I love all of my sweaters, and I love all of the photoshoots that the great folks at Twist Collective produce with them, but in my heart of hearts I’ll let myself admit some favorites. And Oscillate definitely tops the list.

(Photo credit Jane Heller. Photos used with permission from Twist Collective.)

This photo shoot is so iconic, and so perfectly captures the life and beauty of the yarn, it absolutely makes me squeal. And Oscillate is one of my favorite designs, in that it so perfectly captures my favorite things about hand-knits: I love a fuzzy sweater with a close (but easy) fit. I love simple-but-interesting cables. I love sweaters that scream “Wear me!”.

The Classic Elite Lush I used for the design was wonderful. Soft and fuzzy without being sheddy or limp, it practically screamed to be used in plump, wiggly cables. I’ll definitely be using it for my own version.

You can find all of the nuts and bolts information about the pattern either here or on Twist Collective’s site, where you can also buy the pattern, so in this post I’ll just say: One of the nicest things about waiting so long to do a proper post on Oscillate is that there are already stunning FOs for you to gaze at! Just take a look at the projects page on Ravelry. They have me dreaming about my own version…

Since that version is likely a few months away, I decided to take a plunge and fiddle around with Polyvore instead. And in the spirit of Carly’s post, here are the two ways I plan to wear my own Oscillate as soon as I have the time to make one in my size:

I’ve included two looks here, in a (budget-less) nod to the two very different parts of my life. First, my home/knitting design/running after the boys life: Jeans are hands-down the most often worn bit of my wardrobe. The boys still haven’t mastered the art of napkins/kleenex/anything-other-than-someone’s-shirt, so pretty much anything I wear when I’m around them has to be tolerant of washing machines. I have pretty short, thick legs, so I love a good flare–they take the eye, and the visual balance, away from the rest of my legs and cleverly hide the high heels I’m never without. I love the look of a butter yellow paired with a rich, dark red, so I chose a pretty simple tee to wear under the sweater. Naturally, my favorite boots of all time have to make an appearance. (No kidding. I own them in both colors, and they’re wonderfully stylish, fit my wide calves, and I can sprint in them. For real.) I seem to often forget jewelry, but when I remember I prefer bolder, funkier pieces for my personal life. I might have to get that guitar bracelet, actually, it would go perfectly with some earrings I got recently from someone I found through Thea.

Second, my work life. I definitely need to dress professionally and conservatively at work, and am frequently rubbing elbows with folks a few levels higher on the totem pole than me. I’m excruciatingly demanding of my hand-knits for this reason, and don’t often wear them to work–but Oscillate fits the bill beautifully. I’d pair it with a pair of gray wool trousers (again with the wide leg), and a sedate set of Fluevogs. Boden is the best for plain shirts with a bit of flare, and I’d go with jewelry that doesn’t call as much attention to itself, reflecting the color of the sweater without being too matchy-matchy.

Playing with Polyvore is super fun! How would you style Oscillate?

(And speaking of styling sweaters, stay tuned for the next post, where I take the Charles Collection sweaters over to Caro’s house for a photo shoot with some friends.)

(Photo credit Jane Heller and used with permission from the Twist Collective.)

Rest assured I’ll do a full post on Oscillate soon, but for now please do look through this latest issue. Every time Twist comes out I think they’ve done the best issue ever, and this time is no exception.

*****

I have two more classes before the end of the calendar year, and for a wonder there’s still space in both! Please, if you’ll be in the Boston area consider joining me at The Creative Stitch in Hingham. This will be my third time teaching Fit to Flatter there, and it’s such a lovely space. You can call the shop at 781-749-2280 to sign up.

And the family made a somewhat last-minute to spend an extended weekend in San Jose visiting friends this December, so I’m teaching a special 6-hour workshop at Purlescence Yarns in Sunnyvale on December 10. This is a great chance to have a wonderful time exploring the Fit to Flatter topic in more depth than I can usually cover in a 3-hour class, and I’m unlikely to get back to the Bay Area for another 6 months, so don’t miss out! You can call the shop to sign up: (408) 735-YARN (9276)

*****

My other plans for the rest of the year involve at least three more sweaters. I hope that one of them winds up being a self-published design that I am itching to wear^H^H^H^Hshare with you! I’m going to try offering two different sleeve lengths and two different necklines in one sweater–kind of like 4 patterns in one. We’ll see how it goes.

Happy knitting!

Long time no see, eh? I’ve been a busy bee here, eternally knitting on something I hope to share with you before too much longer, putting the finishing touches on the Charles Collection, and starting up my fall teaching schedule.

A couple of weekends ago, I spent time teaching at the insanely fabulous Fiber College. My family decided to come with me and when I wasn’t teaching we enjoyed the beautiful stretch of Maine coastline where Fiber College is held. It was more like a getaway than like work!

This coming weekend, I’m returning to Seed Stitch in Salem to offer another Fit to Flatter class there. Incredibly, there are still a couple of spots left open so if you’d like to join us, call the store!

And yesterday, I made my Knitty debut with a cardigan I showed here awhile back: Vignette.

You can find all of the details on the Knitty pattern page. Such a fun fall so far!

The Charles Collection is a celebration of great sweaters (from everyday to super special) and accessories for any occasion. We drew our inspiration from Boston’s gorgeous surroundings, long history, and fiber-friendly weather.

Working with this team has been amazing. I was pretty intimidated at first, but Elinor and Kirsten are a joy to work with, and the others we’re collaborating with are also incredible: Caro Sheridan has taken our photos and Jenn Jarvis is our technical editor. We all got together in person early this month to shoot the collection–let me tell you, these women can even make standing around in alpaca in 85-degree heat and 90% humidity fun!

We’re working through the final stages of the collection now, and hope to have it ready to release to you soon! Stay tuned here and in the Ravelry group for details.

Such fun!

(Photo credits to Jamie Dixon (beach shots) and Caro Sheridan (studio shots); used with permission.) You can find all the tech specs either on the Twist Collective page linked above or on the design page here.

Twinings started out with a comment someone made about how wrap sweaters looked so flattering, but tended to feel really bulky over the stomach. My initial ideas involved trying to use a row of snaps to allow for just an inch or two of overlap, but I quickly realized such a sweater would simply be an asymmetrical cardigan. The nice thing about a true wrap sweater vs. a cardigan is that the fabric doesn’t pull open at many tension points down the front of the sweater.

So I started thinking about how I could spread the tension evenly, and sketching, and would up with the idea of a single cable panel traveling across the front of a sweater:

I knew I wouldn’t be able to make the cable panel move quite as severely as the sketch without some serious biasing in the fabric, but I started swatching to play around with the maximum movement rate:

And I was able to move a cable every other RS row without things getting too nasty. So when Kate told me she liked the sweater and wanted to include it the Fall issue, I calculated the different required cable positions at three points of the sweater and worked out the rate of decrease within each section.

I had lots of fun working with the other details of Twinings, too. The hem of the sweater body is trimmed with the same cables present in the panel; the sleeves are deeply cuffed with the same cables.

The back neck gave me a little bit of trouble: I started out wanting a wide, curved cable band on the back. But I quickly realized that working short rows on a back neck cable, combined with the complicated front of the sweater, would intimidate a lot of knitters. So instead, I charted out some attractive diminishing cables from the front neckline, moving into 1×1 rib. These extensions of the front cable panels are then sewn onto the back neckline. I wound up liking the effect far more than my original idea:

The merino-silk blend from Catherine Lowe Yarns was just great. I’d never worked with a yarn like this before (the individual plies are laid out parallel to one another and wound into a cake like that; CL says that they’re sprayed with sizing to keep them together but although they did stay together fine I couldn’t detect any stiffness or anything), and I don’t necessarily understand why it makes such a difference–but it does! The stitch definition is utterly fabulous and I have to say that the yarn produced the single best fabric that has ever come off my needles. It manages both a dense-looking, opaque fabric and an incredible lightness–the sample weighs far less than you’d expect. The silk adds a lovely drape and shine. And the ex-goth in me definitely appreciated the color, which was a lovely dark violet that looked black in some lights, stunning purple in others.

All in all, I’m really pleased with the way the sweater turned out, and hope you are too! If you’d like to knit Twinings, we’re having a knit-a-long for the sweater in my ravelry group and would love to have you join us.

Second things second: Sock Summit was phenomenal. Seriously, the best conference I’ve ever been to and I go to a lot of them for my day job. The classes I taught at Twisted were full of amazing students and the store is just lovely. All in all it was a glorious little escape in the middle of a very busy summer.

And third things third: I’m sure you’ve seen that the latest issue of Twist Collective is up? It’s an astonishingly huge and beautiful issue. Clicking through it, I had the experience twice of thinking that must be the end, and then discovering another photo story! There are so many wearable and beautiful garments, I do hope you’ll go through and check out the whole thing. I’m thrilled to have a sweater included this time round: Twinings is what happened when I started thinking about how to make a faux wrap sweater.

(Photo credit Caro Sheridan; click to embiggen.)

I’ll be back in a couple of days to talk about the design process and details/modifications and so forth. For now, I just wanted to give you all a little wave from the mountain of work I’m sitting behind and let you know that we’re starting a KAL for Twinings over on ravelry. I’m running it from my brand-spanking new Ravelry group, which I hope you’ll join! It’s exciting to have one place for errata, modifications, pattern support, and beautiful FO shots.

See you there?

Pattern: My own Cooke Cardigan (rav link)

Yarn: Fibre Company Canopy Worsted, in Macaw, 12 hanks.

Time Elapsed: Only about a week!

Pattern Notes/Modifications: While I liked all of the designs I drew up for my Knitscene Collection, The Cooke Cardigan was definitely the piece I could most easily see fitting into my day-to-day wardrobe. I have the need to dress pretty professionally in my day job, and the lustre of the Canopy Worsted, combined with the open nature of the design, absolutely meet that requirement. (Let me please take this opportunity to say that Canopy is one of my very favorite yarns I’ve ever worked with. It’s soft, it’s slightly shiny, it’s not too heavy, it’s not too warm, the colors are fantastic. LOVE.) So very soon after getting notice that the Issue’s preview was live, I visited my fave ‘LYS’ and got a whack of Canopy in the lovely “Macaw” color.

The design was written with top-heavy figures in mind, and included details especially appropriate for that shape: The front panels of the cardigan have no waist shaping, the edges are trimmed in i-cord to keep rolling to a minimum and maximize the vertical lines of the sweater, etc. Since I’m not a top-heavy shape, and wanted a more relaxed, fluid feel to the cardigan I made a few changes.

I think this is important enough to repeat. When I urge knitters to examine a written pattern closely and modify to suit their needs, I mean it! You’ll wind up with sweaters you love that way, and knowing people love their versions of your design is manna for any designer.

Since having the boys, my waist is definitely thicker than my “old self”‘s waist ever was. But despite that, I still have a bunch of curve going on in front. So the first two changes I made to the pattern as written were to increase the overall width of the stockinette front panels by 1” each and then add waist shaping to those panels to match the back.

(Worn closed so that you can better compare it to the magazine picture.) This ensured that the sweater would fit my larger bust and hips, but still contour to my figure.

I also knew I wanted a straighter sleeve–I find them easier to push up, which is what I constantly do with my sweaters, and I liked the more relaxed look of a straighter sleeve, too.

Finally, I eliminated the i-cord edging. I knew I wanted the cardigan’s edges to scallop and roll a little more freely. The sample’s crisp lines were lovely and met what I wanted to do with the design, but didn’t fit my own personal vision for my wardrobe.

Aside from that, I knit the 38” size exactly as written.

(Normally, I’d suggest that someone with a figure like mine shorten the sweater’s length; however, I have the torso length of a 6′ woman, so I didn’t find that necessary!)

All in all, I had a wonderful little stint of entirely decadent knitting (not a single deadline attached!) and wound up with a piece I’m going to pull out time and time again this fall. What could be better?

(I’m off to Sock Summit later this week, but please stop by again on Wednesday, when I participate in the Fiber College Blog Tour!. I’m so stinking excited to teach there, it’s not even funny.)

The whole magazine was fantastic, with so many great designs. I’m thrilled to be in it. Since the issue has hit the newsstands, now seemed like a good time to tell you about the three sweaters in my designer collection. (Magazine photos used with permission; the other photos are copyright splityarn.)

These three sweaters opened up 2011 for me. When Lisa approached me about being the featured designer, I knew I wanted to offer 3 patterns that each had something to offer the main shapes in my Fit to Flatter paradigm, and would be easy to modify so that anyone could enjoy them. You can find more technical detail on each of the sweaters by clicking their link.

The Cornsilk Pullover is a classic, balanced shawl-collar pullover with some updates. The shawl collar is worked side-to-side with short rows in garter stitch, rather than the traditional rib. I envisioned it being worn open, almost like a portrait collar:

The magazine styled it more upright, and I think both look just great. The middle of the sweater is shaped with vertical darts and is stockinette, to facilitate modifications. The garter stitch trim is carried throughout, with straighter sleeves and nice deep cuffs.

I have some Fresco in charcoal to make myself one someday soon, I hope!

The Pinstripe Pullover was my sweater designed especially for bottom-heavy figures–the hem is plain, and the eye-catching pinstriping broadens the shoulders. The pinstripes are accomplished with a dead simple slipped-stitch pattern that just flies by. I love how it turned out.

Again, the rest of the sweater is really simple to ensure easy modification. I think a contrasting cast-on/hem would be adorable, if someone wanted to try it!

Finally, the Cooke Cardigan is a design crafted to slim the torso. The pattern as written includes no waist shaping on the front of the sweater, a longer length, and definite vertical lines that will flatter top-heavy figures.

It’s also super-easy to modify, and the pattern actually includes bust dart instructions and guidance. (The sample was knit with 3 inches (ish) of bust darts.) In my classes, I’ve found that cardigans intended to be worn open, like this one, are exceedingly flattering on many women. And of course the Fibre Company’s Canopy Worsted is pretty much a dream yarn.

I regret not getting the same collection of pictures of this cardigan that I have of the other two designs; I love being able to show you all details! But luckily this piece is the most work-friendly of the bunch, and I ordered yarn for a version of my own a couple of weeks ago (Canopy Worsted in “Macaw”, a brilliant blue).

I’m squeezing this in around other deadlines (such is the way, for designers) and knitting as fast as I can:

(Which, as it turns out, is apparently pretty fast.) So stay tuned for detail shots once I get my own finished!

I so enjoyed doing this collection, being interviewed for the profile, and writing the article on sweater modification. It’s the first of many exciting projects I’m itching to share with you, and I can’t think of a better way to start off my dreams of fall weather.

I have lots of designs coming up for fall that slip easily into any kind of wardrobe, that flatter all kinds of shapes, but this spring I was on a serious curves kick. Have you seen Caro’s Petrea (rav link)? I love my Petrea, don’t get me wrong, but my hourglass waist took a hike with the first 9+ pound baby. Caro has the shape I had in mind when I sketched Petrea in the first place, and it looks jaw-droppingly stunning on her. (Seriously, click through that link. Mrowr.)

This weekend I put the finishing touches on another springtime design that I’m calling Vignette.

This cardigan definitely also highlights and celebrates a curvy figure, but unlike Petrea it will exaggerate the curves on those of us with straighter figures, making us look more hourglass.

I’m a little stymied as to what to do with it, actually. Most of my designs for the fall will be released in two collections: One a collaboration with other fabulous designers (squee), and one of my own designs following a striped theme. And then there’s this sweet little sweater-girl cardi. Do I release it on its own? Do I save it up for some larger collection in the winter?

Thoughts? Desires? Do you prefer individual pattern releases, or the excitement of a full collection being released all at once?

Speaking of a better plus size fit, I’m embarking on a little project that I hope you can help with. It’s been my worry for some time that the Measurement Charts for plus size women are faulty. I’d like your help in testing my hypothesis by donating your (anonymous) measurements to be averaged and generate a new measurement chart for plus sizes. You can find the chart to fill out here, along with explanations of how to take the measurements and links to the CYCA measurement guidelines in case you’re not sure how to measure yourself.

If I get enough data to feel good about the charts, I’ll commit to offering my patterns in a larger size range; I’ll also provide the chart as a resource for other designers. Thanks for your help!

And finally, FINALLY, I can share with you some very exciting news that I’ve been sitting on for the entirety of the year.

I’m the featured designer in this fall’s issue of Knitscene!

In addition to the profile article and the three sweaters I knit for the designer collection, I also wrote a technical article on modifying your knits. It comes to newsstands in just a few weeks, so be sure to look out for it. (I actually have the yarn to knit two of the sweaters for myself!)