My newest knitwear design, Little Honeysuckle, is now available at Hill Country Weavers!
And you can see the dress live in the Fashion Fusion Runway Show on Saturday September 29, 2012 at the Balcones Country Club in Austin Texas.
The Luncheon and Style Show is 11:30 am to 1 pm. Vendors will be set up from 9:30 am - 4:30 pm. I will be there selling my hats!Question:
I am using the Russian Winter bear hat pattern in the Stitch N' Bitch Nation book. I want to make the bear hat to wear on Halloween. I am stuck. I got to the part where it says: w/ RS facing, pu 20 sts btwn. right side of CO edge and sts on needle. K sts from needle. Pu 20 sts down left side to CO edge-48 sts. Beg with a WS row, work in St st until piece measures 7" from picked up sts. ....etc.
I don't understand where I should pu 20 sts. Which side is the right side btwn the CO edge and sts on needle?
Answer:
First, lay your knitting down with the knit side (RS) face up and your live stitches away from you, as in the picture. Start picking up stitches from the bottom right. Pick up 20 sts along the right side then knit the live stitches. Next, pick up 20 sts down the left side. You should have 48 sts. Now when you flip your work over you're looking at the purl side (WS) and can now proceed to purl across for your first WS (wrong side) row.
Wondering how to pick up stitches? KnittingHelp.com has a video that shows you how to pick up stitches.
Question:
What is SSP?
Answer:
SSP: (slip, slip, purl) Slip the next 2 sts knitwise, one at a time, to right needle. Slip them back to left needle. Then purl them together through back loops. See KnittingHelp.com for a video.
Question:
It seems like the purl side of the knitting should be the right side because it's fuzzier. What's up with that?
Answer:
While you're working, the purl side of the hat will be fuzzier than the knit side. That's okay! The knit side is still the right side of the work. When you're finished with the hat, brush the right side (knit side) with a cat slicker brush (the ones with metal teeth) several times. This will pull much of the furr to the right side and help make the hat very furry looking.
If you have any other questions please email me or contact me through Ravelry.com
Introducing the Prairie Bliss Collection from Hill Country Weavers!
Inspired by the rolling hills west of Austin, the Prairie Bliss Collection brings a taste of Central Texas to where ever you are with knit, crochet and weaving patterns designed by Austinites.
We’ve taken yarns from some of our favorite small yarn mills and dyers to make up a soft neutral palette accented with bright pops of floral colors.
See the Prairie Bliss Collection including my pattern Lantana Haze at HillCountryWeavers.com.
For your convenience I've added Lantana Haze and my two Shelter Collection patterns Nightshade and Cypress to PlatypusDreams.com. On those pages you'll find links directly to the patterns on HillCountryWeavers.com. Please purchase these three patterns directly from Hill Country Weavers. Or you can find all these patterns on Ravelry.com. Thanks!
Ok this is a story about the current redesign of my website. Yes, the one you're looking at right now. I don't know if you remember my old website but it needed help, badly. It was very out of date and very hard for me to update. For way too long I did nothing. It wasn't the top of my priority list and I let it slip further & further away.
Then I met Megan (Ideaschema.org) and Marty (martinwhitmore.com). They inspired me to do something (anything!) and specifically led me to Shopify.com as a way to redo my website and easily (!!!) keep it up to date. Great! I set up my new shop on Shopify and was ready to go.
But what about my url? My shopify site is on the Shopify website. PlatypusDreams.com still showed my old sad website. I contacted my domain registrar. I had originally picked that registrar 10 years ago because they were very helpful on the phone getting everything set up. Well apparently they don't care so much anymore. I wasn't able to get any useful advice from them and they didn't know how to get my domain name set up to work with Shopify nor did they know how to get my domain name to work with Google Apps (for my email). Grr.
But this story isn't about those frustrating days & nights wanting to throw computers across the room. No, this story is about the ray of sunshine, the rainbow peaking through the clouds.
After reading some reviews I finally decided I needed to switch my domain registration to iWantMyName.com even though I had just renewed my domain name a couple months earlier. It meant more money out of my pocket but it seemed to be my only option to try to correct the issues I was having with my domain set up.
Ok so I'm not well versed in domain name lingo but iWantMyName has these awesome little apps that help you get your website working with whatever other common hosting and blogging websites you might use. They also have online help with lots of pictures and helpful hints from other users. Yay! So I follow the ones I need to get Shopify & Google Apps working with my URL. But something is wrong and this easy-to-use little helper app doesn't get my website working. I have no idea what I'm doing and am at a complete loss. After sputtering around several days I finally get up the nerve to click on the little box at the bottom of iWantMyName's website: "Live Help". My old domain registrar had trained me that it does no good to ask them questions. But I had to try.
Timo answers right away. Mind you, it's probably 11 pm at night and I'm surprised that Live Help really is Live, especially after normal business hours. I tell him what's wrong and he tells me to hang on a second while he takes a look at my account. A few seconds later he's back with an answer. And a fix. He fixed it right then and there while he was chatting with me. Within 5 minutes everything I needed to work was working! < Insert Angelic Choir > Since then I've had several other questions related to getting my websites to do what I want them to. Every time I use Live Help Timo is there to help and he's always friendly and responds quickly and fixes the problem. Plus, he doesn't seem to mind that I don't always know what I'm talking about.
So I just want to say Thank You Timo and iWantMyName.com for all you've done for my business. May rays of sunshine brighten your day. (If you want rainbows and ponies we can throw those in too!)
I'm super excited to announce that I have 2 patterns in the Hill Country Weavers Collection for Shelter! The patterns in this collection have all been written by talented local (Austin, Texas) designers and use the SHELTER line of yarn from Jared Flood aka Brooklyn Tweed.
The patterns are sold through Hill Country Weavers on the HCW ecommerce site and on Ravelry.
Nightshade (cabled hat) by Kathy Bateman:
Cypress (cabled scarf) by Kathy Bateman:
Please excuse the mess. We’re working on making this the best iteration of the Platypus Dreams website yet!
