Tag: knitting pattern

Christmas Stocking

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, my mother knit each of the kids in the family a Christmas stocking to hang above the fireplace, waiting for it to be filled by Santa on Christmas Eve. It worked, too!

We each had our own in a different color – mine was purple, my brothers and sister had red, green, and white. Mom embroidered our names on them, and then added fun little items like jingle bells, angels and snowmen she made by knitting them, and crocheted snow flakes. For years, even into adulthood, we continued hanging these stockings. Then, brilliant me, hung mine too low over a hot fireplace. Being of acrylic yarn, it melted a bit!

And, as time goes by, we are dispersed and gone from the world. We don’t see each other as often as we could as we are thousands of miles apart – or at least hundreds – in California, Wisconsin, and Colorado. My youngest brother’s wife put in a special request this year – she would like her own hand-knitted and personalized stocking. Challenge is now being met.

I looked through a lot of free holiday stocking patterns – some meh, others too much. Stranded color work is my favorite “fancy” knitting (forget lace and cables), and the one I have settled on is this pattern from Yarnspirations: the Festive Fair Isle Stocking. I am doing my own variant of it – already found a pattern mistake, but who cares?! As long as it looks good, and is enjoyed by the recipient and the maker, nothing is wrong.

The pattern itself is red, grey, and white, but my brother’s stocking is red, so I have to use green in his wife’s stocking to complement it. Yesterday afternoon, lounging in the afternoon sun on the patio, I began. If you follow the link to the pattern itself, you will see that “fur” yarn is at the top. I couldn’t find any so I made an I-cord, picked up the requisite 60 stitches, and made sure I had enough I-cord for a generous loop.

And so, the holiday season has officially begun for Christmas. Thanksgiving is past – and ours was nice – and this little project is a pleasant way to listen to audiobooks, relax, and watch the stocking grow.

Old Vines Scarf: Pattern & Process

Friday was a really big day for me!  I decided to post to Ravelry, and to here, my first “pay for” pattern.  It is the that I wrote about last March.  You can find it on the “Patterns for Sale” page.  Please give some consideration to buying this pattern!

Writing up a pattern takes some time, as does creating the knitting schematic, shooting the pictures, doing a layout, and finally creating the PDF file that goes along with it!  It really is a major process, far more than I anticipated.  And the thing is, the item has to be knitted before you can photograph it.

I used Knit Visualizer for the pattern schematic.  It is a fairly expensive piece of software, but it is really worth the price paid because it is so easy to use.

My camera is a Casio Exilim, and I can get pretty decent pictures with it.  My preferred settings are with all 9 sensors being used, along with soft flash and a +1 light setting.

For the PDF, I begin in MS Publisher, and then create the document using text boxes, clip art, my photos, and Knit Visualizer schematics saved in a PNG format, and then imported to Paint Shop, and saved as a JPEG.  Once I am happy with my Publisher file, I save it, and then, beginning on the first page, I “save as” and create a PNG file.  Finally, I use Acrobat Pro to create the PDF by choosing “create PDF from multiple files.”  My preferred PDF is “highest quality” for better detail.  It works very well.

Photos are really odd creatures.  You think you have a good one, but you don’t.  This is why I love digital pictures and software.  Cutting, editing, whatever – all can be done pretty readily.  Fonts and so on are also important, for headers, subheads, and content.  Everything needs to work well together.  The direction of a model in the layout leads the eye in, or out, of the page.  Busy-ness is distracting.  Too-much-of-the-same, in density and visual rhythm creates a visual yawn.

Anyway, there you go.  Here are some of the more than 40 pictures I took for the photo shoot.  These were some I liked, in addition to the ones you will find in the Old Vines Scarf pattern itself.