Summer is not my most productive time of year. I don’t know why this is, but ever since the weather’s been getting cooler I’ve been just itching to do and make. I won’t over-analyse it, but I’m glad that I’m feeling more enthusiastic.

Witness the results (both are works in progress, but both are well on the way towards completion!):

Aeolian shawlette, just pinned out to dry.

Some of my handspun being knitted into a doll-sized cardigan.

It seems like every spare minute of the past few weeks has been spent on the New Shop. The New Shop will be harder, faster, better, stronger… okay, maybe not harder. (Ideally, it will be easier, and I will stop pointlessly referencing Daft Punk.) The New Shop has a proper shopping cart, a really nice back-end management section, and lots of features that I can grow into. Right now, its sole concern is my knitted doll clothing, but I dream of one day being able to offer knitting patterns for the discerning woman (perhaps also the discerning man, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves).

Unfortunately, despite working through the past two weekends and thinking it was done, I have hit a small snagette. It seems that some scripts do not play nicely with others (Lightbox and jQuery, I am looking at you) and it’s going to take a few more hours of puzzling before everything is running smoothly.

I have an eighteen-item-high (see below) stack of knits to finish and photograph, too, which seems to have been breeding over the past few months. I don’t know how this happens; I thought I had maybe five jumpers to add to the shop, but no.

It’s strange how tiring it is to sit at the computer and code for hours. I think I need another weekend, please. In my absence of mind I managed to enlarge the beret I was knitting by several inches, so now it’s ideal for a giant, but not so much for me. I will be ripping back when I am more awake. It’s going to be lush, though: cream merino and the Crumpet beret pattern from here. Perfect for winter – and isn’t the name excellent?

Firstly, I’d like to collectively thank everyone who was so complimentary about my Cherry in the last post. It’s been lovely to read your comments, and to know that my spur-of-the-moment decision to accessorise turquoise with red wasn’t completely crazy. :)

Secondly, here are some dolls in the snow. (Yes, snow, in April, in London of all places!) This is obviously a justification for my ridiculously large box of knitted doll clothing. Some day I’ll have to get it all out and photograph it, although much of it is rubbish, and from the “early days” of my knitting (hard to believe that was only a year ago!).

I don’t think I’ll ever tire of snow. It’s rare here, and rarer to have it settle, and even rarer for it to be more than an inch thick, so in my view I’m allowed to behave like a five-year-old when I see it. When I woke up on Sunday morning to see the white blanketed view from my window, I showered in about two minutes flat, pulled on my big coat and some woollies, grabbed the camera, the dolls, and went out into the back garden to enjoy the freezing temperatures and the sheer joy of kneeling in snow (ha!) to try and get a good angle for my photos.

One of the aforementioned woollies was my new beret. When I finished Cherry, I had five balls of the RYC Cashcotton DK left over (having only used five for the cardigan). I hummed and hawed over these five balls, not really wanting to make another top, but not feeling the need for a scarf either. Solution: another hat. I didn’t need another hat, but I’m coming to realise that’s a completely irrelevant and pointless fact. I don’t need to drink tea, but woe betide the man or woman who tries to stop me! Anyway, this is what I ended up with:

Pattern: Lace Tam (from Lace Tam and Scarf pattern) by the Rainey Sisters (see “free patterns” section at the top of the sidebar, or find it on Ravelry here)
Yarn: Rowan RYC Cashcotton DK, colour #602 Pool, just over 1 ball
Size: One size fits all
Needles: 3.75mm, 3mm

I knit it flat on straight needles – I have very few double-pointed needles or circulars, so I decided to make do with what I had. This initially caused some confusion re. the seed rib, but I soon figured it out. I don’t think the seam is particularly obvious, either (at least, I hope not!). It’s a beautiful pattern, not too lacy, but just enough to be interesting. I did find that I had to sew a couple of rows of elastic inside the hem to make it really secure, but that’s due to a combination of the inelasticity of the cashcotton and the extremely windy weather we’ve been having here. (I hate having to walk around holding my hat on my head – I hate it even more when I’m doing that and trying to keep my skirt from blowing up!)

Over the past few days I’ve been churning out doll-sized hats, but I also have plans for ysolda’s gorgeous Rose Red beret pattern. I’ve bought it, but haven’t quite decided on the yarn. I’m also plodding along with the Darcy jacket from Kim Hargreaves’ Heartfelt. It’s going to be lovely, but knitting seed stitch in thick cotton yarn is really not my idea of fun. I’ve got a slightly sore elbow, too (too much computer and knitting, I suspect) so I haven’t worked on it much. At this rate, maybe I’ll finish before the autumn…

I’ve removed the password protection on the directory, the products are in, and my shop for doll knits is finally open! This will only be of interest to doll owners, but it’s been a slog, and more than once I’ve wondered why I didn’t just use a pre-packaged “e-commerce solution”. I think mostly I was rebelling against the notion of using a “solution”, but the result is good and all my own work. It’s based on a wordpress install, so I can’t take credit for coding a site from scratch, but I think it’s pretty good, and it does what I need it to.

There are only nine items up, but I decided to focus on getting the vehicle up and running smoothly. I have a number of things on the go, and they’ll be put up as and when they’re finished.

I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend spent with a friend in Cambridge, but for now I need to start catching up on all the correspondence I’ve been neglecting (oo-er!). I hope to get my modifications of the Modern Lace Henley written up in the next few days, and I may have another finished knit (human-size) to share too.

Phew!

Over the past week or so I’ve been working pretty solidly on the shop part of twoswallows.com, which is intended for showcasing and selling some of my dolly hand-knits. (I make so many that they’re just sitting around doing nothing, and so why not see if anyone else can benefit?). My attention has a tendency to wander at the best of times, so staying fully focussed on one thing is usually an uphill struggle. However, I can say with some small degree of satisfaction that I am making progress.

Firstly, I have done a good deal of work on the upcoming website. I’m keeping a theme of sorts by having the shop layout be very similar to my blog layout, but — as is usual for these things, I think — most of the work is behind-the-scenes. After experimenting with several open source “e-commerce solutions” (as they hilariously call themselves) I decided I could go one better and customise a WordPress install to use as a CMS. (Basically, this means I’m making the WordPress front-end look like a shop, and then I can use the very familiar and user-friendly control panel to input my products and information. Endlessly customisable, and admittedly rather fun for me to work on. Don’t worry, I’ll stop now before anyone’s eyes glaze over.)

That’s one side of the shop. The other side is the products, and in this area I have been making strides.

I have a couple of new patterns that I really like the look of:

And I have a pile of knits that need the finishing touches added to them: snap fasteners, the odd edging, etc. The pile has grown since I took this picture. I think I will have to sit down in front of a really long film and just get on with it.

If the weather would start to behave, I could perhaps get on with the third stage of things: photographs. Ultimately, though, I am having a lot of fun with this. I like have a project and something to work towards. It doesn’t feel like a chore (yet!), either, which is doing wonders for my motivation. Now, if only dinner would cook itself, and the house clean itself, and the washing-up magically disappear…