a new design, a new winner, and a wbdt

happy monday everyone ^^/

today is a great day. i'm debuting a new design, naming a new winner in my giveaway, and i arrived home from work today to see a lovely BIG box sitting on my doorstep which could only mean 1 thing....new yarn!!!!!

i know my blog has been ominously silent all last week, and that's because i was slaving away at my newest design purls interrupted. if you follow my blog this is that new revolutionary design i promised a picture preview of. this has been my most changed design from the original concept, as you can see from the picture progression below:

in my very first test knit the silk yarn i used just wasn't working for me so i switched to acrylic

i thought the acrylic would make the cables pop up a bit more, but i still wasn't satisfied. at this point i got the brilliant idea of using a contrasting color to knit the cables, and also using Knit Picks yarn so i could submit this design to the Independant Designers Program

{the final version}

ah the evolution of a design... and to think this design started out as me trying to find a way to cable with purls (which i've discovered is completely possible, but just doesn't look all that great.)

i hope you all like my new design, and wish me luck with my submission to Knit Picks. i'll be crossing my fingers until i hear back from them ^.^

and on another note, i was unable to get ahold of one of the winners for my petite vache designs super awesome free giveaway, so i'm pleased to annouce a new winner:

Cindy!!!!

you've won a set of rainbow detanglers :)

i'll be emailing you just incase you don't make it by my blog this week so we can work out the details of which colors you'd like.

and now it's time for another Weekly Budding Designers Tip!!

{the newest members of my yarn family xD}

as budding designers we are artists, and yarn is our medium, and if you're anything like me you need a LOT of yarn to fill the demand for your designs. but yarn support is not always available, especially if you're not designing something specifically for a certain company or magazine. if you do a lot of freelance design then you really need to check out LittleKnits.com.

my recent order was for 13 skeins of Ella Rae Classic (100% wool) AND 2 jumbo balls of Opal sock yarn which, as you can see from the picture bellow, is 150gms and 420m per skein!!

this is a grand total of 3440m or well over 3700yds of gorgous yarn. the MSRP on these yarns would have put my order at over 120$ but i got everything for just a little under 70$ including shipping!

so my best tip to budding designers out there is to bargain shop for your yarn, and always check LittleKnits first because they have some of the most amazing deals i've seen on the net

well it's time for me to go and put the finishing touches on my purls interrupted pattern so i can get it submitted to Knit Picks asap. thanks for stoping by my blog and have a great week everyone :)

~Carla

new beginnings

i know it's a rarity for me to be blogging 2 days in a row but i just found a new and exciting opportunity yesterday and i couldn't resist the temptation.


KnitPicks has aparently launched a new partnership that will allow freelance designers to be published on the KnitPicks site. honestly, it's about time one of these yarn companies caught on. i've seen so many awesome up and coming designers on ravelry who have all been submitting to the same Magazines for months and months and the magazines just can't accomodate the influx of awesome patterns they are receiving. the way i see it, this is a win-win scenario both for designers and for KnitPicks. the designers get some much needed exposure, and KnitPicks gets a bunch more business, if only from the scores of novice designers like me who will now be designing almost exclusively in KnitPicks yarn for the chance of being published on such a well knowns and reputable site.


as a result of this new and exciting opportunity my new years resolutions plans have changed slightly. i decided my the next WIP i conquer should be one of my own design so i can get something to send to KnitPicks ASAP. so instead of working on that scarf and pair of socks i talked about yesterday, last night i dusted off my Rowena sleeves that sadly hadn't been touched in almost half a year, and began trying to figure out where in the pattern i left off. to my dismay i couldn't quite figure it out and since i wanted to test the pattern anyways i frogged all my lovely progress on the first sleeve and commenced re-knitting. i must have been really excited last night because i got almost as much done on it as i had before from a few weeks of work on it.


here's a pic of my progress before frogging:









and the progress i made last night after starting from scratch:








this pic was taken rather hastily so i didn't have time to pin in out like in the picture before but you can see if you follow the cable pattern that i only had about 3 or 4" to go and i would have been at the point i was pre-frog.


luckily the pattern for these little beauties is all but done at this point. the hardest part is going to be finding a program to write out the cable chart and doing the tech editing so i can make it as professional-looking as possible before sending it to KnitPicks.


i'll probably be working on these for another 4 hrs tonight and maybe i'll even have the first sleeve finished by tomorrow


::crosses fingers::


if i do i'll come back with pictures and blog for a 3rd day in a row!!!!!!


ttfn ^^/


~capn' vache