Sunday Morning Shawl - Live! (and a discount code)

The Sunday Morning Shawl is now live under the “Patterns” tab of this website and on Ravelry!

There are so many special things for me wrapped up in this design. The yarn was purchased with a dear friend at Black Mountain Yarn Shop in the Fall of 2019, before the pandemic, before so many things that I never could have dreamed. At the time, it was a huge splurge and the Woolfolk used here is so luxurious. I hadn’t started designing patterns when it was purchased but I had all of these ideas in my head for what these colors could be together and it was a kind of leap of faith to really invest in the dream of designing.

When I finally sat down to work on this project, I tried out a few different design ideas,. But this winter, I really just needed a project in my life that was incredibly cozy, incredibly simple, and soothing no matter what the day held. Its name comes from the Commodores song “Easy Like Sunday Morning” and I think that encapsulates it perfectly. I also love that, because of its generous size, it can look so different depending on how you drape it. More stripes! More color! Less color - a mishmash of the two.

I love to include one new skill that a knitter may not have tried in each pattern that I write, and in this pattern it is the applied i-cord edging which is knit on the shawl after it is complete. It adds such a nice, finished edge to it and really ties it all together. In this design, I did the edging in turquoise, but in the pattern it is written for color B (in this case, the tan/khaki) just to make sure you have enough yarn to complete it. (It would be SO sad to get halfway through and run out of yarn).

This month I am also, amazingly, celebrating my first year of work as a knitting designer. It has been a steep learning curve for me both personally and entering the “business-y” side of the craft world for the first time in over five years and I have a lot more to say about it, but for now I’ll just leave you with a celebratory discount code “WHATAYEAR” which will get you 50% off any patterns here on my website or on Ravelry, just enter at checkout.

Thank you for all of the love on this design and for my journey as a designer! I can’t wait for much more creativity, self-expression, and knitting love to come.

Sunday Morning Shawl coming 7/16

Hello! We are back from just the most magical vacation I could ever have imagined. It was so, very, incredibly hot. But nearly everything we did was so, so perfect. I will be sure to share more soon. For now, I wanted to pop in and share that the Sunday Morning shawl will be coming this Friday, 7/16. I wrote just a little bit about it on my IG today but this pattern has been the coziest, simplest thing I have knit all year this year and I really hope that if you are needing some comfort and quiet stitches, this one makes it on your needles wherever you find yourself this summer.

More details on Friday, but this design is knit in four colors of Woolfolk Tynd (two skeins of one color, and one each of three others). If you have the chance to knit with this yarn, I highly recommend it.

Looking forward to Friday <3

What's Old is New Again

If you are at all familiar with the Enneagram, it would surprise you, I think, very little to know that I am a solid 6. Sometimes I feel as though I have a 7 wing, sometimes a 5. but solidly, solidly a 6. The 6 is all about security, and preparation, and dealing with their anxiety in the best way they know how. I think that as a 6, I also have a quite strong propensity for nostalgia: of remembering former times in my life and, because I can look back on them and know them, feel like they are safe spaces. Who feels nostalgic for the year 2005?! Me, apparently. I have been reading old blog posts from Posie Gets Cozy (again), and thinking about the little boutiques that I would stop in and visit as a teenager, how much I loved monogrammed things. I’ve been going back to the last page of my Ravelry favorites and, in quick succession, finding myself purchasing someone’s stash of discontinued Debbie Bliss Chunky Tweed for a pattern that I have had saved for at least seven years in my queue. I have been listening to a lot of The Shins.

I find myself feeling very poetic about how things used to be which I have come to realize is a really dangerous and inaccurate space to live. We have come so far as a society, and we cannot go back, nor should we want to. We can’t glorify parts of the past without considering the world as a whole, and it is naive to think of the past as “better times” (better for who?). But even my recent yarn purchases have made me feel like it’s ok to remember when online crafts were a little more eclectic, and more things came in the mail, and the fanciest thing I knew to order at a coffee shop was a London Fog.

I think these feelings have also been influenced by our recent trip to Nashville. One of my dearest friends is having a baby any day now and B and I went for a visit for a few days to the place where we met, fell in love, went to college, and started our life together as a couple. You remember things differently, and you remember more, when you are in a place that you used to know so well. Oh, and our friends also introduced us to the Huji app, which makes everything you take a photo of look like it was from 1998. Amazing.

I’m not sure there’s really a point to this post other than just to say what kind of headspace I’ve been in recently, and how interestingly, it has made me so creatively inspired too. Between this mindset and my “lack of internet” breakthrough a couple of weeks ago, I have made incredible progress on two new designs, one of which I am going to be submitting for publication for sure, and the other we’ll see. But I’m really excited about both of them and for the inspiration that they’ve brought to my life, connecting my past and my present and sharing something absolutely cozy with you.

I have not forgotten about the Sunday Morning shawl, which I am hopeful will be on its way to being released in a few weeks. I’m also working out the kinks on my e-reader cover that I shared on IG last week and have had some interest in seeing written up as a pattern (this one will be free).

What happens when you get off the internet for 36 hours

Last Wednesday, we celebrated seven years of marriage, and this weekend we went on our first ever camping trip together. We have historically been huge fans of farm stays, having stayed in a converted Airstream, in cabins, in an 1800s farmhouse in Eastern NC, going to farm-to-table restaurants, but never have we fully committed to the great outdoors until now. (And, to no one’s surprise, this campsite was, you guessed it, on a farm.)

We set up camp after a normal person’s dinner time in the miraculous still-light evening that only comes this time of year during solstice when the world is bright at 8:30 PM and ate buffalo chicken sandwiches looking out over the most incredible pasture. We woke up and made coffee on a crooked little campfire and burned bagel sandwiches. We hammocked basically all day with a short break in town for lunch and texting our cat sitter. We napped. I slept terribly. We read, I knit. Our phones didn’t work at all - the entire weekend - except for our brief stop in town. We had downloaded music, and that was pretty much it. I knit and re-knit a sock using some hand-dyed yarn from Posie Gets Cozy that unfortunately for me and you is now sold out. I would absolutely love to make a sweater in this yarn.

I think that this may legitimately have been the first time in I don’t even know how long - five years? Ten years? Where I truly have not been on the internet at all for over 36 hours. Realizing this fact was extremely depressing and anxiety-provoking, but I think it’s true. I’ve never deleted Instagram off of my phone or taken a true, intentional break there, either since I downloaded it in 2012. Even when we have extensively gone to the mountains, our cabins always have WiFi. Being off the grid for even just a weekend was kind of a wild experience (no pun intended), and I can’t say that I am glad to be back quite yet. When I had no choice but to just be present, I suddenly felt so nostalgic for my years growing up when this was just my normal, every day reality. Sure, I was on the computer all of the time for school, or texting my friends on my pre-iPhone smart device thingy, but it made me realize just how caught up in it I am now in my life. We had some big talks about our dreams, and how we spend our time, and what we value, and there was no input or comparison from anyone else in the world to consider when we had those conversations. Is that pathetic? Sometimes I think I am too impressionable and social media just makes that so much worse. It kind of made me question why I make any of the choices that I do in my life: do I actually want and value that goal, or do I just follow a lot of people who want and value that goal? Do I actually want XYZ item in my life or am I just constantly getting ads for it on every social media platform I see? Am I actually stressed about big life decisions or am I just hearing a lot of ads on podcasts for Modern Fertility and Better Help?

Honestly, I’m not sure yet. But I know for a fact that getting off the internet and just knitting or just reading or just being feels like a whole new concept that I plan on doing a lot, a LOT more this summer. I’ve also been listening to music from back in high school on actual CDs (I know) and y’all, it has me all in my feelings.

In other, less philosophical news, I will be releasing a new shawl pattern SOON and I am so excited to share it with you. It’s so meditative and lovely and perfect for taking with you anywhere that adventure may call this season. More soon!

July, as it were

How are we doing today? Today it is July, next week it will be August. This time of year is hardest for me typically: I’ve experienced all the best that summer has to offer (cool water on a hot day, fresh tomatoes, fireflies, a getaway, a celebration or two) and my heart starts to wonder when the heat will subside and the cool relief of the fall will arrive. The days where the hottest it will get is 85 degrees are over and we are in heat indexes nearing 100 which makes it hard to feel good about doing anything out of doors.

And yet! There is gratitude in each day. I’m home after a week with family, the first week I’ve spent with them all since November, and it filled my heart so full. It was a lot of travel and way more levels of stress than any of us were thinking with the virus still rearing its ugly head in the areas where I was destined, but it was also 100% worth it. For a long time I think I expected to get into more of a rhythm with living far from home but honestly, each year is still a bit of a heartache. My nieces and nephew are the most special little people I know and photos are not the same as being with them. (How far away are the holidays now?)

The highlights of my week this week are the ten pounds of heirloom tomatoes that Nash insists on munching whenever he gets the chance that will turn into the best tomato sauce and my weekly bouquet from Bluebird Meadows Farm. I’ll get a photo soon, because everyone needs to know how amazing these flowers are. Having a pitcher of happiness in my dining room never meant so much to me as it does this year. I’d take celosia and zinnias and black-eyed susan over most things.

The Paeonia Shawl testing is also complete and will be launching this week! Check out my Instagram for more information and photos today. I’m so so excited to share this with you all. Wishing you joy (and air-conditioning) in the meantime.

Coming Soon: Paeonia Shawl

I took a break from posting last week in solidarity with amplifying Black voices in our community and focusing my feed on sharing resources for white folks interested in educating themselves on systemic oppression, police reform and the validity of protests. In the wake of no arrests still for the murder of Breonna Taylor, and hearing of how the families of former victims called the family of George Floyd saying, “Don’t expect much to change,” and the complete misuse of force across the country and straight from our president towards peaceful protestors, it really didn’t even seem like I should post about anything else for a long time.

I saw a post the other day that reminded me, however, that the work that we are in is a marathon, not a sprint. I continued to knit all last week after reading the morning paper, and while watching movies safe at home, and listening to podcasts. This was good, but just because I am back to talking about knitting today, know that the work is still very much ongoing with me and my community.

What was I knitting all last week? I was knitting what I’m calling the Paeonia Shawl, my first ever knit design. This idea has been rolling around in my mind and heart for years and was sparked into being the first time I saw this yarn in my local yarn store a few months ago. In the wake of those who are putting their actual lives on the line and demonstrating incredible courage in the world, it seems so trite and trivial to call the work of this design as an act of hope or belief in moving past fear, but in me for many ways it was and it has been. I am so excited to share this design with you, reader, and the world.

From my call for testers on IG this morning I think I have all of the folks that I need to test this design, but be on the lookout for the official pattern’s release next month and for more information on this design the closer we get. Thank you to everyone who has responded to this design in such a positive way and for all of the love I’ve felt today, it truly means the world to me.

From My Stash: Icelandic Minis

Today is the one year anniversary of my trip to Iceland. It’s hard to believe that it has already been a year since I packed my oversized camping backpack, boarded a flight, and landed in a country where the sun doesn’t set until 11 PM and where 45 degrees in May is considered balmy. Where nearly all of the vegetables are imported and where cities feel like they haven’t aged in years.

That trip was big for me for so many reasons, but a highlight that I still treasure the most while traveling with my group around the western coast was the afternoon we spent learning about Icelandic traditions of natural dyeing with Gudrun Bjarnadottir. (You can read all about that day and the incredible people we met here.) I got a chance to purchase these mini skeins from a local wool cooperative outside of Reykjavik, naturally dyed by local artisans and made out of, of course, single ply Icelandic wool. Unfortunately, these skeins can’t be found online, but you can find naturally dyed Icelandic wool in full skeins at Gudrun’s Etsy store, or by searching for Hespa yarn, and a very similar single-ply base in the wool called Einband.

I still remember SO VIVIDLY standing in that co-op agonizing over which of these skeins to bring home because each of the dozens of shades on display was so lovely and I had such a hard time choosing. I have a lot of dreams for what I would like for these skeins to be but even now, a year later, I am perfectly content admiring them and making as careful of a decision for what they will be as I was in choosing them in the first place. Their colors haven’t faded even a bit from their original beauty and I know that they will be skeins or finished pieces that I will share with my loved ones for many years to come.

New Favorites; Stone Knits Colorwork Socks

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I love knitting socks for so many reasons. They are often made in fingering weight (my favorite), they are portable, they are the ultimate example of custom fitting a garment to your unique body, they are cozy, and they are endless opportunities for inspiration and just plain fun. I will knit a pair of socks I would never make a sweater out of, either because the pattern or color is really busy or bright, or if I’m not sure how it would fit. They also make great gifts, because the recipient will always be endlessly impressed with how you made those socks?!

I discovered Stone Knits within the past year, and she makes some truly amazing colorwork socks. I haven’t actually dove into much colorwork in my socks beyond the world of contrast heels and toes, but I am very excited to get into it. I find that colorwork stays a bit tighter because of the floats that you carry behind the knitting, and even the best knit socks have a tendency to stretch a little from their perfect fit between washings. I imagine it is also a great way to try out different kinds of colorwork and color combinations before committing to something similar in a larger garment. Her designs are whimsical and fresh and always really fun to look at in my Ravelry favorites. Highly recommend if you’re looking for something extra botanical for your feet this summer.