Design Coming Soon!

Still alive, still kickin'!
It's the busy season for my Etsy shop (The Knitted Fiddle Boutique) once again, so that means my little fingers have been moving as fast as I can manage. I've been looking forward to this fall/holiday rush of purchases and sales since last year. Funny how when it gets here I am so easily distracted by everything else! Concentrate kid, concentrate! Yeah, right. Anyway, the big thing in the shop is fingerless gloves. I discovered the popularity of them last fall and it seems like it still holds true. Last year I did all my designs on the fly and never really wrote anything down. I had a vague idea (x amount of stitches for x weight, etc.), but I didn't keep detailed notes or write exact patterns for my work. Well, for one design I did, and that design became hugely popular in the shop and I duplicated it over, and over.... and over. Eventually I released it as a free pattern on Ravelry (Button me up Gloves). This year I decided to pay more attention to my designs and come up with a few that I thought would be popular in the Boutique and that I could sell that pattern for in my other Etsy shop (Fiddle Knits) and on Ravelry. The first of these designs (shown at right) is "Frosty Morning," a buttoned cuff design in aran weight yarn. (Apparently I like gloves with buttons on the cuff.) I should have some decent photos within the next few days so I can post the pdf for downloading. The weather for the past few days has been downright horrible, which meant that getting good lighting was out of the question. I took some not-so-good photos to send off to test knitters so they could see what the design was like, however, I have much higher standards to meet with the actual pattern photos. ;o) Next up in the designing queue is a "Frosty Morning Hat." I'm thinking of doing the hat two ways, 1 as a standard cap and the other in a beret style. Both will have the same elements, but different shapes. With luck I can start on that tomorrow.

Sweater Lust

I'm craving sweaters. What can I say? I just finished knitting Annalee the top-down vine lace cardigan by SweaterBabe for her birthday and I simply had to have one for myself. I stopped at Michael's yesterday on my way to my knitting meeting and bought out their supply of Paton Shetland Chunky in black. Yes, black. Annalee's sweater was done in a dark gray charcoal tweed so she could where it when we perform (especially thinking of Rhinebeck in a few weeks). I wanted mine to also be suitable for performing which meant I either needed to use the same gray tweed, or black. I went with the black so we wouldn't be too much like twins and it would still match our performance wear. I would like to make mom this same sweater, but I guess I'll be doing that after Rhinebeck. I almost feel guilty because she could use a sweater for performing before than, but there's no way I'll have the time to make another two sweaters in two weeks. I knit fast, but not that fast. Also, I can't decide what color to make mom's. She's appreciate the gray or black so she could also use it for performing, but I saw a lovely dark green tweed that I also think she would like and that would go great with jeans. Hmmmm.... Decisions. Also, it will be a real test for me to get through the same sweater pattern 3 times. Yikes! This will be the first ever pattern I have repeated. I never do that! What's up?!

I definitely need to get back to some fingerless glove knitting for my Etsy shop as well. Can someone please add a few more hours to every day? There's just no way I can get it all done! 24 ain't enough. Sleep takes up too much precious time.