Emmen

Hi, Knitters,

Meet my new hat pattern, Emmen! I knit a quick hat for my son right before Christmas and he absolutely loved the way it fit and looked. And I loved knitting it. I quickly knit up another one and this is the one in the photos here. 

So I thought the pattern might be something you'd be interested in, as well.

I have the pattern priced at an introductory special of $3.50, no code is necessary. This price will go through Jan. 12, 2018, and then the price will be set at $5.00.

The other thing is that the hat uses one skein of Barrett Wool Co. Home Worsted Weight. If you purchase any of our worsted weight yarn and write KIT in the order notes, we will throw in a FREE Emmen pattern Ravelry Download Code with your order! This offer goes through Jan. 12th, as well.

Click here for Barrett Wool Co.!

Click here for the Emmen pattern and more information on Ravelry!

Click here for Home Worsted Weight!

The model is a family friend, Mark, who is visiting from Emmen. Emmen is a city an hour or two outside of Amsterdam, thus the pattern name. A few days ago he had to go back to school in Emmen and we miss him around here already. Mark generously modeled for us and the hat looked so great on him and he really liked it so I ended up giving it to him in appreciation. He wore it non-stop for the rest of his visit which I took as a good sign. 

The top of the hat is so pretty. It continues on with strategically placed decreases in pattern. I love the simplicity, look and fit of the hat. It fits men nicely but it also fits me perfectly. I think I am going to knit one up for myself.

The Home Worsted Weight comes in lots of beautiful colors but the color in the photos is Scout, which is a rich shade of teal. 

Also, I just filmed and posted two tutorial videos for the Sven and Solveig dolls. I show how I did Sven's beard and Solveig's hair over on the Barrett Wool Co. Journal.

The pattern booklet for Carol Anderson's Sven & Solveig is available right here! The pattern is only available in this booklet. It is not available for download. 

Click here to see the videos and to find out more about my modifications to Carol Anderson's wonderful pattern Sven & Solveig!

I love these dolls so much. We have more kits on order for the dolls. I'm not exactly sure when they will be available but hopefully soon. If you would like to get an instant automatic email notice when they are listed all you have to enter your email on the product page. Then you be the first to know!

Click here for the product page for the Sven and Solveig Kit! 

Have a wonderful Sunday. We have a fresh dusting of snow on the ground and the temperature is supposed to be a little friendlier today. My fingers are crossed.

xo ~ susan

The Fruits of Summer

Hi, Knitters,

The summer is going a little too quickly around here. But one thing I really look forward to is the ripening of our backyard garden. We have a good-sized garden in a sunny spot that is fenced in to keep out the rabbits. We have two raised beds and I think this year we finally have it down. The plants are spread out and supported nicely and this is paying off. Our trouble has always been overplanting. 

This year we have a couple of kinds of peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, a big variety of tomatoes from cherry to Roma to heirloom, and tons of basil. My favorites are the tomatoes. I love tomatoes and once this season hits I can eat a tomato sliced up with salt and pepper for breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner. It is a highlight of summer. 

The shining stars this summer are the heirloom tomatoes. These are the best we've grown. I love the taste, the look, and the color of these heirlooms. I love the folds and gathers at the top, kind of looks like a knit hat. 

Anyway, I hope you are having success if you garden or maybe if you get to hit a farmers' market or two this summer.

One other fun thing about August is hiking in our neighborhood conservancy. The paths become enveloped in tall grasses, way above my head, and the masses of flowers are beyond belief. No photo can capture what it's really like. The colors and sounds are so beautiful. Hiking in August is something I look forward to every year and with the rainfall this summer, everything is in its prime.

I started a couple of fun projects this past week. One project I am especially excited about is a pattern that's not released yet but it is coming soon. I cast on and started a red cardigan with pockets and a fun textured stitch pattern. I will keep you posted. I think wearing a red cardigan this fall and winter is going to make me really happy. 

Yarn: Home Worsted Weight in the Red Flannel colorway

The other project I started and finished is this gorgeous Erland hat. Tanis Gray is the designer and she wrote the pattern for Barrett Wool Co. I love this kind of hat that is simply casting on and following a chart for the entire hat. Erland is one of my favorite knits ever.

In the photo above, that's Tanis' sample hat and on the right is my version of Erland.

I finished it up in one day and here it is blocking. I modified the original Erland pattern a little bit but not much. I knit the hat on a US size 7 needle at 5 stitches per inch. I added some corrugated ribbing for extra length to cover my ears. And because I was knitting at a bigger gauge I took out one of the repeats, so instead of four repeats I only did three repeats. 

I misjudged the length a tiny bit. After Erland dried I realized that I should have only done one-inch of corrugated ribbing instead of two-inches. So I tucked the cast on edge under and whipstitched it to the inside of the Latvian braid so the brim is doubled, which I love. 

Now the hat is perfect and the fit is fantastic. When you only do three repeats instead of four repeats of the chart the top of the hat becomes slightly pointed. I blocked out the point as much as possible and when the hat is worn there is no visible point. 

Anyway, I love this hat. I feel like it is a tiny piece of art. Thank you to Tanis for such a rewarding design. I haven't had this much fun knitting a hat in awhile. 

Click here for the Erland pattern on Ravelry!

Click here for the Erland Kit on Barrett Wool Co.!

Click here for Home Worsted Weight in the Snowy Pine and Marmalade colors!

I finished writing up all sorts of good tutorials and updates on the Gigi Cardigan. It has been really fun to walk through a typical modification series for a simple top-down cardigan.

Click here if you are interested in seeing tutorials and notes on a Knotted Steek, button placement, sleeve fitting, short rows on necklines and hemlines, adding pockets and more. 

There is a lot of good information for sweater knitters here!

Okay, friends, thank you for the Smooth Operator Socks pattern love. The discount has been extended through the weekend. No code is necessary for the discount on the pattern. 

Click here for the discounted Smooth Operator Socks pattern!

Love to you and yours.

xo ~ susan

Snow Day

Hi, Knitters,

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Ours was filled with family time, fires in the fireplace, and good food. Before I start I want to give a quick reminder that today is the last day for my holiday pattern sale which is a discount of 20% off my entire Susan B. Anderson Ravelry Pattern Store (click here to see the pattern shop).

The discount code is: HOLIDAY2016

The sale includes all of the pattern and ebooks in my shop at the link above.

Now onto the topic of the day.

It finally snowed yesterday. It was exciting and extraordinarily beautiful outside. The snow came down most of the day. I couldn't wait to get out for a long hike with my husband and daughter and then later for a good run by myself. I stopped a lot to take photos during these two ventures out in the winter wonderland and I want to share them with you today. 

It was quiet and so was the color pallet. I soaked it all in.

 

I was struck by the birds flitting about so actively in the dried prairie grasses. I'm sure they were eating the seeds. Rarely do you see birds like this in December but they made the view incredibly pretty. You have to look kind of hard to see the birds but there were probably at least a dozen of them. 

The rest of the photos are from my snowy outings yesterday and I thought you might enjoy them. It was so quiet and gray outside that when you look around it makes you feel like you have a filter on your eyes. 

Have a great Monday and week ahead, friends. I'll be back soon with more. If you live in a snowy area, has it snowed yet? I look forward to this time of year and I hope you do, too.

One more question, how is your holiday knitting going? I am not able to devote a lot of time to gift knitting this year but I keep thinking about it so maybe I'll squeeze in a couple of gifts yet. 

I'd love to hear how you're doing out there. 

Take care and I'll be back soon with more.

xo ~ susan

Snowflakes and Apples

Hi, Knitters,

I hope you are all having a good week. The fall weather has been on the warm side this year and we have been enjoying it as much as possible. We can't take the warmer weather for granted around here as winter is right around the corner.

I want to thank you for the support for the Mitten Knitting Season pattern sale I had over the last week. It was a hit and so I hope to see lots of your Waiting for Winter Mittens all over the place, stacks and stacks of them. My daughter gifted the mittens I knitted for her cross country sister at the last meet. I didn't hear much about it so I hope she likes them. And I have to say that if I don't hear anything about a gift, knitted or not, I never worry about it. It doesn't bother me at all not knowing if the person likes it because the fun for me is making the gift. After that I let it go. Although it is added fun if you do hear that the gift is enjoyed, of course.

Now, you may be wondering why I have the photo of a hat I designed in 2014 as the first photo. Yesterday or the day before that I noticed that my hat pattern, Split Back Snowflake, was getting some attention on Ravelry. It was rising back up in the Hot Right Now Patterns on Ravelry. Sometimes these things happen and I assume it's been mentioned somewhere or someone is knitting it and posting about it but I didn't know what was up this time.

I posted the original photo of my niece wearing the hat on my Instagram and people started letting me know that Staci Perry of Very Pink Knits had been posting about knitting her own Split Back Snowflake Hat. Staci is a prolific knitter, designer and knitting teacher and she has a very popular YouTube Channel called VeryPink Knits, where she does loads of tutorials and tutorial-style projects. You should definitely check her out. Thank you, Staci, for knitting the hat! 

Here is the back of the hat and thus the reason for the pattern title. The cable-rib brim is worked flat and then it is joined to begin working in the round for a short ribbed section and then moves into the colorwork section of the hat. When the hat is worn it should be tipped back a bit which makes the flat section hug the back of the neck (perfect for a low ponytail, too!) and the split creates earflaps to boot. There are so many good things about this hat. It is perfect for a new-to colorwork and new-to cable knitter because the patterns are simple and a hat is small with small sections of each. The hat also provides good variety for interest and moves quickly on the worsted weight yarn.

If the split back detail is not for you there is a more traditional option in the pattern, too.

The photos above show the traditional brim with a simple 1 by 1 rib to turn up or to wear down for a slouchier fit.

With two skeins each of two contrasting colors of Quince & Co. Owl you can get two hats including the pom poms. Three skeins of Owl will get you one hat, either version.

Anyway, it's been fun to revisit the Split Back Snowflake Hat pattern. My niece is the model and she is just so darn cute. 

Click here for more information or to purchase the Split Back Snowflake Hat on Ravelry!

Now for another subject, apples and apple picking. For the last ten years that I've been writing this blog I have talked about my love for apple picking and pumpkin picking in the fall. It has been a longstanding autumn tradition for us to head out and pick those apples. We like trying all sorts of kinds of apples and I am always fascinated by the variety and tastes and textures.

This year we focused on Northern Spy, Jonagold and Cortland for our picking. My son and his wife, and one of my daughters joined us so it was a small group by our standards but we had a blast and the weather was gorgeous.

I love how the rows of apple trees look so unassuming but when you get in there and look the apples are everywhere. We had the best weather. Oh, and I just remembered that as we were walking out of the rows of trees I ran into my buddy Jaala Spiro of Knit Circus with her kids. That was fun.

The apples this year were big, gigantic even. Some of the apples we picked were the largest I've ever seen.

In 2010 I posted about making applesauce in the oven and I shared my No Recipe Baked Applesauce recipe. Click here if you want to read about it!  I use this guide every time I bake applesauce and it never fails. In the old post it was fun to see TC playing her French horn in the background and my then newly remodeled kitchen. Seems like a long time ago. 

 Married life agrees with them!

I've made apple crisp and applesauce and I've eaten a lot of apples for snacks over the last week or two. I love it all. I've also blended a generous amount of cinnamon into plain cream cheese and added raisins for dipping with sliced apples. It's all so good and delicious.

I can't think of a better way to celebrate autumn each year. 

The colors are finally changing around here and it never gets old. The photo above was taken with my phone and I can't believe how good it turned out. My husband was with me on a hike and I told him how the landscape looked just like a painting. Then later when I looked at the photo I had taken it really looked like a painting in the photo. Sometimes it is hard to capture what you see in a photo. This time it worked.

The photo above was taken on my run in the late afternoon yesterday.  It was a pretty good view.

Right before I ended my run and headed home I stopped to take one last photo. You know, having a phone with a camera is one of the best things ever. I really enjoy being able to capture moments in time so randomly. (This makes me sound old but when you don't have a cell phone until you are in your mid-forties you can understand that it seems pretty wonderful.)

Have a great rest of your week, dear Knitters. I'll be back soon with more.
xo ~ susan

Good Tidings

Hi Knitters,

I hope you are doing well this holiday week. I love this season and all of the home-y activities with which we devote our time. I've been planning gifts and sewing and knitting up a storm and baking and cooking, etc. All of my kids are home and on break from school. It is bustling and busy. You, too?

Well, I have randomly selected a winner for the Kermis Kit giveaway from Infinite Twist! And the winner is...... matildachelsey on Ravelry or Josette! Congratulations, Josette. I have sent an email to Cate Carter of Infinite Twist with your contact information and she will be in touch with you directly to plan out your kit specifics. Click here for the Kermis pattern on Ravelry.

Thank you for the fantastic Kermis Kit giveaway response. Cate is just thrilled and has sold a lot of kits this past week. She is so thankful and excited to give good homes to her beautiful yarns and kits.

Here is some information and links for the photos in the collage:

Rainbow Socks: Quaere Fibres 10-Stripe Rainbow colorway, sport weight; US size 2 needles; toe-up with an extended afterthought heel. 56 sts for the leg and foot count.

Knit Collage Mittens: Yarn is Knit Collage Castaway in the Prism colorway, 2 skeins. I made up the pattern but there is a similar pattern on the Knit Collage website. I knit the mittens with the knit side facing me and then turned them inside out so the purl side is the right-side. I used US size 10.5 dpns to make the mittens. I gave the finished pair to my niece as an early Christmas gift. She LOVES them and now my other niece wants a pair, too. I see more of these fun mittens in my future.

Socks for my son: Regia Cotton Summer Smile Color (purchased right here) with Opal heels and toes in gray. My son wants lighter weight handknit socks and so I am trying out this cotton/wool/nylon blend from Regia to see if he likes it better. He is so knitworthy! He wears the two pairs of socks I knit him constantly, they are always in the wash. I didn't enjoy knitting with this cotton blend yarn as much but it is doable. It feels a bit like string in my opinion. But I love the end results. He picked out the colorway (I love that he likes colorful pink stripey socks!). I used US size 1 dpns and my free pattern How I Make My Socks for men (here is the men's sock information).

Rag Quilt Placemats: I made a quick set of 6 placemats for my sister-in-law. I made the same rag quilt placemats last year and wrote a blog post (click right here) with all of the details and the YouTube video tutorial I used. I made a few more for another gift for this year, too, nine in total. They are really fast!

And lastly, my son has been baking and baking and baking! I try to sneak in and bake and cook when he's not in the kitchen which is not often. He has gifted most of his cookies, muffins and breads to others but leaves plenty for us to enjoy as well. He is currently working as a baker in a popular Madison bakery and loving it.

Yesterday as I was working on the rainbow socks I sat across from TC at our kitchen table. She is working on her beaded ornaments which she has been making for the last several years. I love her focus and concentration while she is working. It is so much fun to have her on break from school and sports and whatnot. I enjoy her company so much.

And I want to mention the Santa project bag that I've been using for the holiday season this year. It is from ShopLouleigh on Etsy and it is just the cutest bag ever, honestly. I'm so in love with Leigh's work and fabric choices. She is spot on.

Click here to visit ShopLouleigh!

Here are the ornaments TC has finished so far! She'll wrap them up in little sets to give as gifts. It's so sweet. Each of these designs come in kits that we purchased at the Wisconsin Craft Market this year and last year. Some of the kits only cost a couple of dollars and include the materials for several ornaments per kit as you can see. 

Merry, Merry and Happy Holidays, dear Knitters. Thank you for the support and for the fun here on the blog and everywhere else. I appreciate you all so much. This is the tenth Christmas I have celebrated on this blog, it's hard to believe that it has been that long.

I'm wishing you all good tidings of great joy! 

xo ~ susan

Fall Inspired

Hi, Knitters,

I have randomly selected a winner for the Little Skein Secret Garden Luxe Kit and the winner is.....

Susan Cowan or MaggieGrl on Ravelry! Congratulations to Susan. 

I've already emailed Anne Vally of Little Skein to pass on Susan's contact information. Anne will be getting in touch directly. Thanks to everyone for entering, what an amazing and huge response! I will host another giveaway very soon.

I started recording a podcast episode and I got about 20 minutes in and I noticed my phone had stopped recording. I had to stop and move things around and by the time I got back to it the house was full of family and there was a lot going on. So I have about a half of a podcast filmed and hopefully I'll get to recording the rest this weekend or early next week. 

Well, fall has hit pretty hard around here. It is such a beautiful time of year. We have had a mild and somewhat warm fall season. Although we've had some colder weather recently the first week of November is supposed to be back up around 70 degrees. That seems impossible.

Everyday I get outside to enjoy the outdoors and the fall colors. It has been beautiful and inspiring. The fall landscape and temperatures have seeped into my knitting over the last couple of weeks. I'm thinking a lot about cozy sweaters and warm wool socks.

I started a pair of Patchwork Socks. There isn't a specific pattern for these socks. You just take leftover sock yarn and your favorite sock pattern and switch yarns every 10 rounds or so. The yarns I'm using are the leftovers from the four pairs of Arne & Carlos Regia socks I have made. I am knitting these socks from the toe-up and it has been really fun. They won't match but they will definitely go together and look like a pair. I see a lot of autumnal colors when I look at that finished sock. I've already started the toe on the second sock.

And for some reason navy blue has been going strong around here as well.

Miss Molly (my future daughter-in-law) finished her Yowza Weigh It 3 Shawl using Miss Babs Yowza in the Stairway to Heaven colorway. It is beautiful and she reported that she has worn it several times already. Molly says it is warm and cozy. She loves it!

The other navy blue project I've been working on is the Antrorse sweater by Shannon Cook. I am using Quince & Co. Osprey in the Peacoat colorway. Those are Karbonz dpns on the sleeve, US size 10. 

Since this photo I've finished the sweater and it is blocking and drying now. I've ordered some buttons that I hope will work out well. I'll share more about it as soon as it is all together and done. Antrorse is a great pattern, super simple and fast. 

I'll be back with my podcast episode very soon.

xo ~ susan

Fab Funky Fibres Giveaway!

Hi, Knitters,

I hope you have all had a good holiday season so far. It has been busy and full around here. Along with hosting Christmas for my side of the family we've had a birthday leftover lunch for my niece and a Packer-viewing game crew just left. We have had lots and lots of family and friends at our house over the past week and I love every minute of it. It's been a lot of cooking, baking, talking and eating. My husband's birthday is tomorrow and then New Year's Eve, my son's girlfriend is coming to visit for a few days... and so it continues. 

And in two weeks Vogue Knitting Live in New York City! Come see me! I can't wait to teach at this event. It is one of my favorites.

We have taken down all of the Christmas decorations and tree (the needles were collapsing in piles on the floor every time someone walked by) but I snapped a few photos before they were stored away for next year. 

Alan Dart Yuletide Gnome above!

Hope your days were merry and bright..... 

Now for some socks.

Do you remember these stripey socks I knitted a couple of years ago? I used to have this photo on the header for my blog. The yarn is in the colorway called 15 Color Rainbow and it is from an Etsy shop called Fab Funky Fibres. The colors are saturated and the stripes are clean and crisp. Elaine does one of the best dye work jobs I've seen. She lives in England. The skeins are a bit pricey but worth every penny in my opinion. Each of her striping skeins is about $38 plus shipping.

Click here for Fab Funky Fibres on Etsy!

 

Every once in a while I hop over to Fab Funky Fibres to see what's cooking with her yarn. Elaine has a yarn colorway with 23 different striping colors that I purchased. It is called, I Believe in the Impossible. It's the skein on the left in the photo above. Elaine sent me a note saying that she sent along an extra skein called Autumn Rainbow to give to one of my blog readers. 

Thank you, Elaine! You are very generous.

The 23 different colored striping yarn is extraordinarily beautiful in the skein but when you see it knit up...

(photo from Fab Funky Fibres, I Believe in the Impossible)

... it is exciting! I can't wait to dig in! Elaine added contrasting cuffs, heels and toes. You wouldn't have to but it is pretty this way.

Directly above in the photo is the skein one of you luckies will win!

From Elaine of Fab Funky Fibres:

Autumn Rainbow a little taste of Autumn Colours knits into 6 rows of knitting per colour depending on your tension for a fab and funky fusion of colour:

75% Superwash Merino 

25% Nylon
4 ply Superwash

Autumn Rainbow is a 100 gram/464 yard skein of fingering weight yarn. I counted and I think this giveaway skein has about 15 different colored stripes.

  

 (photo from Fab Funky Fibres)

Here is what Autumn Rainbow looks like knit up! Stunning! The knitter that gets this skein is going to have so much fun.

To enter to win the skein of Autumn Rainbow striping sock yarn from Fab Funky Fibres, please leave one comment on this blog post. Be patient for your comment to appear and only click post one time. There is a delay in posting to the blog post. In your comment you must leave either your email address or your Ravelry ID or username so I can contact you if you win. 

I will be back in a couple of short days to randomly select a winner. 

Good luck and let the comments begin!

xo ~ susan