Finally! I have the updated my most popular pattern available on Ravelry, Lovecrafts, and Yarn.com (WEBS). This sample uses two shades of Malabrigo Rios—Paris Night is the dark main color and Aquamarine is the light contrasting color. The pattern instructions are the same, but the layout design is new.
I have knit this design many times at this point, and I’ve enjoyed it each time. It’s a relaxing knit for colorwork fans and newbies alike with no long floats and an intuitive motif.
The color combinations you could use are nearly endless, and the yarn amounts needed are minimal, so it’s a great stashbuster too! I’ve knit two large headbands from two hanks of Malabrigo Rios, and still have some yarn left over! I love a great way to use up yarn left from bigger projects, especially hand-dyed lovelies like these.
The original sample combined a gorgeous hank of Three Irish Girls Glenhaven Cashmerino in Cair Paravel as the main color and Madelinetosh Tosh Vintage in Fawn for the contrasting color.
I had the post below ready to go and was really and truly ready to dig into designing again, but you’ll note that the date of the last (only) post is January 11, 2020. Yep, January 2020. Need I say more? We were all so young an innocent then, completely unaware of the chaos that would befall the entire world in about two months.
My intentions were quickly derailed by remote work for me, remote school for all 4 kids, and generally just surviving in the pandemic world. We made it through, and there were bright spots I’m thankful for, but the entire experience was overwhelming. So overwhelming that I lost my knitting mojo for well over a year there and wasn’t sure it was going to come back. I’ve had it wane before, usually around moves for our family, but it usually comes back pretty quickly once we are settled again. Not so much this time. I was wondering if it was gone forever this time, but lo and behold it’s back.
In the end I think it was gone until I was through the worst of the overwhelm and had the brain space to devote to creative pursuits. During the pandemic I played a lot of Animal Crossing, probably since it provided a creative outlet that had easy to complete tasks in an aesthetically pleasing package. I also found myself sewing a lot, something that tends to come in cycles and then fade out again. But now, knitting is back and I am so, so happy to have it as a creative outlet again.
So here is what I had ready to publish in the beforetimes:
I’m more than a little bit overwhelmed at the idea of publishing my designs again. I have my notebook of ideas and swatches, so the raw materials are there. Time and confidence, however, are in shorter supply. My time limitations are real, but I know that a realistic plan that breaks each project down into smaller pieces will get me to the finish, and that’s what counts.
I’m using this gearing up phase to refresh the designs that I released several years ago, and it’s been kind of fun to open them back up and remember the process of writing each one.
The first pattern up for it’s spiff-up is Smitten with Colorwork Headband. This is actually one of the more recent designs I have, and the one I have knit the most for myself and my family. This pattern was also the one with the shortest time ever between the first idea and holding the finished object in my hands. The fact that it’s such a quick knit has a lot to do with this, but I was also really excited to get this out into the world. I was a member of a Ravelry group that was doing a stashdown challenge for the new year, and I loved that this design could be made with partial balls of yarn leftover from other projects.
A headband seemed like a great project that would also fill a need during a cold snap. I wanted to do stranded colorwork, so I sat down with graph paper and played around with ideas until I had a geometric pattern that didn’t have any long floats (I don’t like trapping the carried yarn in colorwork, and avoid it when I can). A few hours later, I had something I was really excited about and I wrote up the pattern soon after. Things usually hang out in the ‘knit a sample and have it hang out indefinitely before writing the pattern’ zone for a long time for me, so getting it written promptly was huge.
I have a new sample knit up using Malabrigo Rios that I am loving—the main color is Paris Night and the contrasting color is Aquamarine. Next for this pattern is a new layout and new photos and a new larger size added. I’m also considering writing up a companion hat pattern, since the penny finally dropped for me about how I wanted to do the crown decreases when I was looking at a prototype of the hat that I knit not long after I published the headband pattern. Apparently it just needed to percolate for three or four years?
Nadia Paige Designs 