akabini

The Rockettes, representing in our booth at TNNA a few weeks ago...

It was amazing to see it all come together, after spending the last months of last year visualizing and knitting and writing and planning.

Thanks to all the great shops who came by, and asked questions, and were willing to give Unpatterns a shot. I hope your customers love working with them, and make lots of glorious sweaters with them!

We're all back home now, even the Rockettes.... They're in the backyard, trying to organize a neighborhood barbecue. (They got so used to that Southern California weather, I kinda hate to break it to them that it's January.)

What's next? The six new Pullover Unpatterns are launching in the first days of February. Madam's coming up next week, and will help me ship them out to shops, and the Prime Minister will be uploading them to Patternfish at the rate of one a day or so for that first week in February. Thanks to all of you for your patience as I put them together – I'm taking some time to make sure they're as error-free as possible, so you'll have more fun knitting with them!

In the meantime, I'm due some couch time: think I'll knit myself one of these, and then one of these.

Gentle Readers, may I present the new Unpattern lineup?

Bottom-Up Sleeveless Pullover

Bottom-Up Drop-Shoulder PulloverBottom-Up Set-In Sleeve Pullover

Top-Down Sleevless Pullover

Top-Down Raglan Pullover (not new, but a favorite)

Top-Down Set-In Sleeve PulloverWe're ready for the ride in the back of the station wagon over the Grapevine into LaLa Land for the Big Show! Stay tuned for their début... they're sure to be giddy.

Hiya, Troops!

Life proceeding on behind the scenes here at casa akabini — change of venue to Northern California for the holidays. (And a convenient prolonged stop-over on our way to Long Beach for TNNA next week.)

But now, suddenly, it's December 31st, and Das Internetz is full of reflections on the past year. Clara over at Knitter's Review has done a nice write-up of 2009: my goodness, did we get a lot done this year! Sock Summit, Ravelry pattern sales topping US $1M ... Astonishing.

The two things I'm proudest of this year:
a) Actually having fun running a marathon. I trained solo this year (Nurse K being out of commission for part of the season), which took a lot of dedication. And then I really focused on running my own race in Chicago, and had a blast. (It helps when the course is flat. It helps a lot.)

b) Knuckling down and dedicating my work time, full-time, to the Unpatterns. I've been hell-on-fire since early September to get this trade show thing done, and by the time I go live on the show floor next week, I'll have 6 new samples, 6 re-vamped patterns, a brand-spankin' new website, and downloadable .pdfs on their way to Patternfish! I really grew up as a company this year, thanks to a lot of good advice and role-modeling from my colleagues, whom I now get to join at TNNA. Can't wait to hang out with all of you and share the stories from the trenches.

I may also be growing up a bit, now that I'm in my forties: Dr. K and I were just discussing 'big project' people and 'quick challenge' people … No surprise which category I fall into. Give me an idea, and I'll turn it into a dissertation, or a product line, or a magnum opus with full marketing plan.

So I'm catching myself this morning wanting to post a full list of twelve sweaters for my NaKniSweMoDo'10 projects … and stopping. Not that I don't have a Ravelry queue as long as a donkey's ear, but I'm just getting wise to my tendency to overbook things. I got smart with the TNNA booth and decided to do a soft launch of just the 6 Pullover Unpatterns, postponing the Cardigan release until the June show. Likewise, I'll have sweaters in the back of my mind to work on this year, but I'll consider the 6 Unpattern Cardis as half of those 12, with another 6 or more to round out the year.

And the Olympic Challenge? (It's coming up! Can you feel it?) No new sweaters for me—despite all your great votes, I've decided to get even more grown-up and tackle the UFOs. There are some very worthy projects in there that have just stalled out, and they deserve to get off the needles. So we're-a-gonna hit them hard in February. Finish one, and I get a bronze medal. Two for silver, three for gold.

Here they are, in all their delayed glory:

Gatsby—

Gallivant—

And there's a lovely Linen-Stitch Laceweight Stole that may take me until the End of Time, but it's worth a shot—

That oughta keep me out of trouble, eh?

Happy New Year, one and all!
See you on the needles next year.

Trade Show!

No Christmas tree this year, since we're gettin' out of dodge next week, but I do have a festive display in our living room:

One, two, three, four, five, six!

Which means... the deadline has been met. All ladies in my booth shall be clothed. Each silhouette has been sampled (in pullover form, at least), so I have something to show in the booth!

Of course, the knitting doesn't stop here (what, are you kidding me?), but at least the big pressure is off and I can stand in front of The Rockettes with a smile and show off my wares.

The Hat Unpatterns got a major remodel this week, and they're ready to go to press…

We might just be able to pull this one off, folks!

As a former language teacher, I have a rather geeky relationship with grammar.
I love the regal symmetry of it all, the relationships between verb constructions -
And sometimes even the names of grammar elements have a certain metaphorical 'oomph.'

To illustrate: my relationship with the Future Perfect tense.

"At some point, I will have...
a) finished that sweater;
b) launched that pattern line;
c) come out from under that crushing deadline."

There's been all this talk about what I will be about to be knitting
(say, for the Olympics in a few months), but little to no blog content about what I am actually-right-now-this-very-moment knitting.
(That's the present progressive tense, for those of you keeping track.)

So, I present for your consideration
What I AM knitting:

One Koolhaas Hat.
(You saw it yesterday, but I'll reiterate.)
Yarn: Berocco Inca Gold, in a lovely shade of British Racing Green.
Plus, I cast on with some leftover yarn in a great, deep turquoise – I think it's Rowan Wool Cotton.
Needles: US 6 (4.0mm) Inox metal, 16"

Having ripped back three (count 'em, three!) times, I think I'm now underway on this sucker, and have just one more repeat or more to do before the crown shaping.

(Good thing, too, 'cuz it's a holiday present for someone.) (Who shall remain nameless.)

And there are some more UFOs that are just for fun (gifts, sweaters for me, etc), but the bulk of my time and knitting hours have been spent on these babies:

Meet The Rockettes, here posed as a barbershop quartet.

I'm deep in the throes of knitting samples for my very-first-ever trade show booth, to go to TNNA (The National Needle Arts) in Long Beach in January. I'm doing an Unpattern booth there for the very first time, and the Rockettes are the stars of the show. There are 8 gals in all, which is making my studio feel like a doctor's waiting room.

So far, I have 4 samples complete, as you can see on The Gals above.
We have (from left to right): a Bottom-Up Sleeveless Pullover with a ruffled neckline (in Sublime Soya Cotton, a yarn I thought I'd fight and ended up loving); a Top-Down Raglan Pullover (in good ol' Cascade 220); a Top-Down Set-In Sleeve Pullover (in Rowan Cocoon, in tweed stitch. Cozy personified); and the Top-Down Sleeveless Pullover you met earlier (in Broken Rib, out of Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece).

All that progress was made by the time I left for Victoria last month; and now I've officially spent AN ENTIRE MONTH on ONE sweater. It's going to be lovely, I know it is, but they call the past tense that goes on and on and on the 'Imperfect' for a reason.

I don't know why I've been knitting on this sweater so long. And yes, I realize that 'long' is a relative term... For many of us, we're lucky to get a sweater done in three or four months. But folks, didja look at the calendar lately? As Boyhood says, "Dates in this calendar may be closer than they appear"; and January's breathing down our necks already.

I have FOUR sweaters to go, which means a sweater a week (I can handle that) in December. So, Little Mister Classic Elite Soft Linen Bottom-Up Drop-Shoulder Turtleneck Pullover?
Yer days are numbered.