I had to check the calendar this week as it’s been so cold! Even though it is nearly mid-May I’m back in my woollen dress and tights, especially important while doing exam invigilation in a very cool hall. The last thing the exam candidates need to be distracted by would be my teeth chattering!
Are you one of those people who doesn’t knit in the summer? I’m an all-year-round knitter as you might have guessed – and quite often I’m knitting quite thick autumn/winter items during the spring and summer months because of the way deadlines for magazines go, so in that respect the current coolness is not a problem, not when I’m at home knitting with a pile of wool in my lap anyway. It is slightly different when I’m out and about!
The rhubarb that we planted and that seemed to be settling in so well is sulking a bit, but I think that might be the lack of decent rain. We are due some more this week, but if it turns out to be more of a drizzle than a soak I might have to do some watering. The rain we did have recently made the chickweed and goose grass grow like mad, but not the things we actually want to flourish!
It is nice to see the aquilegias in flower again though. Did you know I have a shawl inspired by the colours of aquilegias? That’s the shawl in the main photo for today’s post. Aquilegia Shawl uses a Fibonacci sequence for the zig-zag stripes and is very adaptable in terms of both width and length.
You can tell it’s one of my older designs as my hair isn’t blue in the picture!
On Friday the updated version of Into the Vortex was released, now including all the information you need to knit a version of the shawl using 2 x 100g DK yarn as well as the original two sizes for 4 ply.
I’m planning to relaunch Ice Diamond Mitts next week now as this week has turned out to be quite busy!
If you are hoping to learn two-colour brioche knitting with me at a yarn show this year, there are still spaces at the Midlands Wool Festival (3 on Saturday, 8 on Sunday) and some at the Stafford Wool Gathering. The workshop at North East Wool Show in Newcastle is now sold out. I may put a Zoom workshop on in the summer if there are people interested who cannot attend an in-person workshop. Do let me know if this would interest you!
I finally got my grey 4ply What Do Points Make? blocked yesterday. It was not as easy as expected. Not because of the measurements, but because I got hiccups just as I started to pin it out! It’s not terribly easy to pin out knitting with straight edges when your diaphragm is kicking at you! It is done however, and the measurements are the same as the lace weight version! Do you remember when I knitted my multi-coloured 4ply one in Size 4 and it came out bigger than the lace version? I think that was definitely due to the yarn being a ‘thicker’ 4ply, at 365m per 100g whereas the grey is 440m per 100g. That’s quite a difference really and yet they still both count as 4ply yarn!
Now that I know what type of 4ply yarn maintains the original measurements I can update the pattern – and maybe include a note that if you want to use 365m/100g 4ply then it will come out bigger than stated!
I ended last week’s post saying that I was off to ask for some help with something. I did and got a very kind and helpful response.
That’s all for today as I can’t show you what I’ve spent most of my knitting hours on this week as it’s a commission using yarn that isn’t even publicly available yet! I do like how it’s coming out and hope everyone else will too once it’s published!
Take care one and all and I hope you get time to do something that makes you happy this week. K x