If you’ve been reading my posts on Rav you’ll know that I’ve been without internet since some time in November when we moved here. Yep, we’re finally in the new house. It’s bliss! Regardless of the lack of bathroom or laundry, although I do now have a shower, it is fabulous to live rurally.
Not real squirrels, of course, the supersecret type of squirrel.
I’m very excited to show you the collaboration I’ve been working on with Julia Stanfield (j-j on Rav). Julia is the talented designing mind behind the Little Rascals e-book. When she approached me to add some embellishment charts to her re-vamped e-book, how could I resist?
I haven’t knitted these patterns often since my sons have decided that knitted tops shall not be worn by them, but I’ve really enjoyed knitting those that I have and it’s very popular on Rav. Some folk have knitted it a dozen or more times.
Julia and I worked together to create some pretty fun designs for her e-book: a versatile caterpillar, a small and large bulldozer, and a daisy with ladybugs. These designs are exclusive to this pattern and will only ever be accessible by owning a copy of the Little Rascals e-book.
Julia worked with another Raveller, Christine (Prairiedog) to create this mini-hotshot pattern which is also a new extra in the e-book. I had lots of fun test knitting it so I could test my own charts. Other extras include a cabled raglan design, a number of pocket options and various other alternatives to personalise your FO.
And just for the sake of completeness, I need to show you the very first Little Rascal I knitted more than one year ago. At the start of this year I added the embellishment in the hopes that it would entice one of my sons to wear it since they’re both steam-train-mad. No such luck, but I’ll keep hoping.
This pattern is just a perfect canvas for embellishing, isn’t it.
Many special thanks to Julia for inviting me to be a part of this. And a giant heartfelt thanks to my supersecretsquirrels who keep me sane and give me a kick when I’m running out of puff. I really appreciate the time you give to test my rusty charts.
I posted this to my Rav group 6 months ago, and just realised I haven’t posted it here yet. I don’t know what I was thinking.
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I thought it would be useful to do a general FAQ-type post about cottage licences here.
I have received numerous requests from knitters asking about my cottage licence terms and costs, but have never had a reasonable reply to give. It was my intention to arrange licences at the start, but after almost a year of considered internal debate about the numerous pros and cons of such arrangements I have decided to offer all my charts licence-free.
Licence-free! Why?
I have a number of reasons for this, so if you’re interested do PM me or post a question here, but I’m already running the risk of this post becoming a teal dear, so I won’t bore you all with my inner ramblings.
How will this work?
Well, you can purchase my designs, or use the free ones, and put them on your garments for sale, to donate, or whatever you like. Simple.
As a courtesy it would be appreciated for sellers to have a brief line in their sale listing (or swing tag, if not sold online) describing the embelishment as being a Watermellish design or including a link to the website.
Are there any restrictions?
My designs are my own work. Please do not sell copies of my designs or pass off my work as your own.
What about the restriction written on the charts?
All charts in future will say:
Watermellish charts are offered licence-free. This means you are free to sell items made with Watermellish embellishments on them. As a courtesy it would be appreciated for you to credit Watermellish with the design in your sale listing. Please do not sell the charts or claim the designs to be your own. Please support independent designers by respecting their work and their rights.
And this will also apply to charts already sold/downloaded.
Why the post?
I am hoping to get through the numerous PM and emails I have accumulated asking me about cottage licences, so I will point folks to this and hope that others who are interested will find this information useful also.
Well, I hope that has answered some questions.
Happy embellishing!
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I really need to get around to changing all the wording on my charts…
All seems quiet, but things are not always as they seem.
I have been busily working on a few major projects while things have been drifting along at snail’s pace on the surface. Two of the projects are still in the supersecretsquirrel stages of testing, while the other has been released.
I had the pleasure of working with the delightful Hannah of Red Riding Hood Yarns in NZ to design some charts for the August installment of her Winter Yarn Club. The theme she set me was ‘Unicorns and Dragons’. I had a great deal of fun designing some yarny creatures for her club, the dragons being some of the most complex charts I’ve done for others to use.
This is my favourite one of the set. You can see the rest of the set on my Rav project page.
Hannah dyed hanks of her lovely NZ wool for each month, and it was a pleasure to recieve the ‘boy’ parcels each month, complete with little happy extras like lollies, stitch markers and buttons (by Benji!). There are rumours abounding that there will be another RRHY club coming soon. I hope it’s not until next year. I really need to knit down some stash to make room for more of these generous portions of woolley goodness. Thank you Hannah, for inviting me to be part of this fun adventure!
These mythical creatures will be available for sale here in March 2012, as Hannah is kindly only holding onto her exclusivity for 6 months.
More supersecretsquirrel releases coming soon…
I have updated the Tutorials page with links to all the current tutes. The latest tutorial is called Smooth Edges.
A little note about comments on this blog.
My return from blogging hiatus was celebrated by spending a week deleting 4,500 comments from moderation. I don’t know if any legitimate comments were left because I simply couldn’t read through that many comments. Instead I wiped them all, 20 at a time, with 675 clicks of my mouse. Yes, I did the maths. According to the purveyors of these dodgy products my blog is of incredible quality, I write like a professional, and my blog is being shared as a fabulous resource. I’m not convinced any of them have any idea what I write about though, so they had to go.
I have set my comments to only allowing logged in wordpress users to submit comments. If I manage to figure out how to make it more open without a repeat of this time-wasting exercise of deleting mammoth amounts of spam I will. Until then you can contact me via email or on Rav. Sorry for the inconvenience. And if you have written a legitimate comment in the last few months, I’m sorry, I haven’t seen it. Please email me or PM me on Rav.
After such a long hiatus, this is not the post I was expecting to write first up. But time is of the essence! So here we are…
For those who know the story of Fester the Glog, you’ll understand my hesitation in writing the story. For those who don’t know the story… where have you been? I’ll try to summarise the epicness of Fester’s tale. Make sure you read to the end (or skip to it) to find out why this tale is being retold. It’s a brilliant reason!
Eight years ago a goat came to his tragic demise in the bottom of a well (really, it’s a big, 100 year old underground brick water tank). We don’t know how he fell in, except that there was no lid on the well, and goats like to climb. 2 + 2 = tragedy.
More recently, this well came into the ownership of a certain nameless knitter. This knitter’s husband looked into the well and saw the body of the goat lying in the bottom of the empty well. The knitter called on her wonderful Ravelry community and asked the complicated question: “How to get a goat carcass out of my well?” Pandemonium and hilarity ensued as many useful suggestions were followed to no avail. Many completely useless suggestions (think coke and mentos, explosives, and piranhas) were also put forward in the name of entertainment. Photos of the carcass were demanded and supplied. Poetry, artwork, musicals and a tea cosy (!!!) were created in memory of the goat who took on the name Fester(ina) Tutengoatmen the Bloated. The tale took on a life of its own as the story drew crowds of morbid onlookers. Fester even got his own hashtag so that the twits of the group could try to coerce such brains as Mythbusters to come to the problem-solving party.
In the end the husband of the aforementioned nameless knitter used one of the sensible suggestions to drag Fester to the surface for proper decompostion via grappling hooks. Shorty thereafter, the knitter had the embarrassing task of informing the group that Fester was actually a . . . log! Oh, the shame!
Henceforth, Fester has been known as a Glog.
In amongst all this craziness one lone knitter saw potential good in all this silliness. She began an Oxfam fundraiser in Fester’s memory, noting that while a goat in a well is amusing for us, for others in less fortunate circumstances a goat in a well is a life-threatening problem. The Oxfam fundraiser is for a Watsan water quality testing kit. The kit is priced at $3000. Thus far, the generosity of Ravellers has seen just over $2000 raised in memory of Fester. I’ve seen that another awesome Raveller plans to spend up big and take out the remainder of the fundraiser’s target in approximately one week. The challenge has been set to limit her spending!
With this in mind, my injury-enforced hiatus comes to an end with the release of my Fester the Glog embellishment design (available on the Free page) and a call out to all and sundry to contribute a little to this worthy cause. The chart is free and comes with a request to consider a donation to Oxfam even after this fundraiser is completed.
And if anyone is concerned – the well now has a locked, reinforced, very safe lid securely attached. No more goats will be that adventurous again.
Sadly, I need to beg forgiveness for the impending tardiness of the promised February release of the Gnome Garden chart set.
I have a back injury and the pain is making it impossible for me to knit to gauge, let alone think creatively or embellish freely. I was hoping it would be better by now but it is getting worse.
I hope it won’t be delayed too long, but I’ll be sure to let you know when it’s up.
Thanks for understanding.
The embellish-a-long has now finished. It was brilliant! I had a wonderful time watching embellishments turning up each day, created by crafters who were trying it for the first time or who were having fun playing with some new charts.
Speaking of new charts, the EAL special charts are now available in the Free section. There is a little biplane, a sweet set of strawberries, and a butterfly. Enjoy!
Here is a little selection of the amazing embellishments created by the particiapnts:
Aren’t they stunning! The little goat you see there is a chart called ‘Fester the Glog’ which has a hilarious (but mortifying) backstory and is currently finishing up its testing rounds. He’ll soon be added to the free charts also.
You can see all of the images and read all the chatter in the Rav thread. The winners received a choice between a Watermellish gift voucher or an advance copy of the Gnome Garden set being released this month.
In other news, the Nappycino Blank Canvas competition has been extended until the 11th of February, so if you’re an NC member there is still time to submit an entry.
I am hosting an EAL – embellish-a-long – for the Budding Designers Downunder group on Ravelry. Each month a designer or two are chosen to host an “a-long” for the rest of us to have a month of daily help and support from the designer herself. This month I am one of those designers. So far there are almost 40 enthusiastic knitters with darning needles at the ready. Some are experienced, and others are using the opportunity to learn the technique for the first time. They have all sorts of embellishments planned, and some are also knitting up little newborn garments to use as canvases. There are two prizes on offer in this EAL!
I am about to release a set of strawberries for the EAL participants only for January. The set will be available in February on this website.
I am also one of the sponsors of Nappycino’s Blank Canvas Competition. It is open to any NC member with any craft or skill to transform a “blank canvas” into something wonderful. If you’re an NC member do go and join in the fun, whether your “blank canvas” is a knitted garment or a scrapbook page or anything else which draws your interest. I am offering a gift voucher as one of the prizes.
I’m pleased to tell you about another tutorial I have finally completed. The Little Details Tutorials demonstrates the creation of a star embellishment from start to finish. In that process it explains how to embellish “leggy” shapes, how to weave in ends, and how to create nice sharp corners on pointy shapes. I trust it will be helpful to you.
Things have been slow around here. Very busy and very slow. And it’s about to get a whole lot slower, due to the Watermellish family purchasing a little piece of bliss – a few acres of land in the middle of nowhere with a creek running behind it and nothing but sheep and cows and pretty eucalypts as far as the eye can see. It will take a while to turn the run-down house into a home, but once we’re done we’ll be a contented family living our dream.
The man and the big boy exploring the creek behind our new home.
And of course, when life slows down, it is best to pick up some knitting and a cuppa and slow right down with it. So here is a new free set for you to enjoy – Tea for One.
It combines the lovely teapot and mug, which Shannon embellished onto the dress above, with a teabag I embellished onto a teabag cozy for a swap.
Enjoy!
(Shannon’s dress above – the red pretty below the logo – is one of her recent patterns, Versa).
Thanks Kathryn, Julie and Shannon for your testing prowess. xx
Last week I added the Owl chart to the store, without the usual fanfare because I expected to have the Guitar charts up as well. The Guitar charts became bigger and more involved every time I looked at them, so they’re finally finished almost a week late, and were added to the store yesterday.
I added a guitar to my son’s Versa vest, a new pattern by Shannon, and I’m really pleased with the result.
I am equally thrilled with how the other part of the Guitars set has turned out:
This is Julie’s test embellishment on her new Explorer Vest pattern.
The Guitars are available as two separate sets – Accoustic or Electric – or together at a special combined price. Each set includes four guitars of varying sizes and you can see more details on the Classic charts page.
The Owl design is also available on the Classic page. My last entry showed off Julie’s Owl embellishment, and here is Shannon’s version of the owl.
I love the way the variegated yarn looks like an eerie cloudy night sky, and the way Shannon has added a moon to increase the night sky effect.
I would like to add a very special thanks to Kath, Shannon and Julie for their work in testing these designs, for letting me use their photos, and for all their valuable feedback in the testing process.
Next up in the designing process is a set of butterflies and another fairytale set. Perhaps even some special little people. I’ll also be spending some time working on a big embellishment for my son. I was inspired by Julie’s hoodie in the last entry, so I made one for my eldest son. Of course it won’t be finished until it is embellished, so I’d best keep working on it to have it finished before his birthday at the end of the month.
