I had another idea, that needed to be committed to paper.  Which I did, until around midnight.  Then I tried to turn things around and actually rest.  It didn’t work out, instead I was visualizing yarns and colors and schematics.  It took forever to actually sleep, but I did, eventually, make it. 

Only to wake up 4 short hours later.

Here’s what happened yesterday, starting in the morning. 

Knit, knit, knit.  Get lunch for children.  Have older child request to see the seeds of the pear I am in the midst of slicing into pieces for said lunch.  Say “wait please.”  Have child jostle me, while sectioning pear, so that the blade of the paring knife presses really hard against the pad of my right thumb.  Bleed like a stuck pig, scaring the heck out of the child watching.  Put bandaid on bleeding thumb.  Put away knitting, because the itsy bitsy little cut, the size of a papercut, stings like crazy and still won’t stop bleeding.  At 10pm, pick up knitting, hoping that the cut will be fine.  Discover that Addi Turbos borrowed from a lovely friend are pointy as all get out, and that the point perfectly pokes directly into the cut with every stitch knit. 

The day itself was a lot of fun.  My thumb, on the other hand, exposed to neither salt nor lemons, stings like I’m trying to pickle it.  That’s okay, though, with luck I’ll be able to knit again within a day.  Luckily the next Philippa Gregory book I put on hold at the library is in, so I’ll be able to read, in addition to charting designs for future knits.