“Surfing the net” has become a major time-sink for many across the globe.  It is an incredibly addicting past-time.  As a knitting fanatic, my surfing tends to be rather topic-specific.  This post marks the start of a new series here at Knitigating Circumstances called “Surfing the Knit”.   The series will be a forum for me to point out the stories and photos that have caught my eye during my frequent forays into knit surfing.

1. Giant knit squid

WordPress have a feature called “Freshly Pressed” in which they pick a few posts every day from the millions of WordPress blogs, and highlight them.  This week one of the Freshly Pressed posts was about Knit Bombing.  It is from the blog Knits for Life, and you can find the post here.  Here is a photo of the amazing knit bombing project that Lorna and Jill made:

Isn’t it fabulous!  I think this is among the best knit bombing that I have seen.  Check out the post on Lorna’s blog linked above, and also Jill’s post on her blog, The Dapper Toad, which you can find here.  These posts give lots of photos and a detailed tutorial into the making, installation and reception of this great example of street art.  By the way, Lorna notes that the city arborist told them the tree had been improperly pruned, which exposed the bark to sun damage, so the squid is actually good for the tree.

2. Gnome mittens

Spillyjane is a Canadian designer best known for her whimsical mitten and sock designs.  You can find her on her website, Spillyjane Knits. In March 2010, Spillyjane released a pattern for the marvelous Gnome Mittens:

These mittens went right into my favorites file on Ravelry.  I have enjoyed looking at the projects people have made using this great pattern.  SpillyJane includes instructions for fingerless mitts in the pattern, and later released a pattern for Gnome Socks.

Today, as I was busy Surfing the Knit, I found some other designer was offering a virtually identical pattern for sale. (It is featured on Ravelry and on her website and her Etsy page.)  I must admit to being flabbergasted!   As far as I can tell, the new person claims to have come up with the design independently.  I  know that this happens sometimes (in knitting and in science).   I was surprised enough to do a little digging and found a good post on the subject on  Dull Roar.  I am not going to delve into a discussion here of copyright (which I am by no means an expert on), or of probability or design features or identical charts.  Instead, I thought I would direct you to look at Spillyjane, who makes some of the cutest mitten patterns ever devised IMHO.  If Gnomes, don’t do it for you, how about her Flamingo Mittens:

Or the lovely peacock design of her Mystery + Manners pattern:

This design is available for free, by the way, in the Fall 2010 edition of Knitty: you can find it here.  Incidentally, Spillyjane released a brand new mitten pattern just days ago, called Circuit:

 These are published in the excellently-titled Doomsday Knits: Projects for the Apocalypse and After.  If you are after an interesting mitten (or fingerless mitt) pattern, then head to Spillyjane and spend your money there.

3. Garland

Stefanie Pollmeier writes the blog reWOLLuzza.  She is a long-time follower of Knitigating Circumstances and a frequent commenter here.  Stefanie has recently made the foray into knit designing.  I like the fact that she posts about design and also about the whole process of responding to calls for submission and the intricacies of bringing a design to market.  Here, for example, is a discussion of the submission stages for a hat design.  I don’t know a lot about these aspects of the design process, so I find it useful.  I also admire the fact that she writes these posts in English (if I tried to write this blog in German you would be laughing, believe me).  This week in my knit surfing, I noticed that the lovely new-ish knitting magazine, Pom Pom Quarterly, has a new issue out.  And on the cover, is a beautiful design by Stefanie called Garland:

Here is a better picture to show off the design elements:

Isn’t it lovely?  Congratulations, Stefanie!

And that, dear readers, concludes Surfing the Knit today.  Stay tuned for further segments!