This past summer I decided to give a serious try at designing. I now have 11 published designs under the PicnicKnits brand. I have two sock designs completed and one in the works for the Sugarbee Studios Sock Club. I have one sock and one washcloth on the needles being designed right now. And another sock that is mostly written up and I just need to knit it. So by the first of next year I will 17 designs under my label. I really should do a few more and make it a better number. 17, while a lovely prime number, doesn’t really speak to me.
I also have three more designs that are coming out in January of 2009 for J-Knits. I loved designing the lace. Loved it. But I also knew that I didn’t have it in me to knit three full size lace shawls. Fortunately I didn’t have to. But I can show you some pretty pictures of the swatches that went into those shawls.

The triangular Clarimonde shawl (my favorite) is made up of Dayflower Lace. Here you see the dayflower swatch and the mini-shawl to test the transitions. I need to find a Barbie owner who needs a shawl. This would be the perfect size for a Barbie.

Next up the swatches for Balendin – a modified rose leaf lace with the border used in the shawl.

The third shawl is Mirador. This one I loved the way the two lace patterns made columns. And for the life of me I can’t remember what the two were originally called. But graph paper is my friend and I made them into what I wanted.

We have a final swatch as well. This one did not make the cut. I actually liked it best, but right before I started work on the pattern something extremely similar came out on Ravelry – even using a name entirely too close to the name I had chosen. I may do something with this later, as it isn’t exactly the same pattern as the one I saw, but it was too close for comfort. Oddly enough, this seems to happen to me a lot. I come up with something I think is fabulous and then (fortunately before I start serious work on it) I see it pop up on Ravelry. Are we all drinking the same kool-aid or what?