With needle and stick: First Design for Sale on Ravelry

I have several sweaters I have designed over the past few years, but I didn't get around to writing a pattern until I collaborated with my friend Rachel Willis of Black Twig Farm to design a sweater specifically for her yarn. Then, I looked back at my sweaters and decided that I needed to write up a few more of my designs. I finished the first which I am calling Saturday Night Tee. It is a sleeveless tee made for wearing on a special Saturday night out. (I like to sketch all of my designs, so every one of my kits will have a hand sketch as a part of the label or directions.) It is a sweater with a history. . .

I knitted my daughter a hat a while back a la Katherine Alexander. Her class was the first knitting class I had ever taken and it was great fun. So if you ever have the chance, you should sign up for one. Her knits are GORGEOUS, and great fun to knit. Anyway, I knitted this great little hat for my daughter and entered it into the Fall Fiber Festival a few years ago, and I won best in show for the hat and won 150 grams of some lovely hand-dyed wool. I tried to find the hat for a photo, but cannot locate it, it may be lost for the ages, or tucked in some deep recess in my daughter's room. Anyway, here is a photo of one similar to it.

So, I had this beautiful yarn, but not enough to knit either me or my daughter a sweater. So instead I decided to stretch the yarn a bit by adding in some Rowan Kidsilk Haze and knitting it on big needles, and making it sleeveless. Here are some photos of the resulting sweater.

I like to see a sweater on a real person's body rather than just on the mannequin. You can make anything look good on a mannequin, but not so much on the body. So, here is the sweater on me.

It is a lovely soft sweater that feels good to wear. I like fitted sweaters that show off a figure. I know that I often get chilly so I decided to knit a shawl to go with it. I decided to try my hand at Debbie New's scribble lace. I used the Kidsilk Haze again in the same color as the sweater and added a contrasting ribbon yarn.

I get loads of compliments on the pair when I wear them. They are a quick and easy knit and very fun. Also, you only need about 450 yards of dk yarn and four skeins of Kidsilk Haze for the sweater and you will have some Kidsilk Haze left over and you may need only one more skein for the scarf. If you decide to knit it, let me know and send some photos.

In the meantime, we have been holed up at our house since we got hit with about 16 inches of snow last Wednesday night overnight and through the day. And the three days before that I was hanging out with my son who was home with the flu and then shared it with the rest of us. My daughter bounced back pretty quickly, but my husband is quite sick with it. I am not so bad, but not so great either, but it means that I will be inside knitting and weaving rather than trying to do farm chores! I am hoping that I am done digging since temperatures are supposed to reach into the 50's today. In the meantime, I am working on my second set of directions to be put on ravelry for my daughter's Flower Sweater. Stay tuned for that.

Here are a few of our winter wonderland pictures. Just for reference, we have a four foot, four-board fence, so the first board is completely covered in snow and the show reaches the second board in a few places.

Here is our older dog Elsie enjoying the dug out path. She is not such a snow dog as our Spinone; she tends to stay inside enjoying the sun and the fire.