Tag: Fasten Off YAL

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The Longest Night of the Year

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Metamorphosis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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…And a Happy New Year!

Well, we’ve made it to 2023! We’re only a few days in to the year, but already the adverts on the telly are full of the seasonal ‘buy a new sofa’, ‘book a summer holiday’ etc, and social media is full of the ‘New Year/New You’ ads.

Fortunately the majority of the people I follow are, like me, more into intentions and goal setting than ‘New Year’s Resolutions’. I can’t remember exactly when I last made New Year’s Resolutions, but I know for a fact they included not doing/eating this/that and they were guaranteed to fail and make me feel as though I’d failed in the process.

Nowadays I set goals for the year, based on the framework in The Maker’s Yearbook. I bought this yearbook a couple of years ago and really liked the structure of it, but found the space for writing too specified – there seemed to be either too little or too much, never quite the sweet spot I was after. So, in January 2022 and this year I have looked back at the goal setting pages from my copy of the 2020 Maker’s Yearbook and used the questions from it in my bullet journal. It asks things like ‘What is your biggest dream for the year?’ and, perhaps more importantly, ‘What steps do you need to take to get there?’.

I’m not going to share all my goals here, but you should be seeing some new things happening during the course of the year. For example, I applied to be a vendor at another yarn show this morning – fingers crossed for that one. I won’t find out if I’m successful until the end of Feb/start of March, but I’ll be sure to let you know!

Am Byth, the latest MKAL from Yarn O’clock and myself, begins on Friday 13th January. That’s in just 10 days time! Remember we are not going to tell you what you are making until the start of Part 2 (released on 27th January). All you need to take part is 225m/100g DK yarn (we are using West Yorkshire Spinners Croft DK) and 3.5mm needles. We are beginning with a pinwheel cast-on (there will be a video for this on my website and Yarn O’clock’s youtube channel), so you’ll need double pointed needles or your favoured type of needles for a teeny-tiny starting circumference.

You can get the pattern from me on the website, Payhip, Lovecrafts or Ravelry (no link as I don’t want to spark a migraine for anyone!) and the relevant part of the pattern will be uploaded on each release date.

If you want a kit, or to have parts of the pattern emailed to you, you should contact Anne at Yarn O’clock. She is open again from Wednesday 4th January, so you can pop in or ring the shop from tomorrow!

Here is a selection of some the colours of Croft DK (photo from Yarn O’clock’s website):

The Fasten Off YAL has now come to an end and, just like last year, it was great fun. I got to know the work of some designers I hadn’t previously encountered and, just by playing along with some of the social games on Twitter and Instagram, I won two prizes!

The first prize was from Kate Atherley, from whom I chose Mackinac Mitts (I’m still pondering the yarn to use for these – there are so many splendid single skeins of 4-ply in my stash at the moment). If you haven’t come across her designs before, do have a look – they’re great!

The second prize I one was from Síle Thiels of Knit Dance Repeat Designs. From her designs I’ve chosen the Treble Jig Legwarmers.

I really like the fact that she uses music to inspire her designs (as have I in the past) and, even better, her legwarmer design fits calves up to 22″ in circumference! Mine are 19″ so I have the added excitement of a pattern that goes over the calves that I don’t need to alter to make it fit!

Fasten Off YAL covers knitting, crochet, loom knitting and Tunisian crochet, and with 109 designers taking part in the most recent one there were so many wonderful designs to choose from. If you do any of these four crafts (or design for them) I heartily recommend getting involved next year.

This morning I had to phone the dentist again. On Saturday I felt extreme pain in my gold crown whilst eating cereal of all things (toasted rice and wheat flakes) followed by a terrible crumbling sensation from the tooth behind it. It was just like you get in those dreams where all your teeth fall out. If you’ve never had that particular dream I envy you! One corner of my back molar has broken away leaving a very jagged edge and not a lot of tooth. They have been able to fit me in for their first available appointment, which is in two weeks. Fortunately I’m not in pain as long as I keep cold liquids and food away from that corner of my mouth, but these teeth of mine have been letting me down over the past twelve months – and I’ve nearly ground my way through my third or fourth mouthguard. I’m hoping they’ll be able to help!

When I was having a rummage through the freezer drawers just before Christmas I found something wonderful; two bags of blackcurrants! You may remember that I didn’t pick any last summer and so hadn’t made any jam and I’d forgotten that the crop the year before had been so plentiful that I’d only used half of it and frozen the rest. So I will be making blackcurrant jam in the next couple of weeks, staving off my need for the Seville oranges to arrive at the Farm Shop for marmalade making.

(Please note – there is no connection between my jam and marmalade-making and my dodgy teeth! I’ve just been grinding them for years and they’re literally reaching breaking point.)

That’s all for today. Next week I’m going to be telling you a bit more about my Welsh learning and the stitching I have been doing, as well as hopefully having some knitting to show you! ‘Til then, take care, stay home if you’re poorly and keep warm, K x

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All At Once

Three wooden spoons lie face down on a darker wooden desk. The back of each is decorated with a pyrography design of two comical sheep. A fourth spoon is just visible at the top of the image.

It’s one of those week’s where everything is happening at once and some of them are coming to fruition after quite a while!

I’m on the final flag of my Safe Space cross stitch! Once that is complete I shall do the final bit of cross stitch (the word “Welcome” in the middle), then crack on with the outlining and blackwork.

I do want to get this finished in 2022 and it’s starting to look more feasible, which is very encouraging.

On Thursday I will be teaching my Introduction to Two Colour Brioche Knitting workshop. I’ve re-jigged the course and re-written the notes, and therefore also re-knitted the samples! We’re going to start with straight brioche knitting with a garter stitch border so folk can get comfortable with the brioche stitches before having to deal with the fancy cast-on. We’re also using DK yarn this time, so the stitches will be bigger and it will be easier to see how it all works.

Brioche front
Brioche back

Once the straight sample is done we’ll move on to the Italian two-colour brioche cast-on and add an increase and a decrease into the mix!

Brioche leaf front
Brioche leaf back

On Friday I’m launching Nevern Lap Blanket on my website, Payhip, Ravelry and Lovecrafts. Newsletter subscribers have had their discount codes already! The pattern is already live on KnitPicks and it’s selling well so far. If you’re not a subscriber and you can’t wait until Friday you can buy it there!

Nevern Lap Blanket on sofa
Nevern Lap Blanket on floor

And on Saturday I have a stall at the Christmas Fayre at The Rise in Buckley! It’s open 10am – 4pm, so if you’re in Buckley and you still have any Christmas shopping to do, this will be the place to come. (This pic is from a post on their facebook page in October, so there probably aren’t stalls still available now!)

I will have my knitting patterns, kits and pyrography (wood-burning) decorated coasters, hearts, wooden spoons and spatulas with me. I’m really looking forward to it, and have been adding a couple of items to my products in preparation – sheep- themed wooden spoons!

Among other kits, I will have the Mini Socks Advent Calendar kits with me. You may think this a bit strange as Advent has already begun, but bear with me… If you start now for next year and knit one sock every week or so you will be ready without having to knit lots and lots all at once!

Speaking of Advent and Christmas things, how cool is this post box topper? It’s on the post box outside the Spar in Buckley and was made by a group of knitters who meet regularly in the town. A huge amount of work has gone into it and it looks very impressive. It makes me smile every time I go to the post office (which is in the Spar) – a frequent activity at present!

I do have a very exciting piece of news to share with you. Next March I will be a vendor at the Buxton Wool Gathering! This is held in the Buxton Pavilion Gardens and tickets are only £5 for the day, or £8 for the whole weekend, which is brilliant value. There will be over 50 exhibitors there alongside me, so lots to enjoy as well as the beautiful town of Buxton to explore.

I’ve paid for my table, booked the accommodation, but somehow when the leaflets came through the post that was what made it feel totally real.

As well as all this I’ve been selecting a few more patterns from the #FastenOffYAL pattern sale (which finishes at midnight on 8th December Eastern Standard Time – that’s 5am on the 9th GMT), and this morning I wound the yarn for the next design I’m going to cast on. It’s Confluence Cowl by Mary W Martin and it’s a new technique to me as well as being a pattern from a new-to-me designer. Two yarns are held together and knitted together for the main fabric and then some magic is worked so that there are different cables on each side of the fabric! I’m using two colours of Amble from The Fibre Co. It’s a sport weight rather than fingering weight yarn, but it’s so soft and I think it will work really well.

All in all, the rest of the week is quite a busy one, but in a very good way. The Christmas presents are mostly posted (or wrapped if they’re not going in the post) and the cards are written, so I can tick the most pressing aspects of home Christmas prep off the list, which is a great feeling at this stage. I even remembered to feed the Christmas cake with brandy at the weekend – you should have seen my lovely wife’s face when she walked into the kitchen at 11am to see me putting the brandy bottle back on the shelf…!

That’s all from me today – quite enough, I hear you say – so I will leave you with this: Mae smygu’n ofnadwy, dw i’n hoffi cerddoriaeth a dw i eisiau paned a bisgedi! (Translation: Smoking is terrible, I like music and I want a cup of tea and some biscuits!)

Take care one and all, K x