I’ve uttered the name Bristol Ivy a few times on the blog, with regard to her pattern designs Eyen and Bayard (twice). And you may have run across her in the comments here and there. She’s a very talented designer. I also love her Auden sweater and her Metropolis Mitts, to name just two, and I’m completely in awe of her shawl designs. She has an artistically mathematical mind, which enables her to conceive of shawls like Winnowing, Lida and Thorn, and it’s also what’s got me going on about her today. I’ve gotten to know Bristol a little bit through Twitter, and find her endlessly entertaining, and I took special note one night when she tweeted that a friend had suggested she could be the Nate Silver of knitting. (“Guys, it was like a holy light shone down on me and choirs of angels sang when she said that.”) Sure enough, since that day she’s been stalking pattern stats on Ravelry, categorizing and tracking it all in presumably elaborate spreadsheets, and she has begun spitting out nerdtastic charts about the trends she’s spotting. She’s even come up with a characteristically Bristol name for her report: The State of the Stock(inette) Market. Which just makes me love her always charming blog, Where the Red-Winged Blackbird Flies, that much more.

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(Shawl photos by Jared Flood and Carrie Bostick Hoge; chart by Bristol Ivy)