Pattern Release: Trespassers William

Now, Piglet lived in a very grand house in the middle of a beech tree in the middle of the forest - and Piglet loved it. The house had been in the family for a long long time and had his grandfather's name on a broken sign to prove it: TRESPASSERS WILL.

"That," Piglet would explain, "is short for TRESPASSERS WILLIAM, my grandfather's name."

from "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day." Walt Disney's Winnie the Pooh Storybook. 1989.

  

On my coffee table, there is a book: red and fraying at the corners, the embossed design of the cover worn down to a scattering of gold flecks. The image that's left is half of Winnie the Pooh, seated, with one golden finger suspended in the air. The other half - whatever he was holding in one chubby hand, and the rest of his face - are blotted out by a water stain.

There are twin mysteries there: what, exactly, did the Silly Old Bear's face used to look like? And what on earth did I spill on it back in 1991, when I was three and my favorite pastime was stealing crumbs of cheese from the family refrigerator?

(The first question is easy enough to address with a quick Google search. As for the second, the world may never know.)

What I do know is that from ages 3 to 8 or so, the Winnie the Pooh Storybook was my literary comfort food.

When I listened to - and later, read - the words, I was reminded of the forest outside my back door: I felt the sun through the trees; heard the singing of water and the hush of pine needles beneath my feet. I knew the characters as I knew my friends, in all their habits and foibles and joy. And through their stories - of meeting new people, overcoming fear, and practicing kindness in small ways - I learned how to be a person.

All of that from a red, water-stained book - which is why, over two decades later, it still sits on my coffee table.

 

And so, this week I'm very excited to release Trespassers William, a collaboration with my friend Kenneth of The Homestead Hobbyist, featuring his beautiful yarn and inspired by my childhood love of Winnie the Pooh.

I hope you love it too.

You can check out the pattern on Ravelry here, or purchase directly below.

Happy Wednesday, friends. <3

Cory

Pattern Release: Cloudburst Hat & Spectral Lines Shawl

 

Just in time for Knit Fit! this weekend, I have not one but two new patterns to share with y'all. I'm so pleased with both designs, and really excited by the positive response I've already gotten to the photos I've shared on Ravelry and Instagram. I hope you love them!

 

First up is the Cloudburst Hat, a one-skein project using Malabrigo Rios in my absolute favorite of their colorways, the beautiful variegated Arco Iris.

This design was created for the 2016 Northwest LYS Tour as a thank-you pattern for participants, and to extend the love a little longer, I've decided to make this pattern free until January 2nd, 2017!

When I was working on this hat, I really wanted to showcase variegated and speckle-dyed yarns, while still featuring a stitch pattern with a little interest. (Also, as a side note, the ribbed panel on the side is the perfect place for all the cute enamel pins I've been collecting!)

For folks who prefer to work with solid and tonal yarns, they work beautifully in this pattern too. I love knitting hats, and I hope this one is just right for all your holiday and selfish knitting coming up this winter.

You can check out the pattern on Ravelry here

or download your free copy directly here.

Enjoy!

 

Second up is Spectral Lines, a collaboration with local dyer Blissful Knits that we dreamed up while I was down at Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival this last September. She had the most beautiful combination of saturated solid color and speckle-y color-shifting mini skeins, and when she asked if I might have any ideas to feature them along with a single skein of semi-solid gray, I said um yeahhh!

I was a chemistry major for over half of college, and one of the things that I always loved was all the visual ways of analyzing chemicals: burn tests, spectral analysis, nuclear magnetic resonance imaging. I always thought there was something exciting about being able to see a chemical express itself right in front of your eyes - even when it was ground into nondescript white powder, or present in such small quantities it was nearly invisible.

And so, color + stripes + nerdiness = Spectral Lines.

This shawl was an absolute joy to design from start to finish. The yarn base is twisty and a little bit bouncy - my favorite! - and every time I would switch to the next color from my little paintbox of mini-skeins, my heart would go all a-flutter with happiness.

Already, my test knitters have played with color in gorgeous ways, some substituting all solids and others adding in extra colors in the big stripes. It's been so fun to see what folks dream up, and I'm already scheming my next version!

It's available for download for $6.00, or you can check out the details on Ravelry on the Spectral Lines pattern page.

As a note, Blissful Knits will also be at Knit Fit! this weekend, so local folks, if you can't wait to get your hands on some of her yarn, this is the perfect opportunity!

Okie dokie, friends, that's it! Thanks for reading, and hope you have a good weekend.

<3
Cory

Pattern Release: Jardiniere, a Collaboration with Black Wolf Ranch

  

Annnd they just keep coming! A few months back, I started chatting with Wendy from Black Wolf Ranch about creating an original design using her yarn, with an eye towards featuring several of her beautiful dyed colorways.

This is the resulting shawl: Jardiniere, a four-color shawl inspired by knitted counterpane motifs, knit up in Wendy's beautifully textured alpaca/mohair Spirit for the body, and lusciously soft & glowy Distinctly Alpaca Sport for the color panels and edging. Wendy and I put together two different colorways - one with lots of color, and one neutral with just a little pop of brightness, which you can take a look at below.

This pattern is debuting as a kit at Black Wolf Ranch's booth at Stitches Midwest 2016 this weekend, and will be available exclusively from Black Wolf Ranch until July of 2017. 

  

I knitted most of the sample on a two-week trip to London and Paris a few months ago. I'll always remember knitting in bed on a rainy afternoon in Paris: the city shrouded in mist and rain streaking across the windows; our rooftop balcony lined with plants, a kinetic green against the gray.

When it came time to name the shawl, Jardiniere seemed like a perfect fit: it's a word used in both French and English, with multiple meanings - a flower box, a gardener. A word that by its meaning alone is something ordinary, but in its context means something more.

A painted container full of earth and color, tendrils of green spilling out over its walls. A woman with dirt under her fingernails holding a tomato still warm from the vine, her face half-shaded from the sun. This is what I thought of as I named it.

I hope you love it.

Happy Friday, friends - and happy Stitches!

<3

Cory

Stranded Magazine & Pattern Release: Gilia Legwarmers

 

Photo credit: Andi Satterlund, Stranded Magazine

I'm super excited to announce the release of the Stranded Magazine: Mild Weather 2016 issue, and my pattern, the Gilia legwarmers! Knit up in Miss Babs Yowza - Whatta Skein!, they're a fun, cozy way to extend skirts and dresses into the fall, or keep your legs toasty walking down to the diner for pie and damn good coffee. ;)

Gilia is available as part of the full issue, which you can check out on their website or Ravelry.

Now that the official stuff is done, okay, full disclosure: I'm in love with this issue! The bright, retro styling, the Twin-Peaks-y vibe, the designs - Salal and Tupshin and Latourell, omg - soo goood. Not to mention the articles, including a feature on my absolute favorite yarnies, Kate & Rachel of Spincycle Yarns! Yep... time to go find my wool skirts, put on some winged eyeliner, and start adding new projects to my queue...

(And just as a little introduction after the fact, Stranded is a new online publication put together by local designers & yarn folks Andi Satterlund, Erin Birnel, and Monica Kirby - they've been an awesome team to work with, and I'm super stoked to see what they do next. I hope you like the issue as much as I do!)

Happy Thursday!

<33

Cory

Pattern Release: Lelia Hat

  

Way back when I was still in design school, I sketched a cute little hat with a coffee bean pattern on it, and was positively smitten with the idea of it.

Fast forward a couple of years, and that same motif kept on coming up in my sketchbook, again and again. So when I volunteered to work up a design for the Fiber Gallery at Madrona this last year, I was super delighted to find the right balance of yarn and design to finally make the idea come to life, in the form of the Lelia Mitts.

But in my head, Lelia was always meant to be a hat, too. So I put that idea in the back of my noggin for a second while I finished up some other projects, thinking that I'd get back to it as soon as they were finished.

And thennnnnn we got a puppy. (Good-bye, free time! Hello, adorable poop-troll!)

But once the Corgmonster had finally settled in a bit more, and learned important commands like "sit," stay," and "holy crackers, dog, don't put that in your mouth" - a constant work in progress, let's be real -  the Lelia Hat seemed like a great way to get back to it.

Knit up in the same yarns and colorways as the Lelia Mitts, with the same gorgeous color changes of Dyed in the Wool, this hat was like a little potato chip of happiness coming off my needles.

And today, the Lelia Hat pattern is finally ready for its debut! Hooray!

It's available for download for $5.00, or you can check out the details on Ravelry on the Lelia Hat pattern page.

Happy Tuesday, friends!

<3
c.

Pattern Release: Chiral

  

Happy news today, friends - the Chiral cowl is now available for download in my Ravelry store!

The idea for the design started as an experiment in symmetry, and turned into a bright, kicky piece of 3-D smooshiness when I knitted it up in Spincycle Yarns Knit Fast, Die Young, in the colorway Gold Digger. (Just in case I haven't mentioned it enough times, the badass ladies over at Spincycle have my color number on speed-dial!)

So whether you have 100 yards of super-bulky chilling in your stash, or you've been eyeing that Spincycle-y goodness, this pattern is a quick, fun way to play with color and shape.

Chiral is available for download for $4.00, or you can check out the details on Ravelry on the Chiral pattern page.

Big thanks to my test knitter Sara, who helped tweak the wording to make it a better pattern and took her Chiral on a fun field trip to Port Ludlow! I love it when my patterns are well-traveled. :D

Happy Wednesday, friends!

Cory

Pattern Release: Lelia Mitts

On Christmas day, 1899, my great-grandmother Lelia Rieth was given a book of poetry by her father. It's a beautiful volume: the cover brown and textured, the title and spine embossed with flourishes, the edges of each page leafed in gold. My grandfather passed it on to me on my twelfth birthday, my name inscribed in his blocky engineer's handwriting below Lelia's. The dates between us spanning an entire century.

I never met my great-grandmother, but through that book and through stories of her life, I felt like I knew her. Even her name sounded singularly beautiful to me, not only because of its pleasing cadence, but also because of the strength of the person she was: her creative spirit, her resilience, her optimism.

Lelia, abandoned by her husband to raise her children alone during the Great Depression. Lelia, mother of two boys who went to war, and only one who came back. And yet, still: Lelia who sang opera. Lelia who painted. Lelia, who kept a book of Longfellow given to her by her Papa for her whole life.

Lelia, who looked at the world through eyes the color of mine.

And so, these are for her.

 

The pattern is available for download for $5.00, or you can check out the details on Ravelry on the Lelia pattern page.

Big thanks to my test knitter and tech editor, and to everyone who has shared their kind words about this design both in person and online. This one has been in my noggin for a long time, and I'm so happy to be able to share it with you! <3

Happy Friday, friends!

Cory

Pattern Release: Nusa

Seven years ago this month, I spent three weeks on an island off the coast of Bali, a place called Nusa Penida. In my time there, I helped chop a jackfruit; rode on the back of a motor bike down to the market to buy oil and shallots; ate stale sweet crackers on the front porch with an older woman who taught me to spin thread from slivers of cotton and giggled when I made mistakes, which was often. I listened to Junior Wells on a dying iPod and took naps on the couch while the rain rolled over the hills to the sea.

It remains one of the most beautiful and formative experiences of my life, one whose meaning I can barely touch with words. But what has stayed with me are the memories of heat and taste and color: the glint of the big silver diving platform in the harbor; the air so thick with moisture you could feel its weight on your skin like a cat; greens heavy with spices that made my whole chest ache with heat for hours afterward.

In the shorthand of my memory, Nusa Penida is turquoise and red and gold, a continue loop of land and water meeting - and so it seems fitting that my woolen Nusa should be composed of the same stuff. I hope it brings you a bit of sunlight too.

The pattern is available for download for $6.00, or you can check out the details on Ravelry on the Nusa pattern page.

Huge thanks to my test knitters, whose thoughtful feedback and gorgeous projects make my job a million times prettier and more fun. <3

Happy Wednesday, friends!

Cory

F / W 2015: They're Up!

  

Hooray, hooray! All of the patterns in the F / W 2015 Collection are live and available for download on Ravelry.

Sweet Root

Cairn

Wayward

Lingon

If you prefer your patterns in print and are Seattle local, you can also pick up a copy at Knit Fit this Saturday or Sunday, where I'll be hanging out with Ann in the Vintage Buttons booth! A lot of my favorite folks will be there - Spincycle Yarns, YOTH Yarns, Hazel Knits, Three Fates Yarns, and many other favorites just waiting to be discovered - and it should be a really, really great show.

Market Hours:
Saturday November 14th, 8:30 am - 6 pm
Sunday November 15th, 8:30 am - 4 pm

The market is free, the people are amazing, and the yarn is spectacular. You should come!

Happy, happy Friday, friends! <3<3<3
c.