Before the 2016 GAL starts, now seems like a good time to reflect on the projects I made last year. I completed ten items all together, one bag, four hats, two toys, a pair of socks and two light sabres. Yes, you read that last one correctly!
All apart from the toys and one hat are from designers who are participating again this year.
Let's take a look at those finished objects....

My first, cast on on the first day of the 2015 GAL, was This Little Piggy Went to Market by Dana Gervais. This cotton market bag has had so much use over the last 12 months, coming in very handy for carrying my groceries back from the shops. It's especially useful having such a long handle as I can put it across my body so it can't slip off my shoulder, and it folds down into its own internal pocket making it easy to store. 

​The next is Riles by Talitha Kuomi. This one was a gift for my son's before- and after-school childminder. No fault of the pattern but unfortunately she found the wool I used a bit itchy on her forehead, but she likes the hat so much that she just wore a thin fleece hat underneath it to keep it off her skin and keep her head extra-cosy.

The only pair of socks I completed during the 2015 GAL were these All Of My Ducks In A Row by Amy Kenagy. This pattern was great because I needed something that would work for this multi-coloured yarn, and the pattern was designed specifically to enhance short-colour-repeat multi-coloured sock yarn. These were a gift for my mother-in-law who gets quite a lot of gift socks from me, for two reasons. Firstly she appreciates them, and secondly we're the same shoe size so it's very easy for me to check that they're going to fit!!

The next pattern was a fun one, of which I made two. Light Saber by Emily Ringelman is one of the more unusual things I've knitted, and I had to make two, one for each of my boys. They still play with them a year on! 

My final projects were two of these It's Cold Outside hats by Handarbeitskram. I used two strands of heavy DK held together for both of them, rather than the super-chunky yarn that the pattern is really written for, but they came out just fine. I have only very limited crochet experience and these were my only crochet projects in the GAL last year, but if you're looking for a very quick gift, even a beginner can whip one of these up in little more than an hour.

All of these designers are taking part in the GAL again this year, so if any of these projects take your fancy, you can make them as part of the GAL again this year.

The Indie Design Gift-A-Long is a big event with a lot going on. This time of year is a busy one anyway with Christmas preparations going on, work is crazy as people prepare (and panic, let's face it) for the holidays, and we all have shopping and decorating and wrapping and baking and all the rest of it to do. Why on Earth would I make things even more hectic by adding the GAL into the mix as well? Sometimes I ask myself this question too, but it's so much fun I can't resist.

This is my third time participating in the GAL as both knitter and designer. Let me tell you why in this list of my Top Five Reasons Why I Take Part In The Gift-A-Long.

1. The camaraderie.
This is the big one. Even though knitting pattern design isn't my main job, it's one I really enjoy but it can be quite a solitary occupation. That doesn't bother me. I'm really quite introverted and find large groups exhausting, but the great thing about the internet is that one can enjoy the fun and friendship of a large group but without the noise and the overwhelming physical presence of all those people. I really enjoy all the chat and the excitement of thousands of knitters and crocheters all working together, sharing photos of their projects, admiring one another's yarns and then their finished work, sharing ideas and just having so much enjoyment in a shared passion for yarn and what can be done with it.

2. Taking a break
I agree, it does sound mad to claim that frantic last-minute gift knitting is taking a break, but I like to take the opportunity of the GAL to knit patterns by other designers. I love designing my own patterns but it's really nice to take a break now and again and knit something where I can just sit back and follow the instructions because someone else has already done all the hard work, the maths, the charting, the testing. I can browse through all the thousands (and yes, it is thousands!) of eligible patterns, choose something that inspires me and then just jump straight into it!

3. Finding new friends and mentors
As a designer, the GAL is also a great online networking opportunity. I still consider myself a newbie - I've only been designing for 2.5 years - and while the Ravelry forums are great places for asking questions (even the silly ones) and getting hints and tips, it can still feel very intimidating when you're posting alongside Big Names in the knitting world. The GAL is a great leveller in that, aside from having a smaller catalogue available, the newer designers can get just as much exposure and promotion as the well-established ones, and with so many participants there's bound to be other designers, knitters and crocheters who you can "click" with who you might not have found on a site as huge as Ravelry. In fact, the 2015 GAL even spawned its own spin-off group, the GAL After Party group, where designers and non-designers who met through the GAL that year decided to continue after the GAL itself was over.

4. The Sale
Let's face it, we all love a bargain, and the GAL gives crafters the chance to get a generous 25% off thousands of patterns from their favourite designers as well as encouraging people to try out a pattern or two from less-familiar designers. There are designers I have made repeated purchases from having tried out their patterns in the GAL, and projects I love that I would probably never have made if I hadn't been tempted by the bargain pattern. I doubt if my Paypal account is quite so keen on this one, but I have a bunch of patterns in my Ravelry cart already just waiting for the discount coupon code to go live at the start of the Gift-A-Long so I can grab the patterns I've spotted and save some money at the same time.

5. The sales
No, I'm not repeating myself. I mean, sales of my own patterns. Whether you sell your patterns or offer them free, there is no greater compliment to a designer when someone chooses to invest time, yarn and money into something you've designed. I design things I want to make myself (many of my pattern samples end up either in my own wardrobe or get gifted to people I love) and it's always lovely when someone I don't know (or even someone I do) appreciates my work enough to want to buy it. Also, without getting into a debate about free vs paid patterns, designing has a cost to it and expenses need to be recouped or covered from elsewhere, and if people buy patterns it encourages and enables the designer to design some more. So a big thank you to you if you have bought a pattern from me or from any of the other independent designers taking part in the GAL.

Now, come along 8pm US-EST on Tuesday, we all want to cast on!!!

For this year's Gift-A-Long I have decided to choose my projects in a slightly different way.  (And if you're asking "What's a Gift-a-long?" firstly Where have you been??! and secondly check out my recent blog posts, you'll find out there.) I have decided to choose the yarn first, and then choose projects to match.
I have a few reasons for this. Firstly, a lot of my gift knitting is already done. I know, I've been waiting for this event all year, the whole point of it is gift knitting, but I don't want to have to rush at the last minute. December is busy enough, I want to be able to enjoy the GAL knitting other people's patterns without having to think about it too much so why not treat myself to some of those things?!
Secondly, I am actively trying to stash-down, and thirdly (which is related to "secondly") I set myself a challenge in January to get as much of my "old" stash out as possible. I was defining Old Stash as anything that had been pictured in my January 2014 Flash Your Stash photo on Ravelry. (If you don't know that one, the clue is in the name, you'll find out more in the New Year when I do it again and will post then, but just go with me for now, OK?) Between the photograph itself and the wonders of Ravelry's stash search functions I can see which yarns have been lurking, I mean, relaxing in my stash the longest. There are also one or two for which I have really no further use so I just want them used and gone.

The oldest one overall is that blue-purple cake in the middle of the photograph.  I did only cake it up recently as I planned to use it for Lace Anemone and Cowl Anemone but it was just too dark for the lace pattern so back into the stash it went. Now is the time for it to shine. I bought this skein way back in 2011, from a yarn store in Providence, Rhode Island, which isn't even there any more! It has been patiently waiting to fulfil its destiny so I am determined to find something to knit for myself to use this precious and beautiful skein of yarn.

Next up comes the burgundy skein of Wollmeise. I had this one, in colourway Brombeere, in one of my first ever WM grab bags, like the colour very much, but can't wear it myself. It's a lovely warm brown-red which look awful on me! However, I have a sister and a sister-in-law who both suit autumn colours so one of them (I haven't decided which yet) will be finding a matching accessory set under the tree this Christmas. I'll be looking for a hat and mitts or hat and cowl or similar to make.

The orangey-browny-purpley ball right in the front is going to become a hat for my mother-in-law. The skein was originally bought to make her a cowl but it has become a victim of its own yardage. I love Wollmeise Pure for its very generous yardage  - the skeins are generally heavier than their marked 150g and it's not uncommon to get a 600 yard skein - but it does mean there's a lot left over if you only need 250 yards for something. I've already made her mitts to go with the cowl and I still have 230-odd yards left!

The purple lace top-right I have definitely cowl plans for, but until the lists of participating GAL designers and patterns go live on Monday, you'll have to wait to hear about them.

The blue in the front left is left over from a skein I bought in Maine, also in 2011, and it is so soft! It's a merino-cashmere sock yarn that came from an LYS in Bar Harbor, most of it went into a pair of very scrummy socks, and I want to do justice to the remainder. With only about 120 yards in stash though I suspect it will be combined with something else.

Finally there's the blue and pink lace ball and that little blue one right at the back. I don't have a clue what to do with them, probably combine them into something, but they're both WM lace so they'll go together just fine. I'll be looking out for two-colour lace shawls on Monday, I think!

And those are my plans so far. Check back again for more pre-GAL news and musings!

Four more days until the start of the crafting event of the year, the Indie Design Gift-A-Long! My Ravatar (Ravelry avatar) has been changed and decorated, the chat has exploded in the Ravelry group and plans are being made for the fourth annual crafting extravaganza that is the Gift-A-Long, known affectionately as the GAL.

Such a big event generates an amazing array of statistics, and thanks to the generosity and hard work of the GAL stats guru Kimberly Golinskiy aka 80 skeins, here are just some of them.

I'm looking forward to taking part for the third time as both crafter and designer. I'm going to be picking out yarns from my stash and using them in my GAL projects - check back between now and the start of the GAL to find out what I plan to knit with and which patterns have caught my eye.

Then get ready to join in when the fun starts at 8pm US Eastern Standard Time this coming Tuesday 22nd November. You can work in any or all of 8 KAL/CALs arranged by category, and don't forget any paid-for self-published pattern by a participating designer can play, not just the ones included in the sale bundle. With over 17,000 patterns to choose from, we'll all be spoilt for choice when it comes to finding the perfect one, or two, or three....

As part of a Ravelry design challenge I've been working on a pair of colourwork mittens. I don't design a huge amount of colourwork. I don't know why because I actually quite enjoy designing it and knitting it but I will confess sometimes it is tricky to find the right combination of colours. Often I take the easy way out and just choose a main colour and contrast it with white or undyed yarn. It's what I did for my Snow Over Leiden hat and my Winding Leaves mitts.

In my defence, Snow Over Leiden was part of a challenge with a winter theme and if you're designing snowflakes there's a strong possibility they're going to be white, but for Winding Leaves I had less of an excuse!

For this most recent challenge I decided I wanted to use three colours, a departure from my usual two for starters. I also decided I didn't want one of them to be white. Finally I wanted to use yarn from my stash. Realistically, for stranded mittens, using sock yarn leftovers was the best option so I pulled out all my partial skeins and started putting them together.

Coordinating yarns in my stash is not difficult. I am a big fan of blue - if I sort my Ravelry yarn stash by colour more than half of the entries are either entirely or predominantly in shades of blue. My difficulty is in finding colours that are different enough to contrast with one another but that will actually go together.
In the end, I put together all the part-balls with enough yardage in them to be useful, took a photograph and then converted it to black and white. That way, the colour of the yarn is less of a influence and instead you see the colour value. The colour value is not about the hue, about whether it is blue or red or green. It refers to the lightness or darkness of a colour, and for colourwork you need colours with differing values that will stand out against one another in a pattern.
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These are the three yarns I chose, as the three with the greatest contrast in value. You can see from this monochrome photo that the actual colours themselves can't really be distinguished, and actually they really don't matter. They could be black, cream and grey, as they appear to be here. Or they could be black, pale blue and pink, or dark green, cream and lilac, or dark brown, yellow and peach. What makes them a good combination for colourwork is that they contrast well with one another.

There is also a warmth associated with colours. Warm colours, those based on reds, yellows and oranges, can appear to advance towards you, as can brighter colours. Cool colours, the blue-based and green-based ones, can recede into the background, as can darker colours.

I wanted to choose a lighter, brighter colour for the areas that I wanted as the foreground of the colourwork design and the coolest colour for the background.

So what was this combination of colours?
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Here is the original colour photograph! Did you guess? A deep red-purple, a yellow, and a turquoise blue were not a combination I would have chosen based on the colours themselves and I've been really surprised to find how well they have played together in the mitten pattern. The design will be revealed soon enough, but for now, here is how they work together on the palm of the mitten.
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What unexpected colour combinations have you found recently?

It's November, which means just one thing in my calendar. OK, it means two. It means Bonfire Night (yay, fireworks!) and it means the big one, the Indie Design Gift-Along!!

This year's GAL begins on November 22nd, running right through to the end of the year when it finishes with the annual GAL New Year's Eve online party.
If you haven't joined in with the GAL or whether you're returning for more fun again this year, I look forward to seeing you there.
(And if you're reading this thinking "What on Earth is a Gift-A-Long?!" don't despair. More info will be posted over the next couple of weeks here, or check out my posts from November 2015 about last year's event to get the general idea too)