it’s a real cornucopia today, as i have had a couple of days of very distracted knitting. that is, with not much time on my hands, i picked up this thing or that, and worked just a little bit, then headed off to do something completely unrelated.
except for spinning—i actually sat down two nights in a row and put in a couple of hours each time to get this spun up and plied
spunky eclectic merino/silk in midnight run colorway. i skeined it and washed it up last night, so it’s still a tad damp in this photo, and hasn’t acieved its full poofiness yet. i have about 432 yards of a sport weight-ish yarn here.
i split the roving into 2 lengths, and split each length into 4 strips, which i then spun onto 2 separate bobbins. i mixed the strips randomly, and for one bobbin, i turned the strips around make the colors feed on in the opposite direction. it’s still somewhat stripey, but very mixed.
the colors are different than anything i’ve spun in a while and they excite me. i think this is almost certain to become something rippled. just an idea, but it won’t go away.
and of course, you didn’t really think i would let those ragg sox lie around and moulder, did you?
done. i’m so happy to have these off the needles i could cry. it’s getting too warm to have heavy socks in my hands—smooth, cool yarns feel better now. these have a nice, loose, slipper-sock feeling. great to wear with boots (as in herman survivors, or doc martens)
one of the reasons my knitting has been distracted is that we have been working in the yard some. we went to get some of our plants, and i filled the concrete pots that are here and there in the yard.
i adore calladiums and coleus. it’s the weird coloring i am attracted to. just can’t get enough of it. david made these concrete planters a few years ago and they are perfect for filling with these shade plants. and we have plenty of shade.
i found some begonia rex i wasn’t familiar with (ha! like i’m actually enough of a gardner to be “familiar with” what’s out there . . .)
they look hand painted—how could i resist?
we got the vegetable plants too, but i didn’t get those into the ground yet—maybe tomorrow.
speaking of nature and the outdoors, i started treeScum 2 because this is another pair i would like to be finished ASAP
is it my imagination, or did the first one seem to take forever?? i really hope that was just a case of first sock syndorme and that this one just flies off the needles. where are those sock-knitting fairies when i need them??
and then i got started on a new one. i’ve had this idea for a while. i saw the stitch in a book and thought if i knit that into a top-down sock, it will be wrong-side-up in the fabric, and then it will look like golf tees.
and, if you’re not into golf or top-down socks, when you work the sock in the other direction, you get little eiffel towers
now in this photo it is just getting established, but i think it’s going to work. i know it looks like ice-cream cones here, but when you spread the fabric out (or put it on your leg), it looks like golf tees.
not a ra-ra crazy-for-golf sock. that would not really be my style, nor would it fit into the manLace series. but this, i think, does. but then, i’m not a golfer . . .
tomorrow, i think we’ll have some lace knitting; i’m not sure. the days have been flying by, and even though i have been designing like crazy, i don’t seem to have much to show for it.
yesterday, i sent my first-EVER submission off to a magazine. i’ve not done it before because i didn’t have much confidence going up against “famous” people; i just cringe at the thought of people laughing at my work (and i find secret knitting extremely difficult).
but, i realized that was sounding rather paranoid and presumptuous, even to myself
i mean, if a piece doesn’t get accepted, it’s fine—i can then have it back just for us to play with here.
still, i was shaking when i handed the envelope to the mail carrier. maybe other people do this kind of thing easily, but for me, it’s much harder. but i did it now, so that’s water under the bridge.
the thing is, this is the month of getting ready for submissions. i have one or two more to get out, and they will take a time and knitting that i can’t share on the blog. just so you know.
ok, i’ll stop talking about that now. let’s look at another nature picture
this weekend i am going on a trip to new york state, leaving friday. actually i’m tagging along with a friend who is going to a conference on harp tuning (i am NOT making that up) in the catskills. i will continue on to albany to spend mother’s day weekend with my mom. and i’m also going to be picking up a very special surprise or two . . . as always, i just wish this trip was longer so that i could visit friends. i must make time to do a special trip JUST for that soon.
so, i am planning on posting tomorrw, but it’s possible that i just will not be able to get to it. becasue, of course, i have not even given a thought to packing or getting ready in any way (like loading a few books onto the iP*d for one—hey, good sounds before clean underwear, i always say . . .). and i haven’t organized which knitting i am taking either, which is what makes me most nervous of all.
52 thoughts on “lots of little bits of knits”
Ooh, I’m a sucker for some coleus. Agreed – it’s the unusual colors that get me. Ragg socks look so cozy! Had to laugh at the golf tees, but you’re right – that’s what it looks like when knit that direction!
Anne, your designs are gorgeous! You shouldn’t be so nervous, because so very many people would love to see your things in print, Im’ sure; but as you say, if it’s not accepted, then we get to see it here!
I wish I knew sooner that you were headed this way! We could have made arrangements for meeting the upstate NY knitters and a well planned “fiber tour” of the area.
Congrats on getting a submission out! I have the same feeling when submitting my artwork for a gallery show, whilst everyone in my life says things like Of course they’ll pick yours, how could they not” and things like that, the truth is it is just plain scary to put yourself out there like that, whether I get picked or rejected is less the issue (for me anyway)it’s getting myself together to do the submission! So, long comment, all to say, Congratulations on the Brave New World you create for yourself…
I love, love, love that yarn you spun! Those colors are amazing, and the texture looks marvelous! I can almost feel it running through my fingers. (Your coleus and caladiums are beautiful, too. I am nurturning a bed of coleus and ferns with an elephant ear centerpiece. That is also a great combination, if I can get it to take off.)
brave woman – submissions are a hard thing – I’m not sure I could take the rejection if it happened.. 🙂 the spinning is so pretty – my two faves together – brown and blue!
I love those rag socks!
I wish you best of luck with your submissions and a very good trip to see your Mom.
I’m sure you’ll get accepted, after all I see your shawls being knit everywhere, how could they have missed that!
lovely plants!
I am so glad to see the rag socks in all their glory, I was worried there for a second!
The calladiums, um calladia, are fabulous!
Your patterns are wonderful. Whether they are the right thing for a particular mag’s editorial goal for a particular issue or not really isn’t an accurate reflection of your talent. All the same, Best of Luck! And have a great trip!
It’s not that I didn’t believe you, but I have to admit that I googled the harp tuning conference. You are absolutely right!
Your spinning is beautiful, thanks for sharing.
Nice sock patterns! Makes me want to design my own socks 😉
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the magazine buys your submission! They’d be, well, not very clever if they didn’t.
Nice plants, too! I like them because of their color and because of their velvety leaves. Plus, they’re always colored, not only when they have blossoms.
Lovely pics in this post! A real visual treat :~) I’m still mourning my coleus that died in a freakishly late frost.
Your socks are lovely, and the spinning is enviable. My poor drop spindle hasn’t been touched in a year. Gotta practice. Congrats on the submission – that’s an accomplishment in itself!
Good for you for putting in a submission! I can totally understand your nervousness, but I think you’ve got a really good outlook on it. I don’t know if this helps or makes it worse, but to me, you *are* in the same ranks as the “famous” people! I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way, too. This is meant as support and encouragement, not pressure! Also…I see both ice cream cones and golf tees — very cute and summery! 🙂
You are one very productive woman! I am really loving the design of the newest sock….VERY nice pattern!
Kudo’s to you for submitting your pattern. I completely understand your nerves, but you truly are a talented designer. Good luck :-)!
I am so completely in love with that skein you spun, I can’t put it into words. Wow!
The yarn at the top of your post is absolutely gorgeous! I can’t wait till I am at the point at which I can say I sat down for a couple hours here and there and Voila! A gorgeous skein of yarn! I have a couple new things to spin so I’ll be getting around to that…hopefully this week.
Some perspective: In my world, you ARE one of the famous designers. Not being published is not the same as not being famous. You are a stah, dahling.
Enjoy your trip and your visit with your mom. I will keep you in my thoughts as I know this could be a difficult day for your mom (and the rest of your family.)
Congrats on working up the courage to put down the obstacles you had built up for yourself… I hope your first submission to a magazine receives the attention it deserves!
I’ll say it one last time, now that they are done: I loooove your pink ragg socks!
Before you mentioned little Eiffel towers, I was already seeing little Christmas trees in your inverted golf tees…
You’re silly. You get so much knitting done on a regular basis and then you wonder why it takes a long time to finish a sock. 🙂 And there’s the magazine subscription silliness.
You know, it sounds a lot like the kind of silliness I do around my knitting. Hmmm… Go figure. Is that why I hang around here?
I love the idea of man-lace. I wish you would have a new tag ‘man-lace’ so I could see all of them at once. I would LOVE to knit some man-lace for the hubby!
Ok, I have to ask, if my memory serves me, the ragg sox were knit from the top down, and I love the way the toe is finshed – I abhore the squared off toe look, so how did you finish them? I know you are busy packing today so a lesson on this toe-technique at a later date would be appreciated. Your spun fiber is beautiful. I too am a spinner. Have a wonderful weekend with your mom. Happy Mother’s Day to her, from us all.
Chloe
Oh, I’m so happy that you took the plunge–it would be SO exciting to see your name in print! 🙂
And congrats on the finished socks! 🙂 You’ll be so glad you have them when the next chilly, wet day comes around.
Gee Anne, I think of YOU as someone famous. Your patterns are awesome! I figured you were already published somewhere I just didn’t know about yet! Will keep my fingers crossed for you – you certainly have the gift.
Blessings,
Susan
It’s my understanding that the big commercial knitting magazines seldom publish designs that they haven’t helped to develop. That is, they announce a theme, colors, yarns, and ask designers to produce garment designs that are then tweaked by the editors before finally being selected for publication. (This I learned from a class at Stitches West a few years ago, so the information may be out of date.) However, if someone new submits a design that they like, they may invite the person to contribute to a future issue.
In any event, you shouldn’t fear, or even be upset by a rejection. Successful freelancers, even after becoming established, get a lot of rejections. Whether an editor accepts a publishable submission depends almost totally on current needs, including whether something similar was recently published or is about to be published.
As a professional editor/writer (at one time in trade books, currently in legal publications), I can assure you that no one will be laughing at anything you submit. Your patterns and photographs are totally professional, and very high quality.
(And please forgive me if you know all of this already.)
O Anne, you shouldn’t be so harsh on yourself !
Your work is amazing ! But I understand how you feel though. AndI am sure they will love whatever your submission is !
What lovely flowers/plants. I have a ton waiting for me to put them in the ground.
Look at all the sock you have going. I don’t think that I could remember where I was on each one. 😉
Weather around here, with snow above 400m this morning(just above our farm)doesn’t let us plant anything yet- we are in much more need of raggsocks-LOL!
Congratulations! It all gets much easier from here, honest. And I love your caladiums–they’re way more interesting to look at than our “man-eating plant,” as my kids have always called our giant elephant ear.
Congratulations on your mag submission! One of the reasons I enjoy reading your blog is that you are so wonderfully inventive with your knitting. I admire how you can take a pattern and craft something really stunning out of it. I hope this is the start of an exciting new adventure for you! All best.
No one would ever laugh at your designs. They are tastefully modern, elegant and timeless. You go, girl!
Well, you are sort of famous! To me anyway.
Good for you for taking that step!
The plants are beautiful. We’re just getting our Spring buds here (Maine). Tulips, Forcythia, Daffodils, yep, just now busting out.
I, too, love the rag socks! I can’t wait to see what you have to show us tomorrow! Don’t worry about your submission, it’s a done deal.
Where to start?
Well, the Spunky Eclectic looks so great spun up, and I know why you’re thinking ripples . . . because it looks kind of like the ocean.
Oh, the calladium and coleus – sigh. Still too chilly for that here.
On the pattern submission – I thought you already were famous? For you, I hope they accept it. For us, I hope they don’t (because we’ll see it sooner then).
There’s something else that golf tee sock reminds me of, but I just can’t place it – maybe when it’s further along.
Enjoy your trip!
And Tree Scum 2 gets its own note:
Lovely, just lovely.
Knitting and gardening go so well together.
Hi I grew that begonia last year and kept it alive over the winter. They are beautiful (bought another this year) Did you notice that the underside of the leaf is a beautiful green? It’s really showy as it gets bigger!! Enjoy it Donna
The Tulip Festival is this weekend in Albany. Are you from there? I’m an Albany girl who now lives in NYC. But we still have family in the area. Enjoy!
I will totally need to test knit the golf tees. My man is insane about golf. I’d love to knit him a pair of golf tee socks — in the summer it might even qualify as man-lace…
Finally, the ragg socks! They look delicious (PMS week – I’ll eat anything).
I got a chuckle out of the golf tee socks. I don’t like golf, but I think little Eiffel Towers would be cute! That’s a LOT of purling.
Your yarn is gorgeous! I love the ragg socks. Yes, the first pond scum sock seemed to take forever. I’d thought that somehow I’d missed you finishing the first one, and that you’d been working on the second for some time now. Maybe it’s the color, but they look more like those good, crunchy sugar cones to me than golf tees.
Caladium and coleus have always been two of my favorites as well.
Congratulations on sumbitting your first pattern! Hey, even Lily Chin was unknown once… 😉
If they know good stuff at the magazine, you shouldn’t worry, because if they have any taste at all they’ll love your designs just like we do!
Love the rag socks, they just look comfy and warm and cosy. And as for the other socks I’ll try and convince my own sock fairy to fly over to you for a couple of days.;-) But please send her back after use!
Good luck on the submission. Your designs are so lovely, and you write about them so well, that I can’t imagine you’ll get anything but an acceptance. And if you can’t show us your knitting, you can always show us your plants and flowers. I’m getting vicarious pleasure looking at them–we still had a frost warning earlier in the week and I’m just putting out plants today.
Ya know, my FIL, who IS a golfer might just wear those. He likes quirky things, under his conservative, Mercedes-Benz-driving exterior. I might have to make him a pair, just for fun, when you release that pattern.
Don’t worry about us – go work on your submissions, which I know will be highly successful! We can entertain ourselves with plant pictures.
Your designs are absolutely wonderful. If, for some odd reason no one can understand, your design is rejected, then it’s not the right publisher to go with. Try again somewhere else.
About poor old “treescum” sock…I adore the color and feel sad that it’s not appreciated more. Give it another chance. Knit positive energy into them. If you give them away, you should include a story card of the adventures of “treescum”.
Anne, congratulations on getting your submission out. You are a very good knitter and a designer.
You are putting yourself out there through your blog and now by submitting to a magazine.
That by itself alone is admirable!!!!
Keep up the good work Anne, it is much appreciated.
Good luck with the submissions. That’s great. Your work is so wonderful, I couldn’t imagine someone not being awestruck when they see it, truly. enjoy your trip. I’m leaving on a trip to Boston tonite and my packing is still haphazard. I did make out my packing list (as I always do before the actual packing) and I had to include my knitting too otherwise I might forget. Can’t have that. Especially you can’t, not if you’re riding, plenty of good knitting time.
anne, I sure love your blog. Your dedication and positive, unflinching energy directed toward knitting is something I find great comfort from and admiration for. I’ll never be a knitter like you, but it’s great to read your blog anyway. I get a vicarious thrill.
I love the garden pics. I know how it is a part of a person, a part of the knitting – can’t help integrating that which affects your sensibilities into your creative work…
love that spunky electric – divine!
and the golf sock is so sweet –
congrats on making a submission to a magazine, they should totally accept it!!
I’m the same about secret knitting. I just have a gut feeling that keeping secrets is unhealthy as a rule. I have published in the Heels and Toes Gazette (five designs) but that had a quick enough turnaround that I didn’t feel sneaky about them.
For now i have chosen self-publishing, maybe sometime I’ll submit.
And your work is wonderful… if you aren’t known out there yet, it’s time. My experience is that the folks already published are very welcoming to “newcomers.” I’m crossing my fingers for you!
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