New Shopping Website

I have put a new shopping website up, and if anyone is willing to take a look and give me feedback, I'd be grateful!

Right now I am waiting for the support people at Square fix a picture bug, which would allow me to choose the main picture for each item.  II also need to link Paypal so it will accept PayPal payments.

Here's why I did this:

• Maintaining my old website is difficult, time-consuming and not my skillset.  This seems like it will be much easier, at least once I get the initial setup.
• I have all my purchasers paying through PayPal and some people don't want to use PayPal.  When I get PayPal working with it, this is supposed to take major credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal.
• I wanted people to be able to write reviews.  When I shop online, I read reviews, and I bet you do, too.
• I'd like to put up "click to buy" single patterns.  Making a book takes me many months, and I've been wanting to experiment with doing a single pattern and then flitting off to my next knitting passion.  I put up two digital patterns.  Right now they're not automatic - I'll get an email that someone purchased something and I'll email them the pattern.  Square is supposed to make this automatic later.
• I want it to be easier to contact me.  
• This website came with an email list manager, and I left it on there.  I don't know about a newsletter or email list.  Let me know what YOU think about that!
• This website also has a "coming events" section that I appeals to me.  For instance, later this year, I am teaching in Minnesota and Northern California.  If those seminar organizers wanted me to promote those seminars, this would be a way to do it.  I could put other people's seminars up, as well, if they sent me the information.

The new site is here currently:  dianaknits.square.site    Once it's all set, it'll be moved to my domain, www.dianaknits.com.

A Peacock Shawl

Here's another one in the upcoming shawl book.  I called it the Peacock, because I was going that that tail shape.

This one was hand-tooled on the bulky machine.  The blue one is made from Shawl in a Ball, and the orange colorway is Caron Cakes.

The straight edge is a extra-big I-cord.  It's something I found in an old Japanese book (with good pictures - I can't read Japanese).

The edge is relatively easy to hand-tool, because I did it with a 7-stitch transfer tool.  I had a cheat sheet with the short-row stitch numbers and the stitch number for the increase-decrease edge, and I marked the needle bed, as well.

Working away on the shawl book

I've been working on a shawl book...forever.  I have a great time coming up with the ideas and the shawls, and then getting the rest of it done is where I bog down.  The filming, editing, writing, diagramming, proofreading...and this time, the photography has been difficult.  My shawls are big, and that's how I like them.  It makes them harder to photograph.  My husband finally helped me - we made a two-person job of it with me holding very bright lights for him.  (The more light, the more detail...)

Today, I thought I'd share more shawl pix.  This was an especially fun pattern for me to develop, with several little puzzles to solve.  I don't know if you will like this as much as I do, but this was my solution to matching striped yarn from "cakes."  Yup, I had the antiquated idea that I would really like the stripes to match and make a chevron.

This was a ribber project, using my bulky, and I got the marled look to the colors by mixing a cake of a sport weight self-striping yarn (Lion Brand) with an off white DK yarn.  I got the stripes, edge, and center lace by doing increases in U-shaped ribber knitting.

The edge is hand-tooled with the 7-stitch transfer tool.  The brown shawl edging is the one taught in the book.  It has my best bottom corner miter.  

I didn't add a top edging on any of these.  It's actually a built-in row of eyelets, and it looks fine.

You might like to see this in other yarns:

Did you know Caron Latte Cakes is available again?  I saw it at Michael's the other day.  I did this shawl in Latte Cakes.  It was an earlier shawl, and I went around the bottom corner with the edging by crowding the motifs.  Less effective than the miter, I think, but still very pretty.

I also did it in the regular Caron cakes.  This one has an earlier version of the bottom miter, and while it doesn't show well in the picture, in reality it is sort of straight across at the bottom.  I liked the little point better.