Beyond The Pines and Equatorial Nights

Here we are on the eve of Stitches West 2014, and I'm pleased to announce that I have not one, but two new designs out. First is Beyond The Pines, a shawl inspired by the way light flits along the tops of the trees in the mountains during a sunset.

This top-down shawl is designed in order to use every last bit of yarn. The striped section can be repeated as many times as desired before working the final solid section. It's available on ravelry and bear-ears.com. Also, the sample will be at the Spincycle booth (841).

The second design is a follow up in the star series: Equatorial Nights. This infinity scarf features all the constellations along the celestial equator.

Equatorial Nights can also be found on ravelry and bear-ears.com. This sample will be at Canon Hand Dyes booth (847).

If anyone happens to be going to Stitches West this year, I'll be there every day, so do stop me to say hi. On Friday the 21st, I'll be doing a signing for Lit Knits from 11:30AM-12:30PM at the Purlescence booth. (804,903). Hope to see you all out there.

Blocking With Nemo

I finished up knitting my Deep Sea Wanderer a few days ago, but I didn't get to blocking it until just yesterday. It's amazing what a good blocking can do to a project. Stitches relax and the project becomes what it was meant to be. To prove it, here is a blocked and unblocked Deep Sea Wanderer. 

There are different blocking methods for different projects. But for this one, I just soaked it in the sink, pushed the water back out, then lay it outside. Sometimes I'll pin the project, but for this one I just smoothed out the infinity scarf with my hands. I've found that I'll often end up with a crease in my projects. What I do to prevent it is to rotate the project periodically while it is drying. A quarter to half turn will do it.

Tada! A finished infinity scarf. It's hard to believe that the first picture in this post is of the same two scarves.

I just have to wait for it to get cold enough to wear it. 

Deep Sea Wanderer

Deep Sea Wanderer is an infinity scarf based on Jules Verne's book, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, published in 1870. This is the third pattern to appear in Lit Knits. The name of the pattern refers to both Captain Nemo and his ship, the Nautilus.

This was the very first photo taken during the shoot. 

The novel's original language is French, so the title was originally 20000 Lieues Sous Les Mers, which ought to have been translated to 20,000 Leagues Under The Seas. That missing "s" has led many English speakers to believe that in the story, Captain Nemo's submarine, the Nautilus, travels 20,000 leagues straight down. In the book they actually travel a distance of 20,000 leagues, visiting all the different seas.

The scarf is meant to look like a view through the porthole of the Nautilus. The top and bottom have a texture that resembles the rivets around the porthole and the center portion of the scarf is the seaweed that can be seen when looking through the glass.

During part of the shoot, I handed over the sextant. Captain Nemo has a sextant, and I was lucky to borrow one from a friend. (I hadn't expected to learn how to use a sextant for a book of knitting patterns. But I couldn't have the captain holding the sextant upside down, now could I?) The model had a good time playing with it.

One of the best lines of the day was when we were trying to get a certain pose. My lighting assistant yelled out "Look more captain-y."

And so he did.