‘Twisted – a workshop with a twist!’ is being held at Yarn O’clock over 2 sessions: 2nd and 16th November, 6.30-9pm. It’s £50 for the two sessions and includes the yarn to make the cowl.
Contact Anne at Yarn O’clock (01352 – 218082) to book a space on the workshops – please note her shop will be closed from 14th to 24th October!
Skills needed: Ability to use a circular needle, knit, purl and cast off.
Equipment to bring: 80cm circular cable with SHORT 5mm tips – these can be bought at the shop if you don’t have them. 1 x 5.5mm or 6mm needle or double pointed needle (for Twisted 2 only).
Twisted 1 (2nd November)
Understand and learn to create the unique structure of a true moebius ring and how this technique can be used for wonderful neckwear and more. Learn the Moebius cast on. Learn the basic brioche stitches (brk and brp) and how to work brioche in the round. Discover the magic that happens when you work brioche in a moebius ring! This part of the workshop ends with learning a brioche increase.
Twisted 2 (16th November)
Continue the cowl, learn a brioche decrease and repeat the main pattern once more, revising the brioche increase and sharing your progress with the group. Discover what happens as you cast off!
Bodelwyddan, my sock pattern to raise funds for Treasure Chest YGC has sold 7 copies so far. That’s £17.50 raised for the charity, which is a start. I’m hoping it will go above £30 by the end of the month, so do spread the word if you know any sock knitters. The pattern is available on all my platforms. If you can support this good cause, please do!
Progress on Umbriel (the sweater I was knitting in the pub) has gone even better than I anticipated – I’ve finished it! Completely finished, as in all ends woven in and it’s been washed and is now drying. As the design by Sylvia Watts-Cherry was done in the round with sleeves that were picked up from the armholes and worked down to the cuffs, there was not even any sewing up to do. The neckline is particularly lovely.
I’m knitting 10 rows a day on my Barragán Shawl, my design which is The Knitter‘s current knit-along. If you’re knitting it too, please share your progress with the hashtag #BarragánKAL when posting on social media. You can still order a yarn kit from McIntosh too if you want to use MY Serenity and MY Joy (the same colours I designed the shawl in) in his hand-dyed Bluefaced Leicester 4ply – or subscribe to The Knitter and get the yarn kit as a free gift!
It’s a completely different experience knitting along with everyone else, with only one section to complete per month, rather than the experience of writing the pattern and knitting it to a much shorter deadline. Some folk will think I’m a bit mad knitting the shawl a second time (in the same yarn no less!), but I wanted to be there along with other knitters, able to help out in case of any problems, show them how it should be looking and generally join in the fun. And, as I say, just doing 10 rows per day and photographing the progress for my Instagram and Facebook Stories is really chilled. This is how it looks today, after 70 rows (1 week):
I’ve also started knitting Mum some more bedsocks that she requested.
The pattern is Bob (Friend of Dave) by Rachel Coopey, which I’m glad I printed out as I cannot for the life of me find a link to it anymore, and I’m using CoopKnits Socks Yeah! DK. Having been at Mum’s last week it would have been clever if I’d remembered I was going to be knitting more of these socks soon, and checked the stitch count on her current socks, but no. Fortunately I was able to ask Mum to count the groups of knit stitches around the cuff and tell me over the phone so I could work it out! I have now finally made a note of the stitch count to cast on – 64 on 3mm needles.
I had some very good news yesterday – a submission was accepted, which was lovely. It won’t be out until May next year, and I’ve got until January to complete the sample and write up the pattern. It’s a design on a smaller scale this time, which will make a nice change as many of my recent designs have been on the very large side! There’s also another submission I sent out at the weekend which I’m keeping my fingers crossed for and four (!) yarn shows I’ve applied to (not all in the past week I hasten to add) that I’m waiting to hear back about as well.
Speaking of scale, did I tell you that I’d started working on the pattern for the adult version of Honeybun? This will be published separately from the child’s version and will have 20 sizes, none of which overlap with the child’s version, which only goes up to Age 8. The sizes are UK 4 – 42 and the spreadsheet is quite something. The construction is the same as the child’s one with the body worked in one piece and I’ve got as far with the numbers as the division of the fronts and back and underarm cast-off. I’m currently undecided whether to crunch the numbers for the raglan armhole and neck decreases, or to cast-on for the adult sample (I’m going to make an 18 as that’s the size of my dress-form/mannequin) and knit as far as I’ve got to. I might do a bit of both.
We’ve got a jaunt at the weekend as Sue is reading at the Gloucester Poetry Festival. I’ve not been to Gloucester for decades and I’m really looking forward to it.
With this oddly warm weather, we’ve been out in the garden quite a bit over the past few days, cutting back and tidying the veg patch and deadheading the many roses. Some of the nasturtiums are making a bid for freedom across the patio! If I remember I’ll try to grab a photo of them to show you next week.
That’s all from me for today. You’ll probably have noticed I haven’t mentioned the events in the wider world. That’s because I’m having trouble processing how some people can behave the way they do to other humans. Have a good week if you can and be safe out there. K x