Fancy a bit of lace?

In March I was busy again designing for Artesano. This time I used Manos del Uruguay Lace which is gorgeous. Anita and Pixie did all the knitting for me (I was busy knitting the Fyberspates Royal Wedding Shawl).

These patterns are now available from Artesano/Manos del Uruguay stockists in the UK, Sweden, Germany and France. There are several other great patterns in the collection by other designers too.

First is 'Living Doll' which is a cardigan which starts with a leaf lace edging. Stitches are picked up for the body and the leaf lace edging continues up along the front edges. The body of the cardigan is stocking stitch so it's fairly quick to knit. Perfect as a light weight cover up all year round.

Next up is 'Miss You Nights' which is a short sleeved lace top. There is an all over lace pattern which is fairly easy to knit. Perfect summer top which will go with everything.

And lastly we have 'My Pretty One' which is a sleeveless top with lace columns separated by 'fagotting' columns. I love this stitch pattern. This top can be worn as a summer top but I can also see it being worn as a little party top for the pre-Christmas party season.

ETA: I forgot to add this pic last night, I was a bit tired.

A big thank you to Pixie and Anita who did a great job with the knitting and to Rachel who checked the patterns for me. Rachel checked the Serena patterns from the previous post too.

I've got lots of other stuff I should be blogging about but this has been a bit of a weird week. I've finished some pattern writing which I was way behind on. And done some knitting and although I've been busy all week I don't feel like I've got a lot done. I've done a lot of swatching for new designs which is fun but can be a bit weird. Sometimes I can spend hours swatching and end up with nothing to show for it as ideas don't work out and swatches get ripped. that's why during swatching periods i don't feel like i'm achieving anything. When I work on new design ideas now I like to set aside a weekend or a few days to work almost exclusively on swatching for new ideas. If I try to squeeze it in between other knitting I struggle with my inspiration. If I give myself a few days to just think about new designs the ideas seem to flow better. I've got several magazine submission deadlines coming up so I'm hoping to finish my swatching and work on some new ideas this weekend.

Over the weekend or early next week I'll be starting to organise test knitting of some of the patterns in the Easy Lace Collection. I'll be posting pics of the patterns that are ready so far and asking for volunteers to test knit them for me. Next week I'll try to finalise the last few patterns in the collection. My current aim is to have the collection ready by end of May.

I also want to take pics of the Daisy Shawlette over the weekend. I wore it today for some filming i did for our church and I love it. I'll be asking for someone to test knit it for me too. The Daisy Shawlette uses elongated stitches rather than lace stitches although there are some yarn overs and I've been thinking about doing a small collection of perhaps 4 patterns using a variety of elongated stitches. I'll talk more about that next week.

Tomorrow I'll post Pattern Of The Week as it's a while since I posted one so do come back over the weekend.

Have a lovely weekend x