OK, so it's a cowl, but the alliteration wouldn't have worked otherwise!

This weekend I have been multi stranding. Sounds painful, I know, but it really isn't, and if you're looking to get large yardages out of your yarn stash at speed it's a great way to do it, and you can get some lovely results.
This cowl couldn't be simpler. In fact, if you're looking for a project suitable for a novice knitter you could do worse than this cowl.

For this one I used three strands of lace weight (all the same yarn), one strand of sport weight and one strand of fingering all held together to produce something approximating chunky to super-chunky weight. I used 9mm (US 13) needles, because they are the biggest ones I own. My cowl came out to be 7" (18cm) wide. The exact width isn't vital as long as you're happy with the size you get, but bear in mind you want to be able to see out over it. A wider cowl can be folded in half lengthways as shown, though, for a really squooshy cowl (and if that isn't a real word it ought to be!)

The pattern goes like this:
Using 5 strands held together (as above), cast on 22 stitches.
Knit in garter stitch until work measures 20" (51cm) long.
Cast off. 
Fold in half end-to-end with the right side innermost and sew the cast on and cast off edges together (that's the short ends).
Fold back the right way out and pull on over your head!

And that's it. Very easy. Mine used approximately 100 yards of each strand of yarn, but again, if you've got more yarn available, make a longer cowl and that gives you the chance to wrap it twice for extra insulation.

​Or if you want to pretend to be a gangster, you can wear it like this!

Have fun, combine crazy colour combinations, use serious numbers of strands. I'd love to see what people come up with using this simple pattern. Enjoy!

...this week's knitting, that is! Let me go back to the start. Well, the very start was last year with The Answer headband which was my solution to needing something to warm my ears but not being a keen wearer of hats.
The start of this next headband phase was last weekend, when I saw a stranded colourwork pattern in a stitch dictionary and thought it would look good in two colours of Wollmeise yarn from my stash (Lapis lazuli and Skarabaus, if you're interested!). I worked up a swatch and it did work, and also called to me that it wanted to be a headband.
Never being one to refuse my yarn its wish, I worked up this headband during a knitting meet.

On the train home from the meet, an idea for a second headband popped into my head and as soon as I reached home I dived into the stash for the right yarn to bring it to life. By the end of the evening, Two Rugby Games was sitting on the sofa beside Bubbles headband.

By this point I was really on a roll! The following day I had a cable headband knitted up (well, part knitted, frogged, part knitted again). The day after that I had a felted headband made and the idea for an eBook of a collection of seven headbands, one for each day of the week. The fifth headband is already made. The sixth one is calling out to be knitted. The seventh one is still not fully decided upon but will be joining its friends in the book, A Week Of Warm Ears, just as soon as it tells me what it wants to be.

If nothing else, this winter I have absolutely no excuse for having chilly ears!

My latest pattern is out. Titania's Inferno is available through Ravelry.com now, but the launch of this pattern has had an added extra with a Texan twist.
As part of my pattern preparation process, I get one or two (or three or four....) test knitters to work up a sample. It gives me the chance to make sure that the pattern makes sense in the real world and not just to me and my tech editor, and also to see how the pattern works in different colours of yarn, perhaps comparing solid colours with variegated ones and so on.
Testing a more complex pattern like this one is not for the faint-hearted so I had contacted some knitters who have worked lace shawl samples for me before. My offer to test was taken up by four intrepid knitters including Ravelry user Beccainsonora. She mentioned that a friend of hers has a line of hand-dyed yarn and she thought this would be an ideal pattern to pair with that yarn. There was a deadline though, as the friend was to be exhibiting at Stitches Texas and Beccainsonora wanted to be able to loan her friend the finished shawl to showcase her yarn at the expo.
The test continued with all four knitters working up some beautiful samples in different colours and different yarns, and meanwhile behind the scenes I made sure the pattern itself was getting its final tweaks.
Then last week I had a message from Beccainsonora to ask if I could contact her friend who dyes the yarn she was using. Not only did she want to display the shawl, she also wanted to be able to sell the pattern at the show as well!
I had heard of the "Stitches" shows before but I hadn't realised this is the inaugural "Texas" version. A quick search online showed that this was to be a really big event, and I was excited to think that one of my patterns could be displayed there.
Some last minute preparations, lots of emails and Ravelry messages back and forth, and the pattern went live just in time for the show this weekend. 
And here is the sample shawl itself at the show - photo courtesy of Ravelry user Beccainsonora, used with thanks. (The yarn is WIP Fiber Arts Bliss Lace in colour Malachite, available from Yarnies in Abilene, Texas!)

It has been said that I knit anywhere and everywhere. And it's probably true! Not all projects are suitable for travel knitting though, so here is my list of five must-haves for a mobile knitting project.

1. Small size. It's not easy working on a seamless adult size sweater on the move once you get a decent amount of it worked. Socks, mitts or charity squares are much more portable.

2. Circular needles (or a crochet hook, at a push). I work in-the-round projects almost exclusively on one circular needle using the Magic Loop technique. It means if I drop anything, it all stays together. I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to have one of a set of DPNs drop down a drain or down the gap between the train and the platform. 
I'm not much of a crocheter and tend to restrict myself to charity squares, but at least it's just one pointy stick to drop!

3. Centre-pull yarn ball. This might not be the most obvious, but a centre-pull cake sits still when you pull more yarn out. If you're pulling from the outside, the thing is inclined to roll about. You might get away with it if it's a cake from a ball-winder as the bottom is flat so it might sit still, but an actual round ball is going to be off across the floor as soon as you look at it!

4. Small drawstring project bag. Seeing me using one of these was the point my mother-in-law released I was a Knitter (with a capital K). With a drawstring bag looped over my wrist, a centre pull ball inside it, and a sock magic-looped on a circular needle, I can walk and knit socks at the same time!

5. Memorise the pattern. Depending on the circumstances, you might get away with a small printout, or a copy of just the chart if it's a small on, in the bottom of that drawstring project bag if you don't need to refer to it too often. Ideally though you want something you can work on with needing to check the pattern whether it be just stocking stitch or garter stitch, or a simple repeat on a stitch pattern. Plain vanilla socks (just knitting round and round and round, except for the heel and the toe), charity squares or dishcloths (just back and forth knitting, or crocheting round and round and round), a simple hat, all things that can easily be made while moving about.

So there we have it. There are other things I could list, like not needing too many notions - I don't want to be shedding stitch markers all the way down the high street, and I lose enough tape measures without taking them out and about with me - but these are my Big Five for the Knitter On The Go!!

There are times when I have design ideas coming out of my ears (almost!) and other times when I struggle with what I want to design next. Last weekend I was stuck between those two places. I currently have two sock ideas, a sweater idea, a shawl idea and a jewellery idea, all percolating in my head and I couldn't decide which one I was most excited about to put first on my to-do list.

However, I also had a niggling thought that I wanted four stray balls of DK out of my stash. I don't like throwing away entire balls of yarn. If it's something I know I really won't use I might give it to charity, or I'll use it up making charity squares, but these were balls of yarn that I wanted to use myself. I just couldn't think what to do with them. There's a limit to what you can make with a single 50g ball of DK, even if it is soft squishy merino in a pretty colour!

I think the fates must have been on my side, though, because browsing online I saw three unrelated threads on Ravelry that, put together, became the perfect idea for those stray stash yarns.

The first one was a Stashdown Challenge to try to use your entire stash over the next 18 months. If I needed one last push to use up those four DK orphans, this was it.
The second one was a call for pattern submissions for homeware items. I have never designed a homeware item. It's not something that's even crossed my mind, probably because they aren't something I tend to knit for myself.
The third one was a Design Challenge to design a pillow incorporating a cabled texture. 
Finally all the pieces fell into place. I had been browsing through a stitch dictionary looking for a background for (yet another) sock pattern, and kept coming back to a braided cable stitch pattern. Too complicated for socks, so not what I was looking for, but the stitch itself really appeals to me. And then into my mind popped a picture of the pillow I would design using the DK yarn, including the cabled stitch pattern, which I might submit to the pattern call. (Or I might just decide to release the pattern myself. Or not!)

After working on my last design, which used lace weight, this yarn is knitting up at lightning speed! And it's looking just how I imagined it. I did need to do a bit of quick-and-dirty maths on the fly, just to make sure that I would have enough yarn to make the pillow the right size to fit a standard size insert. After all, there's no point in designing a cushion cover to fit a cushion that you can't get, nor did I really want to have to buy more yarn since the first inspiration for this design was the idea of getting this yarn out of my stash!
Three more inches of work and then there's just the sewing up to do. And then comes the hardest part for me - trying to decide whether or not to submit it to the yarn company pattern call.