Tag: Buxton Wool Gathering

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Housiversary

Part of a crocheted octagon motif from the Persian Tiles blanket by Janie Crow. It is in orange, red, dark blue, teal, yellow, light blue and cream.

Twenty years ago today we moved into our bungalow. Moving from our little flat we thought that we’d never run out of space again. How naive we were!

Regular clear outs and de-clutters have to happen to help us still fit into our home that has become more and more ‘us’ over the years. During the time we’ve been here, pretty much the only things that haven’t been changed are the walls and the bathroom (apart from the basin which had to be replaced). The garden has grown along with us too: the daffodils we planted in the lawn last year are starting to come up, the roses and fruit bushes are ready for pruning and the hellebores and snowdrops look beautiful.

It’s made me think about how things can change over time so that even though technically you’re in the same place, in other ways you’re definitely not.

When we moved in I was 30, teaching music (still part-time then) and singing as a regular alto dep at the cathedral. Now I’m 50, I’ve been out of the classroom for 5 1/2 years, I’m working with yarn full time, designing, teaching knitting, exhibiting at yarn shows and I’m singing again.

Back in the day I had made a couple of (quite simple) crochet jumpers and I loved them. I made a couple of granny square blankets too. Then I didn’t do any crochet for years, apart from the odd edging to a piece of knitting or an amigurumi, such as the unicorn I made for my sister-in-law and the Pikachu I made for Sue.

Then last year I started the Mystical Lanterns blanket designed by Janie Crow and loved it. I’ve not yet finished it, but it’s coming on. And last week I began my most challenging crochet project yet – the Persian Tiles blanket, again designed by Janie Crow. I’ve completed one octagon motif which was very successful and tried a small granny triangle which is a little lopsided at the moment.

Persian Tiles octagon motif

It’s so good to learn new things, especially when you teach – getting yourself into the place of ‘not knowing’ is really valuable to understand what it feels like for your students!

I mentioned exhibiting at yarn shows. I’ve already publicised that I’ll be at East Anglia Yarn Festival (EAYF) in Norwich next month and Buxton Wool Gathering in May.

I can now let you know that I’ll also be at Wonderwool Wales in April! This is held at the Royal Welsh Showground in Builth Wells and has always been my favourite show to visit, so I’m thrilled to be exhibiting there.

I’ll be back at the Pop-Up Wool Show in Port Sunlight too in August. And there may be more shows to tell you about in the coming months as well!!

In terms of designing, I’m juggling a couple of things at the moment. The sleeves for the adult Honeybun are nearly complete – I just need to work out how to add the extra shoulder shaping into the pattern writing.

Then the button band and it’s off to the tech editor! Fingers crossed it will be ready for Wonderwool.

I’m also working on a lovely reversible cowl which I hope will be out quite soon (no pics of that yet).

I bought some fab yarn at Ewe & Ply on Saturday and it’s already being used!

Caramel Slice was first published in The Knitter in August last year and the rights have now returned to me. The pattern is now in my own format and I’ve taken some new photos with Shelby modelling the cardigan. Once these have been fully edited and added to the pattern it will be ready to be published and I will have printed copies of the pattern with me at EAYF!

I’m at my mum’s until tomorrow – Cleo the cat says hello:

And I’ll say goodbye until next week!

Take care all and have a good week, K x

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Dros y Penwythnos

(that’s Welsh for “Over the Weekend”)!

Well, what can I say? Buxton Wool Gathering was fab! Sunday was warm and sunny with LOTS of visitors – apparently more people came that day than came over the entire weekend of the previous year. After the show closed I was able to enjoy a plant-based salted caramel ice-cream on a bench in the Pavilion Gardens which was just the thing after a busy day.

The weather on Monday took a turn as expected and it rained for much of the morning, with a few drier hours in the afternoon. It was a quieter day at the show, as is usually the case with the second day of a yarn show (that’s why I tend to visit Wonderwool on a Sunday), but everyone who was there was having a good day and was cheerful about the rain.

It was wonderful that my lovely wife was able to help me set up my stand on Saturday. We drove over in the morning and, thanks to me believing my sat-nav knew what it was doing, ending up driving across (up?) the peaks and up the Cat & Fiddle – not quite the A road I’d been expecting! However, we still got there in good time, got everything looking beautiful on the stand and went off for an explore in the rain. The cable ties for the items on the clothes rail were such a good solution as it removed the problem of things sliding onto the floor!

We had lunch at The Herb Garden, a lovely little vegetarian cafe that was friendly and welcoming with super vegan choices. Following that there was more walking, Ronnie flew above the rooftops of Buxton, we explored some of the shops and then drove up to the Premier Inn.

After settling into our room we booked a table for dinner, chilled out and dried out a little, then walked back into the town centre for dinner. Once we had walked back to the hotel we’d clocked up over 12,000 steps!

Sue had to return to Wales on Sunday and so I was on the stand by myself, but not for long, as there were so many people to chat to, both vendors and visitors.

My immediate neighbours were brilliant company over the weekend and deserve a shout-out:

Zwölf Fibres had yarn and rugs from his own sheep and was doing his first ever show. Edelweiss Fibres had gorgeous hand-dyed yarns inspired by florals and the natural beauty of Scotland. Noodle Soup Yarns are also hand dyers, specialising in punchy colour on sock weight yarn and All Wool That Ends Wool had a wide range of full and mini skeins in bright and bold hand dyed colours.

You’ll see some of their stands at the end of this video I took on Monday morning:

Buxton Wool Gathering, just before the start of Day 2

I also got to meet Pod from A Happy Crow in person (I follow them on social media), learnt how to make a Saxon Vat for indigo dyeing without extra chemicals from the fab folks at Blotz Natural Dyes and managed to grab a few good chats with the one person I knew from before this show: Tanya from The Woolly Tangle.

There were lots of other fantastic folk there as well, but my brain can only remember so much today, so please forgive me if I was chatting to you and haven’t given you a mention.

A couple of designing highlights of the weekend were: when two people came round the corner and one exclaimed “I recognise that!”, pointing to Bargello Aurora Wrap which she had just finished knitting and when someone at my stall said “I’ve got a list”, and just as I was thinking she was going to ask for the whereabouts of some the other vendors, showed me the section of the list she meant – she had gone through the patterns on the website and had a list of six patterns she wanted!

There were lots of other great moments – those are just the two that stand out most in my thoughts at present.

Sue had made dinner when I got home on Monday evening and it was so good to sit down to eat a home-prepared meal. I slept REALLY well too!

This morning I combined my notes of sales from each day and was delighted to realise I’d sold 77 patterns and 4 kits – so over 80 patterns in total. That led to some very necessary re-printing (especially as I’d sold 22 copies of Tiffany) in readiness for Wool@J13 this coming weekend! That will be a slightly smaller event in term of number of vendors (about 30 rather than 50), but there will be food vans and music and workshops happening as well, so it promises to be a lively show. The stands are in a marquee in the grounds of Bishton Hall; fingers crossed the weather improves a bit from what we’ve had today and the grass has a chance to dry out beforehand – especially for those brave souls who will be camping! Not me, I’ll be extending my range of Premier Inns visited.

I didn’t get much knitting done while I was away – though I did manage to turn the heel of a sock I’m working on during a quiet patch on Monday. I will be glad to get back to the needles for a last bit of swatching for my next design during the next few days before I pack up the car on Friday and do it all again!

Did you have a good weekend? K x

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Have You Any Wool?

It’s been a full week, with much of it being dedicated to my next design commission. The pattern is written for the back and both fronts and for the sleeves up to the underarms. So, really it’s just the sleeve caps and the collar to do in terms of writing/grading. This design is in 10 sizes. The sample size required will be too small for me to wear once I get it back, but it does mean that it will take less time to knit! The yarn arrived a few days ago and it’s a really gorgeous, vibrant colour:

It’s a really soft pure wool yarn that I’ll tell you more about in the coming weeks. Later on today I’m going to cast-on the back for the sample! Hurrah!

This evening I’m teaching a stranded colour-work workshop at Yarn O’clock. Stranded colour-work is one of my favourite knitting techniques, as you’ll know if you’ve looked at my pattern pages. It used to almost always be referred to as Fair Isle knitting, but the term stranded colour-work is becoming more common now. The idea is having two contrasting yarns being used in each row, one as the background colour and one as the pattern colour, and handling the yarns so they create neat ‘floats’ or strands of yarn across the back and a consistent colour-work design on the front. I’ll be taking some of stranded designs with me this evening for the knitters to examine and help them understand what they are aiming for.

This is what they are going to be making:

I’ve left the yarn ends loose on this swatch deliberately so I can demonstrate how to weave the ends in tonight.

As well as working on my new design, I’ve been making good progress with my Umbriel sweater in Cirro from The Fibre Co. I found a few issues with numbers and mirrored instructions in the back shoulders and front of the pattern and have made a note of them. I ended up counting stitches in one row at least six times, along with checking the fabric for dropped stitches, before going back to the pattern and doing some maths. One too many stitches instructed to be knit after an initial cast-off caused me quite a headache for a good few minutes! I have now finished the whole body and I’m pleased with it:

The next stage is to seam the shoulders. Stitches are then picked up around the armholes to work the sleeves top down. I might do both at once, or I might just make notes of any changes I have to make as I go. Knitting two sleeves at once avoids the ‘sleeve island’ that many knitters often feel marooned on, and it does mean that the sleeves are highly likely to match – so long as you remember to swap between the two sleeves every one or two rounds. However, I often prefer to make sure a sleeve works for me, writing down any changes to the pattern, going quite slowly with the first and then knit the second one more quickly from my notes. Also, there is always the possibility of getting the two balls of yarn tangled or more seriously mixed up by knitting on a sleeve with the yarn from the other, or forgetting to switch between the two or it just feeling like a sleeve is taking twice as long as it should (because you’re making two at once)!

I probably won’t start the sleeves now until after Buxton Wool Gathering.

In preparation for Buxton Wool Gathering, I’ve printed even more patterns over the past couple of days, including the final version of Am Byth, which is also available as an update for those who’ve already bought it, and Bargello Aurora Wrap which was first published in The Knitter in September (Issue 180). Before the printing could take place, the photos had to be taken and much laughter and fun was had on Saturday afternoon in the garden as Sue took over 200 pics! At least with so many to choose from I can be ruthless about the ones I don’t like – these are usually the ones that catch me looking gormless or pulling an odd face!

Am Byth
Bargello Aurora Wrap

Am Byth is already available in my online stores, and Bargello Aurora Wrap is available as part of The Knitter issue 180 either as a back issue or as an ebook on Ravelry. I’m going to add Bargello Aurora Wrap as a single pattern to my online stores after the show at Buxton this weekend.

I’m really looking forward to Buxton. I’ll be heading there on Friday to set up in the afternoon and my lovely wife will join me later in the weekend as my ‘booth babe’ – the amazing person who talks enthusiastically to knitters, helps find things, get cups of tea and holds the fort when I need the loo!

I’ll be on Stand 31, circled in orange and a full list of vendors can be seen here.

It’s only £5 entry for the day or £8 for a weekend ticket, which is very good value I think. Held in the Buxton Pavilion Gardens, the show is open 10am-4pm on both days, with entry from 11am for those who buy tickets on the door.

The only potential spanner in the works at the moment is the weather forecast. We woke up to a centimetre of snow here in North Wales this morning. It’s all gone now – even though it took some of it until about an hour ago to melt where the sun wasn’t shining. I usually like snow, but not when I need to travel in it. Still, the tyres are all good and I’m going to allow myself plenty of time. But please keep your fingers crossed for good weather for me anyway?

I’ll tell you all about how it went next week! ‘Til then, take care, stay warm and do something that makes you happy. K x

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Everything Happens at Once

It’s been a productive week and one that got busier as it went along! It seems as though my work is building momentum currently and that’s really quite exciting. This wouldn’t have been possible while I was a full-time school teacher as I just wasn’t able to put the time in to yarn-based stuff to get things happening.

The socks are finished as I intended and, as you can see, they fit me really well. I can’t wear them ‘properly’ yet as I want to use them as a teaching aid at my sock workshops at Yarn O’clock on Thursday and there wouldn’t be time to wash and dry them between now and Thursday evening. The yarn is from RiverKnits – it’s the cormo wool 4-ply version of their 2022 Open Day Special yarn, dyed with Lola from Third Vault Yarns, and the colourway is called ‘Ankh Morpork’. The pattern is the basic sock pattern I always use for me; 2.25mm needles, 80 stitches to cast on, rib for a while, stocking stitch for a while, heel flap, heel turn, gusset decreases to 68 or 72 sts (68 in this case), work foot straight for a bit, toe decreases, graft. What some people call a ‘vanilla’ sock.

Yesterday’s beginner knitting class went well. It was still just the one lady attending and she got on really well. I forgot to take a photo of her bunting triangle, so instead, here’s a pic of the one I made. She did some extra eyelet rows in hers too! I rather like the extra eyelets – it keeps it interesting and add extra practice of yarn overs too! Our next class will be in two weeks, with the focus on using knit and purl stitches to create texture. I’ll be adding it as an event to Facebook to see if that helps encourage folk to book a place.

I chose my next fibre and started spinning it. I’ve got 200g of this lovely Bluefaced Leicester wool. It’s dyed by FibreHut and the colourway is called ‘Faded Blooms’ which I think suits it well. As I’ve got more fibre to play with, I decided to spin this one a little thicker. The singles are (mostly) coming out around a DK weight and I’m hoping the plied yarn will be somewhere between an aran and a chunky weight. I do need to concentrate to avoid drifting back to spinning finely though. It’s certainly eating up the fibre more quickly spinning this way!

The final section of our mystery knit-along, Am Byth, was published on Friday and I’ve done two videos to help folk with certain technical aspects. One was for the 5 stitches to 1 stitch decrease and I’ve been absolutely astounded at how many views it has had on Twitter – at the time of writing, over 1700! I will add this one to the website as well. The other video I recorded was for one of the cast-off options. it’s a sewn cast-off that gives a fabulous finish to a ribbed fabric, but it’s not one that everyone knows.

Also, now the larger cables are complete, can you see why I called it ‘Am Byth’? Am byth is Welsh for ‘forever’, and these closed cables look like the eternity symbol (when you hold the knitting on its side!).

I’ve also started getting ready for Buxton Wool Gathering – which is now less than four weeks away!! These are the filing cases I transport and store my printed patterns in and I’ve been going through my patterns spreadsheet, deciding which patterns I need more copies of, and I started printing more out today. The next thing to do is to go through the kits and see what I’ve got and what I could do with replenishing. Although, at a pretty big yarn show (there will be 54 vendors) it’s not as if folk won’t be able to get some gorgeous yarns from the other stalls to knit my designs with.

Part Two of Branwen is in the new issue of The Knitter that is in the shops from Thursday. It’s a knit-along shawl (but not a mystery) using West Yorkshire Spinners Fleece. It’s a lovely DK yarn made with Bluefaced Leicester wool. There are three more parts to the pattern after this one, and I will of course be publishing the whole pattern once I receive the rights back. This also means that if you want to read the interview with me in Issue 185 you have one day left to visit WHSmith and buy a copy!

Yesterday I had two more design submissions accepted which is lovely and very exciting, and one of the reasons for added busying! I set up the Excel spreadsheet for the first one that’s due and started working on that this afternoon. I bet you didn’t know designing knitting patterns was so glamorous, eh?! Seriously though, it’s amazing how much easier the process is with a few formulae up my sleeve – it helps turns one set of numbers into ten far more quickly than I could ever do on my own. Afterwards, I go through it all and make sure it’s still elegant and all the sizes represent the design concept ‘authentically’. Wow, that sounds a bit pretentious, but it basically means if you have a sweater with a design where, for example, a cable hits the shoulder just by the neckline in one size, it needs to be positioned so that it hits the shoulder in the same place in all the sizes. The geek in me loves playing with the numbers to make it all work.

There have been one or two less fabulous things that have happened this week too – but that’s the way of the world, isn’t it? One of the things was that I broke ANOTHER tooth this morning whilst eating my breakfast. At least I already have a dentist appointment in two weeks… I think I need to go back to porridge oats stirred through plant-based yoghurt, it’s far less hazardous than a bowl of cereal!

Anyway, take care one and all and don’t go clicking any links in your notifications until you’re absolutely certain you know who it’s from! And do something that makes you happy this week. K x