For my birthday this year, my very generous mother paid for the full-works registration at Stitches South, the first fiber convention that XRX (the publishers of Knitter’s Magazine) has put on in the southeast U.S. It’s also the first time I’ve been to a big fiber event like this.

Mom and I had a fabulous time, as much because we could spend it together. Here’s what I learned:

• You can find all kinds of gorgeous yarns at fiber festivals that you cannot feel up anywhere else. If you are tempted to order Sanguine Gryphon or Creatively Dyed yarns because of what you have seen online, I can guarantee you that you won’t go wrong. Not only are their products unfailingly gorgeous, but the owners/dyers are lovely people as well.

• Beth Brown-Reinsel and Karen Alfke are the most charming, knowledgeable, patient knitting instructors imaginable. This was an especially delightful discovery for me, because in some ways they represent such different parts of the knitting community. Beth has done decades of research on traditional knitting, and in an utterly charming and unassuming way will teach you the precise, authentic techniques. Karen is a raucous, hilarious young woman (well, she’s the same age as me, so that’s young… shut up) who believes that knitters should bend the rules in order to make garments that most suit them. They are both treasures.
• Knitters really are a great culture. Several staff members at the convention hotel told us that the Stitches attendees were the nicest group they had ever hosted. “You knitters treat us like people,” said one waitress. Isn’t that pathetic that that’s what passes for good these days?
• Our economy really is in the crapper and it is affecting the craft industry, even if not as desperately as — say — the American automobile industry. When we asked Steve Elkins, one of the owners of the yarn megastore WEBS, how things were going at the market, he looked like he was about to tear up.
• Atlanta has the most physically beautiful yarn store that I have ever seen. Knitch is tucked down a little alleyway in a bohemian neighborhood. It’s interior is all exposed brick and simple shelving. There’s an enormous table in the center of the store where you can sit and peruse books and patterns. They stock not only beautiful yarns in virtually every color that exists (Rowan, Noro, Debbie Bliss, Socks that Rock, etc.) but also fabric, buttons, roving, needle felting kits, and other fiber-related goodies. The whole place is thoughtfully and beautifully laid out. They even gave us cupcakes, which admittedly does endear a store to one’s heart.
• If you thought that knitting and crochet were mostly white chick things, then you should go to Stitches South and re-educate yourself!

I’ve always been a “thrower” — that is, I knit English style, holding the yarn in my right hand and throwing it over the needle.

For years, I’ve wanted to switch to Continental (yarn in the left hand, right hand picking stitches). I really do think it’s a faster method, though there is much disagreement about this among knitters. If you think about it, your knitting is moving toward the left as you do it, so it’s more efficient to have the yarn in the left hand, already heading in the right direction. It’s also MUCH faster to do ribbing when you’re holding the yarn in your left hand.

But by the time the urge to switch hit me, I’d been knitting for 15 years. Those are some hard-to-break habits, folks. Every once in a while, I’d try out Continental, but after about 20 minutes I’d break down and switch back to my old way of doing things.  It just doesn’t feel right to have to concentrate that hard on stockinette.

And that’s when crochet entered my life. A couple of years ago, I taught myself to crochet. I did it, not even thinking about the effect it might have on my English/Continental issue. This week, I tried Continental again for the first time since I learned crochet, and discovered that it was incredibly easy for me to pick up this time. I think that crochet has taught my hands the motions that you need for Continental-style knitting. When I crochet, I hold the yarn in my left hand, and pick at the stitches with my right — just like Continental knitting.

So I’m now the merry convert. Recent converts are so annoying, aren’t they?

My apologies for the long silence. You know how it is.

Here’s how I earned my genius points yesterday:

1. A local yarn store asked for five printed copies of my Rodeo Kid pattern. Woo hoo! I couldn’t get my own printer to work yesterday, so I loaded the file onto a zip drive and skipped off to the local copy shop.

“Ten color copies, please!,” I say, thinking I’ll keep a few for later.

[Whirring of copier.] “That’ll be $26.50.”

Gulp. That meant that I had just spent as much to print the pattern as I was going to make selling it wholesale to the LYS.

GENIUS!

2. Then I drove to another LYS to buy some yarn so that I could swatch a design. (It’s for Classic Elite, who put out a call recently for designs for their spring 2010 collection.)

I poured over Classic Elite’s various scrumptious yarns, and settled on Cotton Bamboo. I’m designing a men’s sweater, so choosing colors was a little trickier than usual. In the end, I felt very pleased about the combination I put together: just within but stretching the usual man palette.

I took this photo on the tile in my bathroom, and then turned around and saw this – the shower curtain that’s been hanging there for at least five years.

GENIUS!

As someone who is very new to knitting design, I have learned some interesting and unexpected things about the process.

The most recent example of Lesson Learned: You might think you’re done with a design once you put the PDF up for distribution, but you’re not. What else is in store (so to speak)?

Take, for example, my Rodeo Kid pattern, which I completed in late November. It has seen only modest interest – which I’m hoping is mainly because I haven’t had the time to really promote it. Still there’s some work that any committed designer needs to do:

1. List the pattern in several different places (blog, Ravelry, Etsy, etc.).

2. Keep tabs on orders and respond to them quickly. Keep track of who orders so that you can send them updates to the pattern.

3. Keep records of money spent developing the pattern and money earned selling it. You will need this for tax reasons, but also so that you can keep track of how much profit you are really making with your designs.

4. Promote your design (blog about it, show it to your LYS owner, advertise it on Ravelry or other venues).

All of that I expected. But there are other parts that I hadn’t anticipated:

5. See if your LYS will let you teach a class based on the design. Gauge in Austin has very generously let me do this, starting on February 7. It’s going to be a multi-part class, so there’s lots of prep work to be done, like deciding how to break up the elements of the design, how to illustrate them. I’ll also need to prepare swatches so that I can be ready to demonstrate different techniques.

6. Think about expanding the audience. Since I’m not very practiced at designing for multiple sizes, I released the original design in just one size (18 mo – 2 years). I’ve decided to knit up a second, larger (3-4 yo) model and add the instructions for that to the pattern. Why? A couple of reasons: I’m not entirely pleased with the photos that I’ve got of my original prototype, and I don’t know that many kids who are the right size for that sweater. I’ve got a 4-year-old on staff, so I can get better shots if he’s in the picture. Also, the expanded size range will make the design more appealing.

I’m sure this is all a very back-asswards way of going about things, but for now I’m all about the fumbling through.

Speaking of the 3-4 year-old version, here’s what I’ve knit up so far:

Which ribbon should I use to line the button bands? I’m leaning toward the one on the right, but I’d be glad for your input.

My friend Lisa has an excellently weird tradition of setting a theme for herself at the beginning of each year. To take some recent examples that my friends came up with: “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough,” “Doppelganger,” and – my favorite – “Pudding.”

But today, I’m going to go the more conventional route of writing out a list of craft resolutions for myself. I would love to hear what yours are.

2009 craft resolutions:

1. In my head, I decided that craft is the new center of my scholarly and creative life. I’m going to act like that’s the case on the outside.
2. On the other hand, I will not listen to the voice inside my head that says that I will never be able to create good knitting designs.
3. By the end of the year, I will have done enough research to decide whether my small craft business idea is viable or not.
4. I will not use other people’s babies as an excuse not to make things for myself.
5. I will make myself a sweater. That I like.
6. I will learn how to dye yarn.

Behold, friends – one week’s worth of crochet:

My son has the audacity to have not just one teacher but seven assistant teachers. The idea of making handmade gifts under these circumstances is pretty deranged.

But I am deranged, so off we go. Two years ago, I knit everyone flower pins. Last year, I flaked. I was stumped about this year. All the small gifts that I could find either seemed lame or impossible to accomplish for eight separate people.

Enter the super-fast craft called crochet. Crochet, I love you. I would not marry you – I’m already married to knitting – but you are a fabulous fling on the side. You give me seven hats in as many days. Knitting cannot do that for me. Crochet, remind me to buy you something sparkly.

So these hats are for the assistant teachers. Liam’s main teacher wears head scarves every day, so is not a good candidate for a hat. So she’s getting the non-stanky bag that you see described in the posts below.

In the comments on the previous post, Sara posted the very helpful suggestion that I soak my reeking crocheted bag in vinegar, borax, or Oxyclean, and then wash it with regular detergent. (Thanks, Sara, for giving my bag a brief clemency!)

This technique may very well work 99.9% of the time, but even after this treatment my bag still made me want to retch every time I got within a foot of it.

Into the trash can it went. It’s the first time I’ve ever just tossed a finished object. It only took me four hours to make, though, so I’m not sweating it.

To console myself, I immediately got out this luscious little Noro tidbit:

Several months ago, I had picked up three skeins of Matsuri (87% cotton, 13% wool, 100% gorgeous Noro dye work) for some unknown thing or other. OK, I probably just got it because it’s purty and I can’t resist lime green.

So this is going to be the new mesh grocery bag for my son’s teacher. All signs point to it not stinking.

Yesterday I crocheted a grocery bag as a Christmas gift for my son’s teacher. It’s simple (just some double crochet at a big gauge), but I like how it turned out.

The only problem? This bag stinks. I do not mean that it stinks visually or in terms of its construction. No, it REEKS. It is S-T-A-N-K-Y.

What does it smell like? Oh, I’m so glad you asked. The answer is VOMIT.

I noticed the stench when I started knitting with the yarn. I decided to muscle through it, taking shallow breaths, telling myself the smell would come out in the wash.

It didn’t.

I have washed this sucker three times in the strongest smelling detergent I have, and it still smells like the very last thing on earth that you would want to put your newly purchased produce into.

So. What to do with a crocheted bag that smells like vomit? Diaper pail liner? Donation to the Let’s Give Sarah Palin an Affordable Makeover Fund?

Tip for the week: Don’t ever think that you can base a pattern that you’re designing on a pattern from one of Barbara Walker’s amazing stitch dictionaries, and still expect to feel original by the end.

I’ve been working on a stole design for months now. (That’s it in the photo above.) I’ve got the concept all worked out – it’s just taking me a long time to execute the prototype. I want to make sure it looks in reality like what I have in my mind’s eye.

The repeating lace design at the heart of the thing is the Embossed Twining Vine Leaf pattern from page 238 of Walker’s Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns. It’s a stunning piece of lace and lovely in its complexity: it takes 24 rows just to finish one repeat of the pattern. I’m going to layer some additional elements on top of this, but I’m delighted with how the vines look as they trail along the length of the stole. It looks especially fabulous in the rich semi-solid tones of Dream in Color Smooshy in the Happy Forest colorway.

Then, the winter issue of Interweave Knits arrived in the mail, and my smugness was shattered. There are not one but TWO patterns in this issue that use this very vine pattern: the Climbing Vines Pullover and the Stenton Garden Pillows. (Weirdly, each pattern has a completely different chart, though the knitted result would be the same.)

Now, I’m grateful for the charts, because following Walker’s written instructions was making my eyes cross, and my attempts to chart the thing had reached the limits of my charting intelligence.

And even though seeing these IK patterns makes me feel like I just showed up at a party wearing the same dress that two other women were wearing, you have to figure, hey, it’s got to be a great dress if all three of us are wearing it, right?

It’s finally ready! I got some expert help with the technical editing and some photos, so I can now put my Rodeo Kid pattern up for sale.

I hope you enjoy the pattern. It includes a lot of unusual but useful techniques that can build the skills of an intermediate knitter.

Here’s my adorable friend, Cole, modeling it for us. The link to purchase the pattern (for $5) is below the photo.

Photo: Jorge Reyes (http://jreyesphoto.zenfolio.com)