Ravelry Indie Design Gift-a-long is here!

If (like me) you spend unhealthy amounts of time on Ravelry, you may just have heard some murmurings of a special project organised by a group of indie designers - well, it's time to go public... the Gift-a-long has begun! The Gift-a-long is a collaborative event, hosted and organised by over a hundred independent designers on Ravelry. We've banded together to offer a huge selection of our patterns at a 25% discount, and the Ravelry group will host KAL/CAL threads in different categories, so that you can chat along with fellow Ravelry members whilst you get your gift-knitting/crocheting underway. Best of all, there's a massive selection of prizes on offer, which will be awarded randomly to participants in each of the threads - if you take part in the Shawls & Stoles category, you will be in with a chance to win a subscription to my Celtic Cable Shawls e-book - I've donated 2 pre-orders to the prize pile.

As we designers banded together to plan the Gift-a-long, we realised that there was no way to tag participating patterns in a way that would show up on the Ravelry search engine. There is a long thread in the Gift-a-long group, with one post from each designer who is taking part, but we were lacking a way to actually browse through every single pattern available. I tentatively suggested the idea of making Pinterest boards for each of the categories. Amazingly, a group of designers jumped in to help, and soon we had a team of pinners, supervised by the amazing Ash Kearns, who did a fantastic job of organising us. Between us, we pinned over 2000 patterns into categorised boards, in just a few days. And here they are!:

Hats and Head Things

Scarves and Cowls

Mitts and Other Arm Things

Shawls and Stoles

Socks

Garments

Baby and Child

Non-Wearables

Other

So, to recap, every single pattern on the boards above is available with a 25% discount, from Nov 1st to Nov 15th, when you add to Ravelry cart and use the code giftalong. And, you can join a KAL/CAL in the Gift-a-long group and be in with a chance to win some prizes. Hope to see you over there!

P.S. Almost forgot to mention... it probably goes without saying, but every individual pattern in my Ravelry store is in the Gift-a-long, and eligible for the discount. If you've bought a pattern from me previously and not cast-on yet, you can still take part in the KAL threads!

Kyna shawl + Celtic Cable Shawls - a rather exciting announcement!

I've just released a new shawl pattern - Kyna, a sideways triangular shawl with a twisted-stitch cable edging.

Now for the exciting announcement bit - this design is actually the second design in a collection of shawl patterns that I will be releasing in e-book format - and print too! Yep, I'm doing a book!

The e-book version is currently available for pre-order on Ravelry - when you pre-order it, you will get all the patterns currently released (at the moment this includes Taliesin and Kyna), and then you will receive the rest of the patterns as they're released. There'll be a total of 7 designs in the completed book.

Because Taliesin was released way before I announced the collection, I have set things up so that if you purchased Taliesin on Ravelry, the full cost of this pattern will be deducted from the cost of the e-book (note that you need to be signed in to your Ravelry account, and click 'add to cart' on the e-book source page for this to be applied automatically!).

If you'd rather get this book in print, then stay tuned - I will announce details of the print pre-order soon, and a complementary copy of the e-book will be included with every print book pre-order.

Lots more information here on my website!

The Tale of Taliesin

After a good few months of knitting, charting, testing, tech-editing... Taliesin is finally available!

This shawl has quite a long back story, and I thought I would tell some of it here... the design is named after the Welsh poet Taliesin, but I will stick to prose!

It's probably apparent from even a quick glance at some of my past designs that I'm completely obsessed with Celtic knotwork. I learnt how to draw it from the marvellous writings of George Bain (a truly wonderful artist, who inspired so many people with his books) and Aidan Meehan, and I love how the form is underpinnned with mathematical, grid-like structures, yet also allows for a lot of creativity. I don't consider myself an artist and I'm not very good at drawing, but I can invent my own Celtic knots with relative ease, and I find it very relaxing.

Here are some early sketches of knotwork that I made back in April, with a view to turning them into a cabled shawl... originally my design was a little different.

This was what my original swatch looked like:

I decided the different cables were just a bit too fussy, so I went back to the drawing board and simplified things a bit.

I eventually ended up with the final design, and set about knitting it up with a beautiful skein of Old Maiden Aunt yarn that I got at the Edinburgh Yarn Festival in March. However, disaster struck when I ran out of yarn halfway through the cast-off!

Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise though, because the shawl was a little bit on the small side for my tastes, and I wanted to enlarge it, so I got another skein. Even though it was from the same dye lot, the colours seemed a little different, and I was worried it would be obvious, so I striped the skeins a bit and in the end it looked fine.

Here it is blocking:

This is where things get decidedly bizarre. Somewhat foolishly, given my track record of losing handknitted objects, I decided to wear this shawl to the Beltane Fire Festival on April 30. At some point during all the revelry, I must have dropped my shawl, and didn't notice until after the event had finished and the security guards were shepherding everyone down from Calton Hill, where the event takes place. I tried my best to get back onto the hill, so that I could look for the shawl, but security said no. They said my best bet was to check with the council next day, as they'd be sending in cleaners to clear up the hill.

Now, I had a sinking feeling in my heart that I would never see my shawl again. It was about 3 am by this point, pitch dark, and I was making my way home. The route back to my flat goes past one of the small roads that leads to the top of the hill. All the roads were blocked off with large metal gates, but I happened to notice that there was no guard on this particular road. So, I might have found myself squeezing past that gate and clambering up a pitch dark hill at 3 am in search of a hand-knitted shawl. Yes, perhaps not the most sensible or safe thing to do. But I was desperate to find it, and also reasonably sure that the only people still left up there would be security guards, and not anyone who would try to murder/rob/violently assault me. So, up I went.

I got up to the top of the hill and was completely disoriented. I couldn't even remember where I might have been standing when I dropped the shawl. So I picked a spot, figuring I had to start somewhere, got out my phone, switched on the torch function and began sweeping it along the ground. Within approximately 10 seconds, I spotted something like knitted fabric. I think I may have actually shouted, "NO WAY!" in my disbelief, but yes, it was my shawl!

It still boggles my mind how it was that, by complete fluke, I happened to pick pretty much exactly the correct spot where I had dropped my shawl. A bit of Beltane magic, maybe, or just sheer luck. Either way, I don't think I've ever been so happy to find something that I thought was lost for good!

Greens and blues...

Today, this bundle of loveliness arrived in the post...

Yes, that is a whole pile of Shilasdair Luxury DK in the most beautiful contrasting shades of green, and, yep, I know I'm a lucky girl to receive stuff like this in the mail on a regular basis! It's one of the most fun aspects of what I do. Unfortunately I can't give any details on what this heavenly stuff will become, but you'll hear about it here eventually, I promise! Or, get on my newsletter and you'll be the first to hear once the veil of secrecy has been lifted...

I recently got a beautiful new camera and I've been obsessively photographing everything within sight. I'm still getting to grips with all the settings, but it's so much fun! And it's arrived just in time for my new self-published pattern, Taliesin, which should be released in the first or second week of July.

This pattern is still in the test-knitting/editing phase, but if you'd like to find out as soon as it's released, you can either sign up for my newsletter or drop me a PM on Ravelry. I also have a new Ravelry group for my designs too - come and join if you'd like to discuss my patterns - or pretty much anything else!