The Copperhead Tee is live on Ravelry and has been submitted to LoveCrafts!

This is my second pattern release and my first garment. The design was actually born from some English language frustration: I love thrifting, and have been scratching the itch online with sites like Poshmark and TheRealReal ever since the start of Covid. It's a little less of a true treasure hunt than a real-world Goodwill, but searching and filtering are a major plus side -- unless you are looking for snakes. Not snakeskin. Not snake print. Whole-ass entire snake imagery. Try it: you'll get about one garment with actual snakes on it for every hundred snakeskin prints. (Which I also like, but that's beside the point!)

So, I made my own dang snake sweater.

The pattern comes in nine sizes and includes options for waist shaping and cropped length. I wanted to include as much flexibility as I know how as a beginner designer so that everyone loves the sweater they end up with. My test knitters utilized these options as well as their own modifications and came up with an array of same-but-different pieces that have brought me SO much joy to get to see!

If you knit your own Copperhead Tee, I'd genuinely love to see it. You can use the tags #copperheadtee or @luciaknitsss on Instagram or DM me on Ravelry. I'd also love to hear what you think of the design and pattern -- I'm here to learn!

Holy crap: the Saturniid Cowl just passed a thousand favorites on Ravelry!

I am COMPLETELY blown away and was in no world expecting this kind of love for my first published pattern. Thank you to everyone who's encouraged me, taught me, and given me a chance as a first-time designer. You've all gotten me super excited to get on to the next one!

Speaking of. My first garment pattern, the Copperhead Tee, is approaching halfway through its test knitting. I'm learning a ton and can't wait for its release on September 3rd. I'm also about a thumb and a half from finishing my sample for a pair of snakey, scaley fingerless mitts. After that, I'll be tackling the reason I learned to design in the first place: reworking a Strange Brew pullover I'd knit with the Saturniid Cowl colorwork into a pattern of my own.

If any of these upcoming projects sound interesting to you, I'd love to have you test knit them for me: join my testing pool on Yarnpond for a heads up when they're available.

Today's the day! The Saturniid Cowl, my very first pattern release, is live on Ravelry.

I picked up knitting in 2016 as something to keep my hands busy while watching online university lectures, in awe of those with the seemingly mystical ability to put patterns together for the rest of us to enjoy. I never planned or imagined giving designing a try myself. When the pandemic hit in 2020, I was extremely fortunate to find myself with a lot more time on my hands, with my commute and other pressures of the outside world suddenly removed. I remember stumbling across Stitch Fiddle, playing around with pixels representing colorwork, and then having that hey, wait... moment.

Even then, I thought I'd only ever design things here and there for my own use. The Saturniid Cowl started out as a Strange Brew pullover with some tweaks to the sleeves. I posted my finished product on r/knitting and received an enormous-to-me response: tons of upvotes and a huge number of encouraging comments, with some asking me to please turn my design into a pattern to publish. No one even told me to die in a fire! On Reddit!

I have a tendency to get frustrated and quit things if I'm not perfect at them immediately. Thanks for that, gifted program. That in mind, I decided if I was going to try out publishing, I was going to take it slow and do it right: I enrolled in Aroha Knits' Swatch Studio program, read Kate Atherley's The Beginner's Guide to Writing Knitting Patterns, and decided to avoid overwhelming myself with grading a pullover for my first pattern. Thus, the Saturniid Cowl was born: a much simpler form of my original design that's still fun to wear and gets the same mothy moony energy across. Just as it was easier for me to design, I'm hoping it's more accessible to beginner knitters, those new to colorwork, and anyone in need of a smaller-scale project.

I do still have plans to release a pullover version of the same moth-and-moon motif, but I've got a couple of other ideas in the pipeline first: a short-sleeved snake pullover that's in test knitting now, some scaly gloves I'm just starting to knit, and another cowl with all-over colorwork I've sketched out. Too many ideas, not enough daylight!

Oh, and why moths? I just like 'em. Fluffy bumbly nightbois. Butterflies but make it goth. Ridiculous antennae that could probably pick up satellite signals. Amazing.