Tag: Embroidery

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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 Barragรกn, 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

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Christmas in July

24 mini socks lie drying in two rows on white foam mats. A larger sock is at the bottom right. The socks are a mix of solid colours, stripes and colour blocks in various combinations of four yarns; purple, pink, red and multicoloured.

The Mini Socks Advent Calendar is almost complete! The socks are knitted, the ends are woven in, the hanging loops have been crocheted and sewn on (and more ends woven in) and they have all had a nice relaxing bath. The measurements and gauge have been taken, the pattern is written up and checked and I’ve decided what order I’m going to hang them in.

A close up of the mini socks drying in two rows on white foam mats. 10 are visible. A larger sock is at the bottom right. The socks are a mix of solid colours, stripes and colour blocks in various combinations of four yarns; purple, pink, red and multicoloured.
Kath Andrews Mini Socks Advent Calendar close-up

Although there are twelve pairs of socks I have decided not to hang them in pairs, but instead following the sequence: solid-striped-colour block. And overlaid on that is another sequence following the colours of the cuffs; red-pink-multi-purple up to the halfway point and then reversed. I like it, but if you make the advent calendar you can hang them in any order you prefer! You could even hang them all separately on a Christmas tree to make the hunt more of a challenge.

All I need now is for the small round kraft labels to arrive so I can tie the numbers on to the hanging loops and string the whole thing together with ribbon and hang it up for some proper photos!

The kits are prepped – I’ll have seven with me at the Pop-up Wool Show – three in the colourway shown, two in a blue/green/purple/multi combo, one in just red and cream and one in blue and cream. All using West Yorkshire Spinners ColourLab DK, with the multicoloured yarns being two of the Zandra Rhodes special colourways.

The Mini Socks Advent Calendar takes 200g of DK yarn and I was able to get the larger Day 25 bonus pattern out of that amount as well, though it might be a push if your gauge is looser.

Kits will be ยฃ20 to include the yarn, a printed copy of the pattern, stitch markers and a cotton project bag. The pattern will also be available on its own as it makes a great stash buster!

A small hand knitted sock in stripes of blue, pink and white lies on a pale gold carpet.
Kath Andrews Tipton Sock

I’ve been on a bit of a sock flurry! This is Tipton. It’s small because this version was actually a swatch for a submission, but it’s intended as an adult sized sock. While it wasn’t chosen to be part of the collection I submitted it for, I do like it and have decided to work on the pattern for self-publication. This sample swatch was knitted with CoopKnits Socks Yeah! I’ve had the colours for ages and think they’re now discontinued, so I will need to go on a yarn hunt (what a shame…!) for current yarns in these colours. I’ll tell you more about Tipton another time.

A cross-stitch in progress showing a variety of pride flags
Safe Space by Peppermint Purple in progress

My cross stitch is coming on. Safe Space by Peppermint Purple is a fab design that comes in both cross stitch and blackwork versions and includes a huge variety of pride flags. 50% of the profits from the pattern go to Stonewall as well. Can you see any similarity between one of the flags and Tipton?

An embroidery in progress re-creating a b&w photo of my mum in her twenties
Photo Embroidery of Mum in progress

My intention to complete four more colours this month is stalled – partly as I’m currently working on one of the most prevalent colours. It’s a dark grey which is almost indistinguishable from the black and it’s not easy going on the eyes. I’ve found a good solution to help me not lose my place on the chart in between stitching sessions though – a small post-it with an arrow drawn on it pointing at the last stitch I worked. Using magnetic strips wouldn’t help much with this one as the colours jump around so very much. I think I’ve done more on Safe Space instead as it can be worked without reference to the chart for every single stitch!

A close up of a stranded hand knitted cowl in progress. Main colour is dark red. Black is used for purl stitches in the corrugated ribbing and the morse code poem
Kath Andrews Morse Code Cowl 2

Do you remember the red and black yarn I purchased from The Travel Knitter at the RiverKnits Open Day? It’s halfway to becoming a stranded cowl. The Morse Code Cowl, as I have called it, has one of my lovely wife’s poems translated into Morse code and then converted into a knitting chart. That was a LOT of work, before I could even cast on! But it’s coming on. I am most pleased with the section that isn’t Morse code – the part that will say “Poem, Sue Finch“:

The other side of the hand knitted cowl in progress, showing the poet's name - Sue Finch - worked in black on a dark red background.
Kath Andrews Morse Code Cowl 1

The link on her name will take you to her publishers where you can read some reviews of her first collection, Magnifying Glass. (And you can buy it if you like what you read!).

The last pic I’m going to share with you is one of those roses I rescued last week. They still look might fine in their bowl of water! The orange has changed to a more pinkish shade now and they’ve opened up, completely filling the bowl. It was a really good way to save what otherwise looked like a bunch of flowers destined for the compost.

A glass bowl filled with nine rose heads floating in water. They are orange shading to pink in the centres.
The rescued roses – one week on!

Take care one and all, and look after the folks around you as well as yourselves. And, if you can, go knit something – maybe plan ahead a little!

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I Can Sing a Rainbow

A close-up shot of the back of a piece of knitting using a muted rainbow of colours moving from left on the red to purple on the right

These past few days I have been SO grateful to work from home. No hot and sticky commute and I can move between rooms as the sun moves round the house. (Yes, I know, technically, the sun stays put, but it’s an easier way to think of it, okay?) It has still been very hot, and doing the ironing yesterday morning just because that’s what I do on a Monday perhaps wasn’t my best choice, but I have been able to cope with it fairly well.

Today has mostly been overcast, warm and rather humid with occasional bits of rain, but definitely more comfortable. The sun is now making its first appearance of the day (at 5.30pm) and I’m writing this a little later than usual because I had a visitor! Yes, a real-life friend came to the house for a cuppa and a natter (hi Liz – thanks for the cosmos!) and before we knew it three hours had flown by.

Since the weekend I’ve been knitting like mad with the RiverKnits rainbow yarn, as my tech editor has a window next week when she can edit the pattern. I’m now on the final section, working with colour no.12 and about to bring back colours 1, 2 & 3 for a last hurrah.

Aren’t these colours just gorgeous? The knitting is deliberately scrumpled up and inside out as I’m not showing you the full design until nearer publication, but I wanted to be able to show you all the colours together.

The pattern is all written up in my bullet journal, which isn’t a lot of help to Deb, so I also need to type it up, but at least I have written it out properly and not just made a few vague notes or used some kind of shorthand that I then can’t translate. A bit of typing I can do.

Since bringing home those embroidery threads from Mum’s, I have been slightly obsessing over storage solutions. As a result of some googling I am now getting emails from Pinterest with suggestions of things I might like. They’re right – many of these cabinets are stunning.

The boxes and tins Mum’s threads were in were not big enough for both her threads and my existing ones, so I did need a coherent solution. There are two brands, DMC and Anchor. The DMC ones now have a rather splendid home:

This is the top drawer of an old small chest (also from Mum) that had been used to keep a random collection of bits and bobs. Now it’s highly organised thread storage! You see those dividers? I made those from an Aldi bran flakes box. That white line on the pic below is where the bottom flaps of the box were glued together.

When I’ve finished the next box of cereal, I’ll do another set of dividers for the next drawer and fill that with the Anchor threads!

My newsletter subscribers have had access to a special sale during the past week that finished yesterday. It gave them 25% off all patterns by using an exclusive-to-them code. I’m really pleased that some took advantage of it. One Australian knitter is clearly planning ahead as they bought SIX patterns at once! Surprise sales like this don’t happen all the time, but they are one of the benefits of being a newsletter subscriber. Other benefits include introductory discounts off new self-published patterns in their first week. If that sounds like something you’d like, why not sign up? You only get one newsletter a month (unless there’s something really exciting I need to tell you that is time sensitive), so I promise not to clog up your inbox.

With it being properly hot and likely to remain so for a little while, you’ll probably want lightweight knitting to do (if you are a knitter). Laceweight yarn is perfect for this season – and good value financially as well. And just because it is really thin does NOT mean it needs tiny thin knitting needles.

What Do Points Make? (the 2020 MKAL with Yarn O’clock) uses laceweight yarn and 4.5mm needles. Only the largest size of four needs more than 100g of yarn, so it’s cost-effective to make and light as a feather to wear. In fact, I’m wearing this one (in size three) as I type.

That’s all for today – I’m going to go and drink my fourth pint of water. Stay hydrated folks and do what makes you happy. K x

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Back on Track

A close up of part of a stranded knitting square with designs based on the Nevern Cross. The background is dark grey and the pattern colour is duck egg blue.

So, after last week’s own goal of knitting from the wrong chart, I’m all sorted again. The correct chart has been completed and blocked (and I’m so glad I bothered!) and I’m halfway through one of the other new charts in the Nevern Throw Expansion Pack. Yes, I really do use that many pins when I want completely straight edges – especially when the vertical edges have the two yarns twisted at the end of every row.

I’ve been helping Mum sort through some of the mountain of craft supplies she has – some of it has gone off to the church fete and some of it will be re-homed with me! (I will find room, I will find room).

Having rediscovered stitching, Mum has let me raid her embroidery floss collection (and there was a lot!). These beauties are now joining my stash:

I’ve finished her socks and have been able to get the toe shaping just right, with the classic and very scientific approach of getting her to try one on and pinching the end until it felt like it fitted. She’s very pleased with them. So, it’s not all been a one-way street.

I’ve also finished the fibre I’ve been spinning for the past couple of months (I posted these shots on my socials yesterday):

And! The rainbow of Riverknits Nene minis is starting to turn into something fabulous… Here’s a sneaky close-up to tempt you!

My phone’s personal hotspot is being a little temperamental today, so I’m not going to write much more, but I hope that, despite the awfulness of much of the world at the moment, you are able to find some moments of peace and tranquility. I find that looking at and playing with yarn helps.

Take care one and all, K x

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Falling into Place

A Canada goose, with five goslings swimming in a line behind her, approach the edge of a large pond. There are some yellow flag irises growing in the bank in the foreground.

I’d wanted to make a joke about getting all your ducks in a row, but since this photo is of goslings, that doesn’t really work, does it?! These little beauties in the main pic were following in their mama goose’s wake in the pond on our town common on Sunday. Just as they are lining up neatly behind her, so things this week seem to be working out well for me so far (sshhh!!!).

Yesterday morning I was waiting for a phone call. An old college friend (who was also our best man back in 2005) had texted the day before to ask if I would be at home for a call about 9.30am. I thought it must be fairly important if he needed to ‘book’ the call in advance. By 10am I was beginning to wonder if I’d got the day wrong, or if something had come up that was preventing him ringing.

And then there was a knock on the door. I answered it, imagining it to be the postie – there have been a fair few parcel deliveries in the past week. But no. It was my friend, on our doorstep, a total surprise!! Especially when you realise that he lives in Kent and we are in North Wales! Turns out he’d been on retreat nearby and was ‘calling’ in on his way home.

It’s the sign of a good friend that, even when you haven’t seen them for years, don’t talk that often on the phone, you can pick up as though no time had passed since you last saw them. It must have been pre-Covid when we last met up. Cups of tea (coffee for him) were drunk, news and gossip and hugs were exchanged and then, less than an hour later, he was on his way. It was a truly lovely surprise – a little gift of someone else’s time.

Speaking of gifts of time, the embroidery is coming on. I had worried on Sunday that I wouldn’t be able to finish it in time for my wonderful wife’s birthday on Friday as I was going to run out of green thread, but Sewcraft Swindon came to the rescue. I ordered some yesterday morning and today, it arrived! So, there is still a good chance of it being finished. It won’t be framed, but it will be ‘done’.

A partly completed blackwork and cross stitch embroidery in 4 colours (green, black & 2 shades of brown). A geometric design with nested offset squares.

It’s proved to be so much quicker to do than the embroidery of Mum’s photo, partly because it’s working at a larger scale – each square on the chart is over two threads in each direction, not just one – which means I can more easily see what I am doing! Always useful! The main reason though is linked to this design being geometric – there are patterns that are repeated and can be memorised, so I don’t have to refer to the chart for every stitch. In fact there are whole sections now where I don’t need to look at the chart at all, just do a quick check with one of the sections I’ve already completed. The photo embroidery by its very nature is rather random in the placement of each colour (and there are 46, I think), so there is no getting away from the chart (all 16 pages of it) even for a moment.

And I do like patterns. I’m good at spotting patterns – and errors in/interruptions to repeated patterns as well. Patterns that can be repeated and memorised make knitting a joy, and they are pleasing to the eye as well.

The Wensleydale yarn (Aysgarth) from RiverKnits that I showed you last week has started to be knitted up in a new design with some delightful repeated patterns. I’m not going to show you the whole design until it is published (probably in September), but I can share little snippets with you. It’s an unusual yarn as it doesn’t have the elasticity that I associate with wool when in the skein or being knitted, but once it is part of a knitted fabric it has a wonderful softness. I love this colour too – it’s called ‘Sloe Gin’ and has a gorgeous range of purples in it! (See, I haven’t *just* been stitching this week).

A curled up piece of knitting in progress. The yarn is deep purple, on a circular needle with a couple of stitch markers visible. The rest of the ball of yarn is under the knitting. The background is a pale gold carpet.

And, when blocked, the way the pattern opens up is astounding – it’s almost like linen with added fuzziness and shine!

A close-up shot of a small blocked swatch using the purple Wensleydale yarn. It is draped over the thumb and back of my left hand. The background is a pale gold carpet.

I shall also be able to finish Mum’s socks now too. I’ve been waiting for her to measure either the length of her foot or the length of her favourite bed sock so I can be sure the new socks will fit well. 10″ for both, apparently, so on we go! These are Raggsocks from Midwinter Yarns.

A sock in progress on double pointed needles. The yarn is a marled/barberpole purple and white. Worked from the top down the leg and heel of the sock have been worked along with half the foot. The rest of the ball lies next to the sock. The background is a pale gold carpet.

There’s no date as yet for “An Introduction to Lace Knitting” Craftucation course going live. The accompanying PDF is having some formatting issues (e.g. image captions appearing on a different page from the image itself) which require the brain of a clever tech bod (thanks in advance Graeme!). Hopefully it won’t take too long.

On our second (yes, really!) walk into town today, I decided to photograph the postbox topper that’s been outside the Spar for a good couple of weeks. I’m not sure which group made it, but it looks very splendid. Even if the Jubilee isn’t your thing, it’s nice to see something cheering the place up and being left in place undamaged too!

A knitted postbox topper of a large gold and purple stuffed crown with red, white and blue knitted 'jewels'. It is attached to a green crocheted base that also has red and white knitted flowers and red, white and blue knitted bunting around the edge. The background is the corner of the Spar shop and the sign for the Post Office.

There’s been a definite purple theme to the knitting in this week’s post hasn’t there?! Not at all consciously – just one of those things.

In the meantime I have another live workshop with Yarn O’clock next week – Crochet for Beginners! Being left-handed I am most used to crocheting left-handed, but I can also do it right-handed, which is really useful. I’m looking forward to helping the students develop skills and confidence over the course of the two hour class. As the workshop is on Tuesday that means next week’s blog will be on Wednesday – and then I can tell you all about it and show you how they got on.

In the meantime, take care, make stuff and hold your favourite folk as close as you can. K x

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What a Week

The top part of a partly completed blackwork and cross-stitch embroidery. Four colours are used, green, black and two shades of brown, and it is a geometric pattern based on nested squares at 45 degree angles to each other.

RiverKnits‘ Open Day on Saturday was wonderful. A gorgeously sunny day that wasn’t too hot, with friendly, welcoming people to chat to and relieve of their yarn (usually in exchange for money!).

I got to meet some lovely dyers I hadn’t encountered before, such as Larissa from Travel Knitter, from whom I got this intensely coloured sock yarn. This will become a cowl with a poem by my lovely wife that has been translated into Morse code!:

and Ishrat from Fruitful Fusion, whose colour palette was so varied. I fell for this skein of 4-ply, called ‘Spring Bloom’, which reminds me very much of the colours in our front border:

It was lovely to see Becci and Markus again and make some plans (intrigued? good! I’ll tell you more soon). I came away with these wonderful skeins of Aysgarth and something else that I’m not going to share with you yet!

I also bought some of the Open Day Show Special yarn, dyed jointly by Becci from RiverKnits and Lola from Third Vault Yarns, and called ‘Ankh-Morpork’ in reference to the covers of the Terry Pratchett Discworld books that inspired the colourway. A skein of Cormo in the darker batch for me, and a skein of Corriedale and Mohair for Anne, whose birthday it is today! (Happy Birthday Anne, glad you love it!). This is my skein:

As well as all of this yarny goodness, I treated myself to some new washi tape from Katie Green Bean. I was tempted by this at Wonderwool and seeing it again I couldn’t resist. Washi tape with hand drawn sheep! How could you resist??

So, we had a great couple of hours there and also chatted with Sharon from Dragon Hill Studio, talked to the sheep, listened to Johnny from Garthenor Organic talk about the process of transforming fibre into wool and went for a walk around the little village of Weedon Bec and along the canal towpath.

The walk was particularly important as it had taken three and a half hours to get there (traffic delays plus a much-needed service station stop added to the two and a half we had expected) and then nearly three and a half to get home (more traffic). Another time I will work out a route that bypasses the M6 completely…!

And then last night was the first of a series of three workshops in Mold, in conjunction with Anne at Yarn O’clock. We had the cafe of the Daniel Owen Centre, which is a good, well-lit space with plenty of tables that they didn’t mind us moving around to suit.

The workshop was two-colour brioche knitting and the six ladies who attended were wonderful! Despite being a bit flummoxed initially by the Italian two-colour cast-on, they all persevered with good humour and made great progress! Everyone got the main fabric sorted out, learnt how to do an increase and all tried a right-leaning decrease. We didn’t get as far as the sewn cast-off, but they have a reliable youtube link to refer to if they want to try it and several other options were given as well.

The next workshop is in two weeks at the same venue and is Beginners’ Crochet – there are still a couple of spaces on that one.

In designing news I have completed the charts for my Nevern Expansion Pack and will be knitting a couple of samples of the (six!) new squares soon. Two of them are based on this part of the Nevern Cross:

The veg patch is filling out, the embroidery I started recently (main pic) is going well (and the deadline is looking slightly more reachable) and I’ve even got the rest of my summer clothes out of the vacuum pack bag in the wardrobe!

So that’s been the week in my little world. I’ve deliberately not written about wider events as some of them are beyond words, but if you have been impacted by what’s been occurring around the world recently, I am so sorry.

Hold your loved ones close when you can and tell them you love them. Stay safe and make stuff. K x

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A Little Fall of Rain

This week has flown past – I can hardly believe I’m writing another blog post already!

The main image of today’s post is the Helmet hat I made for Sue from my hand spun yarn, the pattern coming from Woolly Wormhead‘s Introspection collection. I realised I hadn’t taken a photo of her wearing it since it was blocked – and this overhead shot shows the crown decreases really nicely.

Some good news – I have finished recording and editing my videos for my new Craftucation course, An Introduction to Lace Knitting. They are currently in the process of being uploaded to the website and that just leaves the final bits of transcriptions to write and the still images to capture from the videos for the pdf downloads. Hurrah!

A screenshot of the first title page for my lace knitting course. The text on the left reads "Introduction to Lace Knitting, 1.1 Welcome". On the right is a sample square of different lace stitches worked in pale blue DK yarn. The background is a wooden desk.

In a week or so I will upload one of the introductory chapters here – they are free to view before buying the course anyway, to give you a flavour of it. That’s probably better than showing you the out-takes where I end up blowing raspberries at myself for tripping over my words!

Looking back at last week’s post, I see that more knitting progress has occurred than I’d realised. The first of my Good Riddance Socks by Laur of the Blings Designs is complete and I’m just about to start the short row heel on the second one.

One complete multi-coloured hand knit sock lies on a pale gold carpet with a sock in progress on top of it. The sock in progress is being worked toe up, starting in stocking stitch with two colours held together then going to a section of 2-colour brioche. Stocking stitch returns just under the needles (dpns). The colours change randomly as each yarn runs out.

I’ve also passed the half-way mark on my ‘secret’ project, so that will be complete in the next couple of weeks which is fabulous as it gives me plenty of time before the deadline. I really wish I could show you this, but you are going to LOVE it when you do eventually get to see it – in September. The yarn was dyed especially for me to match a picture I sent the dyer. The picture relates closely to the name of the pattern. The dyer will then be making yarn kits for the pattern to coincide with publication in September!

I don’t yet have photos of everyone’s finished Calon Cariad shawls, but they are going to make a stunning collection when I do manage to bring them all together. Some people are still working on them I know. It was lovely to get feedback about including Zoom events as part of a KAL. Those who attended really appreciated them and said it gave them more of a sense that they were taking part in a group event, rather than just knitting and sharing photos of their work online. It’s something I think I will do with future KALs and MKALs – though I might need to invest in the Zoom package that stops your meeting unceremoniously ending after 40 minutes!

The embroidery of Mum has stalled a bit, although I did do a couple of hours on it yesterday for the first time in a while. I’m not sure I can see the difference yet from my previous update photo as my current colour – dark brown – is so close to the black that it’s hard to see. I have decided the next colour I choose to work will have a clear contrast with the dark brown, black and olive green there so far. I need to be able to see some progress being made. What do you think?

A piece of cream linen with patches of tiny black, dark green and dark brown stitches. The fabric is marked off in squares with fine black thread and pale blue thread marks the centre lines. The image of a laughing woman can just be made out in the emerging picture.
The same embroidery as the image on the left with more stitches worked, adding a very dark brown.

A book I pre-ordered back in August arrived recently. The Sourdough Whisperer by Elaine Boddy. It’s the second of her books that I’ve had and they are both brilliant. I love the tips and tricks and ways to revive and boost your starter and different things to try if your dough isn’t behaving the way you want it to. As you may remember I’ve had some spectacular failures in my baking adventures (total frisbees!) as well as successes and this book mentions the effect that being in a hard or soft water area can have. We have incredibly soft water, so I followed the suggestion to reduce the water content by 30g and it worked a treat. At first I wasn’t sure all the flour would mix in, but it did and we’ve been enjoying a cracking loaf for the past few days.

A round sourdough loaf sits on a cooling rack.

It had finally stopped raining and drizzling – there was even some sunshine! – so I interrupted my blog writing to grab the opportunity to go for a walk. Less than ten minutes out the door en route to the post office the rain began once more. Just a little fall of rain. It’s a shame we weren’t wearing our hats when we went out!

Take care, keep safe and keep knitting, Kx

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All These Things That I’ve Done

Last week I finished by telling you I had marmalade to make when I got home. And indeed I did. However, the lovely Chris from Hampton Farm Shop had popped in the last few of the Seville oranges in addition to the ones I’d asked for, so rather than 1.4kg (3lb) of oranges, I had 2kg (4.5lb)!!

Marmalade was made on Thursday AND on Friday. It’s rather gorgeous in both colour and taste and I have found a solution to the skin withering tendency of the oranges when squeezing and chopping them – wear gloves! Obvious really, but it’s taken me until now…

This coming Friday sees the launch of our latest KAL – Calon Cariad and I’m really pleased that a number of people will be knitting along with us. The invites to the Cast-on Party on Zoom have started going out and I have got my chosen yarn all balled up; three skeins of CoopKnits Socks Yeah! in Xenon, which is a truly NEON pink.

I’ve also finally done some more embroidery and I *think* I may nearly be done with the black thread.

The spinning is coming on too – the 15 minutes per colour seems to be working well!!

I’m also working on a new pattern that is due for release next month (if you’re in my Facebook group you’ll have seen a sneak peek pic of it!).

I have blocked my Water Dragon Shawl and I love it. I still have the ends to weave in, but apart from that it is done! The top left image is straight after I cast off. The next is whilst blocking and the other two are after blocking.

This month’s pattern (due at the end of the month) is the re-launch of Of Night and Light, the colourwork vest that appeared in Knit Now Issue 134 last October – the rights return to me this month and I will get the pattern formatted into my standard layout and some new photos taken over the next couple of weeks.

But it’s not all been about the new things this week.

Today I have been mending my favourite cardigan (again). It’s three and a half years old and I wear it A LOT. The repairs and re-knits it has had deserve a post all to themselves and that will be what I tell you all about next week.

Have a good one and do stuff that makes you smile. K x

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Better late than never

Ok, own up; who actually noticed I didn’t publish a blog post yesterday? Answers in the comments please!

It was our return journey from Kent yesterday and, at the weekend, while we were still at home, I wondered whether I should draft a post in advance. Then I thought, “No, it’ll be fine, I’ll just write it when we get home”. Well, that plan didn’t work. We got home at 6.30pm (having left at noon), unpacked, I made dinner, read and signed a contract (missing the first 10 minutes of Bake Off while doing so) and then? I just didn’t have the spoons left to do it.

It was a good trip to Kent. We were visiting my lovely wife’s family – only the second time I’ve been there since Xmas 2019 and only the third for Sue – and we had a great time. My niece had made a birthday cake for me – it was gorgeous and I am absolutely going to investigate the non-dairy alternative to condensed milk that she used. On Monday we had a long walk to the sea front, up the pier and then along the harbour arm with my sister-in-law. There was brilliant sunshine, a fabulous rainbow, a carousel ride for Sue and Katie (I couldn’t have decently got on the horses in my long dress, and I don’t think side saddle would have worked) and a detour through the park.

And then? The heavens opened. There had been a little rain/drizzle prior to that, but it went full biblical downpour. Katie had a coat with a hood and I borrowed her umbrella and Sue had a neckband that she put over her hair, but, to be honest, none of it did much good. We got thoroughly drenched. So much so that the only solution was a shower to warm up and a complete change of clothing. I am eternally grateful to my lovely mother-in-law that she washed and dried our wet clothes for us that evening as otherwise we would have had no clean things for the following day.

While we were away I did a fair bit of knitting. The majority of it I can’t show you for quite a while yet. One lot of commission yarn I was waiting for last week arrived last Wednesday and I got cracking, only to change my mind about six inches in about the placement of the stitch patterns. I left the original version on the needles, went back to my spreadsheet, copied the sheet and played with the numbers again. Then cast on for the new version. Once I’d done the same amount for both versions so the comparison was fair, I was so glad I had listened to my misgivings and paused. The new version is so much better – and so that was the majority of what I worked on in Kent and in the car. I’m getting better at knitting on rumbly concrete motorways!

The other project I took with me was a new type of knitting project for me – a sideways knit hat by Woolly Wormhead. I’m definitely enjoying the process of seeing how the structure develops and I can’t wait to see how the whole thing looks when finished. The variegated yarn is playing nicely with the short rows too. It’s going to be a beret style hat, but it looks nothing like it at the moment! The yarn is Neps and Tatties in ‘Raisin Girl’ by Ewe & Ply. There’s a knitalong running on her Facebook group (and on Ravelry) at the moment for sideways knit garter stitch hats – it’s definitely worth a look as there are a huge number of exciting designs and ways of constructing a hat that I’d never imagined.

A sideway knit garter stitch hat in progress is lying on a wooden desk. The ball of yarn can just be seen in the top right corner. The yarn is in variegated shades of pink, purple and white, like raspberry ripple ice cream and there are tufty news in cream and black on the surface of the fabric.

The other creative thing I had a rethink and restart on last week was my embroidery. I was finding it hard to keep track and, though I knew I had gone ‘out’ (wrong) by a stitch or two in some colours that I’d done, I couldn’t quite work out which they were. This meant that I was finding it hard to trust the stitches that were in place when it came to using them to position new sections. So, I began again, this time with a more thoroughly prepped piece of fabric. Again, it was worth it, as my progress has been quicker and easier since. It probably also helps that I reprinted the chart (again!) so it is larger AND with colours on the squares as well as symbols so it is easier to follow. It does take up 16 pages now instead of 9, but hey. It’ll be worth it.

A piece of cream coloured linen with tiny diagonal tent stitch in patches of black down the centre of the fabric. There are two pale blue thread running vertically and horizontally marking out the centre points and thin black threads of running stitch between every twenty threads of the fabric from the centre outwards.

What have you been up to this week? I hope some of it has been fun.

Take care, stay safe and keep wearing a mask! K x

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The Hills are Alive

My plan to weave in a section of yarn ends on my advent sweater (Serenity by Joji Locatelli) each day worked a treat. I seriously underestimated how many there were; I’d forgotten that as I had worked each colour from the top over the back and each side of the front, several colours had six ends not two. It turned out that there were over 80 in total! However, I did a sleeve’s worth and so on and the ends were soon completed. It is such a gorgeous sweater to wear and the yarn is so very soft.

We took this picture on Sunday, during what we call our ‘country walk’. We are so lucky that we can get onto lanes like this within a kilometre or so of our front door. The main pic of today’s post is the view of Moel Famau, to the left of where we were standing.

A woman wearing a hand-knit sweater and a linen dress stands with her back to the camera and her hands in her pockets in a country lane. It is a sunny day and the jewel colours of the sweater almost glow.

Last week I asked you to keep your fingers crossed for me regarding a submission I’d sent, that I was due to hear back about by Friday. Well, it worked! I had an acceptance email on Wednesday morning!! Since then, I’ve been grading the pattern (10 sizes for this one) and starting to write it up and I am now waiting eagerly for the yarn to arrive in the post.

Can you believe that my flowers from last week are still going strong? The yellow roses have opened up and become all frilly on the edges and the deep red carnations are a lovely contrast.

My Fiery Dragon Skin Cowl is done and very cosy in my hand-spun yarn. I still have to pinch myself a bit that I only started learning to spin this time last year and I am making yarn I can use when knitting up my own designs. That disbelief is going to get to a whole new level once I have finished a project with yarn from Doris, isn’t it?!

A hand-knit cowl in hand-spun shades of blue, green and greeny-gold wool is on a mannequin covered with black fabric. A cream wall is reflected in the mirrored door behind.

In the meantime, here is my current spinning, some Southdown fibre, from Hilltop Cloud. The two bobbins are intended to have stripes of different sizes as I am attempted fractal spinning; you split the fibre lengthways, then one half lengthways again and then one of those lengthways again. The horizontal finished bobbin contains the singles spun from the fibre that was split more often and the bobbin still on the wheel is being spun with the other half of the fibre, so there are much longer stretches of colour.

A close-up of a bobbin in progress on the spinning wheel, with the other bobbin balanced horizontally above it to show the contrast. The wheel treadles and rest of the background are out of focus.

As I’m waiting for yarn to arrive for two commissions at the moment, I decided to cast on something small in the mean time. I posted about this sock on social media the other day and I’m pleased with how it’s coming along. It did take me a while to adapt to using the KnitPro single 25cm long circular needle, especially trying to work out which hand the shorter needle tip felt best in, but it’s feeling more natural now. That’s a 2mm needle in the pic with 80 stitches per round. I did once have 2mm bamboo needles, but they did not last very long. Sue likes her socks knit to a tight gauge – it makes them last better – and bamboo just snapped in my hands. The stripy yarn is fabulous isn’t it? This is Zandra’s Rainbow, one of the Zandra Rhodes colourways on their Signature 4-ply yarn for West Yorkshire Spinners.

A brightly coloured stripy sock in progress sits on a wooden desk in front of its ball of yarn. The yarn is pink, yellow, dark blue, maroon, scarlet and olive green.

I have spent several hours on the embroidery so far. You can see progress from last week, but no sense of the image yet. But this is only working from the central page of nine…

A close-up image of a very small scale embroidery in progress. The fabric is a cream coloured linen with black, dark brown, grey and green threads. Bright red threads mark the central lines of the design.

There has been slightly less baking than I would have liked recently, but Audrey2 is waking up again after a short time in the fridge. Hopefully I will be making another loaf in the next couple of days. I was feeling more than a bit off-colour yesterday, so there was definitely no baking, or much activity at all!

That’s all from me for today. I hope you all stay safe, stay well and do what makes you happy. K x