There's a Good Reason - Red Earth Design Studio

The contents of this post will reveal why my blogging schedule went sideways this week—I’ve been working on a lot of stuff.

First up is the SweetGeorgia Mystery Knitalong, which has eaten largish bites of my waking hours over the last few weeks. There’s not actually anything to show for this one yet (mystery…), but trust me, it’s been fun. There have been dozens of shawls flying and lots of questions/discussion points to cover, and we’ve even met up on Zoom a time or two for knitting parties. Okay, and that was a bit misleading when I said there wasn’t anything to show. If you want to see what things look like so far, take a gander at the official hashtag on Instagram, #sgymkal2021, where some of the MKAL knitters have been sharing their progress so far. There’s also a hefty project gallery going on Ravelry.

Then, there’s my new crochet design, Glimpses of Autumn, which I’ve been steadily crocheting and ripping and crocheting again. It’s my most complex crochet pattern to date, so working out the kinks has been a little more exciting than I usually prefer in my works-in-progress, but hey—I’m getting there.

So I don’t bore you with the long and sorry tale of how many timeouts this project has been in, can we talk about how amazing this gradient from SweetGeorgia is? The contrasting color for this shawl is their Old Flame gradient sock blank, and tell me it doesn’t look exactly like fire…every time I get to a color shift, I think it’s my favorite part of the gradient, but then it shifts again and I love the next bit just as much.

I’m hoping to have this sample finished and the pattern written up by the end of next week. Then it’ll be testing time, and then I’m hoping to have an informal crochet-along for it once it’s out—holler if you’re interested! Why should the knitters have all the fun?

To give my hands a break, I cast on a knitted sample which I’ve been alternating with the crochet shawl. This will be my first brioche design, which I’m fairly tickled pink about. It’s worked in Malabrigo Sock, and I can’t figure out why I haven’t picked up this yarn sooner. It’s smooth and soft (actually, the name might be a misnomer—too soft for socks in my opinion) with a subtle sheen, and the colors have an incredible, rich glow about them. I can’t wait to show you more in the coming weeks…

Then there’s the preview knit I’ve been doing on the weekends for Wool & Pine Designs. I decided to start with the mini version of their Broadleaf sweater, and is this not the cutest thing you’ve seen all day? Well, that is unless you’ve seen an actual baby today. No babies live at my house, unfortunately, so this is about as cute as it gets. I’m loving the way these two colors of KnitPicks Stroll are playing together—we rarely get snow here, but this reminds me so much of snowy branches on a sunny winter morning. The soft tonal shifts create movement within the fabric without being distracting.

This brioche pattern is really delightful; it’s a small repeat that’s easy to memorize, and the increases and decreases are simpler than they look. I freely admit to knitting on this a couple of times during the week while binge-watching action movies late at night…

Next, I’ve got something I haven’t had a chance to show you all the time I’ve been working on it. Recently I had the opportunity to test knit the Ramblewood shawl by Tamy Gore. Tamy’s an amazing shawl designer with a big portfolio of fun shawl designs, and this was a real blast to knit. She just released it this past week, and the pattern’s currently on sale on Ravelry if you want to grab it.

Tamy kindly gave me the thumbs-up to make some modifications, including using DK-weight yarn instead of worsted and 4 colors instead of 5. These colors are all from different dyers and have slightly different fiber blends (all merino-based), but they meshed quite well in the final shawl. I’m thinking this will be perfect to pair with anything denim when fall finally decides to show up around here.

And Kahlua approves, so I guess this one’s a winner:

Finally…it’s test knitting time for my Downstream Tee! Everything’s set up in my Ravelry group, including pattern details. If you are unable to use Ravelry but would like to test, let me know and we can work something out. It comes in a range of 12 sizes and I’m looking for 2-3 testers in each size, so be sure to jump in if you’re interested!