No Lazy Lacing, Designed Lace Stitch Pattern--"Ellie's Heart"

Best Quote I Heard All Day 

"Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”--John Lennon

When John published "In His Own Write" back in 1964, my best girlfriend Dottie and I were inspired. We were both huge Beatle fans and John was our love. "Love Is All You Need" indeed! Dottie was a wonderful artist...still is, and I was already a writer, having had a short story published on our Junior High literary magazine.

This past Friday was my birthday and I have plenty of friends; however, I ain't as young as the number of them. Spent my birthday knitting...of course.

Designing Lace On Your Own

Although there's no knitting technique I've never done, lace is my happiness. Have designed a pile of lace socks and scarves, which eventually I'll put up on Ravelry. But on my birthday, decided that I wanted to create my own lace stitch pattern, not grabbing something from one of my many stitch pattern reference books.

And because Mom has been in my heart constantly, due to her death a month ago, I decided that I would create a lace stitch pattern that Mom would have knitted. I can teach ya how to create your own lace stitch patterns! Would love to teach at Vogue Knitting Live or Stitches. Have been a tech trainer for a long time and know how to help folks learn.

So I began designing this lace stitch pattern on a chart app and its title is "Ellie's Heart" because Mom was Eleanor aka Ellie. Here's the swatch. Yeah, it's hard to see the actual design but as you knit it, you can adjust the design.

Stuck it on my lamp shade, using my IPhone camera. Obviously, this swatch helped me make numerous adjustments to the heart. The swatch has two pattern repeats so I could fix the area between the two repeats. That big diamond at the bottom had no yarnovers, so I added some. Don't want a big stockinette stitch section. The swatch is done on lace yarn but I will probably use fingering or sport weight and dump it into a cardigan design. Blocking is upcoming.

F'ing Knitting Career

Mom always told me that I should consider my knitting designing and knitting article writing as a career once I retire. Yeah, that's a good idea. I'm a technical writer and trainer and have been searching for a job but companies rarely hire you as a full-time employee...just want ya for a project that might last a few months.

I do knitting editing lately for designers and wish I could go back doing that on a mag. Lately, I've bought my three favorites--Vogue Knitting, Knitter's, and Interweave Knits. All of their springtime issues have been wonderful. A long time ago, I bitched about their photography and layouts but these days the mags are 100% improved.

My only criticism is that these magazines need more articles--techniques and articles about designers, fibers, and other knitting/crochet items. Yeah, you buy the mags for patterns but it's nice to read shit. Back in 2007 for Interweave Knits, I wrote an interview I did with Kristin Nicholas and they had me write a short article about Ravelry, which was in its beta setup. I also wrote a Raveling piece too. And one of my first sock designs was given to Knitty.com when it first started. Haven't published anything since then. Just my interactive book, "You Can Knit! A Better Way to Learn Knitting Basics."

Well, it's Sunday and time to beat feet from blogger. Happy to be back here writing.

See ya, skanks! So many of you have become my friends. And I hope I can go to MD Sheep & Wool next weekend. If I do, the next blog post will be about my trip.