TexStyle is a new fibre and textile festival in the north of England. We’re bringing together independent stitch craft creators under one roof and I am delighted to be part of it!
Join us at Manchester Central to celebrate all the fibre crafts you love. We’ll have a hall full of knitting and crochet, sewing and quilting, weaving, and more.
I will have a ‘designer stand’ at this event, so I will have patterns and samples only with me, no kits or other items.
Recently I have been enjoying the simplicity of crocheting a large granny square with a set sequence of colours. I can relax and as long as I can count to three it pretty much sorts itself out. Mind you, the counting bit isn’t foolproof!
It’s steadily and slowly growing which is good. I’m still not entirely convinced whether or not the two darkest shades of green are in fact the same colour – I think they might be, but as long as I keep to the sequence I’ve chosen it doesn’t actually matter.
This urge for simplicity may surprise you as I am more known for my love of knitting quite detailed and sometimes complex things. There has been a bit of that too. I’ve finished the new sample of my Prime Cowl and love this colour combo. I still haven’t got it listed on the website – apologies for that. I will get it on there soon.
It did languish in the sink for about 5 hours yesterday evening as I had forgotten I’d left it to soak. I don’t think it minded.
I also began this yesterday:
It’s a knitted gnome from the book The Gnomes of Grimblewood by Sarah Schira and it’s intended for my mum. Don’t worry, she doesn’t use the internet so she won’t see this. What you can see so far is the hat and the start of the body. The arms, nose and beard will be knitted separately and sewn on.
I’ve gradually started updating the website, beginning with events – I’ve added two more yarn shows to the listings this morning. There are several more and some workshops at the yarn shows to be added as well. The next event we are at is Stollen & Wolle at the RiverKnits studio in Weedon Bec this Sunday. It’s open from 10-4 and entry is just £5. If you are coming, please try to get an advance ticket as this greatly helps their caterers.
Also still languishing is my 4ply What Do Points Make? which is still waiting to be blocked. However, since I saw someone’s recent post that said their’s had waited two months for 15 minutes of sewing up (the two short side seams), I know I’m not alone here. It will get done. It won’t be ready by Sunday for Stollen & Wolle, but hopefully it will be ready by mid-December for Yuletide Yarnies at the Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings which is our last show of 2025.
I hope you all have a good week and if you come to Stollen & Wolle on Sunday, please say hello. K x
The pastries shown in the pic at the top were from Jusrol from the supermarket that I ‘made’ this afternoon. You just unroll the pastry, spread the cinnamon stuff on, roll up again, slice, bake and drizzle with the icing. Very easy and ideal when you want a pastry and don’t have time to make from scratch or get to a bakers that sell vegan ones. These also happen to be vegan friendly! Perfect for what I needed – you can see I didn’t wait long…
Yarndale preparations are nearly complete, after lots and lots of printing and putting kits together and I have one more delivery arriving today that will be very exciting to reveal at the weekend!
Yesterday’s delivery was more mundane, but very important for my stand set-up: two mops. No, I don’t intend to mop out my pen before setting up my stand; the removable handles will be the supports for my business banner! There is a loop at the top of each handle perfect for a cable tie and I will be able to attach the handles to the rails of the pen with either more cable ties or string (or both). There won’t be a mop head in sight (or even present – as the whole thing comes apart into five pieces, so the mop heads will be staying at home)! I’ll photograph it on Friday as we set up in case you aren’t going to Yarndale and can’t quite picture how it will work.
I did consider broom handles, and also did extensive googling for lengths of wood with pre-drilled holes as I didn’t fancy grappling with Dad’s old Black & Decker drill just before a show, but when I discovered that mop handles tend to have hanging loops at the top (presumably so the mop heads can hang and dry out in between uses) that seemed the way to go. It’s amazing the rabbit holes you can end up going down on the internet when you need to find something very specific that hasn’t been invented for the purpose you need. Funnily enough, the company I bought the banner from don’t sell portable things to suspend said banners from. You might have thought that a search of ‘banner stands’ or ‘frames to hang banners from’ would have produced the solution to my needs, but no! The process of working out what might work and what wouldn’t was quite head spinning and I’m very grateful to all the members of the Yarn Show Vendors group on Facebook who answered my cry for help on how on earth I was going to display my banner. Wonderwool was easy as it could just be hung from hooks over the high temporary walls to the stands and at other events I’ve been able to attach it to the marquee frame (Wool @ J13) or string it between my clothes rails (Pop Up Wool Show), but with the layout I would have at Yarndale that wasn’t going to be an option.
Aside from printing lots of patterns and getting my kits and workshop materials in order, I’ve been doing quite a lot of knitting and some crochet this week. And this time it’s stuff I can show you!
The new sample of Elinor is coming along. I’ve got 20 more rows of the border to do before the edging and I will soon break into the second skein.
These skeins are 1200m, so it’s very very fine laceweight yarn – most laceweight is 800m per skein. I’m wondering whether it will pass the wedding ring test once complete. Very fine lace shawls were said to be able to pass through a wedding ring. however, it will be a big shawl (approx 2m across when complete and my current stitch count is nearing 900 stitches per row), so even with such fine yarn that may not work.
As the rows of Elinor are long and it’s very fine yarn, it’s also been useful to have some knitting on the go that’s easier on the eyeballs. My long loved Manu cardigan, twice mended, has gone under the arms again (despite thorough darning in the past) and I’ve started making a new one. I found some DK yarn in the deep stash which is a bit plumper than the yarn I used previously and I’ve gone up a needle size to keep the fabric supple. I’m not entirely sure the colours are working though. The palest colour (it’s like a lime green in real life) stands out far more than the other shades do. And with the yarn being thicker (and a bit shorter) I’m not sure there’ll be enough for the cardigan at the rate I’m getting through it, even if I leave off the pockets. So, here it is, sitting in temporary time-out while I consider its future.
I will use the yarn, even if not for this cardigan. Maybe I’ll do a Lichfield in colour blocks with the stitch pattern sections in the contrasting colours!?
I’ve woven in the ends of my Mystical Lanterns blanket (apart from the ends of the joining yarn) and it looks very respectable on the back as well as the front now. The left hand pic (with the clear white wavy lines from joining the strips of motifs) is the back.
Last Thursday I was at Yarn O’clock, talking with Anne about patterns that would work well with the new DK Chimera she was expecting from RiverKnits – it’s arrived and you can see it on her social media pages. I remembered that Into the Vortex had originally been written for 50g of the 4ply Chimera and 50g of Nene 4ply (another RiverKnits yarn) and we wondered how the pattern might work knitted in DK on larger needles.
I’ve started an experiment, knitting the first couple of sections of Into the Vortex in John Arbon Knit By Numbers and West Yorkshire Spinners Croft, both of which are DK yarns. I’ve done Parts 1 and 2 on 5.5mm needles (the original 4ply was on 4.5mm) and Part 1 on 5mm needles for comparison. This is because I started on 5.5mm, but the lace section in yellow felt much floppier than the first slipped stitch section in teal, so I’m trying again with 5mm to see if that works better.
It’s probably also due to the character of the two yarns being very different, but I want to see which needle size works best. Once I’ve worked that out and confirmed that the small version of the pattern can be made using 100g of each colour of DK yarn, I’ll add that as an option to the pattern. I’d love to knit one in the DK versions of the original RiverKnits yarns too! I’d forgotten how much fun the vortex shape is to knit as well.
Whilst I was at Yarn O’clock I treated myself to a new book.
Now, Tunisian Crochet is not a technique I’ve tried at all, but it looks really interesting. I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to have a play with it soon. I mean, it’s not like I’m busy or anything, is it…?
That’s all from me for today. If you come to Yarndale at the weekend, please come and say hello! We’re on stand L14. If you can’t make it there, I’ll try to remember to take lots of photos and tell you all about it next week.
Take care one and all, K x
…well you could give up, but that isn’t what I do, is it?
Today both I and Floella (my lovely car) have both had to have a second go at something. She needed a new tyre before she could pass her MOT as one of them was bulging(!), and I needed to sort out the spaghetti tangle that my spinning had become. We have both now succeeded!
You’re probably more interested in the spinning (I hope), so I shall tell you what happened. Last week my singles were coming along nicely and I was spinning it all onto one bobbin with the plan to chain ply some of it into a 3-ply structure and bracelet ply the rest as a 2-ply. Chain plying works really well off a single bobbin, and I started to do this, but didn’t love the effect – I wanted the colours to blend and contrast more and for that I needed to ply the yarn either from two bobbins or by using each end of the singles yarn.
Do you remember that when I posted about spinning last week I mentioned I hadn’t done any spinning for a while? I also forgot that winding 100g of yarn around your wrist and middle finger to prep for bracelet plying is a really stupid idea. Three times I rescued my middle finger from the tightening yarn around it before it went completely blue. And then I could barely get it all off my wrist. I’d also forgotten that I’d bought a tool to use instead of wrapping the yarn around my hand back in June…
So, I did eventually get the 100g of singles spun yarn off my hand, but there was no way I was going to be able to get it to hang nicely from my other wrist while I plied it. It crinkled itself into a telephone wire/spaghetti style ball that I tried to ply from with it on my lap, but that didn’t work either. The photo below is just some of it!
The telephone wire nature of the yarn made me think that it probably had too much twist in it as well and I decided to attempt a rescue. The lump of wool had divided itself almost into two so I snapped the yarn and developed a plan. If I could get this mess back onto two bobbins with approximately half on each, then I could try again with the plying. Very slowly I eased the yarn onto the bobbin, turning the wheel in the opposite direction to remove some of the extra twist. I had to keep stopping to undo knots and tangles, but I got there in the end.
After that I went straight into plying the two strands together – still moving in the opposite direction of the first twist (that’s what you do when you ply singles together), which probably removed a little bit more of the original over-twisting.
I’ve actually ended up with a decent looking yarn with exactly the contrasting changing colours in the two strands that I was after. But blimey, it was hard work and I did for a while considering walking away from it as a lost cause. I’m so glad I didn’t though. It was worth trying again and not giving up!
Today hasn’t just been about spinning and visiting the garage though. I have also pressed send on a pattern that will be published in January and submitted another design idea to another publication. These are both exciting things. I’m hoping the submission will be accepted – and if it is that will be another ‘if at first you don’t succeed’ moment, as the designed has been submitted before elsewhere. This time I’ve reworked the idea, re-swatched and I think it’s now a stronger design all round. Sometimes not being successful first time around leads to an even better result at the end!
I can’t show you the new pattern I’ve just sent off or the submission idea, so there isn’t any new knitting to show you this week. I have done some more crochet, returning to my Mystical Lanterns blanket (another great design by Janie Crow). Two more strips of motifs have been added to it this weekend. It’s about half the size recommended in the pattern at the moment. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll make it any bigger than that – there will be enough yarn – or if I’ll make it the size stated and have it as a cosy lap blanket.
Of course I haven’t forgotten about Yarn Gathering on Sunday!
There are daily posts going out on Instagram and Facebook highlighting each of the 17 vendors attending. If you can make it to The Daniel Owen Centre in Mold on Sunday (CH7 1AP), please come along!
The vendors we have coming are:
Plus, Anne will be opening Yarn O’clock between 12-1pm!
Entry is free, you don’t need to book a ticket, parking in Mold is free on Sundays and you will be able to visit the Mold Food and Drink Festival as well. I’m really excited about co-hosting our third annual Yarn Gathering event with Anne from Yarn O’clock and also being one of the vendors.
If you can’t make it on Sunday, I’ll tell you all about it next week – as well as getting even more exciting about Yarndale at the end of September! Until then, take care and, if at first you don’t succeed… have another go! Kx
We spent last week in Kent visiting friends and family and the week culminated in going to see The Manic Street Preachers / Suede at Dreamland in Margate. It was very good, and you can read more about it (along with a fantastic Ronnie photo) over on my lovely wife’s blog, Singing as the Darkness Lifts and see why James Dean Bradfield shouted a “Thank you!” to us. She does an audio version too!
I had finished knitting my Bargello Aurora scarf before we left for Kent and I blocked it the day we got home. Yesterday it was ready for me to remove the pins and finish the ends off. I’m very pleased with it and I’m looking forward to taking some photos of it on Daisy (one of my dress form mannequins) later on today to add to the pattern.
The updated pattern will go live on all my platforms (Ravelry, Payhip, Lovecrafts and my website) on Friday, so you only have to wait three more days.
Since we got home I’ve also woven in all the ends on my Persian Tiles Blanket, designed by Janie Crow. It does need a final wash to allow the border and seams to relax and lie flatter, and I’m watching the weather forecast carefully to choose a consistently dry day to do this so it can dry outside.
This project has had so much attention on Twitter every time I’ve posted about it. I can only hope that one day one of my own designs will be admired as much!
My new Elinor Hap Shawl sample is steadily growing. I’ve done three and a half pattern repeats of the 15 that make up the centre square so far. I’m enjoying knitting this one again and the finer lace weight yarn is giving a really soft fabric It’s rather wide with 191 stitches in this section, but then there’s just the border and the edging. The whole shawl uses traditional lace stitch patterns. The stitch pattern in the centre square is called Smiling Diamonds – once it’s been blocked you’ll be able to see why more easily!
For a while now I’ve been planning to run some Zoom Workshops and yesterday I finally booked them in! All workshops are 2 hours long, running from 7-9pm (British Summer Time/GMT+1) and cost £25 per person. I’ve put a 10-person limit on each the workshops so that people can interact and get the most out of it.
Zoom Workshops currently available are:
Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Knitting – Tuesday 8th October
Fair Isle (Stranded) Knitting – Saturday 12th October
Next Steps in Two-Colour Brioche Knitting – Tuesday 22nd October
I’ll be adding these workshops to the Events page on my website later. The links above go straight to the relevant TicketSource page where you can see all the details and book a place if you wish.
I’ve been thinking about swatching a lot lately and have been doing quite a bit of it too.
Swatching as a designer is like playing and I love it. During our week away I had my squared paper and pencil out along with my needles and yarn, and knitted 7 different swatches around an idea I had until I finally cracked it with the 8th swatch. It wasn’t a random idea; I’m working on a submission for publication and there is a brief – techniques to include and a level of difficulty to provide, as well as specific yarns/colours they’re looking to use. I’ll be drawing up the submission document this week and I really hope it’s accepted. Of course, as these swatches are for a design submission I can’t show them to you, but I did enjoy making them and tweaking the idea until I got to the Goldilocks ‘just right’ moment.
The other type of swatching I’ve been thinking about is tension swatching. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but a knitter’s claim that they ‘always knit to tension’ and therefore don’t need to swatch before starting a project is so strange to me. They might generally turn out the ‘recommended tension’ on a yarn ball band, but that doesn’t mean anything when it comes to a pattern.
The pattern tension is the designer’s or sample knitter’s tension – it’s the number of stitches and rows that they got across 10cm/4in when working a specific stitch pattern on a specific needle. Any two knitters given the same needles and the same yarn are highly likely to knit to a different tension – sometimes wildly different. Even a small difference adds up over a larger piece of knitting and can even result in a knitter running out of yarn if they were unaware their tension was looser than that in the pattern, as it creates a larger finished item which inevitably uses more yarn.
Here are two swatches knitted by different people using the same yarn and needle size. The swatches themselves are different sizes because a different number of stitches were cast on and a different number of rows were knitted. It’s the size of the stitches themselves that is important.
I can see they look different, but perhaps not very different. It’s only the stocking stitch sections that will be measured – the borders are just to help the swatches lie flat and not curl up.
When measured the smaller swatch has 24.5 sts x 34 rows over 10cm and the larger swatch has 23.5 sts x 33.5 rows over 10cm. That sounds very similar, doesn’t it? It’ll be fine, won’t it? Not necessarily. Scale it up. Say it was for something that has 500 stitches. For the knitter of the smaller swatch that fabric would be 204cm wide, but for the knitter of the larger swatch the same number of stitches would be nearly 213cm wide. That’s a difference of 9cm in the finished items for the same number of stitches!
What’s the solution? It’s easy! Knit a tension swatch in the given stitch pattern and needle size (make it 12-15cm in each direction). Wash it and dry flat, or block more firmly with pins if the pattern says to. Then measure 10cm across the stitches and count them, and measure again down the rows and count them. Compare these numbers to the tension given in the pattern. If you get fewer stitches than the pattern tension states your tension is looser, so try again with a smaller needle. If you get more stitches your tension is tighter, so try again with a bigger needle. Wash and dry this new swatch and measure it. Stitch gauge (tension) is more important than row gauge as it’s harder to adjust around. Patterns often say “continue in pattern as set for another XX rows or until work measures XX cm”. This allows a knitter to adjust the number of rows worked if necessary to achieve the right length – this is much easier to do than adjusting the number of stitches.
So many knitters refuse to take the step of knitting and measuring a tension swatch, saying it’s a waste of time, but surely it’s more of a waste of time (and money) to knit a whole garment that doesn’t fit you, or to run out of yarn just before you finish (if your tension is looser) and then have to buy another ball/skein (if you can find it still for sale)? If you’re a knitter who is reluctant to swatch before a project, please give it a go! You might find it saves you time and money in the long run – and who wouldn’t appreciate that?
That’s all from me for today. Take care and do something that makes you smile this week. K x
One good thing about being the passenger on a long car journey is that there is plenty of knitting time. And so I have finally finished Sue’s socks that I began while we were at Wonderwool in April. The variegations in the yarn (dyed by Weku Yarn) are very striking and the pooling shifts in unpredictable ways, giving a dynamic effect. It does mean that the texture of the sock pattern gets a little lost unless you are close up, but Sue assures me that they are very comfortable and she loves them. I used my Bodelwyddan sock pattern, making the fourth size of five.
I cut out 7 rounds of the foot before the toe, following my own instructions: “Cont as set, working through Rnds 1-10 of Leg Patt for another 37 (40:42:45:42) rnds, or until sock is 4 (41⁄2:5:51⁄2:6) cm shorter than wearer’s foot from heel to big toe. Check for fit if possible.” The highlighted numbers just show the size I was making.
it really is important to check for fit on the foot length as the size made is chosen by leg circumference (with potential for shifting between sizes on the foot). The length suggested is the ‘standard’ length for each circumference, but who is standard? We’re all different and that’s what makes hand knit socks special – they have the capacity to fit the wearer perfectly.
Last week I was anticipating having a new design out in Issue 204 of The Knitter and I was a bit disappointed when it wasn’t there! However, I have since found out that it’s been held back to Issue 207 for a very lovely reason, so in three month’s time, I shall be able to tell you all about it!
So, my update to Bargello Aurora is ready, and I just need to get photos of the blocked scarf into the pattern before it can be published. Another design of my that is getting an update is Elinor Hap Shawl. This is the ‘sister’ pattern to Marianne Half Hap and I’m enjoying knitting up a new sample for it as well as thinking about ways to improve the layout of the written pattern and charts.
I’m using a particularly fine lace weight for this sample. It’s Ripples Crafts Knockan Laceweight in ‘A Slice of Lime’, a 100% merino wool with 1200m per 100g. Let of the laceweight yarn I’ve used before has been 800m per 100g, so this is superfine, but it does mean I only need 2 skeins for the whole shawl, rather than 3! The pattern will list the length of yarn used as well, so. If you have laceweight yarn that comes in 50g skeins you’ll be able to be as precise as possible when deciding how many are needed for this shawl.
I have finished my Persian Tiles blanket! This photo is not the finished article, but it is the most recent photo I can show you.
There are six rounds of border all the way around the blanket as well now. I do need to weave in all the ends from the seaming and the border and give it a final block (simply hand wash gently and dry it flat). One of the octagons has its red and orange petals facing the wrong way – B2 if you look at it like a map reference – but as many lovely folk have said on social media it gives it character, makes it unique and is a good reminder that nothing is perfect! I really enjoyed making this blanket and if you fancy doing some crochet from a very well written pattern I highly recommend anything by Janie Crow who designed this.
You may have noticed a new tab on my website. “Supporting Small!” is a new initiative from Amanda who owns Moorlands Wool and Crafts, a lovely yarn shop in Leek, Staffordshire, who I met last year. Supporting Small! is a way of supporting other small businesses, indie makers & dyers, celebrating their individuality & craftmanship, to create a vibrant & diverse craft community.
By having a page on our websites we can highlight to our customers other small businesses who are involved who we think are great and who they may not have come across before. So far I just have links and info for Moorlands Wool and Crafts and Yarn Barf, an indie dyer who specialises in really vibrant colours. It’s a reciprocal scheme so you’ll find a link to my website on each of their Supporting Small! pages as well. There will be more added soon as I start to spread the word among my contacts nearer home.
Speaking of things nearer home, did you know it’s less than 9 weeks until Yarn Gathering? We have 16 vendors this year, including 6 vendors who are new to Yarn Gathering this year!
Our confirmed vendors for 2024 are:
Cefn Llan Fibre Flock, Gwennol Designer Handknits, Idris Emporium, Jenny’s Crafts, Kath Andrews Designs, Lottieknits, Penny Stitch Craft, Sheep Floof, SKD Yarns, The Soggy Kookaburra, The Woolly Tangle, The Yarn Artist, Trevor Blackburn, Under an English Sky, Weki Wool, Wild Field Fibre
The date for your diary is 15th September 2024, 10am-4pm at The Daniel Owen Centre in Mold, CH7 1AP. Entry is FREE and no ticket is required.
As Yarn Gathering takes place on a Sunday, parking in town is also free and there is a car park next to the venue with some spaces for Blue Badge holders.
There will be four vendors upstairs. If you cannot access the stairs we will do our best to ensure you can see what is on offer upstairs via video and any items you wish to see will be brought down for your consideration.
The Mold Food & Drink Festival also takes place the same weekend as Yarn Gathering and we encourage you t visit this event too while you are here. It will mean that one of the town car parks is out of use as that is where the Food Festival is based. This can be seen clearly on the map on the Yarn Gathering page.
That’s all from me for today. Have a good week and I hope to show you lots of progress on Elinor next week! K x
Well, Wool@J13 (that’s ‘Wool at Junction 13’ as it’s near Junction 13 of the M6, sometimes referred to as ‘Woolly J’) is done and we are home. I still need to go through all the samples and check if anything needs freshening up with a re-block or just folding in a different way, but everything else is back where it should be.
I know I’ve said this before, but Wool@J13 is a very different kind of yarn show. First of all, it’s in a field and the parking is in a different field down the road. Most of the vendors are in the ‘shop til you drop’ marquee that is a bit like a circus tent with its yellow and white stripes, with others in individual gazebos in the ‘gazebo village’. There are also two tents for workshops. So far, so yarn show, just with a slightly different setting.
Here’s my stand in the marquee, with Sue wearing her ‘Add value, bring joy’ T-shirt. She did, and does, every day!
Then as well as the marquee and gazebo village, there’s a small stage tent, with plenty of chairs and tables arranged in front of it. Throughout the weekend there’s live entertainment and you can sit and enjoy that as you eat your lunch from one of the street food vendors, or just soak up the music as you go round the stands. Last year Jo from Second City Yarns also entertained us inside the marquee with her cello playing. However, this year she had a broken finger, so couldn’t play. Ingrid (who it is almost impossible to say no to!) asked what instrument I played, and when I told her that I mostly sing, and yes, I did sing a cappella (unaccompanied) sometimes, asked if I’d like to do a turn in the marquee? I said yes! So, on Sunday afternoon when it wasn’t too busy and wouldn’t be interrupting too many potential sales, Ingrid gently blew her whistle, and I sang Misty and Unforgettable. It wasn’t until afterwards that I told her I hadn’t sung a solo in public in about 7 years…! I did enjoy it and there’s a short clip of the end of Misty floating about somewhere on Facebook if you want to see the evidence.
Bryn, my new brioche cowl designed especially for first time brioche knitters (or, as Tamsin from The Left Hookery put it, ‘brioche virgins’…!) , was well received and the kit, forever now to be known as ‘Bryn in a Tin’, sold well. The blues colourway was particularly popular.
I will be putting this kit and several others on to the website in the next few days, so if you want one, but can’t get to a yarn show, you can order online!
I had a nice surprise yesterday. I received an email telling me I had a Payhip review and clicked on it to see the details. It was a super review from someone who had bought the Pride and Progress Pride Knitting Kit bundle:
Cute kit – perfectly packaged!
A great kit for a beginner, or someone who wants to make a Pride flag without investing in massive balls of yarn. You got plenty of yarn and great instructions all packed in an enveloped that fitted through the letter box. I made my first flag straight away! – Nessa H.
That wasn’t the only surprise though. I also discovered there were nine other Payhip reviews (all 5 star) waiting to be moderated and published! So, now if someone has reviewed a pattern or kit on Payhip, the review is there on the product page for folk to see, and I’ve selected a few for testimonials at the bottom of my main Payhip shop page. I’m not sure how I didn’t know the reviews were sitting there – some are a year old! But I’m so glad to have found them and to know that folk are enjoying what I do.
Speaking of folk enjoying my work… If you get my newsletter or have seen my social media posts at the weekend, you’ll know that I saw some of my designs ‘in the wild’ at the weekend. It’s always such a buzz, especially when the knitter tells you they’ve really enjoyed knitting the project and that the pattern was clear and really easy to follow. I mean, that’s what I always aim for, but until someone tells you that that WAS their experience, you don’t really know for sure. From the left the patterns are: What Do Points Make?, Meg March Shawl and Branwen Shawl.
My Persian Tiles blanket is making progress – I only have 9 more motifs to finish off with the last two rounds now (that’s about three evenings worth)! Then I need to block them and put it all together. Can you see the different from last week? I am glad I followed Jane Crowfoot’s recommendation to make them ‘production line’ style as you can memorise the round you are working on easily and just repeat it, and you don’t have to keep getting a different coloured ball of wool out.
I’ve made a little progress with my Bargello Scarf. It’s less than I’d intended, and I think that’s because finishing each of the crochet motifs is so addictive! I am however, nearly at the halfway point now.
I am really looking forward to being able to photograph all three samples (the wrap, cowl and scarf) together as a set, ready for the relaunch of the pattern. It’s going to look so dramatic!
I also got a bit more of Sue’s sock done while we were away. Socks are the perfect travel knitting, as they take up so little room – and that was an important consideration with the car being so full of stuff for the show. I will definitely be on at least the second sock by the time of the next show (Pop Up Wool Show on August 18th), even if I haven’t finished them by then. I’m using my Bodelwyddan pattern, making the 4th size.
Plans for Yarn Gathering 2024 are coming on well. It’s being held on Sunday September 15th, from 10am -4pm.
You will be pleased to know that entry to the event is still FREE, and once again it is happening at the same time as the Mold Food and Drink Festival, so you can combine visiting the two events! And as it’s on Sunday, there are no parking charges in Mold!
We will have more vendors than ever this year – 16 or 17 – and because of that we are expanding into more of the Daniel Owen Centre.
We have previously used the main hall and the cafe space. This year we are using those two areas again, and are also using the largest of the upstairs rooms. We know that stairs aren’t great for everyone, but (as someone who has bungalow legs myself and isn’t great with stairs) I can say that they are decent stairs. The treads are deep enough to get your foot on, the steps themselves are not too high, and there are sturdy handrails on both sides. If you can’t access the first floor at all, we can take a video to show you what is up there and bring down things you particularly want to see.
Yarn Gathering now has its own Facebook page as well as an Instagram account, and we will be posting about each of our lovely vendors – who are all still fairly local – leading up to the event. Do come – we’re sure you’ll enjoy it.
That’s all from me today. I was going to pick the blackcurrants or do some weeding in the front garden, but it’s raining (again!) so that can wait. Take care and have a good week, K x
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
I’m glad the wind outside has dropped since yesterday. For 24 hours we had winds over 40 miles an hour and we’ve been very lucky that nothing has been broken, just a small tree in a pot on the patio that got blown over into the border.
It was a day to settle down into the knitting. I’m working on a new design with baby alpaca laceweight yarn and I’ve very nearly finished the first section now. The photo just below the title (which you may not see if you receive this blog by email) shows a full ball of alpaca on the left for comparison and what was a full ball on Friday morning on the right. There’s 12g (of 50g) of that ball remaining currently (along with four full ones).
I was hoping to start it while I was at Mum’s last week, but I didn’t have anything appropriate for a provisional cast-on with me. When you do a provisional cast-on (i.e. one that will later be undone so the live stitches that remain can be picked up) you need a yarn that won’t felt or stick to your main yarn. One that isn’t fluffy, or too thick – for something that is referred to as ‘waste yarn’ it is funny how important it is to have the right characteristics. Once I got home I had the pick of my 4ply leftovers and a merino superwash 4ply that I knew to be quite slippy was the perfect choice.
Because I couldn’t get started on that project at Mum’s, I worked on the other project I’d taken with me (I don’t make the mistake of only taking one project away with me anymore), so there has been quite a bit of progress on my Persian Tiles blanket, designed by Janie Crow. I’m following the original colourway more or less, using West Yorkshire Spinners ColourLab DK – do follow the Persian Tiles link to check out some of the other colourways!
I know they look like flowers now, but they will ultimately become octagons.
I blocked my final sample before Wonderwool over the weekend. Petulia came out in September with RiverKnits. It’s really two patterns in one as the different sizes of the shawl are also different shapes. RiverKnits have kits for sale for both sizes on their website. I recently finished knitting the smaller, symmetrical version of the pattern and I’m really pleased with it. Both versions of the shawl use the same lacy brioche leaf motif, in different arrangements.
Photos were taken yesterday and added to the pattern, so the front cover looks a little different than it did seven months ago, but it is the same pattern inside (with a couple of previous typos also now corrected). Now you get to see both versions on the front cover!
Copies have been printed and I will have them with me at WonderWool – and, if you want to use the same yarns I did (Chimera and Nene 4ply from RiverKnits), you’ll be able to buy those directly from RiverKnits who will also be at the show!
Petulia is the third of my Discworld named shawls that I designed for RiverKnits. The first two were published in September 2022; Agnes and Tiffany. These two designs ‘bookend’ the designs on my Shawl & Scarf Patterns page, being the first and last alphabetically.
Preparations are nearly complete for WonderWool (I think). I’ve got to the point where I’ve updated my packing list and started drawing possible stand layouts on squared paper – the stand is 10 x 14 feet – that’s nearly as big as our lounge! As I think I mentioned previously, I’m trying to get ahead of myself as I don’t know if I’ll need to do any extra trips down to Mum’s before the show. If Sugar Loaf (the adult version of Honeybun Cardigan) is back from the tech editor in time to print I’ll bring that with me too. I may bring the sample with me anyway even if the pattern isn’t printed and ready to sell, so folk can see how the design works on a ‘grown-up’ scale. The photos below were all taken at the same time and the colour has come out differently in each one. I would say the reality is nearest to the top left image.
I spent quite a bit of time on Friday working on my website, setting up a WooCommerce store, and getting the first few products uploaded. I then realised that every time I pressed ‘publish’ for one it was sent out as a social media post! That would have been fine, except neither the basket or checkout pages would load on mobile devices, so it wasn’t really working. I turned the product pages into drafts and tried to find out what the problem was, but it seemed to make a few other things go wonky instead. And then I couldn’t check whether the basket worked without pressing publish again – and getting another social media post going out (to four different platforms, no less)…
Anyway, by Saturday lunchtime I still couldn’t fix it and it seemed weird to have a ‘basket’ option on the main menu of the website when you couldn’t add anything to said basket. Also, in the process of all this, the Payhip pop-up window plug-in stopped working as it was incompatible with something ‘Woo’. You can possibly imagine my joy frustration.
So! I have deactivated the WooCommerce store again for now. The price buttons on my pattern pages take you directly to the relevant product in my Payhip store now, rather than giving you a pop-up Payhip checkout window, and you can add patterns from my whole store to a basket and check it all out at the same time, which is useful if you did want more than one pattern.
I will investigate the WooCommerce option again at some point, but possibly when my head is clearer and things aren’t so busy.
Excellent news this week is that my lovely wife, Sue Finch, has had her second full collection of poetry published. Welcome to the Museum of a Life is available from her Payhip store, Amazon and all good book stores – your local bookshop can order it for you if you give them the title and author.
That’s all from me for today. I hope you all have as good a week as you can and that you get a chance to do some stuff that makes you happy. Take care, K x
Not only did I make progress on my small version of Petulia this week; reader, I finished it! It still needs to be blocked and have the ends woven in, but I may even have it with me at WonderWool Wales!
As you can see when comparing the pictures, the small version is symmetrical, starting and ending with just one leaf, whilst the large version starts with a single leaf and just keeps on getting wider! Becci from Riverknits who commissioned Petulia (along with Tiffany and Agnes) is modelling the large version.
You will only have been able to buy the pattern (and kits!) directly from RiverKnits so far, and that’s because they have exclusive rights for the first six months. Having knitted the smaller version as well now I have found a couple of typos, but they’ll be updated very soon and if you want to get the pattern from RiverKnits they’ll have the latest version by the end of this week.
The rights are returning to me now as well and I will also have the pattern for sale in the near future. You’ll still be able to buy it from RiverKnits as well which is ideal if you want a kit.
The small version of the pattern uses 100g of Chimera (2 x 50g skeins) and 100g of Nene 4ply. The image of the small part balls shows how much I had left, so you won’t be in any danger of playing yarn chicken if you have a slightly looser tension than me. The large version used 3 x 50g skeins of Chimera and 2 x 100g skeins of Nene 4ply – though about half the second Nene skein was left over.
I’m looking forward to blocking this and seeing it bloom into its full glory! It’s a shape that you can wear draped around your shoulders with the widest part over your back or wrapped around your neck like a scarf with the widest part at the front and the points hanging down at the front. There will be photos!
I also did some more crochet, working on my Persian Tiles blanket, designed by Janie Crow (Jane Crowfoot). I’m cheating a bit here with this photo as most of the triangles had already been completed. Again they need blocking, as at the moment you might be hard pressed to identify them as triangles. However, once they’ve had a soak and spent some time on the blocking board they’ll look a lot tamer!
The circles are the centres of all the remaining octagons. I completed one in full in January to find out how the patten worked, but I rather like the production line approach – it means I don’t have to fish about in the bag for the next yarn colour quite so often.
I had thought I’d finished working on a design in alpaca last week, but I learnt something else about this fibre once I’d pinned it together and popped it on – it flows like water! This meant that there was no knitting sitting around the neck, where it was intended to be. However, I managed to come up with a solution that I think works well, and just adds a small section on, using the original cast-on as a stabiliser. It’s rather like when you cast off the back neck of a jumper and then pick up those stitches to knit the collar – the cast-off gives stability to the shape of the garment and helps it keep its shape.
Fortunately the next new design I’m working on that also uses alpaca (100% this time!) doesn’t need to stand up in any way; the flowing draping nature of the yarn and the fabric it creates will actually work in this design’s favour. Phew!
If you are a member of my FaceBook group or receive my monthly MailChimp newsletters you now have access to April’s discount codes for patterns beginning with G-H. Actually, it’s just patterns beginning with H as Gnarly Roots hasn’t yet been launched online. But, you could still get a discount on any of the individual Heart in my Hands patterns (Mitts, Hat or Cowl), Honeybun Cardigan or Helena Rose Stole. Want the code? Join my Facebook Group or sign up for my newsletter!
I’m away next Tuesday and will probably only have secret knitting with me, but I will do my best to put a post up, even if it’s just a short one. For now, take care, look after yourselves and those around you and do something that makes you smile. K x
