In Which the Pirate Designs.

I’m making slow and steady progress on the Dancing Cranes stole, and last night I finished the leg of the second Cakewalk sock whilst watching the Cowboys make up for last year’s losses against the Giants. (Wooo! How ’bout dem Cowboys!) I’m planning to get a lot of knitting done on Sundays for the next few months now that the football season has begun! Football and sock knitting go together so well. It may be 90 degrees today but I’m already thinking about cozy afternoons by the fireplace, flannel shirts, warm knit socks, the colour of autumn leaves, and bowls of stew…

I’ve been thinking about something else, too, as the year comes to a close: writing up new patterns. At the end of last year I set a goal to design and publish at least two, so I’d better get working on that!

Yesterday I sketched out the designs for two stranded colourwork hats from this Lang Merino Superwash. I love these colours! I have two skeins of black as well, but no pictures of them all together. I should have enough for two hats here. A third hat design is tying my brain into knots and I think I’ll just have to knit it in order to understand it, but the armwarmers I’ve dreamed up should be easy enough for me to chart and knit up. I looked up stitch patterns and started to draw them together for a scarfy-shawl, but that one will probably need to be swatched so I can see how the different stitches go together; my mind’s eye can’t quite visualize it.

The yarn that I’ll need for the armwarmers and scarfy-shawl (stole? shawlette? wide scarf?) is already in my stash, so making up these designs will also help with the goal of using up more yarn than I bring in this year. I’m not quite sure I’m going to meet that goal… but I’m trying!