Thank you for your interest in my knitting designs!  The best place to get more details and download all of my designs is on Ravelry at http://www.ravelry.com/designers/treehouse-knits

Latest Patterns:

Nickels Arcade Hat

One of my favorite landmarks in my alma mater’s city of Ann Arbor is Nickels Arcade. Its unique architecture and charming stores inspired me in this Hat Design using North Bay Fiber Heritage, a beautiful Michigan sourced and milled targhee-polypay woolen spun yarn, perfect for colorwork, softness, and warmth.

I suggest using a light, medium and dark yarn for this pattern to really bring out the colorwork.

Also, when knitting the “body” of the hat, I go up a needle size. If you know that your gague does not change when you work more than one color, ignore my suggestion to change needle size for the body.

Finally, consider placing stitch markers between each section of the round. It will help immensely with keeping correct track of where you are.

Please posting your projects here on Ravelry and on Instagram, tagging #treehousefiberarts.com. I would love to see your colorways!

Snow Fest Mittens

Celebrate the snow, wearing these Selbu-inspired mittens sure to keep you warm and toasty during the cold, dark nights of mid-winter!

Pattern uses the beautiful Legacy Fiber Arts 50 gram Steel Toes combo in Winter’s Eve and Vanilla Bean.

In true Nordic fashion, to adjust adult sizing, adjust needle sizing accordingly. Instructions for adding a mohair lining are included.

Design Notes:

I love to incorporate meaning into the mittens when I design:

Cuff - I hope you enjoy the Latvian Braid. I’ve added some tips in the instructions, and believe you’ll agree in the end that it is much easier than it looks. The idea of the Nordic people celebrating Winter Solstice was in my mind while designing, so I added the man and woman motif around the cuff with a light background to indicate that they were dancing around the fire at night during the winter solstice party.

Hand - The top of the hand has the traditional Star patterning, with other types of stars around. The flower on the thumb gives hope in the knowledge that spring is always on the way. My favorite quilting pattern became the motif for the hand of the mitten (spinning whirligig) as a symbol of another item that we use to keep us warm and toasty during those cold, dark nights of winter. I also like how it resembles shooting stars on the mitten.

Gradient, Interrupted

There are so many gorgeous packs of gradient and speckled yarns at our fingertips these days. Figuring out what to do with them can pose a challenge. Pick a gradient pack and a speckled yarn, and make this gorgeous shawl that can be worn in the traditional way, or with the point in the front or on the shoulder. I-cord edging and bind-off creates a polished border to the shawl.

You can follow my recipe for number of rows for each gradient color, or simply stop and move onto the next section when you get to the end of each gradient skein.

Rennie’s Mitts

If summer had a taste, it would taste like the sweet cherries from Rennie’s Orchards, located 15 minutes north of Traverse City, Michigan. In 1938 the Rennie Family purchased the land, and converted it from a potato farm into the beautiful orchard it is today. Rennie’s Orchards is still one of the few family-run cherry orchards the Grand Traverse area.

While I was growing up (and then later when I had my own kids), my parents had a little getaway on Elk Lake nearby. Mom and Dad tried many different orchards in the area, but Rennie’s won out and became our place to pick cherries. Wonderful memories were made picking cherries in the morning (testing each tree’s fruits until we found the perfect one to pick from). We’d then spend afternoons bobbing up and down in our boat on the beautiful Elk Lake, soaking in the sun while eating the huge, freshly-picked sweet cherries (and of course spitting the pits into the lake!).

Winter? What Winter!? We Michiganders know that the promise of summer moments like these is extremely helpful in getting us through the dark, cold Michigan winters. Wear these mittens knowing that the warm days of summer are coming.

Beginner Fair Isle Hat

Practice using this basic two-color pattern with worsted weight yarn, and in no-time you will be knitting those gorgeous multi-color Fair Isle fingering weight hats!

Pattern produces a medium-sized adult hat that can be made larger by casting on more stitches in multiples of 6 (the pattern motif repeat number).