First things first, the winners in the KnitCircus contest!

Emily and Sara have each won a one-year subscription. I have emailed you two — congratulations!

And the following people have  won a copy of the patterns from the Summer Collection:

Wanda in AR, BuleberryKnitSocks, Marion, Bev Watts, Louise in Boise, Carla in NE Texas, Olivia, Kristen, Kathy Parcell, and Beverley.

Congratulations to you all — I have emailed you as well.

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest.

I was away this past weekend in Minneapolis, teaching classes and signing books at Needlework Unlimited. As usual when I go to Minneapolois, I had a great time.

And I managed to finish the back of my d’Azur:

And today I slept all afternoon. So you get a brief blog entry only today.

But I have something fun to show you tomorrow.

Lucy sez:

“Momma finally came home!”

As usual, when I do a blog contest, I have gotten a number of emails asking how to leave a comment on my blog. So I have finally written up a tutorial “How to Leave a Comment on a Blog Post.” If you are reading this post on my blog (instead of in an email if you are an email subscriber) you will see that I’ve put a permanent link to this tutorial in the right-hand sidebar, right at the top.

So . . . continue to comment away!

In exciting knitting news, I reached the armholes on the back of my d’Azur top.

I am now on my second skein of the Ty-Dy yarn. The starting of a new skein seems not to have caused any problems in the striping of this yarn, so I am pleased.

Tomorrow I am off to Minneapolis, for classes and a book signing at Needlework Unlimited. I’ll be back here on the blog on Monday, and will announce the winners of all the wonderful freebies from Knitcircus then.

Lucy sez:

“Momma is going away again?”

Have y’all seen the online magazine Knitcircus?

From their website:

Knitcircus is an independent online magazine; we publish quarterly and knit every day. Knitcircus features knitting and sewing patterns, interviews, articles, and reviews, with an eco- and socially-responsible bent. Check out the interviews, reviews, articles, recipes and pattern previews for free! If you like what you see, the pattern collection is available for purchase while that issue’s live.

I happen to mention it today because I have an article in the current issue, titled “Birth of a Sock” wherein I describe my design process and how a pattern ends up in a book.

The magazine itself is free, so you can read the articles and preview the patterns. As mentioned in the description above, you can then purchase the pattern collection for each issue online. (The pattern collection is very reasonable priced, by the way: 16 patterns for $7.50 — a great deal!)

Here are photos of some of the designs in the Summer 2010 Collection:

Want to win a pattern collection or a one-year subscription?

Jaala, the editor of Knitcircus, has very generously offered ten copies of the Summer 2010 Pattern Collection and two full one-year subscriptions for a giveaway here. So that’s 12 winners in all.

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment on this blog post by noon on Monday, May 24, 2010. The great and mighty Random Number Generator will pick the winners and I’ll announce them in Monday’s blog post.

In my knitting news, I have to report that I spent more time killing zombies last night (curse you, Plants vs. Zombies!) than I did knitting, so my progress is woefully little.

Lucy is too busy tidying up to come to the blog.

Can you find my work-in-progress in this photo?

Why yes, I do like the color green. How did you know?

I am knitting along on d’Azur as you can see. Several of you asked if I was planning on trying to match the striping on the front and back (this is not knit in the round). The short answer is no.

I feel about this yarn the way I feel about Noro Kureyon — just knit it and let the stripes fall where they may. Since I am still working on the first skein of it, I don’t have a feel for how consistent the striping is across different skeins. But that’s part of the fun — it’ll be a nice surprise to see what it actually does.

Would I consider knitting this in the round? The short answer is no.

This is a relatively “solid” cotton yarn. The lace pattern is quite open. I think the sweater will benefit from having side seams to give it some structure.

The problem with knitting in the round is that you are actually knitting a spiral. My experience is that a lace pattern in a heavier cotton yarn knit in the round will bias a bit. I know there are many people who vastly prefer to knit all garments in the round and do away with seaming, but I don’t think seams are always a bad thing.

And from a purely mechanical point of view, I find it much easier to carry around one piece of the sweater than having the whole thing hanging off my needles. That was a minor beef I had while working on CeCe. CeCe is not knit in the round, but is knit in one piece to the armholes, then the sleeves are knit separately and added in and you are back to knitting in one piece. While it is a nice construction, it is a bit cumbersome to carry around.

Lucy thinks dinner makes everything better!

Thank you for all the great comments on CeCe.  I’m very pleased at how this turned out. It is still damp from wet-blocking it, but hopefully will be completely dry and ready to wear soon.

I’ve still got a time-consuming stealth project I am working on, but that did not stop me from casting on for something new. I’ve started a project I mentioned last week: d’Azur, from one of the Sublime books I bought weekend before last.

Here’s the photo of the finished design from the book:

It’s from the Soya Cotton book #632 and is supposed to be knit from, not surprisingly, Soya Cotton. I’m knitting mine from the yarn I posted a photo of in yesterday’s blog entry: Knit one Crochet Two Ty-Dy Cotton. I’m using color #518 — “Meadow.”

I sat down to cast on the back of the sweater yesterday, and had the ribbing done quickly — it was only 2 inches of ribbing, after all.

As I mentioned last week, the book is printed in a tiny font in grey, which makes it difficult to read, and there are no charts.

Fortunately, this is a very easy knit. It has crossed my mind to chart the pattern if need be, but the all-over lace pattern is only 4 rows long, and it is easily memorized, so I did not bother. Here is my progress as of Sunday night:

I am liking the subtle striping of the Ty-Dy Cotton, very much.

The pattern is sized for a number of different sizes, and I’m making the second size. One weird little thing that I didn’t like about the pattern is that for the second size you need to start some of the rows with a k2tog and end with an ssk. It occurred to me that would make it unnecessarily bulky when seaming, so I added 2 extra stitches — a plain knit stitch at each end. I think when the time comes to put this together, I’ll be happy I did this.

Lucy Sez

“I have a case of the Mondays.”