it’s been quite a week! I took part in the Knit Happy! Summit online as one of the speakers, and I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve had some lovely interactions with some of the 9000 (!!!) people attending the summit including with knitters who watched my presentation on How to Knit a Pi Shawl.
Yesterday I got the chance to watch some of the other presentations from the summit. I particularly enjoyed Jen Parochini’s of One Wild Designs talk on common sense bust darts and I’m looking forward to adding some to an existing sweater pattern next time I knit one! I did design a sweater including darts as part of my City & Guilds course, but it was only written for my own size (at the time). I would still love to revisit and update that design, grading it for different sizes and including instructions for knitters to add their own personalised bust darts. I think it will be quite a big piece of work and I’m hoping I’ll be able to block out some time for it later in the year.
As a result of the Knit Happy! Summit my newsletter subscribers have grown from just over 200 to over 800! In a week! Not what I was expecting at all, and it has made me smile – and hope they stick around for a while. It did involve quickly upgrading to a paid MailChimp plan so it would continue to function, and I’ve also started researching other newsletter/email platforms in case a different provider is something I need to consider in the future.
Yesterday we also had the excitement of a drains survey and we were so glad to hear that everything is fine. It did mean that I went into the back garden (for the first time in a few weeks) and it was wonderful to see the snowdrops in flower and the hellebores making an appearance. Of course today it’s raining hard, so I won’t be able to get any decent photos of them. For some reason, thinking about the snowdrops has reminded me that I really need to find some Seville oranges and get on with marmalade making…
If you’re a long time reader of this blog you will know that I’ve had a few issues with my car in the 15 months I’ve had it and, indeed, I am once again back at the garage. However, today is not a mechanical problem which is very nice! I’m just getting a trim replaced that was snapped two weeks ago while my rear windscreen wash jet was being fixed. Fortunately I will not be paying for that as it wasn’t me that broke it!
Being back at the garage means I am typing this on my iPad and I don’t seem to have the knack of selecting a small amount of text to delete. I just tried to delete two sentences and lost a whole paragraph! Maybe my iPad is trying to save me from myself as it was a little sentimental – I was talking about my Mum’s recent move to a care home (planned and her choice) and clearing her house which she’d been in for over 60 years and which I’d grown up in. It was a big job and I am glad the house sale completed last week.
Everything with Mum got delayed by two weeks (for completely different reasons both the house sale completion and Mum’s move as she ended up in hospital again – complete with a 19-hour wait in various ambulances outside A&E), I find myself at the end of January coming up for air and wondering where the month has gone. I am teaching on Zoom again tonight. Tonight is Next Steps in Two-Colour Brioche Knitting. This is your last chance to book a place!
Last week’s workshop was good. I had just one student attending – from Arizona! – but, as I had no travel, room hire or accommodation costs to cover, we went ahead. She did amazingly well and we even covered how to pick up dropped stitches in two-colour brioche and correcting mistakes. It’s amazing what you can do even when thousands of miles away!
The North West Winter Wool Festival takes place at the Imperial Hotel in Blackpool in just over two weeks. Mark February 15-16 in your calendars and do come if you can. If you buy an advance ticket (only £6 for the day!) you will also get to download a free knitting pattern that is exclusive to the show until mid March. I’ve seen a couple of Imperial Cowls knitted by people who are coming to the show and it never fails to give me a thrill to see items that knitters have made from my patterns and shared with me on social media (Instagram in this case). The one on the left was knitted by Sally and the cowl on the right was knitted by Suzanne. Aren’t they great?!
I’ve been making good progress on a new design that was started in November and I’m on the final stretch, knitting an applied i-cord edging and trying to calculate how much yarn it will use. I know some folk aren’t fans of applied i-cord, but it makes all the difference to this design, giving the edge weight and maintaining the shape well. It does grow surprisingly fast too once you get into the rhythm of it – I did half of one long edge in under an hour on Sunday. Soon I’ll be able to show it to you properly when it’s all finished and been blocked, but for now here’s a sense of it:
I’m using McIntosh BFL 4ply in three glorious spring colours! BFL is short for ‘blue-faced Leicester’, which is a sheep breed and this is a 100% British wool that is a joy to knit with.
Right, that’s all from me for today. Who’s coming to Blackpool? Take care one and all, K x