So long 2012 ~ hello 2013

This is what my 2012 looked like in published patterns - not bad for a part timer!

I've had highs and lows this year but on the whole it has been an amazing journey and I have loved my new job.

So that was 2012. What does 2013 hold for me?

Throughout the year I will be teaching at The Sheep Shop in Cambridge - classes for the beginning of this year include Crochet for Beginners, Preventing and Fixing Knitting Mistakes, Crochet Ripples and Crochet Amigurumi.

Coming up in January and February (I think) I have designs to be published in Simply Crochet, Inside Crochet and Clotheshorse. Also designs for a couple of yarn companies should be releasing in the first quarter of the year.

Starting in January I will be leading an exciting arts project in conjunction with the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens and Cam City WI to create a crochet and knitted installation for the Festival of Ideas in October. I am quite excited about this as up to know my work has been practical and mostly garments or accessories. I think a little art and whimsy will be good for me.

In February I will be releasing a crochet collection as part of the Malabrigo Freelance Patterns Project. This is the first time I have worked as a collection.

In March or April Kat Goldin and I will be launching a new joint project with a few other talented designers. More to come on that soon.

In October I will be teaching  I will also be running a one day workshop on crochet flowers at the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens.

There are also a few other projects which will come to fruition in 2013 that I am excited about but can't talk about yet. And if 2012 was anything to go by there will be lots of exciting things that happen along the way too!

He knows me so well

Meet my new best friend

Look how well she matches my kitchen. Look at her sleek design. She is programmable to have coffee waiting for you when you stumble down in the morning. She is clever enough to stop automatically to let you pour a cup before she has finished filling the jug. She is easy to clean and fill. I can have cup after cup of quality coffee as she keeps it warm all morning. I shall call her Cathy the coffee maker. Our friendship will outlive the warranty.

My husband really understands me and my deep and abiding love of coffee. He thoroughly spoilt me with salted caramels (another love) a BEAUTIFUL vanity box with a little padlock to stop the mini minx from raiding my make-up and a book about the philosophy of architecture by Alain de Botton amongst other things.

In other news, it turns out that being interviewed for magazines is good for general present receiving. My mum read the article in Yarnwise and brought me an Edith Head biography which I will be starting tonight.

In very exciting news my scarf made the front cover main picture of Yarnwise!!!

It is good that I am typing it because my voice got so high in the excitement of it all that I am sure only dogs could hear me! It's out in the shops now. Please go and buy it so that they think my designs shift copies and always put them on the cover!! - joking obviously, but only kinda joking ;-)

This is my first magazine cover spot and it is wonderfully exciting and thrilling. A real honour.

Hoping to squeeze in a round up of the year and hopes for next year if the knitting behaves itself and goes quickly (yes I am working over Christmas - January is insanely busy enough without taking days off now)

A peek at our Christmas

(subtitled: where you discover I have zero taste and limited cake decorating abilities) 

I have really enjoyed getting a little peek into the other bloggers Christmas celebrations so thought it only fair that I share my own.

Here is our Christmas tree in all her glory

For the past few years my poor husband has taken antihistamines every day of the Christmas period so that he could be in the same room as a real Christmas tree. This year I selflessly declared he had suffered enough so we trundled off to the shops in search of an artificial number. The plan being that if we couldn't afford one that looked like a real tree we would do as naff as possible. Enter THE PURPLE DISCO TREE. I went fairly tasteful with the decorations and stuck to a teal green and silver. But really. And I hadn't noticed until I loaded it up but my eldest is attempting an assault on the presents. And that is why the presents were only put out to take the picture then quickly shoved back in the wardrobe after!

Then last night I finally did something vaguely crafty for Christmas. There has been no Christmas knitting or crochet this year - well when you average 2 sweaters and 2 accessories a month for work who has time to do more!? I have not done any Christmas crafts aside from the lovely ones we did at the WI

(a papercut card from Mollie Makes Christmas (I think) and sachets of mulled wine spices)

So I was quite looking forward to playing around with icing and getting the cakes decorated. Now I am no cake decorator (If Not So Granny hadn't taken off I might have launched my other business idea "Crap Cakes" a service for busy mums who want to pretend they made the cake, professional ones are a proper giveaway, I would have made try hard but rather naff kids birthday cakes.) but I do quite enjoy it. This year I feel I have rather outdone myself ( I will let you decide in terms of skill or naffness)

Cake is called "We elves try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup." In honour of Elf the movie and because there is one heck of a lot of fondant icing in places!

Merry Christmas 

(or whichever holiday you choose at this time of year)

to all my blog readers.

Joanne

A reluctant king

Doesn't he look lovely in his King Outfit for the pre-school nativity play?

time to get a couple of blurry shots before he abdicated...

Yes this King is definitely the one on the scooter!*

(*in case this is a localised thing the children sing to the tune of We Three Kings:

We three kings of Orient are

One in a taxi, one in a car,

one on a scooter blowing his hooter... )

Winter fun

 on a frosty cold school run the frozen puddles look so pretty

 but the big kid in me...

...cannot resist.

It's rather nice to unleash a little destructive power now and again and I know by morning the puddle will be whole again.

Fit the stitch to the yarn

Hi,

Busy busy head down on a design but I thought I would share a couple of pictures that illustrate how different yarns can make a stitch pattern look.

I am working on a dress with a military theme and initially swatched in a smooth yarn

The linen stitch adds a lovely texture making the fabric look more woven and sturdy.

The editor and I chose a recycled yarn from Berroco called Remix for the finished piece. It has a slightly slubby finish to it and when I swatched the linen stitch I wasn't at all happy with the appearance. 

It was just too much texture and looked too busy with the natural heathering from the mixed recycled fibres.

Luckily the editor agrees so I am knitting the dress in stocking stitch which looks great.

Winner of the Manos goodies.

Randomly drawn winner is

Knitnrun4sanity!

(Knitnrun4sanity is a good friend of mine and has previously won a competition on my blog so I was tempted to redraw but thought that really wasn't fair. If I knew how to do the screen shot of the random number generator to prove the fairness I would :-) )

Congratulations to knitnrun4sanity and thanks to everyone who entered and shared the competition.

And thank you very much to Jenny at Artesano for providing such a generous prize.

Sneaky preview

For those of you that might be interested in a new monthly crochet magazine here is the scoop on the 1st cover.

You can definitely see the beautiful Mollie Makes influence (its from the same publisher) and I am really looking forward to seeing inside now. 

They are having a special offer at the moment if you want to subscribe for 3 issues for £5 which is just 1p more than the cover price. After your 3 issues it goes up to £12.49 a quarter so its still a pretty good deal. I tried Simple Things (same publishers again) on this deal and was so impressed that I am happy to continue the subscription afterwards. They haven't forgotten about the North American readers either - their special offer is $10 for 3 issues

I have designs in this magazine from issue 2 (I think) which I am very pleased with. The magazine focuses on accessories and homewares and is for the beginner to intermediate market. The target audience seems to be people who love the crochet in Mollie makes and want to take it further. As I normally focus on garments and intermediate towards advanced end it was a nice challenge to come up with some accessories that fitted  in this brief. Really looking forward to showing them to you in the next few months!

PS - Don't forget to enter the fab Manos Silk Blend and pattern giveaway and pick up your voucher code for Beatrice.

Beatrice Offer

Hi,

Just to let you know that my Beatrice Evening Bag pattern is now available as an individual pattern download (it was only available as a kit before) for just £2.

But you lucky blog readers can have it for just £1 if you hurry. For 12 days only (until 13th December) Use the code BLOG12 at the Ravelry checkout to get this special deal.

It is a really quick and fun knit for Christmas gifts or an easy way to make a cute bag to go with any outfit over the party season. Its a good stash buster too as it only takes around 95 yds of chunky/bulky yarn for the small bag and 190 yds for the larger bag.

Joanne