October, 2009 November 2009 January, 2010 Sarabande in Color November 20th, 2009 Lately I've been having fun photoshopping garments to see how they'd look in all sorts of colors. I did it recently with Cecily's Ariosa dress in one of the CEY Web-Letters, and found that it's relatively easy to do. I've been wondering what would Sarabande look like in different colors, so here are a few different colors the main color of Sarabande. The contrast color for the fair isle band wasn't easy to change since it's such a dark color—it looked really obviously photoshopped. So I choose not to play with that color.       Comment Sarabande November 18th, 2009 Twist Collective's winter 2009 issue is now live, and in it you'll find one of my designs, Sarabande, as well as an elegantly simple design, Mystere, by Cecily Glowik MacDonald, among many beautiful designs by talented designers. When Sarabande was first born there were many different visions for how it might look. I knew there would be Stockinette Stitch for the majority of the body and sleves, and I wanted a fair isle band around the lower part of the yoke, but I was indecisive about using bobbles or eyelets, or garter or seed stitch. The first swatch I had made was in a skin-tone color and had bobbles… After discussing with my friends what the skin-tone bobbles looked like, that swatch promptly was frogged, and reknit to show eyelets. I liked it better than its indecent sibling, but the fair isle strands are visible through the eyelet holes, which I wasn't entirely fond of… I used seed stitch to create a subtle band below the fair isle band. I liked how soft and discrete the seed stitch made this band appear, but I was unsure how it would look for the entire yoke. I swatched the bobbles again—this time in a different color, and I tried a garter stitch band, for a more bold statement. I liked both the garter stitch and the seed stitch, each for their own reasons. I decided to submit both versions to Twist Collective, and let them decide. Kate Gilbert (Twist Collective's editor) choose to go bold, with the garter stitch and contrasting blue and green colors. I'm really happy with the way the finished sweater came out. You can't see them in many of the photos, but there are lovely darts gracing both the front and back of the sweater—used to shape the waist and create subtle, elegant vertical lines. That's one of my favorite features. Click here to see more photos. Comment Fraternal Socks November 17th, 2009 I've been knitting again, and it feels so good. Garter stitch and tweed are some of my favorite things at the moment, but I've also rekindled my love of sock knitting. A few weeks ago, in the elevator on my way into work, I met an artist who was wearing some fabulous socks. They were made to look the same, using the same colors, but the colors were in different places on each sock. The concept fascinated me, so I whipped up a little chart with a realtively simple fair isle pattern, then went searching through the Hub Mills Store sock yarns for 4 suitable colors to match my chart. It was a more difficult challenge than I had anticipated. The blues and green tones in my chart were just not available, so I had to get a little creative. There was a nice selection of Shibui Sock yarn and I was very unsure of how the 4 colors I choose would look knitted together—especially since 2 of them were multi-colored. Holding the hanks beside each other I could tell that I loved the way they blended and stood out from one another. The light multi had tones of both the blue and orange in it, and the dark multi had some blue tones, so it seemed as though they might work. Hey, it's not like I'd be loosing much if it didn't. I'd have some pretty cool sock yarn to play with in another design. Needless to say, as you can see above, the color combos worked out beautifully. And I'm really satisfied with how similar and different they are. This pattern is high on my priority list, so as soon as I have the opportunity, this pattern will be available. Comment