Deco City Revisited

My Deco City shawl pattern, originally published in Pom Pom Quarterly's gorgeous Winter 2015 issue, is now available as a single pattern download on Ravelry. There is one change to the new version of the pattern: this time it includes charts as well as the written instructions. As a chart-lover, I like to include them whenever I can! You can read all about the shawl and its inspiration in my post from last November: New pattern: Deco City.

Before I sent my shawl off to Pom Pom, we did a little photoshoot of our own in Melbourne's St Kilda, which has some interesting Art Deco buildings including the Palais Theatre. It was incredibly windy, so we used the wind to our advantage...

As you can imagine, it takes a lot of shots to get a shawl to look good in the wind, without having the lace design hidden or all of my hair in my face. :)

We also found this amazing architectural confection on the little lawn outside Luna Park:

Find out more about my Deco City pattern, including Ravelry and Payhip purchase options. You can also find the whole Winter 2015 issue on Ravelry and Pom Pom Quarterly's website.

New pattern: Amarilli

I have something especially pretty to share with you today! This floaty, lacy shawl is Amarilli, part of the Wool People 10 collection and my second design published in collaboration with Brooklyn Tweed.

You can see the whole collection in the beautiful Lookbook. As well as a few more lace scarves and shawls, there are some very cosy-looking cabled jerseys (I especially love Marylebone).

Below are a couple of backyard photos of Amarilli, which we took late last year before sending it off to Brooklyn Tweed. I've been keeping this one a secret for quite a while!

Amarilli is knit in Brooklyn Tweed's new laceweight yarn, Plains. It's a laceweight with a lot of character and springiness, which gives a slightly rustic feel to the shawl. I used the colour 'Ranier', a calm blue-grey-with-a-hint-of-green that reminds me of lichen.

My starting point for this design was a 'bell lace' pattern from one of Barbara Walker's stitch dictionaries. I charted it out, tweaked it to fit a triangular shape, and added a border in keeping with the lace pattern. The design difficulty was in making the edges and border of the shape work with the stitch pattern - it took me a while to find a tidy and elegant solution!

Features:

  • all-over floral lace pattern which becomes nicely intuitive

  • knit and purl stitches only on wrong-side rows

  • top-down triangular construction with garter-tab cast on

  • requires 2 skeins of Plains by Brooklyn Tweed (or 750yds of laceweight yarn)

  • suitable for solid or semi-solid colourways

  • one size: 60" wingspan, 30" along spine

  • both charted and written instructions.

I named this shawl Amarilli because the lace motifs look like flowering bulbs - think amaryllis, lily, or crocus - but I also had a famous early Baroque song in mind, 'Amarilli, mia bella' by Giulio Caccini (published in Le Nuove Musiche, 1602). It's a very common song for young sopranos to learn - if you know someone who has had formal singing lessons, chances are they know it!

You can hear the song here:

And here is a different take on it, a much more decorated version published by Johann Nauwach in 1623:

You can purchase the pattern for the Amarilli shawl from Ravelry, or from the Brooklyn Tweed website.

New pattern: Liquid Honey

So happy I can finally share this with all of you! Liquid Honey is my second pattern to be published in Knitty, and it's one I'm super proud of.

And that's not all... my face is on the cover of the Spring + Summer issue! I've been making 'cover girl' jokes all day, it's been quite surreal... :)

I love yellow, and I love knitting lace, and I'm totally fascinated by bees. Put it all together, and you get a sunny yellow shawl inspired by honeycomb dripping with honey. I thought its cheeriness would make it a great fit for Knitty, and a nice gift for my fellow knitters.

Features:

  • honeycomb lace with a zigzagging lace border

  • top-down triangular construction with garter-tab cast on

  • no special stitches: just knit, purl, single and double yarn-overs, k2tog, ssk

  • a decorative picot bind off

  • requires 1.5 skeins of Malabrigo Lace (700yds of laceweight yarn)

  • suitable for solid or semi-solid colourways

  • one size: 63" wingspan, 29" along spine

  • both charted and written instructions.

The main part of the shawl is very repetitive and intuitive to knit, perfect for an on-the-go or tv-knitting project. The edging requires a little more attention, and I do recommend using needles with nice sharp points, for example Addi Lace needles. They kept me sane!

Shout out to my best photographer Dad for doing the photoshoot with me, and finding all the summery-looking flowers in the garden and around the town. And another shout out to Mum & Dad's 'Fortune' plum tree for co-starring in the photos! Since then, the plums have ripened and been turned into a couple of dozen jars of sauces and jams. Go tree.

The pattern is available for free here at Knitty.com. Its Ravelry page is here.

You can also read my post from last September on the story of Knitty and me.

The Gift-A-Long is here!

The annual Indie Design Gift-A-Long has begun! Come and join us in the Ravelry group for a knitting/crocheting party, and get some handmade gifts sorted. To kick things off, the participating designers (all 335 of us) are having a 25%-off sale on some of our designs. The sale lasts until Friday 27th of November, but the Gift-A-Long runs until the end of the year with games and prizes to be won.

My on-sale patterns are collected in a Ravelry bundle here!

For my first Gift-A-Long post, I'd like to highlight a few patterns by fellow Downunder designers. I can vouch for the Scott Base Socks as an excellent and practical sock pattern, as I made a pair for myself last year. :)

The following beauties are all by NZ or Australian designers, and all are in the 25%-off sale this week. Click the links (all to Ravelry pattern pages) to see more.

New pattern: Deco City

I'm back in Melbourne, and hiding indoors from the heat! A mini-heatwave has arrived to welcome me back. It always takes me a little while to readjust to the time difference too, even though it's only two hours.

One good thing about being back from holiday (other than hanging out with Willie and Ju again) is finally getting my hands on Pom Pom Quarterly's Winter issue and seeing my name in print for the first time as a designer. It's a pretty amazing feeling!

My shawl is called 'Deco City' after New Zealand's capital of Art Deco, Napier. My newly-wed brother lives there with his family, and it's a cool place to visit! I particularly love the art gallery by the waterfront:

Photo by Dad

Deco City is a crescent-shaped shawl with an all-over lace pattern inspired by Art Deco design. It's quite simple to knit, with purled ‘rest’ rows on every wrong-side row and stitch markers to indicate where the middle section begins and ends.

Features:

  • curved crescent shape with elegant drape

  • all-over geometric lace pattern

  • top-down construction, beginning with a garter tab cast-on

  • two sizes, photos show larger size

  • requires 318 - 477 yards of sport-weight yarn

  • suitable for solid or semi-solid colourways

  • written pattern only (for greater simplicity in this case)

The lovely deep blue yarn I used is Road to China Light from The Fibre Company, a very soft blend of baby alpaca, silk, cashmere, and camel. I used three skeins for the larger size, but for the smaller you only need two.

Photo by Pom Pom Quarterly

You can buy a digital copy of the magazine (and see all the other designs!) on Ravelry or on Pom Pom Quarterly's site, and you can buy a print copy directly from Pom Pom or from their retailers.