Behind The Garden Wall

Behind The Garden Wall is the 10th and final knit to appear in Lit Knits. It is based on The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which was published in 1911.

These socks are knit top-down and have a dutch heel. The legs of the socks both feature the ivy that hides the door to the secret garden. And just as Mary Lennox finds a key hidden in the earth, these socks have a key hidden on the bottom of one of the feet.

Getting a model proved to be challenge. It took me quite some time to find a model who looked young without being too childish. I was actually getting a little worried about finding someone. But one day, while talking to a friend, I looked down and noticed that her feet looked close to my size. (I typically make all sock samples my size so that if it comes down to it, I can model the socks.) Actually, I stared at her feet. It doesn't matter if you are good friends with someone. No one thinks it is normal if you stare at their feet.  I explained that I was looking for a sock model. She let me know that she was available the following Tuesday.

One of my favorite shots that didn't make it into the book

Where we were shooting was by a busy road, which I mentioned in a previous post. To get some of the shots I needed, I had to stand in the road. So I would run into the road, focus, take a picture, and run back. Mum and my model held their positions all though this. Everyone was so sore by the end. Don't believe me? Try holding the pose below for 15 minutes. Feel the burn.

Luckily for my model, I left the easy "sitting" pictures for the end. Here is what the set up looked like.

And here is the resulting picture.

All in all, it was a great day.

Motoring Madness

Motoring Madness is the 9th pattern to appear in Lit Knits. The fingerless mitts are based on Kenneth Grahame's book Wind In The Willows, which was published in 1908.

After reading the book, I knew that the pattern just had to be based on Mr. Toad. There are many characters that appear in the book, but in my opinion, Mr. Toad is the most memorable. I decided that Toad would need driving gloves, which is why the project is fingerless mitts.

Mr. Toad is known to be a reckless driver, so the pattern is meant to look like Mr. Toad has erratically driven over the mitts. Twisted stitches help give the car tracks strong definition. There is a missing rib in the top and bottom ribbing on the mitts so that the tracks remain uninterrupted.

I actually knit this pattern twice. After finishing the first pair and putting them on, I noticed despite the pattern being centered on the mitt, once the mitts were on, the pattern curved towards the thumb. To correct the look of the pattern when the mitts are worn, the pattern is knit slightly off-center on the top of the mitt.

The neatest thing about this shoot was that about 10 minutes before the we started taking pictures, the model and I went to the thrift store and found the brown shirt and jacket that he is wearing. I kid you not. We couldn't have found a better outfit to match the gloves, book, and suitcase.

This shoot was done a few hours after the Tomfoolery shoot and it remained a blistering 108°F/ 42°C. My model deserves an award. Even though he was sweating it out for an hour as we took pictures, you'd never know it. It's hard to believe it was as hot as it was because in the pictures, the model made the day look enjoyable. (It wasn't. It really, really wasn't.)

In the book, whenever Mr. Toad doesn't have a car, he just pretends that he is driving. I knew that one of the shots I had to get was to have my model pretending to drive, just like Mr. Toad. The first few shots looked too posed, so I said, "Mr. Toad committed grand theft auto. You need to pretend like you are stealing a car!"

Here's Mr. Toad gunning it

The next shot was exactly what I had envisioned.

Behind The Curtain

Even though this blog has been a little quiet lately, things have been humming behind the scenes. On Wednesday I met with a printer and talked about paper options for my book. I'm pretty excited about working with this printer since they are located only an hour from where I live, uses soy-based zero-VOC ink, and paper that uses PCW (post consumer waste).
Today was finance day. So the majority of financial things that needed to be put in place for the book are ready to go. The book has also been sent off to my copy editor. So that is all the work you guys can't see. But what you can see is the first phase of my website update. Behold: pattern pages now have a zoom feature! Go ahead: visit the pattern pages and try it out.

Speaking of pattern pages, the pattern index page has also been updated. There is now a nifty side navigation tool that takes you to each category. And now there are some placeholders for future patterns, namely The Book.

Now that the first update is done, I'm working on putting together the update with all the patterns in The Book. That's right. All going well, we are roughly 2 weeks from launching The Book. The current plan is that the ebook portion will be launched alongside a preorder for the print book. Once the preorder is over, we will print the books and start shipping!