I knit this dress in 5 days over my holiday break but never got around to taking any pictures or even wearing it. I think that might be a personal knitting record: a mini dress in 5 days. I can get pretty knitting obsessed during school breaks, so it’s a good thing I’m starting a few collections this summer to keep me busy in the studio once classes are out in a few weeks.

Modifications:

The seed stitch mini is one of our Modalura patterns (designed by Lucinda). If you’re not up for the time-consuming process of the seed stitch, this dress is not for you. However, the combination of the alpaca brushed suri and alpaca worsted knit together creates a great halo effect on the bottom half of the dress. (I knit the dress in tan and toasted marshmellow.) For gals like me with very flat back sides, it’s a nice texture for a fitted dress. I stuck to the pattern through the seed stitch, then added about three inches of length through the torso and knit fewer decreases up through my hip-line to maintain shaping for my body type. I added some increases through the bust-line for obvious reasons. I also decided not to pick-up and knit the edges of the armholes and neckline, but only because I’m lazy.

This dress looks great over skinny jeans or leggings. It’s very warm, so it’s not likely I’ll get to wear it much in the near future with spring finally here, but hopefully next fall I can get more use out of it. I’d love to knit it in black next winter.

I did manage to finish the front last week though, so I might get to wear it by April. Good thing I live in Rochester where winter lasts till June.

I also decided not to knit the collar this time–I like the way it looks without it right now and because the collar is made by picking up stitches, I can always add it later if I decide to.

The buttons are covered with vintage fabric from the 1960′s, the same fabric pictured in the original pattern.

I think this piece will really have to be worn as a jacket rather than a sweater; it’s knit with 10 skeins of Blue Sky Alpaca Bulky Natural (color Lynx), which makes for a very toasty jacket!

So, here are a few things made by me:
Super-cute sister in a Modalura sweater made from Blue Sky Alpaca Royal Alpaca:

A much-needed replacement bag, since last year’s bag has been used for the last 364 days straight:

Sisters in their Modalura sweaters:

Sister and brand-spankin’-new brother-in-law in knit hats made from Nashua Creative Focus Chunky:

Sensual Knits is all about knitting with luxurious yarns, although I don’t see much that’s sensual about our sweater design other than that it’s knit with pure baby alpaca:

Our design, the Multiplicity Sweater, it made to be worn in four different ways; in other words, it’s a sweater that you can wear multiple times and it always looks different depending on how you decide to wear it. Unfortunately, the book only shows you one way to wear it, but maybe if I get a chance to knit it I’ll post pictures of the other combinations.

Here’s where I’m at with the October Jacket, which currently looks like a vest. I can’t wait to wear it–it’s SO heavy.

Something really bad happened with one of my Modalura patterns: we printed the wrong version of the pattern and then shipped it to every store that ordered with us. Of course, we didn’t realize it until I started knitting the pattern and suddenly nothing made sense. At all. So, I started over and revised it all with the correct version and knit the thing all over again. The bad thing is that I had to have the pattern all reprinted and shipped out again. The good thing is that it’s correct and so far, we haven’t received any nasty emails from anyone about how much we suck for messing up. (I know I keep referring to “we” but it was totally my mistake.) Plus, in a few days, I’ll actually have finished something in the last 4 months that won’t be sitting in my pile of half-knit projects collecting dust.

Maybe when I finish this paper, I’ll post pictures.

The Thumb Thermal was one of our most popular designs: the sweater is all one piece, but looks like a T worn over a thermal shirt–it also has great thumb holes. I honestly want to make enough of this sweater so that, if I really wanted to, I could wear one every day of the week in the dead of winter.

I’d like to try to knit the boyfriend/girlfriend sweater for my husband for Christmas because I think it would look good on him. (And it doubles as a sweater for me, too, if he’ll part with it.)

This weekend we spent four days in Columbus for the TNNA (The National Needle Arts) trade show to launch our Modalura Fall 2007 Pattern Collection with Blue Sky Alpacas. Overall, it was tons of fun—I even left loving Columbus and feeling silly that I didn’t know how hip the city was, even if half of it is made up of the Ohio State campus.

The response to our collection exceeded my expectations–although there were certainly a number of grannies that looked at our book of patterns as if we had designed them for people living on another planet. (These are also the women who love eyelash yarn, so I didn’t feel bad. At all.) The women working the Blue Sky booth were fabulous: I have no doubt that Blue Sky is successful because of their amazing product, but I think the women who run the place make you love it that much more. I’m so grateful for the opportunity they gave us to design with their yarns.

I spent most of the weekend on the Convention Center floor selling for the Blue Sky Alpacas booth. One of the fun parts of being at TNNA is the people watching: I cannot get over the whacked out stuff people knit themselves and dare to wear in public. I’m sure this happens at most trade shows were fashion has anything to do with the products being sold and it’s no different at TNNA. In fact, it’s worse. Women (yes, and men) are damned sure going to show off that matching knit top and skirt they spent hours on. I have no problem with this; however, after a day it seemed evident that many of these 40+ years old women needed a lesson from my mother in dressing themselves: if you are going to wear a knit/crotched top, please wear something underneath it. No ones needs to see that cream bra and matching grannie pantie set.

Other than trying to race after women in the hall to take pictures of their outfits, (yes, I was that person, following you for five minutes, trying to document your clothes because they were so unbelievable, but this is all I got of the knit green/yellow striped socks, hot pink tights, purple knit jacket, pink scarf/green wrap and purple beret:

…I spent thinking about how the knitting world is so small that it’s no biggy to ride the escalator with Norah Gaughan and walk past Wenlan Chia’s booth ten times a day to use the rest room. My favorite highlights were seeing my favorite Texan, Jenny Hart, who is always sweet and fun to catch up with; Annie Modesitt, who made a fabulous ruckus at the Potter/Craft publishing party by pretending to win the raffle, multiple times; Amy Butler, who I just had to introduce myself to and is way taller than I expected; and my most ridiculous moment: meeting Nicky Epstein, who signed a bag for me and chatted us up for five minutes, after which I still had to ask someone who she was because I had no idea, despite the fact that I knit from her books.

Of course, our booth looked the hottest, if only because of the large poster Blue Sky had blown up of one of our patterns (and best seller!) the Thumb Thermal, modeled by my wonderful friend Julia. Thanks Jules, for modeling for us again, and I promise your “payment” is coming in the form of one-of-a-kind presents and a bottle of cab for every shot you did. (You too, Nate!)