Vacations and the Universe

I have returned home from a two week vacation rested and inspired. Nature has a way of re-charging me creative batteries.This year however, the universe was also sending me signs.
Before vacation, I was stressed out and wondering if I had chosen the right path. During this glorious trip, I met people who had given up 'traditional' career to do what they loved in places they loved. At one stop, we had the opportunity to see a live band in a pub. The duo, who called themselves The Potters Field, played acoustic guitar, banjo, harmonica and kazoo while singing original songs and covers. One such cover was of a Lyle Lovett tune
     "If I had a boat, I'd ride it on the ocean
     and if I had a pony, I'd ride it on my boat."
To me, this song shouted do what makes you happy even if most people don't get it. Follow your dreams.

So, what are my dreams? My biggest dream is to share A Knitter's Gallery of Mitered Squares with knitter's everywhere. My mother and I created this book from start to finish. The e-book is now available on Ravelry. The e-book sales will generate the money for the print book.
I know a lot of you would prefer a print book. Me too. But let me tell you about our offer. Anyone purchasing the e-book, will receive an invitation to purchase the print book (when it becomes available) for only $8.00 (plus shipping). If your on the fence consider this, your purchase of the e-book now will help get a print book into your hands sooner.

Jill's Perspective - Combining Mitered Square Designs

Today I want to share with you one of the coolest things about a book of 45 mitered square designs (that’s A Knitter’s Gallery ofMitered Squares – 45 Unique Designs in Color, Texture and Lace for those of you who didn’t read the first two blog posts), combining squares. Several months ago, when we were still creating the designs, I got a package in the mail from my mother, Jane. This was one of the squares she designed:

Immediately, I thought how fun it would be to have a square with the lace and garter section opposite to this one. A few hours later I came up with this:

A few hours after that, I had designed one of the garments in the book – Frosty Sunrise. I love how the combined squares create additional squares of lace and garter stitch. Ours is made with 2 colors of Blue Sky Alpacas Metalico, baby alpaca blended with mulberry silk. It’s so soft and warm. Now that the days are getting colder, I’ll be wearing this wrap a lot!

Just what is A Knitter's Gallery of Mitered Squares?

A Knitter’s Gallery of Mitered Squares e-book is now available on Ravelry. But what, you may be asking yourself, is it all about? Good question.

The full title, A Knitter’s Gallery of Mitered Squares – 45 Unique Designs in Color, Texture and Lace, will, I hope, give you a clue. It is primarily a stitch dictionary for mitered squares. Mitered squares are great fun but all that garter stitch can get boring so, we challenged ourselves to see how many designs we could add to a mitered square.  Each of the 45 squares has a full color photo, chart and tip on how to resize to fit your needs.

If you are new to mitered squares, there is also basic information on how to make mitered squares as well as how to read the charts.

Finally, there are 4 projects to help get you started creating your own designs. Each project walks you through how to; combine different designs in one project, join squares in many directions, add mitered squares to edging and make a full mitered square vest.

Here is just one of the nice reviews we have gotten so far:

“Modular knitting books have been around for many years because of its infinite uses. A Knitter’s Gallery of Mitered Squares is a delightful book to read because it is clear, concise and extremely well organized. The contents flow in a light, easy and elegant way allowing the knitter to learn and build his/her skills without realizing the extent of knowledge and new information actually being absorbed. More than just a square pattern book, this volume introduces confidence to knitters and a world of possibilities in creating new designs. It is a priceless resource!” – Andrea Wong, Author of Portuguese Style of Knitting – History, Traditions and Techniques

Jill's perspective - Book launch anticipation is killing me!

For those of you that don’t know, my mom, Jane, and I are about to release our first e-book  A Knitter’s Gallery of Mitered Squares – 45 Unique Designs in Color, Texture and Lace. So, it seems fitting to launch our blog at the same time. Before I get started, I want to tell you how our blog will be organized.  Our first thought was to write each entry together. Then we realized if it took us sixteen months to write a book, we may never move beyond the first post. So, we decided to write for ourselves. Some posts will be from Jill’s perspective and some posts will be from Jane’s perspective.

As I have already said, we’ve written a book which goes live on Ravelry on Sept.10.  Until then, there is nothing to do. Over the past months it’s been edited, re-written, re-edited, cleaned-up and spit-shined. Now I can only wait. It’s a relief and a let-down at the same time. Working on this book, in one way or another, is all I have been doing for the last 4 months. One look at my kitchen floors will attest to that. Now, I find myself wandering from room to room not knowing quite what to do with myself.

On the other hand, the nerves are starting to ramp-up again. It’s kind of like a roller-coaster-ride; the nerves go up every time I send the book to someone to review, then back down when I get some very nice feedback. Some part of me wishes no one would ever see it. But then, why do it?  For the next few days, I just wait. For the next few days, I’ll keep reminding myself we rose to the challenge of writing a book, completed it and did the very best job we could do.  I think I’ll clean the kitchen floor.