I feel like I should say something about the rejection letter from Knitty.

I’ve sent out a story to a few magazines, and received a few rejection letters. I understand — I really do — that a lot of magazines out there don’t have huge editorial staffs, but a form rejection letter still really stings. It’s like the magazine is saying, not only do we not think your writing is up to our standards, but we don’t even think it’s worth inserting your name and the title of your work into a mail-merge document. The more personalized the rejection letter is, the easier it is to accept (especially when they put in something positive about your work), and the more likely I am to consider that magazine again if I have something else I think is worthy of publication.

Amy Singer gives good rejection. (Yeah, yeah, that sounds weird and bad but sometimes I can’t help myself.) If I come up with something else that I think will be appropriate for Knitty, I’ll happily send it their way (and try very hard to remember just how long it takes to hear back, because even though they tell you in the submission guidelines how long it will be, you don’t realize just how long that is until you’ve still got two months to wait).

This is a pattern I submitted to Knitty for the Winter 2009 issue, but they decided not to include it. So instead, I’m going to put it in a .pdf file available for free on Ravelry, as well as listing it here.

I Do Not Drink . . . Wine!
(pattern and photos by sosoclever knits!)

I think those charms that you put on the stem of a wineglass so you can tell yours from someone else’s are really neat. Of course, I don’t use them, because I don’t drink wine. I generally drink pop. The problem of being able to tell drinks apart still exists, though. Imagine, you have six women over for a night of knitting, and they all drink the same diet cola. Or, in the excitement at your Superbowl party, no one can tell whose beer is whose. Whatever shall you do?

Knit up a bunch of can cozies in different colors and patterns, that’s what!

These cozies do extra duty, too. The fabric is flexible enough to use them to clean off the tops of cans before opening them, and absorbent enough that you don’t really need a coaster. Then, after they’ve cleaned off the tops of enough cans and absorbed enough condensation, you just toss them in the wash with your towels, and they’re ready to go again.

And if you really want to use the wineglass charms, just add the optional hanging loop, and you’ve got someplace to put one!

Note: the cozy will likely stretch a little with use. After washing, it will shrink back to its proper size. It may even be a little smaller, but it will stretch!

SIZE
One size fits 12-ounce cans and most 12 to 20-ounce bottles

FINISHED MEASUREMENTS
Circumference: approx 8.5 inches
Length: from beginning, approx 5.5 inches; from turning row, approx 4.5 inches

MATERIALS
Lily Sugar ‘N Cream [100% cotton; 120 yd/109 m per 71 g skein]; color: shown in #19173 Spring Meadows (discontinued), #00026 Light Blue, #00004 Ecru, #01742 Hot Blue, #00003 Cream; 1 skein

Alternate yarn: Coats and Clark Crème de la Crème [100% cotton; 126 yd/115 m per 71 g skein]; color: #0750 Fuschia; 1 skein

2 sets 16 to 24 inch US #7/4.5mm circular needles (or size necessary to obtain gauge) and
2 sets 16 to 24 inch US #5/3.75mm circular needles (or 2 sizes smaller than needles used to obtain gauge)

(I use the two circular needle method for knitting in the round, but you can also use one set of each size in long circulars to use the Magic Loop method, or one set of double-point needles in each size.)

Notions required:
Size F5 crochet hook (optional)
Tapestry needle (for weaving in ends)

GAUGE
20 sts/26 rows = 4″ in stockinette stitch with size 7 needles

PATTERN NOTES
This is a very forgiving pattern. Gauge does not have to be exact, but should be close.

One skein of Sugar ‘N Cream will make three to four cozies.

This pattern is a very simple introduction to knitting in the round, but it can easily be converted to flat knitting, also.

You can substitute just about any rib pattern, so long as you can fit it to 40 stitches, or close to it. If you have a pattern that needs one more or fewer stitches (e.g. a multiple of three stitches, or a multiple of twelve stitches plus five), increase or decrease as necessary in the “turning round.” Also, you’ll only have about 30 rounds after the turning round. Any patterns longer than will need to be modified to fit.

Keep in mind that the patterns in stitch dictionaries are often written as if you will be knitting flat. They’re also often framed by selvedge stitches, and you’ll probably want to drop any extra stitches (e.g. instead of “multiple of five stitches plus two,” you’d only work the “multiple of five stitches”).

Rib pattern suggestions:

1×1 Rib (over even number of stitches) (Spring Meadows cozy)
Every round: ** k1, p1** to end.
Repeat to desired length

Holey Rib (multiple of four stitches) (Light Blue cozy)
R1 – 2: ** k1, p1** to end
R3: **k1, yo, k2tog, p1** to end
R4: ** k1, p1** to end
Repeat rounds 1-4 to desired length

Zig Zag Rib (multiple of five stitches) (modified from Nikki Epstein’s Knitting on the Edge) (Ecru cozy)
R1, 3, 5: **k1, p2tog, p1, m1, k1** to end
R2 and all even rounds: k every stitch
R7, 9, 11: **k1, m1, p2tog, p1, k1** to end
Repeat rounds 1-12 to desired length

Puff Rib (multiple of three stitches) (adapted from Barbara G. Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns) (Hot Blue cozy)
On turning round, purl last two stitches together
R1: **p1, yo, k1, yo, p1** to end
R2-3: **p1, k3, p1** to end
R4: **p1, k3tog, p1** to end
Repeat rounds 1-4 to desired length

Lace Rib (multiple of five stitches) (adapted from Barbara G. Walker’s A Treasury of Knitting Patterns) (Cream cozy)
R1, 3: **k3, p2** to end
R2: **k1, yo, ssk, p2** to end
R4: **k2tog, yo, k1, p2** to end
Repeat rounds 1-4 to desired length

Twisted Rib (over even number of stitches) (Fuschia cozy)
Every round: **k1tbl, p1** to end

PATTERN
On size 5 needles, CO 10 sts (long tail CO is fine). Join, pm.

R1: **k1, p1** to end.
R2: **kfb** to end (20 sts)
R3: **k1, p1** to end.
R4: **kfb** to end (40 sts)
R5: **k1, p1** to end.

Continue in 1X1 rib until piece measures 1 inch.

Next round (turning round): P to end.

Switch to larger needles, and work in desired rib pattern until piece measures 4.5 inches. BO.

FINISHING
Optional: before breaking yarn, with crochet hook, chain 12 stitches and join to body to make loop for hanging.

Weave in ends.

I Do Not Drink . . . Wine! by sosoclever knits is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Ravelry really is wonderful. I never would have thought of getting my Boye points re-tooled to accept KnitPicks cables. But Ravelrist achrisvet had seen this and pointed me to it. w00t!

(Crossposted from my LiveJournal.)

I am designing a dress for Thing One. She really liked the sundresses I made for Little Cat Z this summer, and kept saying things like, “I wish I had a dress like that.” Subtlety isn’t her strong suit.

The dress will have a knitted bodice and a woven fabric skirt. My original plan was to have the bodice close in the back with buttons. Now I’m thinking that might not be the best way to go. I’m thinking a zipper on the side would be better. I’m not very trusting when it comes to knitted buttonholes actually holding the buttons. This isn’t so bad when it’s on a four-year-old who’s home most of the time, but if sixth grader is wearing a dress that won’t stay shut . . . that’s a problem. Also, if it’s on the side, it would be easier for her to get on and off by herself. I think buttons on the side would be worse than on the back, because she’d be brushing against them all the time, making it more likely they’d come undone, and also it could be pretty annoying to feel the lumps from the buttons there.

Of course, I’m kind of thinking this might not be a bad pattern to try to sell, too, if it works. So while I would have little problem putting in a double-lapped zipper on the skirt and bodice (I’ve been sewing about as long as I’ve been knitting), I don’t know how other knitters would feel about that. And I’d have to be really good at explaining it in my directions, too.

To top it all off, I’m at least a third of the way done knitting the bodice, with the back buttons in mind, and I’d have to rip out most of it to do it with the zipper in the side.

So, what’d y’all think?

I can’t decide which is better: keeping detailed project notes in Ravelry, or putting them here. I keep going back and forth.

Anyway, I got through the ten rows of ribbing on the Hallowig, and started the setup for decreasing. I think the pattern is a little unclear on a couple things. Are you supposed to do the first decrease before the second marker on the bangs side? I’m pretty sure that’s what it says to do, and it pretty much makes sense, since the second marker on the bangs side is actually right at the beginning of the round, but the way it’s worded makes it sound like the round should be starting in the middle of the bangs . . . I had to read it several times to make sense of it. Maybe it’s just me, though, since no one on Ravelry seemed to have that problem.

Then, reading ahead in the instructions, trying to figure out if I was right or not, I saw the line, “Work this round every round until 6 sts rem between markers.” This, to me, sounds like there should be twenty-four stitches on the needles at that point (there are four markers). Except, you only decrease between markers one and two, not between two and one (really, it makes sense, go look at the diagram). When I copied the pattern to print it out, I didn’t include the actual photos, just the text and diagrams, so I had to wait until our computer was not being used to check, and yes, you only decrease between one and two. It’s very obvious when you look at the aerial-view picture of the actual wig. So, just a little thing I would have worded differently. Or maybe I shouldn’t have read ahead (isn’t that what they tell you in school?) and then when I actually got to that point, I would have known what was meant. Or maybe this should be a signal to me to stop being so cheap about my printer ink and copy the photos, too.

I swear I had never heard of the problem of ladders in ribbing until I made those legwarmers last year and was looking for tricks to keep them from laddering. A lot of the stuff I found was specifically about ribbing, and how a lot of people apparently have a problem with ladders appearing when they go from a knit stitch to a purl stitch. It was one of those things that I filed away as interesting, but not really relevant to me or my problem at the time.

So today, while I was working on the Hallowig for bibliogrrl, I noticed that I was having a bit of a ladder problem in switching between knit and purl stitches. I’m sure if I’d never found that information, it never would have happened to me. Never.

Anyway, I watched myself knitting for a while, trying to figure out how to correct it. It had only started in the last few rounds, so it’s not a huge problem, but I still wanted to stop. I discovered that for some reason — maybe I did a particularly sloppy row when I was taking the stairs down yesterday in my new high heels — I was still knitting as usual, barely dipping the tip of the needle through the loop to pick up more yarn, but when I purled the next stitch, I really went fishing. I probably put the needle through the loop by an inch. Maybe more. This pushed the loop further onto the left-hand needle, which meant there was more yarn between the last stitch and the next stitch, and also meant that I was wrapping more yarn around the needle than when I just dip the tip. That sounds like perfect ladder conditions to me. With the second purl stitch (it’s in 2×2 rib), for whatever reason, I didn’t go quite as far.

I don’t think it shows, looking at the fabric as a whole, but I certainly noticed it when I was knitting. The next couple of rounds, I took special care to not do that with the purl stitches, and now it all seems to look much better. I don’t know that this is what causes it for everyone who gets ladders in ribs, but I think it’s interesting, nonetheless.

Of course, I’m at work and don’t have my camera, so I can’t take pictures to show what I mean, and by the time I get home I’ll hopefully have knitted enough that I won’t really be able to find the laddery bits.

The forementioned pile of projects on my plate:

The Purse
Hallowig for bibliogrrl, who is shaving her head for Gilda’s Closet in Chicago.
Shirt for Thing Two (almost finished, just needs buttonholes and buttons)
“Chain mail” tunic for Thing One’s Hallowe’en costume
Swordfish fin for Thing Two’s Hallowe’en costume
Trick-or-treat bag for Little Cat Z (thinking about doing a tutorial on how to make one, too)
Dress for Thing One (designing it for her)
Dress for Little Cat Z (based on dress for Thing One, but with different yarn and a much smaller size, seeing how well the pattern can be altered)
Cropped cardigan for me (heavily modifying Ravelry pattern Sweet Little Nothing)
Ripping out first Sweet Little Nothing and finding something else I can make with that yarn (maybe The Amanda Hat)
A skirt for Grace
A skirt for me
A skirt pattern I came up with the other day that may or may not work (although I don’t even have fabric for this, so it probably shouldn’t be listed here)
Finish the super secret felting project (needs I-cord still) and figure out what the heck I’m doing with it

I think that’s far more projects than I really need to have going all at once. Hopefully by the end of this weekend, I’ll have the first three done (although if the first Hallowig works well, I might make more, but we’ll see).

. . . Strike that. Reverse it. (Thank you, Willy Wonka.)

I have far too many projects on my plate right now. I probably wouldn’t if I wasn’t running into stumbling blocks every other day.

I’ve knitted and felted The Little Coco Bag. I used the KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in Pigeon Twist that I already had, instead of doing two colors, and I did 3-stitch I-cord instead of 2-stitch. Everything was going really well until it came time to get the grommets. My mom had some, but the largest she had were 1/4″ (which is what the pattern calls for, but my larger I-cord would have fit too snugly), so I had to go buy some 3/8″ grommets. They had the grommets at JoAnn’s, but not the setting tool. My good spouse was going to try to make one up for me, but before he got a round tuit, we found the setting tool at Michael’s. Of course, I didn’t have enough cash on me for all the other neat stuff I found there, so I wanted to write a check. Unfortunately, I was a bad girl and am driving on a ticket (I should have my license back this week, I think), and Michael’s won’t take a check without a picture ID. So we had to wait another week or so before we could go back (it’s a thirty mile drive, I wasn’t going back until I had more reasons to go than just the grommet tool).

I finally have both the grommets and the grommet tool, all in one place, and I can start working on getting the grommets into the bag. Poking holes into heavy felted fabric is not as easy as it sounds. I couldn’t get my size 13 needles (which is what they say to use in the pattern) through the fabric at all. (I don’t believe they actually used those dpns in the picture on the pattern to make the holes. They’d have punctured their hands. I think they made the holes then put the dpns in because they looked nicer.) I decided to start with smaller needles (10 1/2s), get the holes in there, then stretch them out with the 13s. This worked, but as soon as I took the 13s out, the holes shrank. So I decided to leave them for a day. That seemed to work better. But my troubles weren’t over yet.

When I got home that night, I decided I’d wait until the kids went to bed to set the grommets. In case you’re wondering, this is not a good idea. “Quietly hammering” is an oxymoron. I managed, with the help of my good spouse, to get one in place, but decided not to do any more until another evening, before the kids went to bed.

One thing my good spouse noticed was that there was a 1/4″ snap part in with my grommets. We joked about how they call the grommet parts male and female, so ha-ha, neither of us had to actually finish the thought. This continued to be funny, in my mind at least, until last night, when I finally went to set the last of the grommets.

I was still having trouble getting the grommets into the holes. I could have stretched them out further with 15s, but I didn’t feel like waiting any longer. Then the lightbulb in my brain came on. The size 13 needles are just the right size for the 3/8″ grommets to fit around. I slid a male-part grommet onto a needle, pushed the needle through the hole, and then, with a modicum of effort, pushed the grommet into the hole. It worked perfectly. The perfection continued as I worked my way around, all the way up to the seventh grommet, when I realized that I didn’t still have two male-parts that were just stacked tightly together. I had one, plus the little “baby” snap.

Of course, I don’t have the receipt from JoAnn’s anymore. I’m going to call before going out there (thirty mile drive, remember) and see if they will, without the receipt, take the baby snap part and give me a daddy grommet part, and then they can send the opened package back to Dritz as a faulty set.

I’m really looking forward to finishing this. I’m going to line it with a lighter shade of matching purple fabric that I happily found in my fabric stash (it is just the right amount), and then I’m going to try it out and see if it might actually be The Purse. You know, The Purse for which I have been searching for years. The Purse which will be the perfect size to hold everything I need, plus maybe a paperback book and a few other things I just want to carry.

Hopefully, once I get the correct grommet part (if JoAnn’s can’t do the little exchange I have in mind, I’ll just buy more grommets, seeing as how the package of eight was less than three bucks, anyway), that will be the end of my troubles with this project, and I can move on to solving the problems I’m having with others.

I have now made two Summerlin dresses, and two Two Summer Sundresses (pattern available on Ravelry). Both patterns are free, and are very similar: a simple knitted bodice and a gathered woven fabric skirt. There are definitely differences, though.

First off, Summerlin is much better written. The two sisters who make up Kathryn Ivy have been knitting for a while, and that shows in the pattern instructions. Natalie Larson, the designer for Two Summer Sundress, had only been knitting for a year when she wrote hers. Two Summer isn’t hard to follow, it’s just not as polished, and the sewing instructions are seriously lacking. I do a lot of sewing, so I didn’t need them (and if I did, I could have just substituted the instructions from Summerlin), but for someone who isn’t a seamstress, they might be confusing.

I don’t think backwards-loop looks as bad as some people do, but I do think it’s unwieldy for such a large number of stitches. Other than that, the waistband is stable. It lies flat, and provides a good strong place for attaching the skirt.

The straps, however, stretch. Badly. I need to take pictures of the first dress I did (which was, admittedly, in a bad yarn for this project). It’s cotton, and garter stitch. They’re going to stretch. I hoped they wouldn’t stretch quite so much as they did (even in the better yarn for this project). Combined with the v-neck, the dress was more revealing than I would care to wear, as an adult, and was far too mature for the little girls (ages 1 — 5) intended to wear it. I tied a ribbon around the straps in the back to keep it from falling down so much in the front. Another problem with the straps is that, while they don’t curl at the edges, they do fold in half lengthwise (row 1, k; row 2, k2, p1, k2). That line of knit stitches down the center kills them. Sewing grosgrain ribbon to the back of the straps stops both the stretching, and the folding, but is not part of the original pattern.

The instructions for sewing the skirt are really good. One thing I recommend (and this goes for Two Summer, also), is to sew the basting (long) stitches that you use for gathering in two segments, each covering half of the upper edge of the skirt. Then, divide the skirt and bodice into four even sections, and gather the fabric one section at a time and match it to the bodice. That way you know you have it divided evenly, and you aren’t trying to pull the thread through the entire upper edge of the skirt.

I hate yarnover buttonholes. They are just too stretchy and not neat-looking enough for me. I’m not real crazy about doing loops for buttons, either, so I don’t know which I really prefer. With the Two Summers I’ve made, I stopped the ribbon backing before the buttonholes (on both the straps and the waistband), because I thought it would be a pain to try to line up buttonholes sewn into the ribbon with the yarnovers. If I make another, I’m going to try doing just that, and probably at least tack them together. It will look better (to me, at least), and the ribbon won’t stretch the way the yarnover will, so the buttons should stay buttoned better. I think shank buttons are better (for either dress, really) than sew-through buttons. On Two Summer, the buttonholes are really too thick for a 1/2″ sew-through button.

I think the waistband would be better in garter stitch, instead of mostly stockinette, or at the very least, do four rows of garter stitch, two rows of stockinette, then another four rows of garter. As it is (three rows of garter, five of stockinette, and three of garter, I think), it rolls. The ribbon backing stops it from doing that, but sewing it on is a bit of a pain because, well, it rolls. I also think it makes more sense when you cast off for the ends of the waistband to cast off 25% of the stitches, then knit to the end. On the next row, cast off 25% of the stitches purlwise, then continue with the bodice stitches. That way you don’t have to break yarn and reattach.

Another thing I did with the waistband was I cast on four extra stitches, so the buttonhole could overlap the button without the fabric of the skirt having to overlap. [So when I cast off the waistband stitches, I actually cast off (# of stitches cast on - 4) x 25%, k to end, next row cast off (# of stitches cast on - 4) x 25% + 4.]

The instructions for the decreases on the bodice say to do your ssk or k2tog right at the edges, and I prefer the way it looks doing k2, ssk, k to last four stitches, k2tog, k2. I think the edge is cleaner that way.

Then there’s the straps. According to the instructions, the straps are four sts wide. I think five would be better. There’s less chance of the ribbon showing along the edges that way. I have not successfully sewn the ribbon to the straps without the straps getting skewed. It happens a little on the waistband, too, but it’s not nearly as bad. I strongly recommend taking the sewing slow and having both sides of the strap pinned to the ribbon, although this can be a pain if the pins are long (the pins along the side you sew second might get in the way of sewing the first side). I haven’t actually tried that yet, but I think that should help.

Say hello to Fuzzyhulhu.

He's going to eat me first for this.

My mom got tired of my griping about not having a digital camera, so she got me one for an early birthday present.

My biggest reason for wanting a digital camera is that I’d like to try selling some things I’ve designed, or have plans to design, and these days it’s kind of hard to do that without pictures. It’s hard to find someplace that does good film developing for a reasonable price in a decent amount of time. And I hate feeling like I’m possibly wasting film taking crappy pictures. So, a digital camera seemed like the best way to go.

Now my problem is to decide where to submit designs.

I like Knitty. Its submission guidelines are clear and easy to follow. The guidelines say, “This is what we want from you, and this is what you’ll get in return.” It doesn’t have a set style, either. It’s a knitting magazine. The patterns they publish range from stylish to silly and useful to purely decorative. There are very few things I want to design that I think would be out of place in Knitty.

Then there’s Twist Collective. This one, I think is more of a fashion knitting magazine. The layout and patterns are much more likely to be stylish. Some things I’ve designed or plan would not be good for them. I have a couple things that are pretty utilitarian or geeky, and I don’t think Twist would be interested. Some other things would maybe be better for Twist than for Knitty. They definitely fill different niches. One thing that bothers me about Twist Collective is the submission guidelines. I kind of like the idea of patterns being sold through the magazine instead of getting a flat fee for them, but I’d like to know before I submit something what I’ll be getting. At least a ballpark idea. Twist Collective doesn’t advertise that. You have to wait until your design is accepted before you get a publication contract, which outlines the compensation structure. I don’t like not knowing what I’m getting into. It feels vaguely shady to me. And before anyone gets their skein tangled in a knot up over this, I’m not saying Twist has abusive or exploitative practices. I’m saying I can’t tell what their practices are until after a design is submitted and accepted, at which point, sure, I can say no thanks, but how much time has passed since I finished work on it? Would it be a good time to submit it elsewhere? Or will I have to sit on it for most of a year, during which time fashions will change, possibly too much for my design to be marketable? If the guidelines said, “E-mail us for our current compensation structure,” that would be great.

And, of course, there’s Ravelry. With Ravelry, you don’t have to submit your patterns to anyone, you just put them up for sale (well, that’s oversimplified, but not by much). Of course, Ravelry doesn’t really advertise for you, either. It’s a marketplace, and you’re competing with every other designer to get people’s attention.

I haven’t looked much into print magazines, although I should. I like actual magazines. I like holding things that I read. The kick from having something published on paper would be great. (However, I’m not even going to think about Vogue Knitting. I’m not that fashionable, ever, and from what I’ve heard they expect you to give up your design’s first-born as far as copyright and reprint goes.)

I know there are other websites and internet magazines I can try, also, but for now, I’m limiting myself to these (plus looking into print magazines more).