Sea Oats Serenade Release

Sea Oats Serenade Cowl will be available on Ravelry starting 06/20/18.  It has an easy to remember slip stitch cable pattern that will be challenging for adventurous beginners, yet keep more experienced knitters interested as they watch the sea oats pattern emerge.

This cowl is the right size to use as a layering piece during the cool weather of spring or fall, as well as a barrier to the frigid air conditioning that you may find blowing on your neck in some buildings during the heat of summer. Your hands created this little piece of warmth and remind of your time at the beach.

Listen to the breeze sing its ancient song as it makes the sea oats, sway to its rhythm in its eternal dance. You can hear it if you try, especially when stillness surrounds you.

I am offering an exclusive discount to my newsletter subscribers which will arrive in their inbox before the pattern release. You can sign up for the newsletter here.  

If you are interested in becoming a test knitter for any future designs, you may sign up for my test knitting pool.  Members of my test knitting pool are notified 24 hours before general test knitting calls are submitted to other social sites for applicants. You may sign up for the test knitting pool here.

Sea Oats Serenade Test Knitter Appreciation,...part two

In the last post about my excellent crew of test knitters, I profiled the pictures of five of the twelve. I am going to get the rest of them in this post on the countdown to releasing this pattern!

I finally had my photoshoot, so am completing the layout and getting looked over one more time by Heather Folkner of Crafty Ferret Tech Editing, before releasing it. I will be giving an exclusive discount to my newsletter subscribers, so you can sign up here. I will be sending out discount codes before the pattern release, so watch your inbox once you sign up.

Now on to the shameless praise and exhibiting of pictures from my test knitters, who have gone above and beyond in the pursuit of helping to test this pattern. So many beautiful colors were chosen from solids to speckled wonders, it really does show the versatility of this cowl.

Please review these pretties to see an example from each of the seven remaining test knitters.....

Andrea of Artistic Fibers rocking her cowl!S

This lovely cowl is from dimpls742

This from Pam aka knitziwhitzi

Mewmui models her cowl

This pretty blue from yarnsmithdori

a

This pretty purple is from aromanov

Yvonna13 first one done & got a prize

Sea Oats Serenade Test Knitter Appreciation ....part one

I got really lucky with my Sea Oats Serenade test knit! I was overwhelmed by the response of people who wanted to test knit for me. I had to shut it down in less than 24 hours and decided on 12 test knitters and decided to run it like a mini-KAL to get some experience, since I planned on having my first one within a month or so.

I was amazed at the variety of yarns people chose and how each one suited the pattern differently. I have to thank Heather Folkner of Crafty Ferret Tech Editing, for the bang-up job she did of checking my pattern and making sure it was ready for the test knitters. If you are in need of tech editing services, you can find her at her website.

I am showing off a few progress photos of the test knitter versions below.  As soon I have my final photo shoot with my model, I can finish the final layout and release the pattern. These photos will give you a feel for how versatile this pattern is and if you would like to see more you can check out my Instagram feed here, where I have been shamelessly praising and showing off test knitter accomplishments  I am only including a smattering here, but want to thank all my testers and I plan on featuring more when I have more photos of blocked or modeled cowl

This is from @spunbyrj! I really like her mini photo shoot!

This beauty is by @anneswolle! So pretty!

This is from egypte on Ravelry! Love the colors!

@slmetaime modeled this one beautifully.

We folded this one from @lacinitting. She's local!

What to do with leftovers?....yarn that is....

When you have a goodly amount of yarn left from a project what do you do? Here are some of the things I have been known to do....see if some of them sound familiar....

• Leave them in the bottom of the project bag to see if they will go away.
• Put them in another bag with other left over balls of yarn to "organize" them.
• Swatch for other projects of similar yarn weight.
• Look for scrap projects that require lots of yarn.
• Make minis and swap for temperature or hexi-puff blankets
• Any of a number of other ideas.

When I finished Canova Beach, I had approximately 50 g of the color Lagoon left from Arrowhead Fibers and I hated to let it languish in my project bag. While knitting Canova Beach, I had to decide how big to make the neck opening, so with advice from a few others I decided to make up a sample neck.

After casting on the smallest amount of stitches I thought would work, I discovered I would need more stitches, so I continued and came up with the right amount of stitches.

I kept the sample neck around for reference, while I finished knitting  the Canova Beach sample and discovered that the stitch pattern really appealed to me. I thought at some point I would use it again.

Little did I know, that it would be sooner than I originally thought. While Canova Beach was being blocked, I cast on and started playing around with the stitch pattern again.  The result is a great little cowl in the same Sea Oats stitch pattern used in Canova Beach.

Sea Oats Serenade is now in testing. The cowl has an interesting little eyelet pattern at the beginning and end to remind us of the fencing that protects the sea oats on the dunes. The sea oats, themselves protected in Florida, are protecting our dunes from erosion from wind and water. They sway on top of the dunes as the breezes blow up the beach, singing their sweet and ancient song.

 Keep an eye out here for future updates about its progress down the test knitting trail. I'll be posting more here about it later...

Canova Beach is in testing....

Canova Beach, one of my local beaches, is like most others. It constantly renews itself, as the waves bring the sand in and take it out again. The wind sculpts the dunes, while the sea oats and other vegetation keep it all from eroding away. This circle is infinite and always.

Translated into knitting, Canova Beach is a long capelet, knitted in the round with lace, cables and texture stitches calling to mind waves, drifting sand dunes and the sea oats that hold them fast, despite the action of wind and water. The stitch patterns are straight forward and easy to remember, which makes it a pleasing knit for adventurous beginners, but enough of a challenge to keep more experienced knitters engaged.

I recently had my pattern tech edited by Frauke Urban of Urban Yarning, who did a wonderful job. She's a non-native speaker of English and looked at my pattern with both the eyes of a tech editor and a consumer of knitting patterns.  She was very encouraging and made some great suggestions, which helped the look of the patterns. 

I put up a call for testing and had lots of wonderful applicants, but I was giving preference to people who were willing to purchase their yarn for the test from my partner in this venture, Melody Harmon of Arrowhead Fibers. We have several great testers in the US and two in Europe (Germany and Italy).

Canova Beach should be out in late May, as I gave extra time to my testers in Europe due to the shipping time for the yarn. I have included a picture below for your viewing pleasure. It is on my dress form Bertha Rose, which was named for my husband's maternal grandmother and my paternal grandmother. It seemed fitting to give her a name, since she is earning her keep as my model some of the time.

I will have a real model for my pattern photos, as I recruited my niece for that job when she was in town. You'll have to wait a bit longer before I start using those shots. You can follow along on Instagram where I am @kraziknitz, to see progress photos from the various test knitters or you can join my group on Ravelry, KraziKnitz Designs for future test knitting opportunities, KALs or other events.

Canova Beach

The secret is out....

I should have posted about this sooner, but promoting my Rushing River Cowl and other medical  issues have slowed both knitting and typing.

My secret project was a design that appeared in Knotions Magazine, for their January issue that went live on the 27th.  I spent quite a bit of time promoting it all over Instagram, Ravelry, Facebook, and a few other places. It's a free pattern and can be found here. Please enjoy it with my compliments.

Rushing River Cowl made it to the first page Ravelry's Hot Right Now and stayed there for about 36 hours, which was very exciting! I've never had anything go there before, so if you are one of the folks who helped it get there by making it a favorite or putting it in your queue, I want to thank you. If you look at the picture on the right you will see it. It made it into the upper twenties, which is pretty good considering that I am a fairly new designer to conventional patterns, outside my knit/felt niche.

Speaking of my knit/felted niche, I will be rewriting all of my patterns to coincide with my better pattern writing skills. It may take quite a while, because I want to have them all tech edited as well, which is not an inexpensive undertaking.  It may take more that a year, but I want to provide the best patterns that I can for everyone. I will re-launch each of the patterns as I have them done, but will also have them test knitted as well, so be on the look out for calls for test knits on Instagram and Ravelry.
If you would like to be included in the test knits, you may contact me at http://www.ravelry.com/groups/kraziknitz-designs, Reply to the general test knitting thread, I usually recruit from there and from past successful test knitters first.  After that, if I don't have enough test knitters, I recruit from Instagram and Facebook groups I belong to.

That's all for now. 

A little name change..

Hello All,

I'm popping in to say I've had a little name change or my design business had a name change. I now go by KraziKnitz Designs!
I just released Infinite Surf on Ravelry at this link. There is an introductory discount of 15% or  you can click on the link on the pattern page to sign up for a 25% discount and my newsletter, which will feature updates, exclusive offers and events, such as KAL's or giveaways. Who doesn't love a giveaway! It might be for a pattern or other goodies.
 I also have a new Ravelry group where I will host test knits for new patterns and eventually KALS, etc. My new group, is KraziKnitz Designs and you can find it here.
 If you would like to be a test knitter, join the group and reply to the general test knitting thread so that I can add you to the ear burn list.

You can follow me on Instagram,  where I am @kraziknitz by following this link.  I am including a few pictures of Infinite Surf below, for your viewing pleasure.

Infinite Surf

Infinite Surf

Close up of Ocean Wave Lace Detail