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Blog EntriesGuess who’s visiting at Chez Chinchio?
Posted on | April 21, 2009 | 7 Comments
I’ll give you a hint:
Yup, it’s Ysolda! We’ve been having fun talking about knitting and designing. The girl is so hard working!
New summer/spring design
Posted on | April 17, 2009 | 12 Comments
Previews for the spring/summer 09 Knit.1 issue are out and my tie back top appears on the Knit.1 website:
The yarn is Zitron Samoa, a DK/light worsted mercerized cotton in a yummy tangerine shade (and new to me yarn). The top is a dolman-type, cap sleeve shell in spider stitch (a nice, but easy combination lace). The bottom is stockinette and is topped by a ribbed waist that extends to ties that can be secured at the back.
I know I still owe you guys a post on decreasing in cocoon stitch in my Silk Cocoon cardigan in the latest issue of Interweave. I’ve been away for a cousin’s wedding in CA and haven’t had time to knit up swatches and write a tutorial. Thanks for your patience!
There have been some lovely finished versions of the Silk Cocoon on Ravelry already. It’s so much fun to see what other people do with my designs. Thanks to those of you who post pics and projects on Ravelry. Ravelry is such a community driven site. I confess I haven’t done my part in that. I have so much stash yarn and projects to upload. I’ve managed to keep up my design portfolio, but I feel it’s a civic responsibility to engage in the other parts of Ravelry as well – adding to the yarn pages, the project pages, and participating in forums. I can’t count the number of times I’ve looked up a yarn on Ravelry to see how other people have used it to decide if a yarn is appropriate for certain garments. This is so helpful when I can’t have the yarn physically in front of me.
Fun Knitting!
Posted on | March 24, 2009 | 9 Comments
A couple of weeks ago, the Spiders made the trek out to Marie’s Bay Ridge apartment for an afternoon of eating, knitting, and hoola hooping (in Marie’s spacious craft/yarn room). Last year, at the same gathering, the Spiders exchanged single socks, which I wanted to be a part of, but I didn’t have the time to commit to knitting a sock in fingering weight yarn. This year, during a Spider knit night at Jacques Torres in Soho, someone (I forget who now), suggested a cowl swap. Now, a cowl, I can do. And I’ve been wanting a cowl for some time now too since seeing so many lovely iterations of the accessory on Ravelry and blogs.
So I knitted a cowl for the lovely Lisa, a fellow fan of green. She expressed a preference for a couple of yarns and I jumped at the chance to try the Malabrigo Merino silk. I used the Herringbone Cowl pattern and voila, my first cowl (Lisa’s photo, I didn’t have my camera with me):
My cowl was knit by our newest member, Erin aka Mintyfresh. Funnily enough, I’ve been lusting after her gorgeous Tapestery Cowl for a while now (queued it as soon as it debuted). And I put down the Tapestry Cowl on my wish list, knowing that whoever my cowl knitter would turn out to be, she’d probably not want to knit a double knit cowl in fingering weight yarn. My instinct was right, Erin, understandably so, was not up for knitting another Tapestry Cowl. But by being randomly assigned to her, I couldn’t have been closer to getting that desire granted. 
Instead, Erin knit me a gorgeous deep red, textured cowl of her own design (I understand she’ll be releasing the pattern at some point) closed by a silver button! I love it!
Next time: I hope to have a tutorial on how to decrease in pattern for the Silk Cocoon Cardigan.
Varese Hoodie – New PhysicsKnits pattern
Posted on | February 20, 2009 | 12 Comments
$6.50
Or to purchase the pattern through e-junkie, click on the button below. After payment, an email will be sent to you with a link to the pdf.
And a kit (with the pattern included) for all sizes is available at One Planet Yarn and Fiber in many gorgeous Woolie Silk colorways (for those of you who don’t share my chocolate obsession).
Note: You don’t need to be a Ravelry member to purchase downloads via the Ravelry shopping cart. Please email me at changcon_14850@yahoo-dot-com with any questions.
Spring Interweave – Soap Bubble Wrap
Posted on | February 15, 2009 | 14 Comments
The Spring Interweave preview is up and I have two designs in it.
My Soap Bubble Wrap is currently 
I kind of feel like I want to take up kung fu again when I wear this. Perhaps some day, I’ll reknit this in the sportweight gauge. I think it would make a really lightweight and comfortable garment.
I hope people will enjoy making it and wearing it.
I’ll talk about the Silk Cocoon Cardigan in a future post.
Nifty Nymph Tee
Posted on | February 1, 2009 | 12 Comments
The new Knitscene is out and I have a design in it. The folks at Knitscene named it the Nymph Tee…maybe to evoke a free-spirited, bohemian vibe? In my files for it, I rather unimaginatively named it dolman. Thank goodness the good people at Knitscene/Interweave have a better imagination than me!
I don’t think it’s a secret that I love set in sleeves, but I thought I should try to branch out a little bit. This is my first dolman sleeved sweater and I liked the shape more than I thought I would. There’s a bit of bunchiness under the arm because of the extra fabric, but it also offers a lot of design possibilities. Stitch patterns can be continued uninterrupted from the neckline to the shoulder to the sleeve. They can be very dramatic (see Melissa’s 
Ahhh…much better. Last note… I love the color of the yarn. It’s not a color I would normally be drawn to, but I think I’ll have to make a sweater in this color for myself at some point.
What to do when you’re stuck…
Posted on | January 11, 2009 | 6 Comments
…on working out a design?
Take a break with some pleasure knitting!
In my case, it’s Melissa Wehrle’s classic modern knit, the Urban Wrap (with a great kit available here). Although I do love the Lanas Puras Worsted (I used it for my Hexagon Bag pattern), I decided that I wanted to try a yarn I’ve been hearing a lot about, Dream in Color’s Classy yarn. After seeing this beautiful Wisteria in the Black Parade colorway, I was struck with instant yarn lust. Luckily, the Spiders had given me a gift certificate to Knitty City for my birthday and they had tons of Classy in Black Parade in stock – enough skeins to let me choose the perfect ones with just the right amount of variation.
I’ve done two sleeves (one blocked) and the piece on the needles is the left front. I almost always do a swatch, but I find my tension often changes for a bigger fabric; so I usually block a sleeve or part of a front in order to recheck my gauge and make sure all is progressing as expected.
Last FO of the year
Posted on | January 5, 2009 | 3 Comments
I eeked out a final FO in the form of a pair of baby socks for my husband’s childhood friend’s 4 day old baby. The pattern is Ann Budd’s Better than Booties Socks. I forgot to continue the chevron lace pattern down the foot, but I think they still look okay. It was kind of hard to knit with the dark blue yarn and I only had my mother in law’s mother’s old 8 foot inch double pointed needles to work with (since I left my double points at home), but otherwise this was an enjoyable knit.
It’s my first short row heel and toe and I’m hooked. I love the way it looks!
I hope everyone had a good holiday.
New Twist
Posted on | December 21, 2008 | 5 Comments
I know I’m super late posting about this, but the winter issue of Twist is up. I have two patterns in it this time, Broderie and Garbo. I’m so excited to be a part of this new online magazine; it’s such an honor to have my designs alongside the knits of the wonderful designers featured in this issue.
Broderie is a delicate lace cardigan with wide bands of leaf lace bordering the front edges and high waist. The lace band at the waist is knit first and then stitches are picked up above and below the band for the body. The rest of the cardigan is worked in an allover stitch called the wildflower knot, which I thought particularly appropriate given the leaf shapes traced out in the lace bands. I had a lot of fun knitting this. And because the body is knit in one piece and the sleeves are knit in the round up to the sleeve cap shaping, there’s very little seaming and finishing to do at the end. The cardigan is closed with two buttons at the waistband. For fun and because I personally like getting a peek into the origins of a design, I’ll post my original sketch for this cardigan with a few notes about the details scribbled out in the margin:
By the way, thanks to those who responded to my last post. I don’t usually like to bring politics into my blog, but I still can’t believe California passed Prop 8. Love and functional families are already so difficult to come by, that I don’t think the State should really have a say in what shape they come in. I can’t believe, for example, that as recently as the 70s there were laws that prohibited interracial marriages. In another decade (and hopefully sooner), the idea that same sex marriages were banned will be as unfathomable to our children as the ban on interracial marriage seem to us today.
If you’re so inclined…
Posted on | November 14, 2008 | 4 Comments
…please pop over here to sign Moveon.org’s petition to overturn Prop 8, recently passed in my home state of California.
After I signed, they gave me the option to email friends the link to sign the petition. I hesitate to give out friends’ email addresses as a matter of principal, so I thought I’d post the link here.
I don’t usually like to talk politics on the blog, but I was just so shocked and disappointed by this.