MENU
Tinking Turtle Raverly Profile

Tinking Turtle

Four Pillars

Tinking Turtle Raverly

Inspirations and Influences: Time Traveler

by

Photocredit: Sockupied

I’ve got a new pattern that released this last week, and you might have caught a glimpse of it as I hinted at it’s existence.  Time Traveler is a pattern based off of my love of historical knitting and crochet patterns, and I couldn’t be happier to have it released into the general public.  Let me tell you, for all the sock’s simplicity, it took me forever to figure out how to get the lace to wrap around the ankle without breaking the stitch pattern anywhere.  Absolute ages.  But it all works now: and I’ve done all the hard thinking for you!

Let me let you in on a little secret: every once and a while I like to pay homage to my favorite authors with my patterns.  One Salt Sea is a homage to Seanan McGuire’s book by the same name (which in turn is a homage to Shakespeare, but I digress).  Time Traveler is a tip of the hat to Diana Gabaldon, whose Outlander series features a time traveling heroine.  I have a few other patterns whose design sub names followed that name-scheme, but many of the names don’t make it to publication.  I have to admit, when I named Time Traveler nearly a year and a half ago, I didn’t know that the Outlander Series would be in the process of being made into a TV series.

Photocredit: Sockupied

There’s so much I love about how these socks turned out: the picot hem, which I love (and would like to use more!), the way the lace seamlessly travels into the rest of the sock (which, dear readers, you don’t know how hard that was!), and the deep plummy color of the yarn.  I love the way the heels are worked, the way the toe expansion forms – quite simply, I adore the socks so much.  The Hazel Knits yarn is a really good choice for this pattern: you need a sturdier sock yarn in order for the lace to block out and show well.  Something that is softer (but more fuzzy) doesn’t quite show how the increases and decreases interplay to make the lace what it is.

Later in the week I’ll be talking about historical patterns, and a little bit about the not-so-easy process of reading them and mining them for ideas.

Until then, enjoy!

Photocredit: Sockupied

Inspirations and Influences: Isis Wings

by

Isis Wings, published by Three Irish Girls, is now out.  Boy, this pattern has been a long time in coming!

Isis Wings was created four years ago, and was one of the very first patterns I designed.  It was created before I had even considered the idea that I could have a business based off of selling my knitting and crochet designs.  Isis Wings was conceived on the porch of the house my now-husband, Michael, I and two other friends rented.  The three of them were in their last year of undergraduate studies; I was working for the college Theatre Department at Davidson College.  During those hot summer days as I began my first full time job, I discovered that I suddenly had a profusion of free time: I was suddenly released from most of my extracurricular activities as well as my academic studies.

I had actual time to knit and crochet.  I no longer had to snatch precious moments from my studies and socializing time to work on my hobby.  I had whole evenings where I could have a hobby.  And I also, for the first time, had more pocket money than I really knew what to do with.

So I bought yarn.

I commenced knitting.  I think I finished them in just over a week – which was pretty impressive
for me.  I know the first one was finished in a weekend. You’ll note below that the original pair was worked entirely in twisted stitches – I’d just switched to continental knitting, and didn’t realize that I was twisting all of my stitches.  That realization would come two projects later.

Twisted Stitch Detail Shot

And then I let them sit.  You see, at the time I didn’t know how to write a pattern.  But I wore those socks a whole bunch.  I got a lot of compliments on them, and it’s about that time that I began to just think that I might be able to make some pocket money off of this hobby.

Later, I would answer Three Irish Girl’s design call, and my new roommate in Washington, DC, would help me name them Isis Wings.  I’d work to reconstruct what I did the first time – and only realize a year and a half later as I’m studying them, that I did an extra repeat on one of them (so they are not the same height).

See? Different Heights.

Inspirations and Influences: Witchlace

by

Last week KnitPicks released Witchlace, and I was barely able to create the Ravelry page and the page on my blog.  So I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about Witchlace, why I love it, and why I think you should make it.

Witchlace is part of the KnitPicks Serenity Collection, which I’m tempted to make two or three things out of myself.  It’s worked side to side, much like Newport – and in fact, they were conceived as ideas close together.  Like Newport, Witchlace uses short rows for shaping, as the majority of the sweater is worked side to side.  Once the front, back and sleeves are done, the yoke is picked up and worked in distinctive broomstick crochet.

I LOVED working with Galileo.  It’s a beautiful, beautiful yarn and has an amazing hand.  It also lends itself well to crochet, and it comes in very vibrant and jewl-toned colors.  I would design something else in this yarn in a heartbeat – I’ve actually got a few ideas I think would work out well.

In a way, Witchlace was also heavily influenced by the design I made for Tangled Magazine: Sunburst Shawl.  Like the motifs in Sunburst, the broomstick lace in Witchlace is worked in the round – making the distinctive yoke pattern.

I have so much more to tell you about designing this pattern, but I’ll save it for my Post Mortem of Witchlace in a few days.

Carrying Davidson With Me

by

I’ve been talking a bit the last few days about Davidson College (my alma mater), which has been on my mind since Michael and I are currently driving our way from Washington, DC to Davidson, NC.  As previously mentioned, we’re going for Michael’s brother’s graduation.

I’ve been talking about how Davidson College played heavily into the designing I do today.  From resources like The Needlecraft Center to the art program at Davidson, this town and college started the transformation from a casual stitcher to fiber-arts professional.  There is, however, one other major thing I’ve taken with me away from Davidson that has been instrumental in leading me where I am today.

My husband.  Michael.

Back then, of course, he was my boyfriend, whom I had been dating for three years.  As a freshly minted graduate, I had an English Degree in hand, a job working for my alma mater (which I was very happy about, as the job market had just plummeted), and a plan to live with Michael and two other friends in a house off campus.  Michael and my friends were all seniors, and a year younger than I.

Early design project that has been revised,
and will be published later in the year.

I found myself with a profusion of free time.  Having no course load and a job that lasted from 9-5, I had evenings free for the first time in my life.  It was amazing. I was doing more spinning than I had ever been able to do, and was knitting and crocheting up a storm.  I quickly tired of other people’s patterns, and began to work patterns of my own.

There was one such time, working on a pair of socks, that I began to write things down, so I could remember what I did for the second sock.  And it was about that time that Michael began to say, “You could make money from that.”

At first, I scoffed at the idea.  There aren’t many entrepreneurs in my immediate family, nor did I run into many people where I lived who ran their own business.  In contrast, Michael’s father has run a successful small business most of Michael’s life.  What seemed inconceivable to me seemed obvious to him.

Michael kept at it, though, asking thoughtful questions and encouraging me to learn enough about the industry to make an informed decision.  It was there
where I began to seriously think about what it would take to be a designer.  I wasn’t ready yet to take the leap, and I had a lot of learning to do, but it was at Davidson that the seeds were planted.

Inspirations and Influences: Newport

by

Newport is one of the few designs that didn’t start with a stitch pattern, which is how I mostly design.  I get an idea for a pattern, and then I pull the shape of the thing around it.  Instead, Newport was directly inspired by Mary Jane Hall’s Cap Sleeve Top.  My room mate at the time had just created one in Ty-Dy Cotton, and I responded by creating my own in Ty Dy Wool.  I liked it, but I began wondering what would happen if I…?

About the same time, I had been admiring the patterns in New England Knits, specifically the pattern on the cover, the Middlefield Pullover.  I loved the asymmetrical line going down the side, I loved the open neck that showed the collarbones.  But… I wanted something in crochet.  And I wasn’t sure I wanted something quite as warm, or quite as fitted.

You can see where this is going, right?

The clincher was I had just finished a knit-along in Classic Silk, and after I had managed to pick the right size (I had forgotten I had lost so much weight, and used old measurements… silly me), I had a ball knitting the top up.  It just simply flew off the needles.  I had some classic silk left over, so I worked up a swatch in that, and sent it in.

The rest?  Well that’s another story that you’ll have to wait for.

Inspirations and Influences: Sunburst Shawl

by

You ever have a situation where you can trace exactly when a thought entered your head?  I can remember the exact moment that the idea for the Sunburst Shawl entered my head.  It was over a discussion of Fibonacci numbers and crochet, and I misspoke.  I meant to ask if it was possible to do a crochet technique in the round, and instead I said broomstick.

My friend replied she had never seen it done before, and I realized and corrected my mispeak, but the idea was then in my head.  WAS it possible?

But really, in some ways, I think the inspiration for the Sunburst Shawl goes back even further.

The Sunburst Shawl owes much of its inspiration to knitting.  Gasp!  It’s shocking, I know.

One of my favorite things to do is knit socks with the magic loop.  I’ve never been a big fan of knitting on straights, and while I like working on two circulars and did that for about a year, I started wanting my needles to have more than just one purpose.  I got into the magic loop because with a longer needle you can do big projects, but you can also use the magic loop to do small projects in knitting.

At the same time I’d also gotten interested in historical patterns, and both broomstick and hairpin lace.  Both techniques seemed like a great way to make quick crochet patterns with stunning results.  The only problem was that most people who were using these techniques were doing things similar to Doris Chan’s exploded lace.  They were working the techniques in worsted weight yarn.

I was interested in doing the work in something closer to lace-weight.  While lace is still far off from some of the weight yarn historical patterns were made in (especially with crochet) I thought it would highlight the open-ness of the broomstick stitches in a way that a thicker yarn would not.

This, combined with  the conversation I mentioned earlier in The Yarn Spot cemented the idea in my head.  It took a few months more of peculating, and a design call that spoke to me, to have everything align correctly.

I’d like to do more with the broomstick crochet in the round, both because I happen to like round things, and also because I think it’s wonderful to be able to take advantage of technologies that weren’t available before.

Besides, I like to do things that nobody else has thought to do yet.

Latest Posts

Social Feed

Tinking Turtle Ravelry

Email Signup

Don’t miss a stitch!

Be the first to learn about classes, patterns. upcoming events and more.