2023 – Kath Andrews Designs

Posted on 19th December 202319th December 2023 by Kath Andrews — 2 Comments

The Longest Night of the Year

It’s not quite the longest night yet, but it’s close. If you haven’t heard the Mary Chapin Carpenter song of this name, I highly recommend a listen. Here’s a link to it! This morning it was still quite dark at about 8.30am, but now the sun is shining on the garden and I can even see some substantial patches of blue sky.

My plan of doing a 30 mins of embroidery at a time, rather than aiming to complete a set amount seems to be paying dividends. Although my December aim of spending 30 minutes every day either spinning or stitching hasn’t been achieved, I can definitely see progress in the picture on the right, compared with the one on the left taken two weeks ago. Slow and steady will get me there!

Yesterday morning I took part in a video discussion panel along with two other designers, Woolly Wormhead who is a Hat Architect, and Leela Francombe of Leela Mary Knits who specialises in brioche shawls. Sadly Little Seal Designs was unwell and unable to join us. This Zoom event was part of the Fasten Off Yarn-a-Long and was one of several that are taking place during December.

We were asked lots of questions that we each answered in turn about our designing, and how we came to be in this business and it was a really interesting and fun hour.

9am on a Monday morning (as it was in the UK – it was 8pm for Leela in Australia and 10am for Woolly in Italy) may not have been the time that most people would be available to log in and join us, but never fear! The discussion panels are all recorded and uploaded to YouTube, so you have the chance to watch it whenever you have the time. Ours is not there yet, but it will be soon. You may even get some sneak peeks at upcoming designs! All the discussions from previous years are there too, with a wide range of knitting and crochet designers talking about their work, so it’s worth a look.

Last Wednesday I decided to learn a new-to-me technique – working colour work brioche cables! If this sounds like a brain-bender to you then you are correct, but I jumped in (like I do) and got myself a copy of Dulcify by Synaptic Stitches, which is a great looking hat pattern, found some appropriate yarn in my sport-weight yarn box and cast on.

Last night I finished it! The crown did get quite tricky, managing the three yarns and DPNs as the stitch count got smaller and smaller, but I did it and the resulting hat is very cosy. Because of the stranding of the cable colours, you don’t end up with a reversible fabric as you do with regular two colour brioche, but the stranding helps maintain the structure of the hat and stops it getting too baggy or stretchy.

Hat selfies are not my strong point, but this gives you a good idea of what my version of Dulcify looks like:

I will definitely try this technique again in the future! I’m quite tempted by the Banneton pattern by the same designer and I like her ‘pay what works for you’ model with coupon codes right there on the pattern page to give 15%, 25% or 50% off the list price. Two colours of yarn only are used in Banneton, along with some intricate cabling.

If you’re on ‘the socials’ you may have noticed that I joined Threads a couple of days ago. It seems like a friendly and chatty place! If you’re on there, feel free to say hi and/or follow me.

Last week I told you about some of the 7 (!) yarn shows I’ll be at next year. I’ve now started thinking about how my design work is going to map out in 2024, and which of the calls for submission that have recently come through I will submit ideas to.

Currently I have a design coming out in May with Knit Now, and I also will be working on another shawl using McIntosh yarn. I’m hoping to have some more work published with The Knitter too.

As you know, I’m also working on the adult version of Honeybun, which I need to finish and get tech edited. I’ll have the rights return to me of four other designs which I’ll then be able to publish myself.

I want to work on some more options for Bargello Aurora – creating a cowl and a vertically knit scarf. Although a knitter could create these from the pattern as it is, it does help folk if there is a sample they can see to show them what the finished item will actually look like, along with precise instructions! So that’s quite a few things already (even the patterns that are coming back to me will require a certain amount of work to get them into my own pattern style, possibly with new photography) and I’ve got lots of other ideas floating around in my head! I think the best plan will be to write it all out in my new journal – I may even need to park some plans until 2025!!

This is my last blog post for 2023 – I’ll be back on January 2nd to tell you all about the exciting exhibition in Oswestry that I’m taking part in next month. In the meantime, I hope you have a good Christmas/Yule/Solstice, however you celebrate it, hold your loved ones close and I’ll see you on the other side. K x

Posted on 12th December 202312th December 2023 by Kath Andrews — Leave a comment

Jingle All The Way

On Saturday my lovely wife and I attended the Buckley Christmas Market and had a really great day talking to everyone who stopped by the stand to look, ask questions, chat and buy things. It’s been the most successful Christmas event I’ve had a stand at, and the atmosphere in the shopping precinct was buzzing and busy. The coasters were particularly popular!

Buckley Town Band played in the morning and Shelby’s Place Singers gave their inaugural performance of six Christmas songs in the afternoon! We were even accompanied by some very rhythmic jingle bells which added greatly to the festive feel. I’ve already started thinking about what we’ll learn to sing in the New Year ready for the next market at Easter time!

It was a full day; we arrived to set up at 7.30am and the market finished at 4pm – we were very glad to get everything back into the car and then into the house before the storm winds really took off!

Today I finished Part 3 of Barragán Shawl KAL which, as you no doubt know by now, is being published in four parts by The Knitter. I surprised myself by using slightly more yarn than I’d expected to (though I did still have enough), and I’ve been trying to work out why. My conclusion is that the first time I knitted it, while I was designing it, I was knitting faster. I was working to a deadline and I had to knit several sections of the shawl twice, ripping it out when I wasn’t fully satisfied with links between parts.

This time I’ve been ‘knitting along’. I worked out how many rows I need to knit each day to complete one part of the shawl before the next part was published and, for the most part, I’ve only been knitting that much. This difference in both speed and focus makes me wonder if my tension while I’ve been knitting this second shawl has been looser as I’ve been more relaxed about it? Relaxed, that is, apart from today when I began to wonder if there would be a game of yarn chicken in my future (there wasn’t!) and so knitted the final two full repeats of the stitch pattern in one go.

It’s made me think about tension/gauge again and how frustrating it is when knitters say they never knit a tension swatch as they always ‘knit to tension’. How can they? The tension listed on any given pattern is that of the designer while they were working on the pattern – not that of anyone else, and it’s entirely possible that a change of needle size might be required to achieve the stated tension. But that can only be discovered by working, washing and blocking a swatch.

The stitches and rows listed on a yarn ball band are considered the ‘standard’ tension for that yarn when working stocking stitch using specified needles, but that doesn’t mean that is your tension, nor that it is the designers’ tension. And what if the designer is using different needles from the ‘standard’ ones for that yarn weight, such as with lace knitting, where the needle size tends to be larger than you’d use for stocking stitch? In those cases the ‘standard’ tension is almost irrelevant – or at least guaranteed to be different from that of the pattern. And, as it seems, speed of knitting and levels of relaxation can also make a difference to a knitter’s tension, as even a slight change in tension that doesn’t show up much in stitch or row counts can fractionally affect how much yarn each stitch is using.

It’s a fascinating topic and it’s really interesting to me how knitters vary so much in their tension. I’ll probably write more about this in the future and I’m even tempted to get some data by measuring the (unblocked) tension of knitters in workshops who will all be using the same yarn and needle sizes, but who undoubtedly will have different tensions in what they are producing.

All that remains now is Part 4 (out on December 28th) which is the edging worked in the buff colour and the all-important blocking.

The other project I’ve made some progress with this week is the adult version of Honeybun. The colour work sections of the sleeves are now complete and I’m soon to move into the stocking stitch section where the increases happen.

I shall work on this while I watch Vigil later this evening! If you’ve not seen any of this and have access to iPlayer I highly recommend it. There have been 2 episodes so far and it is really rather gripping.

Have you had a look at my ‘Where I’ll Be’ page on the website lately? There are some more things to add (once the exhibitors for events are publicly announced), but it’s looking like an exciting 2024 for me.

Highlights so far:

10th January – Introduction to Lace Knitting workshop at Shaz’s Shabby Chic in Buckley, 6.30-8.30pm
19-26th January – Wool-in Garden City. A week-long yarn festival in the Howard Centre at Welwyn Garden City. During this event I will be taking part in a ‘Meet the Designer’ panel discussion with other designers (on Sat 20th) and teaching an Introduction to Brioche Knitting workshop (on Sun 21st).
9-10th March – East Anglia Yarn Festival at the Norfolk Showground Arena, Norwich
18-19th May – Buxton Wool Gathering at the Pavilion Gardens in Buxton
And we are hoping to run Yarn Gathering in Mold again in September!

Add to this three additional yarn shows I’ve been accepted for and you can see that the year is going to be busy! Thank goodness for Floella (my new-to-me estate car) who will be essential in transporting everything to each event.

Next week will be my final blog post of 2023 as I will be taking a week off between Christmas and New Year. Thank you for reading my posts – and especially those of you who take the time to comment; it’s always very much appreciated.

Until next week, take care and stay warm. K x

Posted on 5th December 20235th December 2023 by Kath Andrews — 1 Comment

It’s All Happening

The Honeybun sleeves are cast-on and growing!

I finally cast them on yesterday, having decided that the calculations are now good, certainly up to the armholes. I’ve decided to knit them both at the same time, which creates a bit of a yarn tangle at times when the contrast colours are being used, but it should be much more manageable once I get the last one of those done, and I’m back to just one ball of yarn per sleeve. If you knit garments, how do you approach sleeves? Do you knit them one at a time or tackle them both together?

The second half of our Twisted workshop last Thursday went really well – and at least one of the knitters has a completed moebius brioche cowl!

Many thanks as always to Anne at Yarn O’clock for hosting us and keeping everyone well supplied with hot drinks and biscuits.

The pattern for Twisted will be available next Monday – yay! – and that means there will be discount heading its way to newsletter subscribers. If you’re not yet a newsletter subscriber but you’d like a 25% discount code for this pattern, you can sign up here:

The pattern will include a link to a really excellent video of a moebius cast-on by the amazing Cat Bordhi, which will be a great help to those unfamiliar with this technique.

The latest issue of The Knitter (196) came out last Wednesday and Part 3 of Barragán, my KAL shawl design, is in it. I’ve been keeping up with my daily progress on this and posting pics on my Instagram and Facebook stories, but for those of you not on those platforms, it’s currently looking like this (with a few extra rows worked since this photo was taken):

Once I finish the “Diamond Fantasia” pattern on this side of the shawl I cast off, rotate the shawl and work the same section again at the other end. This is how I managed to keep the shawl symmetrical, even though it was a rectangle with 4 parts to the pattern, each of which needed to be different!

I’ve finished the first sock of this pair of Bodelwyddan socks and I’m enjoying how the colours change in the yarn.

I thought it would just be a long repeating stripe, but it seems to slowly bounce back and forth between the two main shades of purple and teal. It’s a Zauberball yarn with the colour way name of “Smoking Area”. I’m not 100% convinced the length is correct, so I won’t weave the toe yarn end in yet until it’s been tried on for size by its recipient.

The Fasten Off Yarn-along is going well – there are posts and activities on most social media platforms and bingo cards you can complete, with a choice depending on whether you want to try out lots of different patterns or focus on one:

This is the third year I’ve taken part and there’s such a lovely atmosphere of folk supporting and raising up other designers and sharing gems they find. There are 96 designers taking part this year, all of whom have patterns available somewhere other than Ravelry and while the event as a whole goes on until New Year’s Even, the pattern sale continues until the end of Friday 8th December (American Eastern Time – which is pretty much Saturday morning here in the UK). You can get 25% off a vast swathe of the designers’ patterns by using the event code “FO2023”. For me that code works on Payhip and on Ravelry and it applies to all my self-published single patterns. Head to the Fasten Off YAL website to check out all the details – the patterns are even searchable this year.

There’s been some more embroidery happening too. Can you see a difference in the bottom left part?

The next few days have quite a few events taking place – I’m teaching a workshop on cable knitting tomorrow at Shaz’s Shabby Chic in Buckley, then my lovely wife and I have a stall at a school Christmas Fair on Thursday.

On Saturday it’s the Buckley Christmas Market in the shopping precinct where I shall be wearing two (metaphorical) hats! I shall have a stall, where my lovely wife will also have her cards, calendars and poetry collection, AND I shall be leading our little community choir in singing Christmas songs. Do come along if you can – the event runs from 9am until 4pm. Buckley Town Band will be playing too – and they are great!

So, as you can see there is a lot happening. And on Sunday just gone (Advent Sunday) I sang at the Advent carol service at St Mary Without-the-Walls Handbridge. It’s been so good to get back to singing again, and to feel that I can trust my voice once more. It really can be a case of ‘use it or lose it’ and I’m going to be singing there as much as my other commitments allow. There were some other additional people drafted in for this service and it was good to see some friendly faces from my previous life as a music teacher – some of whom I haven’t seen since I left the classroom in 2018!

And as it’s now Advent, the tree is up!

That’s all for now. I’ll be updating my “Where I’ll Be” page later on so you can see some of the exciting things lined up for 2024! Take care one and all, K x

Posted on 28th November 202328th November 2023 by Kath Andrews — 1 Comment

Metamorphosis

I’ve been to Evesham again over the past few days to do the reverse of last week; collecting Mum from her respite week and settling her back at home. I got back only a couple of hours ago, so today’s post will mostly be photos!

The quinces became jelly (though they needed a bit of help from me to do so)! I was secretly quite relieved that several of them were past their best (translation: starting to rot…) as, even when those ones were discarded I had 7 pounds of fruit that had to be cooked in 2 batches. That gave 4.25 pints of juice which turned into 7+ jars of jelly.

I finished the body of the adult Honeybun! It really is starting to look like a garment now. The sleeves have been calculated to the armholes twice now – having refreshed my memory of raglan-style sleeves via Shirley Paden’s Knitwear Design Workshop book that the full sleeve width should be 2.5cm more than a regular sleeve. It’s amazing how differently the colours came out in these two photos – you almost wouldn’t believe it was the same garment. Neither is quite right…

I also finished the first of this pair of socks for Sue. It looks a bit odd on the table, but I think that might be the angle I took the photo at. Yarn is from deep, deep stash, bought many moons ago.

I’m getting really excited about Wool-in Garden City in January. This will be a week-long event in a disused shop in Welwyn Garden City shopping centre. There’s a ticketed preview evening on Friday 19th and there are workshops, talks and demonstrations throughout the week.

I’m taking part in a ‘Meet the Designers’ talk on Saturday 20th 12 – 2 pm alongside Jane Crowfoot and Gurinder Kaur Hatchard where we will be talking about our crochet and knitting patterns and our creative journey into designing. (For reference, Jane Crowfoot is the designer of the crochet Mystical Lanterns blanket I’m making, so I will have to try very hard not to be too much of a fan-girl!).

Then on Sunday 11am-1pm I’m giving an ‘Introduction to Brioche Knitting’ workshop.

Tickets for all events can be purchased from the show website.

Currently running is the ‘off-Ravelry’ Fasten Off Yarn-along and I’m one of 95 participating designers! There’s a sale period for everyone’s eligible designs (for me, that’s all my single self-published patterns) that runs until 8th December and the whole event runs until December 31st. The discount during the sale period is 25% and the code is the same across the entire event for all designers – FO2023. Please note the difference between the capital “O” and the numeral “0” in the code! There are games and lots of social media activities on almost every platform you can imagine – the hashtag to search for is #FastenOffYAL.

If you’re near Flintshire and want to expand your knitting skills, I’m teaching two workshops at Shaz’s Shabby Chic in Buckley in December. Knitting Cables (both with and without a cable needle!) on Dec 6th and Introduction to Lace Knitting on Dec 13th. Both workshops are 6.30-8.30pm and are £25 per person including yarn.

That’s all from me today – apart from to let you know that my car door got fixed. The electrics in the lock had failed. Stay warm, stay safe and I tell you all about the second part of the Twisted workshop (which happens this Thursday) next time. K x

Posted on 21st November 202321st November 2023 by Kath Andrews — Leave a comment

Fruitful

Having a more organised workspace has already made a big difference to how I feel about being in the study and I think it has had a positive effect on my levels of productivity too!

I also had a chat with the resident coach-in-training about my lack of progress with my embroidery, and through that I was able to pinpoint a few things that were holding me back from working on it and ways I could get past them. As a result I can now see some definite progress has been made since I last photographed the embroidery in July.

Part of what was getting in my way was the feeling that my aim of completing a square at a time was so huge that it felt overwhelming. My current goal is to set 30 minutes on the timer and do however much I do in that time, rather like my approach to spinning. With this approach I’ve done 2 hours of stitching in the past week, as opposed to the ‘nothing at all’ of the past few months.

I haven’t posted anything on social media since last Friday, which is most unlike me. It’s been a bit busy. My passenger car door doesn’t get looked at (and hopefully fixed) until Thursday, but yesterday I was exploring the capacity of my amazing boot space by taking mum to a local nursing home for a respite/trial week. Once the back seats are down it really is tardis-like and this bodes very well for show transportation. Fortunately a friend was also able to help out – she was the one who actually transported Mum there, as although all her stuff fitted in my car, she herself couldn’t get in with the passenger door not working!

Naturally, visiting Mum involved more than just taking her to her respite week. I am also now the owner of a large box of quinces and will be making quince jelly for the first time this week. The weird looking furry bits aren’t mould – they’re just what the fruit is covered with as it is growing. It will be washed off before they go in the jam pan! They smell quite amazing already.

On to the knitting. The adult version of Honeybun is now speeding along. I’ve tweaked and triple checked all the calculations for the armhole and neck decreases and the back should be completed this evening. The main colour in this photo has not come out true to life, but you get the idea! This is the full length version in Size 18. There are 20 sizes, UK4 to UK42, and two length options for each.

Once the body is done, there are the sleeves to calculate and the stitch counts for the button band. Then it’s a case of finishing the knitting, blocking and getting the pattern to the tech editor.

I don’t think the pattern will be ready for my first show next year (Wool-in Garden City in January), but it should definitely be printed and available for the second one (East Anglia Yarn Festival in March)! I’ll tell you more about upcoming shows soon.

Both pairs of socks I’m knitting are growing. Sue’s socks have a completed gusset on the first foot and it’s just plain knitting for 30 rounds now until I get to the toe. Good TV knitting.

This extra pair of Bodelwyddan socks have a nearly completed gusset as well. These are Large, reducing down to Medium (4th size to 3rd size).

You might be able to see where the extra decreases are positioned near the needle. This is so the decreases don’t just continue from the main gusset and go underneath the foot, which could be uncomfortable.

We finally had the first part of the Twisted Workshop last Thursday at Yarn O’clock (postponed because I was ill). Everyone did really well, learning so many new skills and techniques that I think their heads were truly mashed by the end of the evening. The yarn we are using for the workshop is Podale DK and it’s a great choice. We began by getting the knitters to select their two colours to use and using the B&W feature on our phone cameras to help check they really were different in tonal value (one dark and one light).

This was as far as we got by the end of the first session.

The knitters have a little bit of homework to do before the next session completing their current round. Then next time they get to learn the final stitch and then repeat the whole stitch pattern once more to complete the cowl (and reinforce what they learnt last time!).

I bought some yarn this afternoon online. You may remember that my old school-friend treated us to a very special afternoon tea at the Pump Room in Bath where she is part of the piano trio for my 50th birthday. Wanting to celebrate her 50th in a similar way I have offered to knit her any of my designs in the colour of her choice – even black! I knew the choice was likely to be black, as that is the uniform of musicians, and her design choice is Diamonds in the Breeze, a lovely geometric lace shawl in a sport-weight yarn, originally worked using 2 skeins of Juniper Moon Farm Patagonia Organic Merino in a dark green. I’m really looking forward to knitting this design again and enjoyed scouring the internet for an appropriate yarn in a true black

That’s all from me today. Take care, K x

Posted on 14th November 202314th November 2023 by Kath Andrews — Leave a comment

Getting Organised

Yesterday I woke up with a light bulb idea. My study (smallest bedroom) has been more and more difficult to keep tidy, partly because some of the boxes I need fairly regular access to were awkwardly positioned and so was some of the shelving.

I thought that if I swapped one of the wooden bookcases with one of the sets of metal shelving many of these issues would be solved. And they were, but getting to that point took a lot of shifting of ‘stuff’; moving everything off one set of shelves and then moving the shelves (all to elsewhere in our bungalow). Then taking everything off the bookcase I was moving (including unplugging and relocating the wifi hub), moving that bookcase, cleaning and hoovering all the spaces revealed in the process and finally, putting everything back together in its new positions.

I’ve only permanently moved one thing elsewhere and disposed of two other smaller items, but it feels much better and I can actually get to my swatches box and all my yarn boxes without having to shift a ton of other stuff first!

It’s not my most ‘instagrammable’ photo, but it’s organised and will really help me keep the rest of the room tidier. The metal shelving on the left was where the wooden bookcase on the right now is.

I was also very grateful that my lovely wife refrained from reminding me she had suggested this set-up when I first bought the second set of metal shelving, until after all the moving, cleaning and reloading of shelves was finished.

We’re halfway through November now, and I took a look at my ‘want to do’ list for the month this morning. It seems that nothing has been checked off! Two of the things are ongoing daily ones (stay hydrated and walk 3km per day), so they won’t be ticked until the end of the month, but I was surprised that nothing else has been either. But then I remembered that I started the month with a terrible cold that lingered to the end of the first week, and I also checked my other list of ‘need to do’ things and saw that the majority of those have been achieved.

I have had to add an item to the ‘need to do’ list as well – get the front passenger car door fixed. Last Friday it decided to stop opening, even though the car was not locked. And, of course, it was raining. Sue is now having to travel in the back until next week when I have an appointment to see if the clever car people can fix it. Perhaps I should start practising ‘taxi’ style conversations?

On the knitting side I have nearly completed the magazine piece I am working on – it will be published in May next year (so I can’t show it to you, but it’s very pretty and in three colours of cotton).

Part 2 of Barragán Shawl – the knitalong shawl being published by The Knitter – will be finished tomorrow. Part 3 will be out in the next issue on November 29th. The stitches on the bottom left are live stitches on a silicon stitch holder cord – Part 3 will be worked off both sides of the shawl, just as Part 2 has been.

I am knitting another pair of Bodelwyddan socks. These are a Zauberball yarn, but have a much longer colour repeat than others I’ve used. I rather like it! I’m hoping I’ll be able to work it so the second sock matches the first more or less in colour, starting with grey to teal and ending with pink on the foot.

…and Sue’s socks have seen a little progress too – these are on my ‘want to do’ list. The trouble is “Knit Sue’s socks” is rather vague. I should have carried on with the SMART targets and specified something like ‘Complete one sock’.

I haven’t done any more on my adult version of Honeybun in the past week or so, but I’ll return to that tomorrow.

For the past several months my embroidery of Mum’s photo has been on my list of things to do, but it has lain untouched. I’m trying to work out why. I know I will be pleased with it when it is finally done – I just need to work out what is stopping me and how to get past it. I’ve put so much time into the embroidery that I don’t want to just abandon it, but it is incredibly tiny and I think I used too many colours when I converted the photo into a chart, so it’s quite hard to follow. I might ask Sue to practice her coaching skills on me for this one!

On Sunday I sang in a service for the first time in years. I really enjoyed it and everyone was really friendly and welcoming – and we all coped well with the semi darkness as there was a total power cut of half the street just before the service! I’ll be singing in their advent carol service as well on Sunday 3rd December. It’s at 6.30pm at St Mary Without-the-Walls, Handbridge, Chester, if anyone fancies coming. The ‘Without-the-Walls’ part of the name doesn’t mean the church has no walls, just that it’s outside (without as opposed to within) the city walls.

There are still a couple of spaces available in the Twisted workshop at Yarn O’clock. Part One is this Thursday (16th) and Part Two is November 30th. Full details can be found here. You can see all three versions of the cowl layered up on Dolly the dress form in the picture of the ‘great reorganisation’.

That’s all from me today. Stay warm and dry and out of the wind if you can, and I hope you can do some stuff that makes you happy. Kx

Posted on 7th November 20237th November 2023 by Kath Andrews — Leave a comment

Dw i ddim yn rhugl…

…yn Gymraeg, ond dw i’n dysgu! (I am not fluent in Welsh, but I am learning!)

Yesterday I hit a big milestone in my Duolingo progress – a 365 day streak! That means I’ve been learning Welsh for a whole year. Some days it’s only a quick 3-minute lesson, but that’s balanced with days where I focus for quite some time.

I am still really enjoying it and that is from someone who thought they weren’t that good at languages. I ‘did’ French and German at school to GCSE and got As in both, but it was never something I actually enjoyed – and I certainly wouldn’t have practised every single day for a year by choice!

But I’m motivated. I want to understand the adverts and signs around us when we’re out. I want to be able to watch S4C and listen to Radio Cymru! I want to read stories in Welsh, and continue to find relevant Welsh things for knitting inspiration and pattern names.

Living in Wales all signs and official communications are bilingual. It was quite funny when I bought my new car as my V5, being an official document, was bilingual, and the chap doing the hand-over had to keep turning it over to find the English sections.

So, I’m quite proud of my one-year achievement. It doesn’t say anything about how much I’ve learnt or how ‘rhugl’ (fluent) I’m getting, but it does say quite a bit about the importance of regular practice.

When you’re learning anything new, you need to keep doing it, over and over. That’s one of the reasons that my absolute beginner’s workshop sends knitters away with a project bag, needles, more wool and more stuffing and the pattern they’ve just used, so they can make more little creatures. If they were to just borrow the needles during the workshop and only have enough yarn to make the one creature in the workshop, they would need a lot of extra motivation to then go out and buy the materials to knit more. But if they’ve taken everything home with them and it’s right there? Making it easy for people to practice and repeat the new motions of knitting helps them to become fluent knitters. Just like Duolingo makes it easy for me to practise Welsh every day.

Tying in with this idea of practising new skills to help embed them through repetition, I’m going to be linking upcoming workshops with relevant patterns of mine. I’ll take the samples with me to the workshops along with copies of the printed patterns and talk about them on social media in the lead-up to the workshops. Some of my designs even came about as a result of developing workshops!

For example, Jodie Scarf was designed from the three slip stitch patterns I teach in my slip stitch workshop, and Small Acts came from the swatch I created for my Knitting Cables workshop.

I had been hoping to be well enough last Thursday to teach the first part of Twisted (the 2-part moebius brioche cowl workshop at Yarn O’clock), but unfortunately my cold had other ideas, so it has all been moved back two weeks. Part 1 of Twisted is now on 16th November and Part 2 is on 30th November. So, you still have time to book if you’re interested in learning this combination of techniques (ring Anne at Yarn O’clock on 01352 218082).

This is an unusual one to tie other designs in with, as it’s the only moebius brioche or even brioche-in-the-round design I have so far, but I do have two other moebius designs which folk may well be interested in, and I have plenty of brioche designs that are worked flat!

Coming up in December I will be running my Knitting Cables workshop on Dec 6th and Introduction to Lace Knitting on Dec 13th, both at Shaz’s Shabby Chic in Buckley.

The flyers say that the skills needed for each workshop are to be able to knit, purl, cast-on and cast-off, and that really is it. Everything else is taught during the workshop. So, if you’d like to develop your knitting skills and become more fluent in the language of knitting – now’s your chance!

And, by the way – Branwen is out now as a single, self-published pattern!

Posted on 31st October 202331st October 2023 by Kath Andrews — 2 Comments

Thriller!

Sometimes as an independent designer you get no feedback from customers, especially if a pattern is bought online and you never see their finished project.

At other times though, there is lots – and it can be thrilling! I’ve had really useful feedback from people who’ve asked questions because something wasn’t clear to them, and it’s helped me tweak the instructions or notes in a pattern to avoid that confusion arising again for someone else.

Sometimes knitters need more help and I try to break the instructions in the pattern down further for them. In some cases, of course, the help they need goes beyond what I can provide by email, so I might recommend a book on a particular technique or even suggest they book a 1-to-1 online or in-person tutorial session with me.

(Occasionally I do get emails from folk who expect a bit too much and can be rather ‘direct’ in requesting it – the one with “It doesn’t make sense. Write this pattern out line by line in my size” without even mentioning what size they were trying to make – was a particular highlight. You can guarantee the emails stop immediately when they’ve understood and they rarely acknowledge the help or say thanks…Thankfully these are rare!)

The feedback I love best is when a knitter proudly shows me their finished item, especially in person, but a photo and message can be just as exciting.

Three days ago I had a lovely message from a knitter showing me their finished Meg March brioche shawl – and it was their FIRST EVER brioche! It’s stunning, even before being blocked to size. It’s quite a thrill to see other knitters take your instructions and follow them, to create exactly the piece they wanted. And to be thanked for “such a beautiful and well written pattern” made me really happy.

The same day I also got an email from a knitter who had made Marianne Half Hap Shawl. The edging had initially caused her a few issues, but she cracked it and finished the shawl quickly from there. This was the shot of it blocking:

I knew that Ella had wanted to enter the finished shawl in her local show (Berwickshire Scottish Women’s Institute) and this weekend she won first prize in the Half Hap class! It’s the one on the bottom right – the colours look different from the pic above in different light and with the shawl folded up. That red sticker? That’s the First Prize label! I’m so delighted for Ella.

Something beautiful arrived in the post today. I had a RiverKnits voucher from one of my friends for my birthday (thanks Julie!) and, perhaps surprisingly, I chose something that wasn’t yarn! It’s an item I’ve had my eye on for a while, calling to me every time I see the RiverKnits stand, but it had always felt too much of a ‘treat’ before. Now though, with a voucher? That’s exactly the time for treats!

This is a handmade pencil case / notions bag, made with hand-woven fabric using RiverKnits’ hand-dyed yarn. It’s gorgeous and I can’t wait to use it!

There’s not a lot of my knitting to show you this week, for two reasons.

The dull reason is that I’ve had a bit of a cold (no, not Covid – I tested twice) and I haven’t done a huge amount. I am definitely on the mend and expect to be fighting fit by Thursday evening when I have the first part of the Twisted workshop.

The more exciting reason is that much of the knitting I have been doing is swatching for a submission and I can’t show you that!

Speaking of Twisted – the moebius brioche cowl workshop, here is the front page of the pattern:

We’ll be making the small DK version (top left pic) in the workshop, but the pattern folk get as part of the workshop includes all the options. Once the second part of the workshop is over (on 16th November) I’ll be publishing the pattern on all my usual platforms. If you want to book a space on the workshop, it’s not too late – ring Anne at Yarn O’clock on 01352 218082.

Tomorrow sees Part Two of Barragán Shawl being published in Issue 195 of The Knitter. I’ll be knitting along and sharing my progress on here and on social media as I did with Part One. Part Two contains the stripy borders and buff coloured sections of the lace shawl.

And next week (Monday 6th) I’ll be self-publishing the whole Branwen pattern.

Today is Hallowe’en and my lovely wife, Sue, is hosting Top Tweet Tuesday all day on Twitter. She’s getting to read lots and lots of spooky poems – it’s well worth having a look.

We may or may not get many trick or treaters as the weather is very changeable at the moment – the rain keeps suddenly starting and then stopping again – but we are prepared with sweets if we do. We haven’t carved any pumpkins this year. Instead, we have a range of cute small pumpkins and the googly eyes and sharpie pen came out to play! This way we get to eat the pumpkins as well as display them on the windowsill – no waste!

That’s all from me today. Stay safe, and do some stuff that makes you happy. K x

Posted on 24th October 202324th October 2023 by Kath Andrews — Leave a comment

I Feel Good!

We got home from Bath this afternoon, after a few days there to celebrate my turning 50. It’s where I went for my 40th and I had such a good time (coupled with the fact that two of my old school friends lived there at the time, and one of them still does), that I wanted to go back!

Different things were done during this visit from the previous one. I had hoped to visit the Fashion Museum, but had somehow missed the fact that the Assembly Rooms, in whose basement the museum was housed, has been taken over by the National Trust and is being restored. All the clothes went into storage last December before they move to a new home! However, as part of our 12.6km walk yesterday (!), we happened across a small textile exhibition taking place in a building on Queen’s Square and enjoyed visiting that instead.

I remember visiting Wool 10 years ago. We went there again and this time we also visited A Yarn Story, at the top of Walcot Street.

Also on Walcot Street was The Yellow Shop, outside which I did my ‘lego princess’ impression.

It was a long walk between the two wool shops, but definitely worth the effort. And of course, I bagged some goodies in both shops!

My old school friend who lives in Bath plays violin in the Pump Room Trio. She very kindly booked us in for Afternoon Tea (thank you Lucy!), and we got to enjoy the splendour of the Pump Room and an extraordinary vegan afternoon tea, all whilst the piano trio (piano, violin and cello – not as I once thought, three pianos) played beautiful music. There was a massive range of styles – elegant classical era pieces, the theme tune from Desert Island discs, a lovely piece of Fauré, ‘Maria’ from West Side Story, Mad World, and a rendition of Happy Birthday as two extra mini cakes were brought out – one for me and one for the other person celebrating their birthday during that sitting. We should have photographed the full spread, but we were so busy in the moment that we forgot, so I just snapped the extra (also vegan) cake:

I have to say that with spending lots of quality time with my lovely wife since Friday, our trip away to Bath (we stayed at Dorian House, which I highly recommend) and all the wonderful messages from everyone on social media, I am thoroughly enjoying being fifty. I feel good! Ronnie says he feels good too – but I’m not quite up to his level of acrobatics. This shot was taken in front of the Royal Crescent:

You may have seen that I have finished Part One of Barragán Shawl – the Knitalong being published in The Knitter.

You can still get the yarn kit as a subscription gift with the mag or order one from McIntosh (that’s an affiliate link) if you’d like to! Now, of course I do have the whole pattern already, but as I’m ‘knitting along’ I’m not going to start Part Two until the next issue of the magazine (issue 195) comes out. That should be around November 1st I think.

I’ve also been doing more sock knitting, finally returning to the sock I began for Sue a while back on the tiny tiny circular needle. I’ve decided that it’s not the best needle type for me after all, and having switched to magic loop (which I mentioned a few weeks ago) I’m now making much better progress. During the drive home I even got to the heel flap! I can’t remember what the yarn is – I bought it eons ago on eBay. I can tell you that I’m using 2mm needles, 80 sts and my usual plain top down style with a reinforced slip stitch heel.

The other knitting you might be interested in seeing this week is the progress I’ve made on the adult version of Honeybun. I’ve extended the colour work section at the bottom, so that proportionally it fills a similar amount of the body to the child’s cardigan, and I’m now heading up to the armpits. I will need another name for this pattern as it will be published separately from the original Honeybun for children, but I need them to be clearly linked by their names. Have you got any ideas? Suggestions in the comments, please!

Finally, there are still spaces available on Twisted, the two-part workshop being held at Yarn O’clock on November 2nd and 16th. Come and learn how to knit two-colour brioche in a moebius ring! £50 for the two sessions (6.30-9pm both Thursdays), including yarn to knit this cowl and the pattern which includes a larger version as well – book your place with Anne at Yarn O’clock – 01352 – 218082.

Posted on 17th October 202317th October 2023 by Kath Andrews — 2 Comments

Over The Hill and Far Away

Our weekend trip to Gloucester was very successful and Sue’s reading at the Gloucester Poetry Festival was brilliant – I’m so very proud of her. The picture above is part of Gloucester Cathedral’s tower, and yes, the sky really was that blue on Saturday afternoon, despite the torrential rain the day before. It was lovely to see the Malvern Hills again (through the rain) as we drove down, and to see Moel Famau in sunshine as we neared home! If you have a few spare minutes, do read Sue’s blog post from yesterday – it includes the first poem she read on Saturday. We enjoyed lots of readings from lots of other poets as well during the day and evening on Saturday, and I was quietly knitting on Mum’s bed socks throughout.

I now have a finished pair! The sock blocker gives more of a realistic impression of how they’ll look in use – the change between syncopated rib (leg) and stocking stitch (foot) makes them look quite odd otherwise!

I’m not going to weave in the yarn ends at the toes until Mum has tried them on. They go down to 20 stitches and look quite pointy from the top, and I want them to be comfortable for her.

I continued to knit and document my progress on my Barragán Shawl while we were away (you can still order your own yarn kit or get it free with a subscription from The Knitter). Even though I’m only doing 10 rows per day at the moment it’s growing well. Today’s rows have yet to be done, but this is what 130 rows looks like:

This photograph was taken in the morning light and is pretty true to the colour of the yarn.

Something else exciting that happened while we were away was that I picked up a new-to-me car! I’d test driven it the week before when visiting Mum and it’s perfect. Exactly the make and model I thought I needed and I can’t believe the boot space. And it’s blue. You know me and blue – I do like it. Of course now I want to experiment (play) with putting all my show stuff in it to see the best way of getting everything in. All my stuff in one car – with the passenger seat free for Sue as well. It’s been a pipe-dream.

I wore my Umbriel for the first time yesterday and it’s very cosy. Today I’ve managed to get some pics of it. It’s got generous ease which is exactly what I wanted as I will be wearing it over layers. I do like the picked up, top down sleeve construction in the design. I think this is a construction I will explore in my own designs in future – no sewing the sleeve head into the armhole after knitting it, cos it’s all made in one piece!

While we were taking pics, I also got some of Lichfield. It’s starting to pill (bobble) a bit, but I think that’s because it’s not a high twist yarn, as well as the fact that I’ve been wearing it a lot.

Sales of Bodelwyddan are pottering on – please do spread the word about the October fund-raiser for Treasure Chest YGC. 50% of Bodelwyddan sales during October are going to this charity, which helps to support folk who are going through/have been through treatment for breast cancer in Denbighshire. I was asked to design these socks last year to be part of the fund-raising and so far we’ve sold 9 copies, raising £22.50. I’d love it to be more!

I’m wearing my pair of Bodelwyddan socks today. This is the largest size in the leg, decreasing to the next size down for the foot.

Next month, which somehow is only a couple of weeks away, I get the rights back for Branwen, the first knit-along shawl I designed for The Knitter. This is one of the gorgeous photos from The Knitter.

Branwen will be going out into the world as a single pattern for the first time. There is likely to be an introductory discount for my newsletter subscribers, so if that sounds appealing, why not sign up for my newsletter by adding your email in the box below and clicking the blue button?

When I write to you next week, I shall have turned 50! The lead up to this milestone birthday has been very good so far and I’m looking forward to starting my next decade in a much better place than I started the last one. I’m even going to be doing some singing again.

Til then, take care, do stuff that makes you happy and stay safe, K x

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