Enver Baby Blanket

Late August found us in the mountains of northern New Hampshire, enjoying one last hurrah before the close of summer.

One of our favorite walks in the woods is Diana's Baths, a place my parents took my brother and I a lot as children. My brother Patrick and I would run through the woods and suddenly the treeline would open up and we'd be surrounded by beautiful waterfalls. Some of the pools were deep enough to swim in and although the mountain water was freezing, we'd swim until our lips were blue then come back out for a picnic lunch. Over the years Diana's Baths have become more commercial with paved paths, hand rails and an actual parking lot and while it's certainly gotten much busier and less rustic, these additions have made it more accessible to those who may not have been able to enjoy it before.

While my husband, son and I enjoyed a final stroll through the woods to get to the Baths, I tucked a knitting project I had just finished in my backpack along with my camera in case I got a chance to shoot. With the boys occupied with throwing small stones in the pools and watching for bugs, I waded out into the water to shoot my latest design, the Enver Baby Blanket.

Enver appeals to the quilter in me... A patchwork-style blanket that can be made with as few as 24 blocks like the one shown for a baby blanket, or as many as it takes to create a full-sized throw, this is a pattern that is designed to be knit on-the-go. Knit a square on your commute home on the train, knit a square while you are watching the game on TV or knit another square while you're hanging out with your knitting group. The squares are small and meant to be easy to tuck in your bag to grab a row here or there. I'm on a small project kick lately because the holidays are coming up and will be here before you know it!

The real fun begins when your squares are complete! Lay them out the way I have to create a diamond pattern with the garter ridges, or randomly place them as you wish. If you've ever made a simple patchwork-style quilt, the magic happens when you've done all the cutting and it's finally time to decide how the squares will play off one another. Once you have your layout down, seam them up, add the attached border and voila! You have a blanket!

Knit on US 5 needles in the delightful Zen Garden Serenity DK (a yummy blend of 90% superwash merino and 10% cashmere) I'm loving the color combination of the rusty orange, the blues and the gray. Zen Garden is known for their great color ways and this is one of my favorite yarns from the Canadian company. This yarn feels great as you knit with it and blocks out beautifully (plus, cashmere!) and needs only one hank each of 3 colors and 2 hanks of the MC. What I liked most about this project is that it's a no pressure knit - you knit up a square whenever and eventually you have a lovely little pile of squares waiting to be placed and seamed. I seamed it up while watching a movie and before I knew it, I had a knitted version of a classic patchwork quilt.

I love that this baby blanket came on a small adventure with my family and I. I got plenty of interesting looks from hikers as I waded into the cold water and draped a blanket across rocks and fallen trees and happily snapped away with my camera. This blanket seemed to belong there, out in the falls, hanging out in nature. It certainly kept me cozy after my feet got too cold and I had to come back out of the water!

Let's give a copy of the pattern away, shall we? Answer the below trivia question in the comments section correctly and you'll automatically be entered in to win a copy of the Enver Baby Blanket pattern. A winner will be chosen at random on Friday, October 23rd and will be contacted by me via email. Contest open to readers worldwide.

What is the most visited park in the National Park System?

Download the Enver Baby Blanket pattern here.

The Starry Night

I'll always have a special place in my heart for Van Gogh's The Starry Night.

Arguably one of the most recognizable works of art in the world, this painting is what inspired my mom as a child to become an artist. We see it on mugs, posters, t-shirts and notecards... What about an embroidered version? The below article (original post here) just goes to show that this image from Van Gogh's brain is just as beautiful in its fiber version as it is in paint. Anyone up for a knitted version?

Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ Rendered in Thread by Lauren Spark by Christopher Jobson 

Self-taught embroidery artist Lauren Spark was asked by her mother to create an embroidery of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Over the next month, Spark spent almost 60 hours working on the piece, using the Google Cultural Institute’s website to explore extremely high resolution views of the iconic painting to better mimic the strokes of paint, stitch by stitch (double-click the painting on Google’s site, the level of detail is incredible). The final piece is a surprisingly faithful interpretation, full of motion and color much like the original.

Curry Buffet

I hereby declare October "the month that got away from me." It's difficult getting back into the groove of fall. The signs are all there - school buses on the streets, evil squirrels doing their best to eat our pumpkin on the stoop, leaves beginning to turn color and fall and knitwear being grabbed and wrapped around my neck in the chilly mornings, then discarded quickly in the afternoon because it's back to being 80 degrees. I love autumn - such a beautiful season, but it often seems to sneak up and get away from me.

Between designing and knitting like a mad person to meet my October deadlines, my knitting friends and I lament that this is the season to get started on gift knitting. Perhaps "lament" is not the proper word, after all, giving a hand knit gift to someone is a wonderful feeling. Finding the perfect pattern for someone and going to your LYS to match it up with the ideal yarn is special. When I gift knit I try hard to imagine that person as something knitted. New-Agey and maybe a little weird, certainly, but I do try to conjure up what they might be... Are they cabled? Lacy? Fair Isle or even trusty garter stitch? What colors do they wear, what fibers do they love, how can I make this project unique for them? What we knitters often lament about the gift knitting season is that usually means there is no time to knit anything for ourselves.

I find that women struggle with this notion of "put everyone else before me" especially. Maybe it's the caretaker thing a lot of us have, who knows? We could dedicate years worth of blog posts and not come up with an answer. When I was teaching at Squam last month I asked a lot of people (almost all women) why they came. The answer I got most? Something along the lines of, "I do this once a year for ME. I take away the distractions and my routine, know that my kids and significant other will be fine for a few days, ignore thoughts of laundry, deadlines, emails and carpools, turn off the mobile and listen, learn and focus on me." And why not? Our creative souls need to be fed just as much as our bodies do.

Keeping that thought of focusing on ourselves, I'm happy to introduce Curry Buffet. A hat with a few different cables, a riff on a traditional ribbed brim and a star-shaped center top, this hat was designed with the intention of being what some people refer to as "selfish knitting." A relatively quick knit on US 7s, I again reached for the luscious Shalimar Yarns Paulie Worsted (a delicious blend of cashmere, camel, superwash merino and silk) in the aptly named "curry" color way. Designed specifically to be able to be set down and picked up and know right where you left off, this is a hat meant to be snuck in-between gift knitting for your friends and family, for you.

Have a few minutes before picking up the kids? Knit a few rounds. Waiting in line at the supermarket? Knit a few more. Waiting for the dentist? Knit. I grab at any time I can to knit something for myself, even if it's just for a couple minutes. It's a rare treat (ok, and I have a knitted hat addiction) that I try to take advantage of. I encourage you, dear readers, to carve out a bit of time between all the holiday knitting you plan on committing yourself to and make something for you. After all, giving a gift to yourself is a pretty special thing, no?

Download Curry Buffet here.

Idea of North

I spent a lot of weekends and school vacations of my childhood up in the woods and mountains of New Hampshire. We'd ski, swim, hike, meander through town, read by the fire and do some serious knitting. In the colder months, my mom and I would bundle ourselves up, dash out to the car, then settle in at the Yarn Barn, a yarn shop that was indeed attached to a barn, always had a fire going, Abby the dog on her bed in front of it, and Barb the owner with her hot pink lipstick, ready and waiting to offer help, yarn and advice.

When I was a kid, Barb put DPNs in my hands, a Fair Isle mitten pattern in front of me and told me to go to town. It never occurred to me that fear and knitting could go hand-in-hand (something I see a lot as a teacher now) or that it was "weird" that I would rather be up north knitting with my mom when my friends would rather be at the mall. Knitting, my mom and Barb were my perfect trifecta. I lived for those days.

While the Yarn Barn and Abby are long gone, Barb still lives up there (she's got to be close to 100 - I visited her in 2012 and she was still rocking the pink lipstick). We still visit new Hampshire as often as we can and every time we drive by what's now an ice cream barn (weird, right?) I look back and lament over all the time I sat there with my mom, stitching away with Barb and Abby in the confines of those yarn-filled walls. It pains me that it's no longer the place I loved going to - that it now houses a plethora of ice cream flavors, toppings and cones. Where did all the knitters who congregated there disappear to? I sigh and say, "Oh Yarn Barn, how I miss you," and my understanding husband nods sagely and keeps driving. The poor man must have heard me say that 1,000 times. Everyone has a magical place from their childhood and for me, one of those places was the Yarn Barn.

With these memories of this magical place and in honor of Barb, who clearly saw that Fair Isle knitting and I simply belonged together, I'm happy to introduce the Idea of North Cowl. Knit in the to-die-for Paulie Worsted from Shalimar Yarns, this insanely good blend of hand-dyed superwash merino, camel, cashmere and silk (gimme, gimme) was simply wonderful to knit with.

I brought this yarn up to New Hampshire with me when we visited on my birthday in late August. I casted on when we set out on the 12-hour drive north, then bound off when we were up in the mountains. I love how the magenta and glacier blue play off one another and the Victorian-inspired fair isle pattern was something I had doodled on a piece of paper I had tucked away in my desk after reading about Victorian houses in New England.

The color work pattern inverts itself with a simple MC and CC switch in the middle section and I have to say - this was one seriously fun pattern to knit. I loved the yarn, I loved the Fair Isle pattern, I loved the generous height so your neck stays cozy, I loved the colors and I especially loved that everything about this project reminded me of New Hampshire. It is, at the heart of it all, an idea of north - my idea of north. I enjoy all my designs for various reasons, but there's something special about this one. It found its way into my suitcase when I was packing for Squam, heading back up to new Hampshire 2 weeks after we had gotten back from our last hurrah of the summer as a family. I figured maybe I'd wear it when it got chilly at night, or maybe I'd get a chance to photograph it. Correct on both counts, the lovely Nicole who was in the cabin next to mine was kind enough to model it for me.

Everyone has an Idea of North - some magical place that they visit fondly in their memories. What's yours?

Download the Idea of North Cowl here.