Tag: Knit-A-Long

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Thriller!

Four small pumpkins of different colours and shapes have googly eyes stuck on and mouths drawn with black pen sit on a wooden cabinet. Behind them is an acrylic painting in shades of orange and red.

Sometimes as an independent designer you get no feedback from customers, especially if a pattern is bought online and you never see their finished project.

At other times though, there is lots – and it can be thrilling! I’ve had really useful feedback from people who’ve asked questions because something wasn’t clear to them, and it’s helped me tweak the instructions or notes in a pattern to avoid that confusion arising again for someone else.

Sometimes knitters need more help and I try to break the instructions in the pattern down further for them. In some cases, of course, the help they need goes beyond what I can provide by email, so I might recommend a book on a particular technique or even suggest they book a 1-to-1 online or in-person tutorial session with me.

(Occasionally I do get emails from folk who expect a bit too much and can be rather ‘direct’ in requesting it – the one with “It doesn’t make sense. Write this pattern out line by line in my size” without even mentioning what size they were trying to make – was a particular highlight. You can guarantee the emails stop immediately when they’ve understood and they rarely acknowledge the help or say thanks…Thankfully these are rare!)

The feedback I love best is when a knitter proudly shows me their finished item, especially in person, but a photo and message can be just as exciting.

Three days ago I had a lovely message from a knitter showing me their finished Meg March brioche shawl – and it was their FIRST EVER brioche! It’s stunning, even before being blocked to size. It’s quite a thrill to see other knitters take your instructions and follow them, to create exactly the piece they wanted. And to be thanked for “such a beautiful and well written pattern” made me really happy.

The same day I also got an email from a knitter who had made Marianne Half Hap Shawl. The edging had initially caused her a few issues, but she cracked it and finished the shawl quickly from there. This was the shot of it blocking:

I knew that Ella had wanted to enter the finished shawl in her local show (Berwickshire Scottish Women’s Institute) and this weekend she won first prize in the Half Hap class! It’s the one on the bottom right – the colours look different from the pic above in different light and with the shawl folded up. That red sticker? That’s the First Prize label! I’m so delighted for Ella.

Something beautiful arrived in the post today. I had a RiverKnits voucher from one of my friends for my birthday (thanks Julie!) and, perhaps surprisingly, I chose something that wasn’t yarn! It’s an item I’ve had my eye on for a while, calling to me every time I see the RiverKnits stand, but it had always felt too much of a ‘treat’ before. Now though, with a voucher? That’s exactly the time for treats!

This is a handmade pencil case / notions bag, made with hand-woven fabric using RiverKnits’ hand-dyed yarn. It’s gorgeous and I can’t wait to use it!

There’s not a lot of my knitting to show you this week, for two reasons.

The dull reason is that I’ve had a bit of a cold (no, not Covid – I tested twice) and I haven’t done a huge amount. I am definitely on the mend and expect to be fighting fit by Thursday evening when I have the first part of the Twisted workshop.

The more exciting reason is that much of the knitting I have been doing is swatching for a submission and I can’t show you that!

Speaking of Twisted – the moebius brioche cowl workshop, here is the front page of the pattern:

We’ll be making the small DK version (top left pic) in the workshop, but the pattern folk get as part of the workshop includes all the options. Once the second part of the workshop is over (on 16th November) I’ll be publishing the pattern on all my usual platforms. If you want to book a space on the workshop, it’s not too late – ring Anne at Yarn O’clock on 01352 218082.

Tomorrow sees Part Two of Barragán Shawl being published in Issue 195 of The Knitter. I’ll be knitting along and sharing my progress on here and on social media as I did with Part One. Part Two contains the stripy borders and buff coloured sections of the lace shawl.

And next week (Monday 6th) I’ll be self-publishing the whole Branwen pattern.

Sign up to the newsletter if you’d like a lovely discount code to use for that!

Today is Hallowe’en and my lovely wife, Sue, is hosting Top Tweet Tuesday all day on Twitter. She’s getting to read lots and lots of spooky poems – it’s well worth having a look.

We may or may not get many trick or treaters as the weather is very changeable at the moment – the rain keeps suddenly starting and then stopping again – but we are prepared with sweets if we do. We haven’t carved any pumpkins this year. Instead, we have a range of cute small pumpkins and the googly eyes and sharpie pen came out to play! This way we get to eat the pumpkins as well as display them on the windowsill – no waste!

That’s all from me today. Stay safe, and do some stuff that makes you happy. K x

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Peek At You!

I said it might be finished by this week, didn’t I? The individual pieces were all complete by the weekend, but it took until today for me to sit down and sew it all together. One of the hardest things, strangely enough, was cutting out the felt pieces and glueing them into position. That right eye (the white part) had to be stuck on four times before it decided to stay put!

If you play Pokemon Go you might appreciate Pikachu’s pose in the featured image above – for those of you who don’t, sometimes they pop up in the corner of photographs!

Pikachu Front
Pikachu Back

There’s actually enough yarn and stuffing to make at least one more, although I used all the felt supplied. I won’t be making another one yet though – a 2.5mm crochet hook can be quite hard on the hands.

Buxton Wool Gathering is just under four weeks away now! I love the new social media images that have been shared with the exhibitors by the organisers. That crown on the sheep is very jaunty and a nicely subtle nod to the yarn show now being on the Coronation weekend. The show itself is on Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday – do come!

An important point to note is that the 10am opening is for folk who have bought their ticket in advance – if you want to buy a ticket at Buxton Pavilion on the day, you’ll be able to from 11am on both days.

I finished my current spinning this week. I think it’s come out at about an aran weight, which is what I was aiming for. I’ll check it soon against my yarn gauge. The colours are not ones I usually go for, but I really love how it’s turned out. ‘Faded Blooms’ is a really good name for it, don’t you think? The fibre came from FibreHut and it’s 100% Bluefaced Leicester Wool, which is brilliant to spin with.

Last week we had a lovely trip to Bodnant Garden – making use of our National Trust membership. We walked nearly all the way down to the bottom of the gardens and I felt very brave crossing the water on a set of stepping stones. I’m not sure I’d have been brave enough without the handrail there too though! The magnolias, rhododendrons and camellias were absolutely beautiful – and some of them are VAST!

The swathes of daffodils (or should that be ‘hosts’?) across the meadows were also gorgeous and very varied and it inspired me to photograph all of ours once we got back home.

This is one of my favourite new daffodils. It’s got real ‘attitude’ and is quite large too so we can see it clearly from the kitchen even though it’s at the bottom of the garden. I think it’s ‘Boscoppa‘.

The knitting is coming along well. Re-reading last week’s blog post I saw that I was just about to cast on the body of my latest design last Tuesday. Well, I’ve knitted the whole body now (some of it twice) and today I’ve written the pattern for the sleeves, so they will be started next! It’s been quite a number of years since I’ve knitted a child’s garment and I’d forgotten just how quickly they grow.

This coming Thursday (13th April) sees Issue 188 of The Knitter hit the newsstands which includes Part Four of Branwen Knit-along Shawl. Subscribers probably have their copy of the mag already! If you’re knitting this shawl, do share your progress on social media – or even by email! On social media, add the tag #KathAndrewsDesigns and I’ll be sure to see it. There’s one final part left to be published after this one. If the weather continues as it is today for much longer (cold, wet, very windy) knitters making this cosy DK shawl will be very glad of the growing shawl on their knees as they knit!

By the way, my sourdough starter is behaving a bit more reliably, but it’s still taking nearly 24 hours to not quite double in size. It needs a bit more TLC, but we’ll get there.

That’s all for today. I hope you stay warm and dry, and get to do some things that make you happy this week. K x

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And, breathe…

Last week I finished by promising to tell you about the spinning and baking I’ve been doing, as well as how the workshops went and all about next month’s knit-a-long!

Let’s start with the workshops. It was probably the longest amount of time I had (a) been on my feet and (b) spoken for, in over three and a half years. In other words, since I left the classroom!

Five hours of workshops went SO fast. Not just for me, but also for the lovely knitters who were there. In both the morning and afternoon sessions phrases such as “It’s not that time already, is it?!”, “I’ve never known two and a half hours go so quickly” and “Really? Only 10 minutes left? No!” could be heard. (Of course, because we were all so focused I completely missed the opportunity to take any photographs of their progress. Must do better next time!).

Lots was learnt, including the magic that is mattress stitch as part of the Finishing Techniques workshop. I love seeing the faces of knitters during this process. Most don’t believe they won’t be able to see the lime green yarn they are seaming their grey squares with, and when it proves to be true, it’s just a delight. Also we unpicked why different types of decrease are used and the importance of mirrored decreases to make your project look balanced.

The Introduction to Sock Knitting in the afternoon went even faster than I had anticipated, and everyone turned a heel successfully. I had an email yesterday from one of the attendees that made me so happy and I’m going to share part of it with you (with her permission):

“Thanks a million for all your guidance on Saturday. Just learning to knit on 4 needles was great, but to become a wool engineer apprentice and turn a heel was brilliant!”

Yvonne

We didn’t manage to get the graft done at the toe, however, so I promised to record a video showing how this is done and I have now uploaded this to my social media platforms. I wanted to get this up as soon as I could for my workshop attendees, but now I also need to add closed captions to the video.

This is the third little techniques video I have recorded and put on Facebook etc and this morning it occurred to me that they should really be on my website too. So, the Knitting Tuition page now has a new section: Free Video Tutorials! I’ll get the captions done on the toe graft video before uploading that one, but there are two others you can have a look at already. It will give you a little flavour of my Craftucation courses as well (though none of the videos are duplicated from there).

A still shot from a short knitting techniques video. My hands are holding needles and yarn with a multicoloured shawl in progress underneath them. The knitting is resting on a wooden desk with a coaster partly in view to the left.

Another addition to the website today is a section for next month’s Knit-A-Long! We are knitting Calon Cariad together, a lovely shawl whose name means ‘The Heart of Love’. We begin on February 11th with a Cast-On Party on Zoom at 7pm!! We’ll run the KAL over five weeks and there will be prizes 🎁. If you want to join in, the click ‘going’ on the KAL event and/or the KAL Cast-on Party event on my Facebook page, or just send me a message! All the details are here.

There are even kits available – I’m especially fond of the Erika Knight Wool Local which knits up beautifully in this pattern.

In other news, I have finished the scarf sample for Small Acts and that just needs blocking and photographing properly. I’m aiming to get the pattern out by the weekend. If you’re a subscriber look out for an extra (short) email with a discount code!

A large mid-indigo blue scarf lies in a heap on an oatmeal coloured carpet. There are two large mirrored cables running up the centre, flanked by two small mirrored cables at the sides. In between the cables are columns of moss stitch and the scarf has a narrow garter stitch edging.

Spinning is fun at the moment and I have starting on my second batch of Colours of Cambria fibre (this colour way is ‘Coast’). I wanted to create fairly regular repeats of the colours but I am not confident at judging the quantity when dividing the fibre into sections, so I came up with another approach. I set a timer on my phone for 15 minutes. I spin one colour from the sequence during that time and when the timer goes off, I stop and break that colour, ready to start with the next one when I spin again. Not only is this hopefully going to give me some good stripes/blocks of colour in the yarn, it also encourages me to spin more on a daily basis, even when I am busy, as 15 minutes can usually be slotted in somewhere!

An overhead shot of a bobbin on the spinning wheel. There is some soft green fibre at the bottom of the image waiting to be spun next. On the bobbin can be seen two shades of blue, a golden yellow and a little of the green. The yarn is spun quite finely.

I made the sourdough bagels that I have been wanting to try for a while. They weren’t as hard as I had anticipated, but I do think I over-baked them a little. It was a good taste, and nicely chewy, but a little too crunchy/firm on the outside. Next time, check five minutes sooner!

Eight uncooked bagels sit on a dark grey baking sheet waiting to be boiled before baking.
Cooked bagels on a cooling rack with the bamboo kitchen worktop visible behind. Four bagels are fully visible, with two partially shown on the left and one on the right. They are dark golden brown in colour with lighter centres.

We even managed to squeeze in a visit to the Little Orme where we saw the largest group of Seals I’ve ever seen there. They looked so happy and relaxed on the beach and were chatting away to each other quite a lot! It made us relax too, and even though there were quite a few people up there on Sunday (some even had telephoto lenses and tripods for their cameras, so the word about the seals must have got about), it was really peaceful. We sat on a bench and ate a little homemade picnic, all wrapped up against the wind and it was lovely. The perfect balance to the ‘business’ of the day before.

A pebble beach covered with 30-40 seals as well as some larger stones and big rocks. Seen from the cliff edge above with a bit of the sea-glass coloured sea visible on the right and the cliff wall on the far side of beach showing at the top of the picture.

Take care, stay warm and do more of what makes you happy, K x