Knititude

Road trip!

One disadvantage of having spent most of the last three years abroad is that I rarely have had the chance to get together with other knitwear designers.  So when Connie Chang Chinchio mentioned that she was heading to the Northampton/Amherst, MA area to meet up with some other designers, I jumped at the chance to tag along!  The timing was perfect:  not only was my son's soccer team (which I am helping to coach) off for the weekend, and my husband available to hold down the fort in my absence, but the fall foliage was approaching its peak.  (Cape Cod, where we now spend most of our time, is lovely in many ways, but it is definitely lacking in the fall color department).

I was able to find a room at the Allen House Inn in Amherst.  This Inn deserves a photo for its exuberant decor; if William Morris and Liberty of London (and stuffed peacocks) are to your taste, you'll love this place!  (I found the individual wallcoverings stunning, but the combination of all of them a bit much.)

After I checked in, Connie and fellow designers Gudrun Johnston andYsolda Teague came and picked me up, and we all went out for dinner at the Fresh Side Cafe-- a casual, BYOB Asian fusion restaurant in Amherst (my Pad Thai was great.)  There was a lot of shoptalk, as you can imagine, but we covered a lot of other topics too, and I had a great time.  The next morning, we met at the Black Sheep Deli in Amherst for beakfast, where I got the waitress to take a photo of the four of us. 

Then we headed to WEBS-- of course I couldn't visit the Pioneer Valley without seeing the LYS version of my favorite online yarn store!  It didn't disappoint-- I was so taken with the seemingly endless aisles of yarn that it took me a few moments to notice the Vogue Knitting Fall 2009 issue at the front desk, with a sample of my Vine & Leaf Beret right next to it!  Connie then spotted a sample of her Henley Perfected, so we were both happy.

Ysolda was also taken by the yarn-- almost literally, as she sank into the aisle as if into quicksand...well, it does kind of look like that in the picture, doesn't it?!

In the end, I got away relatively unscathed, purchasing only a couple of skeins of Dream in Color Classy, and one of Madelinetosh Tosh Lace.   

On my way home, I passed through Belchertown, where I took this photo.  I love fall in New England.

 

Brain Coral

 

I was thrilled when Tanis Gray emailed me two months ago, and told me that my Vine and Leaf Beret would be on the cover of the fall Vogue Knitting.  

I was actually asked by Tanis to submit ideas for hat patterns for this issue, and since my favorite part of creating hat patterns is working out the crown decreases so they flow from the stitch pattern, I immediately went to my stitch dictionaries and searched for patterns that I thought would adapt nicely to decreasing rapidly-- usually for the flat part of a beret, the decreases work out to approximately 7 or 8 stitches decreased in every round (or something equivalent, i.e. twice as many stitches decreased every other round).  Once again, one of my Japanese stitch dictionaries provided the inspiration; when I saw the stitch pattern I adapted for the Vine & Leaf Beret, I immediately thought of rapidly decreasing every other rep down to a single stitch, and then following with the other reps.  This is another fun knit, and quick!  I highly recommend it.

(If it was up to me, I probably wouldn't have chosen this yarn color.  Having said that, I do like the finished product-- but given the rosy color, the groovy texture, and the fact that it sits on your head, I DEFINITELY would have named this pattern "Brain Coral".)