Designing for Simply Shetland

Simply Shetland Lambswool Cashmere (color Aphrodite #002)

After months of swatching and sketching, I've finally come up with a Spring Cardigan that I am so excited about. This will be my 3rd design for Simply Shetland. The original design used the feather and fan stitch pattern. I swatched it, blocked it, and submitted it to Simply Shetland for approval. By the time I had received approval on this design concept, I had just received my Creative Knitting magazine - which had about 4 designs all using the feather and fan stitch pattern! Then, all of a sudden - every where I turned, I saw feather and fan scarves, shells, dresses...you name it. So - needless to say, I no longer liked my design idea and it was back to the drawing board. My new design is gorgeous! Everything has remained the same in terms of the concept and style - but I am so much happier with the new lace pattern. It'll definitely be for intermediates - as the lace will take more concentration and serious blocking - but it'll be so worth it. The hard part is behind me, now for the fun part - casting on!

Missing in action / in search of baby blankets...

Okay - so according to my BFF (she'll be losing that title here soon!), I have been deliquent on my blogging. So April in a nutshell....the month started out with a bang. I decided that it was time for me to maintain my own website. It's too expensive to hire someone to change photos and add patterns. So - I went on-line and found an Adobe CS3 Dreamweaver which is what my website was created with. I don't know much about software or websites. Come to find out - the company that I bought the software from was shady and out of NYC. The software came scratched and un-installable. I've been bamboozled! After desperate pleas for help, they sent me another one. This time it was installable - but the serial number was invalid so I could not register or use it. After another few pleas, I did get a full refund - but only after lots of complaints to the shady company, paypal and the Better Business Bureau. So - I'm putting that one on the back burner....I'm turning gray and I can't seem to stop it...quick I need my hair dyed.

I had 2 deadlines to meet this month - both of which took the entire month. I can now breathe again. We've picked out a carpet for the new "knitting" office (Cal still thinks it's his office) and it'll be installed the second saturday in May. So my office is still half chaos, half organized. Once the carpet is installed, I'll be up and running! I'll even have a table for my blockers, yarn swift and ball winder (www.knitpicks.com). It'll be like a production line. There is a built-in ledge on the wall where I have my hat heads and sock feet all lined up. It looks really good. My husband has some posters about the heads and feet - which I'll be taking down when he's not looking to replace with a 'knitting' poster of some type. He'll never know what hit him.

Lastly, I met up with another knitter the other day. I found her on Ravelry(http://www.ravelry.com/)

and her husband is a social worker in Tacoma. She had mentioned that 70 children come through the DHSH system (into foster care) every month. The social workers provide a new blanket for each child that comes through their doors. So she was looking for blanket donations on Ravelry. I don't have the time to knit up a blanket - but I had sewn up a few crib quilts - which I donated. We had never met before - in yet, we chatted for a good hour and a half. We could have gone on another 2 hours easily if it wasn't for family and sun awaiting our return. My conclusion is knitter's have so much in common - no wonder we like our retreats. We don't have to know anybody at the retreat to have fun.

So - on that note...if anyone has a new blanket of any size (knit, crocheted or sewn) that they would like to donate, I would be happy to collect them and pass them on to Jennifer. If times are tough in your household - you can only imagine what the social workers are faced with.