Hand on My Heart

Well, here's another pattern. On Ravelry, I decided to participate in the Guild Wars challenge, where members of the Ankh-Morpork Knitters Guild group have joined up into different groups to compete in earning points by completing projects that meet certain criteria within a limited span of time. The first challenge, issued three days ago, was for winter accessories with a Valentine's Day theme. I decided to join the Assassins Guild, mostly because Amy (aka sputnik) set it up. If you're not a Discworld fan, the main things you should know about the Assassins Guild are that its members have excessive amounts of style, and they always wear black.

Unfortunately, the first thing that sprang into my mind when I read the challenge was a pair of fingerless gloves using a heart to shape the thumb gusset, and lacy ribs to complete the girlyness. If it occurs to you that this sounds a lot like the construction of Green Thumb, then you're absolutely right. Suffice it to say that girly mitts with lacy hearts do not really say "Assassin" in any meaningful way.

I tried to get around it by making the first one up in purple, in honor of a character in Night Watch, who has some connection to the Guild and wears a lot of purple. But the knitting gods laughed at me, and I didn't have enough purple yarn. So I made the second one in pink.




Four days from inspiration to published pattern is a new personal best.

Perchta

Can't stop the pattern uploading! And here's the next one.




Perchta is a Victorian-style collar (or a "bertha" collar, as they were known.) The cables and short-rowed neck ruffle are knit first, and then the lace patterned cape section is picked up and knit along the other long edge.

Lisa was such an excellent model, and Barbara performed sterling service as a proofreader. (And did even more to improve the presentation of Ochiba, I should have said before.)

I'm one square away from finishing my crochet skirt. Look for a couple more patterns soon!

Hexabranch

I'm on a roll. I have one of the crocheted scarves done.



It's called Hexabranch, after the scientific name of the spanish dancer, a sea creature that swims around with the most outrageous ruffles.

Since it's a scarf, and crocheted at that, I've priced it at $1.00.

Ochiba

I have been crafting, heaven knows, just not blogging about it. But my main New Year's resolution was to publish more patterns. So I dusted off a file I'd created in 2009, got a friend to model the piece, and agonized for a week or so about how to present 22 different sizes in one pattern.



Ochiba is a seamless skirt, knit from the top, with A-line shaping that grows naturally out of the leaf motifs. I actually went on a bit of a leaf-themed tear after Green Thumb, but this is the only project that I thought was completely successful.

I ended up writing a template that requires the knitter to plug in a number and actually calculate two quantities. I do this with some trepidation, but the alternatives are either not offering a large range of sizes, or writing pattern instructions that have 22 different numbers in parentheses three times per line. I've also priced it at $2.50. We'll just see how this all pans out.

The big roadblock for me with patterns has been photographs (ever since someone on Ravelry kindly and accurately pointed out that most of my photos look like snapshots taken in the backyard.) Now I actually have photos for two more patterns (both crocheted scarves, as it turns out) although these will also involve charting with crochet symbols. I am the proud owner of a new computer, which makes my life so much more wonderful in so many ways, but it does mean that I no longer own a working, all-purpose drawing program. I may have to buy something. I'm also almost done (and have been for, oh, most of a year) with another skirt, this one done in little squares, and that will get written up as soon as I can rope another friend into posing for me.

I do realize that crocheted skirts and scarves are not the most lucrative section of the pattern market (which is, of course, pretty far from being lucrative in any real sense of the word.) But they're original, and I'm pleased at how they've come out. I need to come up with another Green Thumb, so I can live a life of luxury off of my pattern sales.

One reason I've been so absent from this blog is that I'm starting a produce store in downtown San José. It's called Veggie Box. I can't actually tell you exactly when it will open at this point, but I hope it will be some time this summer. It's even got its own Facebook page, if you want to follow along at home.