There’s a magpie hanging out on the back fence. Every now and then it wanders over to where some of the raspberry canes overhang and has a peck at them. It’s the most chilled out magpie I’ve seen in a while! I have to say I don’t mind it helping itself as I harvested a load of raspberries yesterday afternoon, and any that the magpie is able to get to are either too ripe or completely out of reach to me!
Yesterday evening I sent out my monthly newsletter. A few hours later I had a look at the Mailchimp app to see how many people had opened it and noticed it was 55% opens and 8% clicks. Once I was in bed though, it occurred to me that the clicks number was odd because, after pressing send, I realised I had forgotten to insert a link to Cat and Sparrow’s yarn kits for my latest design (Bargello Aurora Wrap).
It was one of those thoughts that niggles at you. You know the ones? And then it occurred to me. I had written the newsletter using an old one as a template. Which probably meant the clicks were to links from the old newsletter that had stayed in place after I’d replaced the photographs… Argh!!
First thing this morning I braced myself to check and, sure enough, if I clicked on the photos in yesterday’s email… they took me to completely unrelated webpages. So, I went back into Mailchimp, removed the old links, added some new and relevant ones, added an apology to the top of the newsletter and re-sent it.
If you are one of the people who subscribes to my newsletter I am so sorry you ended up receiving emails two days in a row from me. I really do try hard not to send things out into the world until I know they’re right and it’s one of those occasions where I have to remind myself that all people make mistakes and we’re only human, etc, etc. (If you don’t yet subscribe, please know that this is a rarity, and that all subscribers get a permanent subscriber discount code to use on Payhip and Ravelry).
Anyway! One of the things I wrote about in my newsletter was the Bargello Aurora Wrap that is featured in this month’s issue of The Knitter magazine (Issue 180). Rachael of Cat and Sparrow, who dyed the yarn for me from the picture of the North Lights that I showed you last week, has yarn kits for the wrap, which is very exciting. The Knitter have shared one of the fabulous modelled shots of the wrap on their social media and written some rather wonderful words about it too!
We think Kath Andrews’ new wrap design is out of this world! Her ‘Bargello Aurora Wrap’ has a mesmerising stripe pattern, inspired by the distinctive zigzag stitches used in Bargello tapestry work. The project uses some unusual increase and decrease methods, which result in dramatic point details along the edges. It’s knitted in five complementary colours of Singular BFL, a hand-dyed yarn from Cat and Sparrow. You can find Kath’s pattern in Issue 180.
The Knitter, Facebook, 4th September 2022
Here are some of the shots Rachael took on a tailor’s dummy:
Those pointed zigzag edges are achieved through blocking as well as dramatic increases and decreases. (Soaking the wrap, then pinning it out firmly whilst damp.) There were a lot of pins involved. With some designs you can simply pin the outer points, and you could do that here, but you would get a different end result. Here are two photos from the blocking stage. The left hand image shows the outer points only pinned, which gives a curved line to the points overall. The right hand image shows the full pinning with every change of direction, and the mid-points between them in the zigzag, pinned into place. I think you’ll agree it was worth the effort!
There are only twelve days now until Yarn Gathering!! Above is the flyer with the full line-up of vendors. If you head over to the Yarn Gathering page you can click on each of them for more details about their business and what you might be able to expect to see on the 18th.
DO come and join us – we’d love to see you!! With eleven vendors spread out through the hall and the cafe space of the Daniel Owen Centre, there will be plenty of room for you to see everything and everyone without feeling too crowded. It was lovely for me to meet up with LottieKnits at the Pop-up Wool Show a couple of weeks ago and I am really looking forward to seeing all the other vendors and catching up. This is one of the joys of a yarn show and one of the aims of Yarn Gathering; you get to talk to people, have conversations, share ideas, ooh and aah over other people’s stalls and purchases – in fact, have some human contact!
In other knitting news, I am on the final section of my latest secret knitting (though you won’t see that one until January…)!
And – I have finished the socks for my nibling, apart from weaving in the ends. I am very pleased with them and hope that they will be too:
I used The Knitting Goddess‘s 4-ply BFL Nylon yarn in semi solid black and Trans Pride Flag. I could have bought some Stripey Stripes of the pride flag yarn, but I wanted to get a whole skein so I can do other things with it as well later on. I just had to wind off a pink-white-pink section between the blues so that the flag was correct and matching on both socks.
I think that’s everything for today. I’m trying to get my head around all the [insert adjective of your choice] things going on in the big wide world outside of my wool-based bubble. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that I can get rather cross about politics on occasion, but for now, I’m going to aim to be more like this morning’s magpie; chill out and eat a raspberry now and then.
Take care all, K x