New pattern: Leadlight

It's always exciting when I can finally share one of my secret projects! Today Leadlight gets its big reveal, as part of Brooklyn Tweed's Wool People 11. This is my third Wool People outing, and the third of my designs in Brooklyn Tweed's wonderful yarn (the first two being my Amarilli and Kea shawls).

Be sure to browse through the WP11 lookbook, which is completely gorgeous! I like to save them up until I have a little uninterrupted time to soak up the inspiration. :)

Leadlight, photo by Jared Flood

Leadlight is a rectangular stole in laceweight yarn, featuring large-scale geometric lace. I was inspired by the image of sunlight streaming through glass panes, and the memory of a small geometric stained-glass window I had in my room which my Dad had made (picture framers are good with glass, after all).

(Photos by me, before I sent Leadlight off to the USA.)

The lace is simple to knit, while the construction and finishing methods keep things interesting: beginning with a circular cast on, the centre of the stole is knit in the round as a square. After placing some of the stitches on hold, the two ends of the stole are each knit flat to create a rectangular shape. Finally, a garter stitch border finishes off the edges.

The centre of the stole, worked outwards from the pinhole cast on

The garter stitch border keeping things crisp

Vale is a new laceweight yarn from Brooklyn Tweed, a springy, plied yarn that's light and soft, but substantial and full of personality. It blocks easily and drapes beautifully, which makes it just perfect for lace knitting.

I knit my Leadlight stole in the colour Heron, which is a calm, neutral, mid-toned grey with a subtle sheen to it. The whole Vale colour palette is beautifully subtle - I definitely plan to use this yarn for more lace projects!

A close-up of the centre

Features:

  • an all-over geometric lace pattern

  • constructed from the centre out, with two sides extended to form the rectangle

  • a circular cast on (instructions for the Pinhole Cast On are included)

  • a garter stitch border all around the edge

  • a stretchy bind off (instructions for the K2tog-tbl Bind Off are included)

  • easy to alter the length by working a different number of repeats

  • requires 3 skeins of Brooklyn Tweed Vale, or 1170yds of laceweight yarn

  • the lace instructions are presented as charts only.

Drapery studies...

You can purchase the pattern for Leadlight on Ravelry, or from Brooklyn Tweed's website. Their Summer of Lace KAL is coming up very soon, beginning later this month.

New pattern: Budburst

Who's ready for more lace? I've just released a new asymmetrical shawl, named Budburst for its leafy lace pattern and the magical way it blooms during blocking. I think it's the prettiest thing I've made in a long time. :)

Budburst's stitch pattern blocks out into light and delicate leaves, but during knitting it forms a really cool bobbly texture. The transformation from bobbles to leaves reminded me of leaf buds unfurling in spring.

The gently-speckled yarn is a fingering-weight Merino Single in 'Dawn', by the Swiss dyer Sidispinnt. I adore using single-spun yarn for shawls, as it holds its blocking really well. I find plied yarn can bounce back again over time, especially if it has a tight twist like some sock yarns. I'm seeking out singles and silk-blend yarns for my shawls more and more these days, to make sure I get a really nice drape.

Dad and I took these photos above the Ōhope hill during my April trip to New Zealand - we found the perfect grassy paddock with flowering mānuka bushes and a view of the beach down below. The one downside was the thistles, which kept managing to spike me through my jeans!

Features:

  • an all-over lace pattern of delicate leaves

  • intuitive stitch pattern, with 'rest' rows on the wrong side

  • an optional picot bind-off (see my tutorial here)

  • knit sideways from point to bind-off edge

  • easy to scale up or down by altering the number of repeats

  • requires two skeins of fingering-weight yarn

  • suitable for speckled, semi-solid, or gradient-dyed yarn

  • pattern includes full written instructions as well as charts.

Find out more about my Budburst shawl pattern, including Ravelry and Payhip purchase options.

This design is part of the Progress, Hope, and Happiness collection (Ravelry link), a celebration of summer from ten designers and five indie dyers. I hope you’ll join us for the make-along on Ravelry, which runs from June 1st to July 16th!

New pattern: Hextile Wrap

My latest adventure in lace is the Hextile Wrap, a long, versatile wrap with bold geometric patterning. The design gets its name from the tiling pattern of triangles and hexagons in simple lace mesh, and it's based on garter stitch for reversibility, ease, and cosiness.

Equally useful for cool spring or autumn evenings, this wrap has already come in handy! Last weekend Mum and Dad and I visited Napier to see my brother and his crew, and my sister-in-law Colleen modelled my Hextile Wrap on the beach like a pro. The sun went down just as we finished the last photo.

I designed the Hextile Wrap to make the most of two lovely skeins of sock yarn I've been saving - Miss Click Clack's Fenwick Street Flashmerino (made up of 85% extrafine merino and 15% nylon) in 'Melbourne Black'. The wrap's open mesh panels and bias-knit construction work together to produce a surprisingly large wrap from just two skeins.

The stitch pattern is fast, easy, and intuitive once you get the hang of the structure - the mesh is the simplest kind of lace (just yarn-overs and k2togs), and all wrong-side rows are plain knit rows. I found it a great project to accompany tv and podcasts.

Features:

  • an all-over geometric pattern of mesh lace triangles

  • intuitive and easy to knit

  • knit on the bias from end to end

  • easy to enlarge by adding extra repeats to the length and/or width

  • requires two skeins of fingering-weight or sock yarn

  • solid, semi-solid, or gradient-dyed yarn is ideal

  • pattern includes full written instructions as well as charts.

Find out more about my Hextile Wrap pattern, including Ravelry and Payhip purchase options.

New pattern: Beeswax Scarf

I've combined my love of bees and textured knits once again, and the result is the Beeswax Scarf! Its large-scale honeycomb pattern echoes the cables on my Beeswax Hat, but this is much easier to knit - and most importantly for a scarf, it's easy to knit flat. No cables here, just simple lace and garter stitch. It's so incredibly cosy, I can't wait for winter... ;)

The stitch pattern really is simple to knit, and watching the honeycomb grow is quite addictive. The only skills you'll need are working basic lace stitches (knit, purl, yarn-over, k2tog, and ssk), slipped stitches at the edges, and the Long Tail Cast On (which is optional). Charts are included as well as full written instructions.

Bohemia Worsted by Outlaw Yarn is a snuggly, luxurious blend of polwarth wool, alpaca, and possum fibre. This amazing rich golden colour is called 'Troy', and I used three balls for my scarf with plenty left over for swatching.

The Beeswax Scarf pattern includes three size options - a standard scarf (which is the one I knit), a wider scarf, and a wrap. All are a generous length for maximum cosiness.

Features:

  • an all-over textured honeycomb pattern

  • knit flat from end to end

  • three width options (scarf, wide scarf, and wrap)

  • easy to enlarge by adding extra repeats to the length and/or width

  • requires 3, 4, or 5 balls of Outlaw Yarn's Bohemia Worsted (depending on size) or 611-1018 yards of worsted-weight yarn

  • solid, semi-solid, or heathered yarn is ideal

  • pattern includes full written instructions as well as charts.

Find out more about my Beeswax Scarf pattern, including Ravelry and Payhip purchase options.

Insulate 1,000!

My INSULATE! Hat has reached 1,000 projects on Ravelry - that's a huge milestone for me, and I'm thrilled that so many people liked my hat enough to knit their own! You can see a few of these fabulous projects (in an amazing array of colour combos) on the pattern's Ravelry page.

The INSULATE! Hat was one of my early-ish knit designs from mid-2012, and I offered it as a free pattern to other knitters who share my geeky love of Daleks. Its stranded colourwork design is nice and simple, and every now and then I receive a lovely comment from someone who used this hat as their gateway to knitting colourwork, which really warms my designer heart!

If you'd like to make one of your own, you can download the free pattern on Ravelry or Payhip.