Diary

Difficult times

14 March 2020 • Leave a Comment

Right now, we are facing a very serious situation (in France and worldwide), which dictates extraordinary measures. A lot of event are being canceled or postponed. Those cancelations or postponements are absolutely necessary to limit the propagation of the virus. If it is a sensible and responsible attitude, they are not without consequences for the organisators and the exhibitors at those events. Everyone has engaged money and time, has made lots of stock of their products. for some, those events are a major source of revenue and their canlation or postponement can really make it difficult for them (cash flow problems, stock management…) and even cause them to stop their activities. If you have planned to attend some events (or even if you didn’t), you can help those (often smell) businesses and support them in those difficult times. You can find the list of the exhibitors on the website or social media accounts of the events. You might even discover some new creators. If you can, go to their online shop ans order a few products and make a special order. And even if you can’t buy anything (no money, not the time, no need for it or too many already in your stash…), you can still help them : share your projects made with those indy-dyed yarn, tag the designers of the patterns you are knitting, share their content. It will help them being seen ! As for me, I should have exhibit at Knit Eat (in Lyon, France), which is postponed until June. My business is not threatened per itself, but yarn festivals make up for a big part of my business revenue. So the fact that Knit Eat is postponed has impact on my activity. Because I invested for this event (partially for new products), my cash flow is really limited right now and I have to pause some projects (future patterns I wanted to make) because I don’t have the cash available right now. To make up for it a little, I’m planning to reopen a online shop to offer my products (projects bags…), but the kids being at home 24/7 for an unkonwn time, it will be more complicated to work and this might take quite some time. In the meantime, if you wish to support me, you can : find all my patterns on Ravelry support me here on Patreon (starting at 1$/month) Take…

Azulejos : Adventures of a hat

12 February 2020 • Leave a Comment

At the beginnign of February, I published my first pattern of the year : Azulejos, a 3-colours stranded-colourwork hat. It took me nearly 18 months between the first sticthes and the reveal of the pattern, which is quite a long time for such a small project, but this pattern had twists and turns… April 2018, The Channe Thread yarn festival : I fell for 1 skein and 2 mini-skeins of The little GRey Sheep Hampshire 4ply. When I bought them, I was already thinking about a stranded-colourwork hat. September 2018 : I drew my first attempts of colourwork charts, inspired by the painted tiles I’ve admired in Portugal and Spain. I hadn’t knitted the hat yet, but I already had its future name… As soon as I had my mind set on a colourwork chart, I put my skeins in balls and begun to knit, improvising the crown of the hat as I went. By the end of September, I was taking the finished hat with me on a long week-end with friends, hoping to take pictures of it… Coming home from that week-end away, I had no pictures of it, no notes about its construction besides the base chart and I had lost my hat ! I searched for it everywhere, even calling the rental we had stayed, but I couldn’t find it anywhere ! I was so disappointed, especially because I didn’t have enough yarn left to knit it again… Trying to move on, I decided to start a new project an wait until I could buy more yarn to make it again. After a few month (April 2019), I found my way back to Emma and The little Grey Sheep booth at The Channel Thread yarn festival. There, I bought yarn to make 2 new samples of my idea : one with the same colours as my first sample for myself (in blue tones), the other for one of my daughter (pink-purple tones). A few months passed by before I got to work again on this pattern idea. At the end of August, I put the first combo (the same as my first lost sample, size M) on my needles, and very soon after that, I begun the second hat (smaller, Size S) and I even ordered enough yarn to make a bigger 3rd one (green tones, Size L). This time, I take notes and save all…

Simply Linen Top

14 May 2019 • Leave a Comment

The weather is quite changing for May : temperatures are quite low, and it rains almost everyday… But I’m still hoping warmers days will come ! After all, I can see some sun rays coming through today… So, to prep myself for the warmers that will come, I started knitting a new linen top for this summer. It’s something I love to wear : light, flowing, breathable… While the pattern is not ready to be published, I’m going to continue catching up by showing you the linen top knitting pattern I published last year with Madlaine.

Selenian Shawl

2 May 2019 • Leave a Comment

I just published a new knitting pattern for Le Fil de la Manche (Channel Thread) yarn festival. Selenian shawl has a crescent shape, like an ode to the Moon !

Arlo

31 March 2019 • Leave a Comment

Right after I finished Oscar’s Wyatt, I begun to knit a cardigan for Capucine… The pattern was in my pattern-to-knit-one-day list for a while : Arlo, by Michèle Wang in the BT Kids Collection from Brooklyn Tweeds and I used De Rerum Natura Gilliatt… I think this yarn has a perfect quality-price ratio for kids garnment !

Wyatt

11 March 2019 • Leave a Comment

After Capucine’s Vertices, let’s continue to go back in time… This time, may I present you asweater I knitted for Oscar…

Capucine’s Vertices

28 February 2019 • Leave a Comment

In the next few articles I’m going to publish here, I will try to cath up on some projects I knitted in the last few months (years ?)… Let’s begin with a shawl I made during Spring 2017… Yes, 2017 ! No, I’m not late…

Summer memories

7 September 2018 • Leave a Comment

Summer is coming to an end… Kids are back at school and day care and my slow work rythm is over. It’s time to dive again in projects and ideas. But, before, I want to keep here some memories of that summer, to keep in mind all those good times together, here and there, and everything we did and discovered…

Making a living as a knitwear designer 1/2

27 May 2018 • Leave a Comment

Like every personal post, dealing with subjects difficult to talk about, this one took me a while to mature and to finally write it… Let’s dive in ! As a knitwear designer, it is really hard to make a living out of it. Everyone knows the names of some famous knitwear designers (Ysolda Teague, Stephen West, Jared Flood, Andrea Moory, Joji Locatelli…)which are well-known and whom we think sell a lot of patterns (right- or wrongfully, I don’t know). In fact, this is not the case for most knitwear designers…

New knitting pattern : Rosalaine

1 May 2018 • Leave a Comment

Sophie (@sophie.kamalaine on Instagram)is a fiber friend. She is passionate about yarn, wool, their origin, how they are processed, natural dyeing. One day, she decided to go for it. Last Fall, she came to a yarn festival where I had a booth and she handed me 2 skeins of HER yarn, offering me to create a pattern with it… I couldn’t resist !

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