New Year, New Site

Happy New Years everyone! You might have noticed that I haven’t blogged on here in a while. The last few months, I’ve been working with Gerry to build my very own site: www.carylstyle.com. Please come over and give the new site a visit.

Black Friday Sale

To celebrate Thanksgiving and the start of the Christmas shopping season, I’m offering 20% off on all of my patterns for the next 3 days. Sale starts at midnight tonight (Thurs, Nov 24, 2010 – Eastern time) and ends at 11:59pm on Saturday, Nov 27, 2010. No coupon code necessary. Here’s a link to my patterns.

31: A Retrospective

Today, I’m officially in my 30s. I am no longer 30-nothing but a 31-year old. I post this bare photo of me. No make up (not that I ever wear any), no smile, just me. I guess in some ways I look young – no real wrinkles yet. But is there maybe a bit of experience behind those eyes?

I’ve experienced my fair share in the past number of years. Those close to me will understand what that means and those who don’t know me that well, well what can I say? I’ve had the privilege of traveling to many places around the world and now I’m only missing two continents: Australia and Antartica. Not bad.

What I haven’t achieved: Well, I don’t really have any sort of career. I’m currently jobless and looking. I’ve had a really great interview recently and maybe something could come of that. I’d love to get that job but these are hard times for the unemployed. There has been opportunity in unemployment however. I’ve started Caryl Style, my knitwear design business. I released a very successful pattern during the summer: Ruffle My Feathers; and I’m hoping that my new Purple Rain Collection fares well. This aspect of my life is one I’m very proud of.

Being a facebook user, I’m now privy to the accomplishments of friends as far back as junior high. Most of these old friends seem to have families and own homes. I own nothing except for probably too much yarn and too many knitting books and magazines. I have no children and I’m very single. I’m feeling very single at the moment because I was having an absolutely delightful time flirting with a guy at my gym. After weeks of sharing long looks, we finally started talking. Sadly, upon the third day of conversation, I found out that my gym crush was indeed married. That really killed me. Married people shouldn’t flirt with us singletons. It inspires hope that will only be dashed. So I’m a bit sad because I felt a real connection with someone after a long time and at least for me, that’s dead in the water. I know another bit of romance will transpire in the near future but for now I wallow in what could have been.

Children: As my biological clock is rearing it’s head, I must ask myself, do I want children? The answer: I don’t know. I think I might want children because I don’t want to someday regret that I didn’t have them. However, do I deeply desire kids? Not really. I don’t even particularly like other people’s kids. So maybe I’m not meant to be a mother and if later in life I do want one, well there are tons of kids that need adopting, no? I have time yet to consider the question of children but I’m not desperate for them, I don’t even really want them.

So today I’m 31. I’ve settled in NYC for now. I’m jobless but have a burgeoning knitwear design career. I’m without a life companion and slightly disappointed at the moment, but  romance will happen when it’s ready. I guess overall I’m OK. I’m not on top of the world but neither am I rock bottom. I’m OK and I’m OK with that. 🙂

New Collection Release – Purple Rain

Tonight I finalized the Purple Rain patterns, a collection inspired by my love of Prince, and released them on ravelry. As mentioned before, the collection consists of 4 pieces: mitts, cowl, hat and neckwarmer. I’m offering the possibility of either purchasing each pattern individually or as an ebook for a much lower price.

The Collection (all 4 patterns)
US$10.00


Purple Rain Mitts

US$4.00

Purple Rain Neckwarmer

US$4.00


Purple Rain Hat

US$4.00

Purple Rain Cowl

US$4.00

Smile

New Collection – an homage to Prince

October to now I’ve been working on a new collection which I plan to release both individually and as an E-book next week. I’m pretty excited to launch my first E-book and I’m quite proud of these designs. I think they’re funky and feminine and to me, they feel very original.

During the late Spring, VH1 aired the movie “Purple Rain” countless times and while the acting was mediocre, I kept watching Prince and Apollonia and really fell in love with Prince’s sense of style. I wanted to pay homage to his wonderful music and wonderfully original style and so I had in my head this Purple Rain collection. Purple Rain along with When Doves Cry are probably two of my fave Prince songs.

In thinking of this collection, purple was a forgone conclusion. I also thought of his album, Diamonds and Pearls and knew that these accessories required bling. Knitting bling pretty much means the addition of beads. I’m not sure that this collection can live up to the phenomenon that is Prince but this is my homage to the artist.

Purple Rain Collection

1) Purple Rain Neckwarmer

 

2) Purple Rain Mitts

3) Purple Rain Hat

 

4) Purple Rain Cowl

Hestia

I wanted to take a moment to promote my friend Jacqui’s new design, Hestia. She released it today and it’s an absolutely lovely fingering weight cardigan.

It can be worn a variety of ways including,

1) Simply hanging:

2) Belted:

I tested this for Jacqui and here’s my version:

Brrr… Chilly…

I would choose the first really cold day to photograph my latest FOs. I’ve been doing a bit of test knitting for my knitter friends and attempted a new design.

1. Quinault fingerless mitts

This is a test knit for Marjorie (Raintownknitter on ravelry). The mitts are really lovely and with the weather turning cold will keep my fingers nice and warm as I knit on the subway. The mitts are knit using Malabrigo Yarn Sock in the Impressionist Sky colorway.

For fun, the pics went ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”:

2. Hestia cardigan
This test knit is for Jacqui (Jacqui722 on ravelry). The cardigan is knit using Malabrigo Yarn Sock in the Terracotta colorway.

3. Reprieve
I’ve really not been having a great time lately. Everything I’ve attempted to design has been a big fail. I see something in my head and then I’d start knitting it and just not liking it. So it was a surprise when this shawl came to mind. I actually wrote out the pattern, made up my charts and then started knitting it. I called it Reprieve because everything seemed to be coming together and it was nice after all the failures. However, I’m not too happy with the final result so I don’t think I’ll be publishing it. The shawl is knit using Malabrigo Yarn Sock in the Ochre colorway.

15% off sale

Ravelry recently introduced a new feature for its shopkeepers, now we can have sales and promotions. October also happens to be the Malabrigo Stockpile event on the Malabrigo Junkie’s forum. This event gets us Junkies thinking of the holidays and start knitting our presents. In order to celebrate these two event’s I’ve placed all my for sale patterns on sale. Get 15% off by using the coupon code: stockpile when checking out. Sale lasts until 11:59pm EST Oct 31, 2010.

Gluttony by any other name…

I arrived back in the US very late Saturday night (Aug 15). And besides starting the soul destroying job hunt, I had already booked my place on the Manhattan Knitting Guild’s bus trip to WEBS. On Saturday I trekked out to E 61st and 3rd Ave to catch the bus that would take me to WEBS. First I must give a shout out to Victoria, my awesome bus buddy. She sat next to me and said something like, someone wearing such a lovely shawl must be interesting to talk to. She was super interesting to talk to and despite hella traffic that made us over an hour late for our estimated time of arrival, we kept up some happy chatter and worked on our knitting projects.

On the bus, I mentioned to Victoria that I was going to be abstemious and only get very little yarn. She then mentioned that since the bus trip cost upwards of $50, buying very little didn’t make sense. “An expensive bus trip to buy nothing??? Really?” thought I. And so maybe thinking that gave me leeway to spend over three times what I’d actually planned on spending.

We arrived at WEBS and after acquiring our mini goody bags and 25% off coupons, I went in and quickly met up with Nina and Mary, two ravelry friends. Sadly I didn’t get to spend too much time with Mary as I arrived an hour late and she had to go. But I got to hang with Nina and she gave me the WEBS tour. I went a bit crazy, especially in the Beads store.

So what did I acquire?

Not photographed: Swift and ball winder (finally, I’m so tired of having to hand wind yarn) and Knitgrrl’s new book – the Guide to Professional Design. I also got a skein of Mal Worsted in Purple Mystery that’s also not photographed because I immediately started knitting with it. It’s for a neckwarmer that I plan to release this Fall.

Additionally, Mal Twist in Lettuce (2 skeins)

1 skein MadTosh in Tart

1 skein MadTosh in Glazed Peach

1 skein Misti Alpaca

1 skein Berroco Lustra in Black

9 skeins Ella Rae in this cream color. The plan is to eventually knit a colorwork garment of my own design playing around with these colors.

2 skeins Ella Rae in teal

2 skeins Ella Rae in this Magenta color

2 skeins Ella Rae in yellow

2 skeins Ella Rae in green

Yeah, I went crazy…