It's Makealong time!

I've teamed up with nine other knit and crochet designers and five indie dyers to produce a collection of summer accessory patterns, the Progress, Hope, and Happiness collection. My contribution is the Budburst shawl, a profusion of leafy lace in a pretty speckled yarn which was dyed specially for the occasion (you can find out all about it in my previous post).

One of the designers, Denise Voie de Vie, created a beautiful look book for the collection. You can read about the inspiration behind the event and our journey in putting it all together on Denise's blog here and here. The designs are individually published by each designer, but you can see the whole collection here on Ravelry: Progress, Hope, and Happiness Designs.

I'm co-hosting a Makealong on Ravelry for these designs from June 1st to July 16th, complete with prizes and even some surprises. I hope you'll join us!

These are a few of my favourites from the collection (all links are to Ravelry pattern pages):

Breeze of Happiness by Tanja Osswald

Dusk On TheMoor Shawl by Solène Le Roux

Chiguroo by Lana Jois

From Dusk To Dawn by Christelle Nihoul

This has been so cool to be a part of, and the Makealong is just beginning! Hope to see you over in the Ravelry group. :)

New pattern: Budburst

Who's ready for more lace? I've just released a new asymmetrical shawl, named Budburst for its leafy lace pattern and the magical way it blooms during blocking. I think it's the prettiest thing I've made in a long time. :)

Budburst's stitch pattern blocks out into light and delicate leaves, but during knitting it forms a really cool bobbly texture. The transformation from bobbles to leaves reminded me of leaf buds unfurling in spring.

The gently-speckled yarn is a fingering-weight Merino Single in 'Dawn', by the Swiss dyer Sidispinnt. I adore using single-spun yarn for shawls, as it holds its blocking really well. I find plied yarn can bounce back again over time, especially if it has a tight twist like some sock yarns. I'm seeking out singles and silk-blend yarns for my shawls more and more these days, to make sure I get a really nice drape.

Dad and I took these photos above the Ōhope hill during my April trip to New Zealand - we found the perfect grassy paddock with flowering mānuka bushes and a view of the beach down below. The one downside was the thistles, which kept managing to spike me through my jeans!

Features:

• an all-over lace pattern of delicate leaves

• intuitive stitch pattern, with 'rest' rows on the wrong side

• an optional picot bind-off (see my tutorial here)

• knit sideways from point to bind-off edge

• easy to scale up or down by altering the number of repeats

• requires two skeins of fingering-weight yarn

• suitable for speckled, semi-solid, or gradient-dyed yarn

• pattern includes full written instructions as well as charts.

Find out more about my Budburst shawl pattern, including Ravelry and Payhip purchase options.

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This design is part of the Progress, Hope, and Happiness collection (Ravelry link), a celebration of summer from ten designers and five indie dyers. I hope you’ll join us for the make-along on Ravelry, which runs from June 1st to July 16th!

Simple lace: a love letter

I have a confession to make. Relatively simple lace made up of basic stitches is one of my favourite kinds of knitting! I love to look at complex lace as much as the next knitting-obsessed person, but I really enjoy the process of knitting simpler lace. It just flows off my needles! And you can do a lot with simple lace stitches, with a little inspiration.

I've designed a few scarves and shawls that fall into this category of deceptively-simple lace, most recently my Hextile Wrap:

Its basic elements are garter stitch with some areas of yarn-overs and k2togs, and once you get the gist of the pattern you really don't need to check the chart/instructions very often. The speediness of simple lace means you can see the shapes emerging quickly, which is really satisfying. I find it keeps me wanting to knit "just one more repeat"...

Two of my lace shawls which I think also hit this sweet spot of simple-but-satisfying are Folia Crescent (Ravelry link), which has a nice small easily-memorised lace repeat, and Silverwing, which has a closely-related lace pattern elongated into feathers.

Keeping to the bird theme, I have two more examples in my Tailfeather scarf and Kea shawl. Once again, one of these stitch patterns is a variation on the other. Simple stitches; endless possibilities!

These two designs aren't quite as straightforward, since their vertical ribs mean no 'rest' rows on the wrong side, and they also require the occasional double decrease stitch in addition to knit/purl/yo/k2tog/ssk. But they do share my favourite characteristic of simple geometric lace in that you can always tell what comes next, just by looking at your knitting.

I'll be casting on a new simple lace shawl tomorrow. :)

New pattern: Hextile Wrap

My latest adventure in lace is the Hextile Wrap, a long, versatile wrap with bold geometric patterning. The design gets its name from the tiling pattern of triangles and hexagons in simple lace mesh, and it's based on garter stitch for reversibility, ease, and cosiness.

Equally useful for cool spring or autumn evenings, this wrap has already come in handy! Last weekend Mum and Dad and I visited Napier to see my brother and his crew, and my sister-in-law Colleen modelled my Hextile Wrap on the beach like a pro. The sun went down just as we finished the last photo.

I designed the Hextile Wrap to make the most of two lovely skeins of sock yarn I've been saving - Miss Click Clack's Fenwick Street Flashmerino (made up of 85% extrafine merino and 15% nylon) in 'Melbourne Black'. The wrap's open mesh panels and bias-knit construction work together to produce a surprisingly large wrap from just two skeins.

The stitch pattern is fast, easy, and intuitive once you get the hang of the structure - the mesh is the simplest kind of lace (just yarn-overs and k2togs), and all wrong-side rows are plain knit rows. I found it a great project to accompany tv and podcasts.

Features:

• an all-over geometric pattern of mesh lace triangles

• intuitive and easy to knit

• knit on the bias from end to end

• easy to enlarge by adding extra repeats to the length and/or width

• requires two skeins of fingering-weight or sock yarn

• solid, semi-solid, or gradient-dyed yarn is ideal

• pattern includes full written instructions as well as charts.

Find out more about my Hextile Wrap pattern, including Ravelry and Payhip purchase options.