Last week I promised I would show you my progress with my Persian Tiles Blanket, designed by Jane Crowfoot and my Bargello Aurora Scarf. I’m quite pleased with both.
The large motifs for the blanket are on their final three rounds.
One of these 16 motifs is complete – that’s the one I made first and one to the left of it has a dark blue round with stitches of different heights that changes it from a flower / star to an octagon. I hope to have completed this round on all the other 14 motifs by next week and perhaps have begun the cream round with the stitches that cross over each other – that’s the hardest bit in my opinion.
As for the Bargello Aurora Scarf, I’m just over a third of the way through it! It probably could have been more, but since I got home from my *second* trip to the midlands last week (it was planned, but it was a lot of driving), I’ve been crocheting in the evenings instead.
There will be nine blocks of the stripe pattern repeat in total. Yesterday I wrangled with inkscape, a programme I use for drawing .svg files for schematics. I don’t use it very often, so remembering how to move nodes (the points where the lines change direction) etc and edit files took longer than I would have liked, but I do now have schematics for the cowl and the scarf as well as the wrap.
I won’t have copies of the updated Bargello Aurora pattern with me at Wool@J13 this weekend as I want to finish the scarf sample first and double check the measurements and yarn quantities used, but I will have it at the Pop Up Wool Show in Port Sunlight on August 18th and it will hopefully be available online before then as well.
There will be new designs and new kits at Wool@J13 though! Leaf & Vine has returned to me as I told you last week and I will have printed copies of that, the new brioche cowl (now named Bryn!) will be there in both printed pattern and kit form (with kits comprising the pattern, yarn and a stitch marker in a tin), and the pride kits will be there with the same bundle offer as online.
The Bryn Brioche Cowl kits all contain the same amount of yarn, allowing you to simply choose your colours and then decide which size you want to make.
That’s quite a few items having their first show outing! I was going through my inventory list and as well as these ‘brand new to shows’ designs, there will be about 20 other products that I didn’t have with me last year at Wool@J13, including patterns, kits, postcards and hand-spun yarn. I just hope I can fit it all into my car and then into my stand space! (Barragán will be making its show debut at the Pop Up Wool Show).
I have a new brioche knitting workshop coming up in a couple of weeks! Next Steps in Two-Colour Brioche Knitting is ideal for knitters who have learnt the basic two-colour brioche stitch and now want to explore the technique further. Knitters will create this amazing swatch, learning increases and decreases that will open up a whole range of brioche knitting patterns.
The workshop is being held at Shaz’s Shabby Chic in Buckley on July 10th, 6.30-8.30 and the full details can be found on my events page as well as on ticketsource where you can book a workshop place.
I will also be running this workshop AND my Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Knitting workshop as online Zoom events later in the year, so keep your eyes peeled for those if this is a knitting technique you’d like to explore, but you can’t get to North Wales (or to Yarndale in North Yorkshire, where I am teaching Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Knitting on Saturday 28th September – there are just 3 spaces left on the Yarndale workshop).
I haven’t been at home much this week with the double trip to the midlands, but we have been able to get into the garden this weekend. There has been some serious pruning of the box at the bottom of the garden (it was almost twice as tall as us!) and we’ve even trimmed the hedge! Well, some of it. We couldn’t get right down to the bottom because the box was in the way, but now that’s been brought back under control we’ll be able to finish the hedge off. This is the hedge that acts as a backdrop for many of my photos of knitting when it’s modelled on a human! Our neighbour used to cut our side every year while we were away in the summer, but since he died (quite a number of years ago now), we’ve had someone in to do it twice, but it hasn’t been enough – and we felt it used to get more of a tickle than a prune anyway. I reckon we’ve lost at least two feet of garden to the hedge, judging from how much it came in front of the bottom garage window. So, we bit the bullet and bought a pole hedge trimmer. We took off about a foot from the width of the hedge on Sunday, but we still need to remove more. We are being very careful – gloves, proper shoes and so on. This pic gives some idea of how much the hedge has overgrown – that’s after we trimmed a foot or so off (and bevelled the corner to get more light into the garage)!
The veg has been very poor this year, with everything apart from a few kale plants having been eaten by slugs or snails. However the fruit bushes are looking mighty fine, and the blackcurrants are ready to be picked!
Jam making time is coming near. Maybe after the weekend?
That’s all from me today. The next time I write it will be July! Which reminds me, if you’d like to receive exclusive discount codes and more, then do sign up for my monthly newsletter, which comes out at the start of each month.
Take care one and all, K x