Knitwear Design & Yarn by Kristen Ashbaugh-Helmreich
Introducing the Rhubarb Helix, this month's $1 pattern!
Shown here in three different yarns: Tosh Vintage (Strawberry Rhubarb Pie), Holiday Yarns' Wooly Ewe Worsted (Fuchsia Fusion), and Malabrigo Rios (Pearl Ten).
It's a simple knit, yet surprisingly interesting because of the way the helix is created. Get the pattern on Ravelry until June 14th, for just $1.
Happy knitting!
Kristen
Good morning everyone! It's been such a fun week! We had our yearly Holiday Party for Jimmy Beans Wool last night and as usual is was loads of fun! Doug and Laura took us to the Charlie Palmer Steakhouse at the Grand Sierra resort which was delicious. They have the best French Onion Soup I've ever had. Hands down. Two things that were particularly amazing about last night:
1) Our party was in the same place two years ago and we were in this little back room and there were just under 50 of us. That's all 25 employees and a guest. This year, they opened that room up and doubled the size and there were about 100 of us. Crazy! It was so cool to see how much we've grown!
2) Last time our party was at Charlie Palmer, Allie, who is one of the resident spinners at JBW and has worked there for a number of years in some capacity or another, gifted me two skeins of her handspun yarn in our yearly gift exchange. It's a gorgeous camel and silk blend and simply stunning. I was so thrilled and touched to be given the gift of hand spun. Such a special gift. This year, I drew Allie and I sewed her a new gardening apron and gave her some seeds saved from my garden as well as some gardeners soap and hand salve from Lusa Organics. She got all teary eyed and gave me the biggest hug. It felt so good to be able to reciprocate her lovely gift.
Overall it was a good evening spent with good people. And today, I am so excited to be able to tell you all about my latest pattern release--The Truckee Shawlette!
The Truckee Shawlette is now available from Jimmy Beans Wool as a Free Download. It uses the new Malabrigo Lace Superwash and I am really happy with how it turned out! I think you'll like the simplicity of the construction and the way the colors blend. Such gorgeous yarn! You can find the Truckee Shawette on the Jimmy Beans Wool Free Patterns page!
Happy knitting!
Kristen
Wow. It's been a whirlwind few months. Since my last post, I took my hubby on a surprise vacation to Hawaii. It was awesome. I also went to Hartford, CT for STITCHES East and then to Chicago for VK Live. I've also published two new designs with Jimmy Beans Wool and been published in a magazine. I'm thinking to really catch you up on all of this, it's going to take a few posts. Let's start with Hawaii.
Nick and I never took a honeymoon when we got married two years ago. We went away for a long weekend just after the wedding and planned to take a real trip when we had more time and money the following year. Then I went and broke my wrist last year and needed surgery. So that pretty much fouled up our plans for a trip because I had to use all of my accrued vacation time for my recovery since I couldn't really work for two weeks (my job is 90% computer work). We talked about doing a trip this summer, but we had so many weddings to go to and it just didn't work out. Also, Nick had just finished school and was trying to get hired by the school district as a teacher. We had no idea if he'd get hired in time for school to start and we were waiting and waiting for them to call him in to interview.
So, August rolled around and I was getting restless. We had no vacation on the horizon and every time I tried talking to Nick about it, he was non-commital about it. It's not that he didn't want to go, he just didn't want to plan anything until we knew more about his job situation, and really I think he just didn't have an opinion about where to go or what to do. Planning kind of stresses him out. And then the stress gives him migraines. So he tries not to do things that stress him out. Like plan, or think about babies, or 401Ks. So you know...it's a fun learning curve for me. :) I'm probably being a bit dramatic but it's at least half-true. :)
Anyway, so I just decided to do it. I planned the whole shebang. A bunch of things sort of fell into place around this time too. Alaskan Airlines was having a fare sale and flights to Hawaii were dirt cheap. My parents were able to trade a week at their timeshare in Mexico for a week in Hawaii for us (their wedding gift to us that we finally used!) I had a ton of vacation time to use so that was all good. Plus, our two-year wedding anniversary was coming up at the end of September. Done. Perfect. We were all set.
And then I decided it would be even more fun for me if I didn't tell him. Yup, I managed to plan an entire 10 day vacation without my husband finding out. I even managed to get his boss involved. She gave him the time off and then played along by putting him on the schedule so that he'd actually think he was working. Everything fell perfectly into place. Everyone knew except for him. Muahhhhhahhah! (Evil laugh, rubs hands together.)
So, the night before we were supposed to leave, I decided to finally tell him. I handed him a box with a new sun hat, a Hawaii guide book, and a packing list and told him to open it. He barely knew what to think when he opened the package. He was so stunned. He just kept looking at me like, "How the hell did you pull this off? Wait, we are really leaving tomorrow?" It was a priceless moment. I wish I'd thought to take a picture.
So that was it. We left the next morning and spent 10 fabulous days on the Big Island of Hawaii. We swam in the ocean, snorkeled (Nick saw sea turtles for the first time!), swam with manta rays, saw an active volcano and hiked across a volcano crater, hiked into (and out of) one of the most beautiful valleys ever (Waipi'o Valley- probably the toughest two miles of my life!), ate amazing food, especially sushi, swam in a volcanic heated warm pond, saw some amazing waterfalls, hiked to the top of the 8th tallest mountain in the US and the tallest mountain formation in the world from sea floor to peak, and in general had an amazing time! Here are some of my favorite moments from our trip:
So, that's pretty much it for our trip. Well, I won't bore you with every photo in the album, but it was a much needed vacation and a trip of memories for sure. It also inspired my October design for Jimmy Beans Wool called the Ohana Shawl. You can read more about it on the JBW website.
Hope you all are having a great weekend!
Aloha,
Kristen
For those of you who don't follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or Ravelry, I released a new pattern yesterday! It's my first for-sale pattern EVER and it's available for purchase on Ravelry and my brand spankin' new website! Don't worry, there are many more freebies coming down the pipeline from me, but I've been working so hard on this one, I thought it would make a great first for-sale pattern. I priced it at $3 so hopefully it won't break the bank. :)
This design idea came about months ago when I saw this stitch pattern used somewhere. I loved the look of it and struggled to find examples of it knit in the round. After a little bit of playing with it, I figured out a seamless way to knit this pattern in the round! I think it looks really pretty.
I showed my best friend the prototype I knit in the pattern and she said that the stitch pattern looks like stalks of wheat and I should knit it in a more golden hue. Done! I grabbed a skein of Berroco Flicker, which lends itself perfectly to this design with it's elasticity and little hint of sparkle, and the Winter Wheat Hat was born! I hope you enjoy it, I really had a lot of fun designing this one. It also has a unique crown decrease which reminds me of pie, so how can you go wrong there?
Yesterday was kind of a big day for me in many ways. I also launched my new website: www.marinadedesigns.com which has been a work in progress since the beginning of the year. My dear friend Amber over at Hold Steady Designs made the site for me and I absolutely love it! My goal is to fill it with all kinds of useful knitting, crochet, sewing, cooking, and general homesteading tips that you all can use. Since I love so many different things, I found a way to combine all of my loves in that one place. The heart of that website will remain on this blog, but I hope you all will take a look around and let me know what you think!
Also, I started work on what will be my first design as the official in-house designer at Jimmy Beans Wool! About a month ago, my boss Laura (aka. Jimmy) called me into her office and told me that JBW was ready to begin exploring their creative side more. She wanted me to be the first in-house designer for JBW and begin re-vamping our entire free patterns library, create new patterns every month, as well as start to create a vision for the future of Jimmy Beans Wool's creative team! I am so honored to be given the task and could not be more excited. I'll continue to blog here and design as Marinade Designs of course, but I am so very thrilled to be able to do this--It's been my dream job for YEARS!
To top of my excitement of the new pattern, job, and website, I also won a free set of Addi Click needles over on Alex Tinsley's knitting and design blog "Dull Roar" yesterday! Thanks again Alex! I seriously must have some good Karma or something because life is on a roll right now!
In any case, I better sign off and get to work! I hope you all have a great rest of your week!
Kristen