Beautiful Smocked Christmas ornaments

Christmas and New Years have come and gone, and we all had a delightful time at the Ricketts' household. Today, all three kiddos are back at work, and I'm back to the drawing board. Literally. I emailed in a magazine proposal, and will be working on a couple more after lunch.

In the meantime, I wanted to share these snaps with you that I took at the Minneapolis Weavers' Guild library in November. What a wonderful resource for weavers, knitters and any textile artist! They are located in a large building and have a full shop, workshop, and library. Workshop space is available for rent, and the library is an actual lending library for members. It is the largest textile lending library in the States! I was able to do some research there for a couple articles.

In the corner was a wonderfully decorated tree. I took these photos of individual ornaments, as I had just recently interviewed a smocker, several quilters, and even a button crafter on my cable TV show In the Loop with Laura.

a crazy quilted ornament with twined piping and tassel

smocked ball in red hearts and green motifs on all-white fabric

smocked ball on gingham fabric

smocked sideways hearts on white fabric

simple smocked gathers

blue and red smocked zigzags

"package" with smocked holly

smocked tree of gathered trim and blue gingham ball

smocked wreath

Button wreath

Upcoming Piecework Magazine

January/February's Piecework Magazine release is imminent.  I've already gotten a couple advertising emails from Needlework about it. A couple images were included in the emails. Here is the first:

Piecework cover for January/February 2015 "Historical Knitting Issue"

Piecework comes out every other month, and every Jan/Feb edition is entirely historical knitting. That means, all the other issues contain other types of historical textiles: hardanger, needlepoint, crochet, laces of all kinds...

My article, this time, is the large red lettering under the historical knitting banner. I'm kind of shocked I got higher billing than Nancy Bush! She is such an inspiration to me in her historical knitting of Estonia.

Here's the second set of pictures. My sweater is the red one on the right.

projects in the Jan/Feb 2015 "Historical Knitting" Piecework magazine

You can pick one of these magazines up at a Barnes and Nobles or similar store with a large magazine selection. Many find knitting stores carry Piecework, as well, but not all, since it is technically not a knitting magazine. You could also order a hard copy or a digital copy from Interweave.com.

Can't wait for my copy to arrive. Have a great Thursday, all!

As December draws to a close

Nine patterns and counting uploaded on Patternfish.

Today I uploaded The King's Sweater on my Ravelry store. I've been working on this pattern for what feels like forever! This modern copy was designed for a class at the Vesterheim, Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah, Iowa for this fall. I viewed copies of the original when I was in Norway fall 2013. Next month, it will be featured in the January/February 2015 “Historical Knitting” edition of Piecework magazine.

This pattern is a copy of the sweater Prince Harald wore April 9, 1940. On that day, the Nazis invaded Oslo, and Crown Prince Harald, his older sisters Ragnhild and Astrid, their parents, Crown Prince Olav V and Princess Märtha, and their grandfather King Haakon VII fled the capitol. Over the next five years, Crown Prince Harald evaded Nazi capture, living most of this time in a suburb of Washington, D.C.. Prince Harald is the current king of Norway, King Harald V. The original sweater is still property of the royal family. It toured Norwegian museums as a part of an exhibit titled, "The Longest Journey (1940–1945): the royal family’s long, involuntary sojourn abroad during the war years".

My neighbor's son, Kaden, was the model. Isn't he just perfect? Despite his twinkling blue eyes, he stood so still for me to take these photos this fall, and he never once said, "it itches!" He is definitely not a Ricketts!

For some reason, my photos are not uploading. I'm going to post this anyway. If you are curious to see some image, please click through one of the links at the beginning of this post.

PATTERNFISH - the online pattern store

Yesterday, Patternfish had six of my patterns listed. Today it is seven!

How many will be listed when YOU click through these links?

To borrow a quote from my favorite TV show Miranda, "Such fun!"