I’ve actually done quite a lot of knitting this week! The sample of Bryn I showed you last week knitted in Weku Yarn Bukom DK is glorious – these colours are Golden Yellow and Royal Purple and this yarn is now available on Weku Yarn‘s website! The purple is a lot more vibrant in real life than it looks here in the photo.
I’ve also tried out a new colour combination for Twisted (which would also work really well for Bryn) which is Lime and Blue in Town Ends Yarns Poldale DK. I had slightly less than 25g of each of these colours and completed the cowl successfully!
In trying to get ahead of myself for Wonderwool I’ve also been putting my kit boxes together. I like the boxes rather than the tins, although they are trickier to open once they’ve been closed!
Those piles of boxes are stacked six high and there are two more piles around the corner!
In more DK knitting I’ve also made progress on my DK version of Into the Vortex. I love how different the slip stitch patterns look in the different yarns.
I’m not yet sure how much more I’ll be able to do as I want to ensure I only use 100g of the Riverknits DK Chimera. I’m also not 100% sure how much purple I used (West Yorkshire Spinners Fleece) as I had a number of part balls in the basket and I’m not sure I picked up the same one each time… I’ll have to weigh it! I’ve realised this is the only shawl I’ve designed with this shape and I think it’s one I want to explore again – maybe swirling the other way next time!
My 4-ply grey sample of What Do Points Make? is also growing. I’m very much enjoying this yarn and I’m looking forward to how the finished item will look once blocked.
Someone kindly messaged me the other day as well to let me know there was a st count error in size 1 at the bottom of the first column on page 4. It should read : “Rep Rows 7-10 twice more, then rep Rows 7-9 once more. 53 (71, 89, 107) sts” (not 55 sts). After the bottom of that column the st count is then correct. It’s been updated on all the digital formats available and I’ve let buyers of the digital pattern know about the update where possible.
Last week I said that my next job was to update the events section of my website and that has been done too – there are lots more yarn shows and workshops showing now! I’m teaching at Ewe Felty Thing on Saturday and, while the two-colour brioche workshop is sold out, there are still some spaces on the stranded knitting one (10.30-12.30, £45 including tea/coffee/cake and of course your workshop handouts). Contact the shop if you’d like to attend!
I’m going to keep today’s post short as there are lots of things I want to get done before my lovely wife gets back from nearly a week away, so Happy Easter to those who celebrate it and I hope you all get to do something that makes you happy this week. K x
We got home from the East Anglia Yarn Festival yesterday, successfully completing the third yarn show of the year. As always at EAYF it was a lot of fun, and we saw some old friends who we only see at this show, both visitors and other vendors. This included Victoria who I first met in person at EAYF in 2024 after knowing each other on social media beforehand and have been delighted to catch up with each year since. This year she brought her completed Am Byth hat to show me – knitted in a yarn containing camel fibre, it was super soft and silky and a very different beast fabric-wise to the original sample in WYS Croft DK – which is on display just behind her head!
One visitor wore her Meg March Shawl on the Saturday, to great admiration – and then returned on the Sunday wearing her Tiffany shawl!
If you’re on social media you may well have seen these pics already (apologies for the overlap!), but I know that several readers of this blog aren’t, and I didn’t want them to miss out!
I was most impressed by the knitting and greatly honoured too that she was wearing my shawl designs on both days of the show, especially as this was a show where Stephen West was present (sharing the same space two weekends on the trot!? Goodness!) and so there were a huge number of Stephen West shawls in attendance as folk queued for selfies. I was also highly delighted that he admired my Meg March Shawl and asked if I’d designed it on Sunday morning before opening when the vendors get a chance to wander around and chat with each other. I heard him say to Eddie of Madrigal Yarns while they were behind me that people at the show just had ‘mad technical skills’ and then realised they were talking about my shawl, so of course we had to chat!
Sue and I shared the most outrageously gorgeous vegan cinnamon bun on Saturday morning from Swirl of Norwich, who did very good business, selling out of most of their buns both days.
Since we got home we’ve been busy, catching up on the house and washing, and I’ve been weaving in the ends of the design commission that has a deadline of this coming Friday. Final checks of everything were completed this morning, the sample has been posted and the pattern and ‘all associated files’ – charts and schematic – have been emailed! Completed, done and dusted well before the deadline. I’m very pleased – I just hope they like it!
Now I’ve emailed the pattern I really need to sort out my desk. It hasn’t quite got to archeological strata levels, but it’s not far off – large working drawings, printed schematics, draft print outs of the pattern, inter-spliced with other paperwork. I know where everything is, but I also know that my brain will function more smoothly on the next things when it’s all tidied away.
The next things for me are to update the website with workshops and shows that are coming up and to start putting kits together in the new boxes ready for Wonderwool. I know there are technically four and a half weeks until Wonderwool, but that time will go by fast. We have nine more shows this year, six or seven of which I am teaching at (yay!), so there is a fair bit to update!
I’m also looking forward to my next workshops which are in less than two weeks at Ewe Felty Thing. I’ll be teaching an Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Knitting and Stranded Knitting there on April 4th. The brioche workshop has sold out, but there are spaces on the stranded knitting workshop (10.30-12.30, 4th April)!
Closer to home, there are just 10 days left before Anne closes Yarn O’clock for good! Everything is now 20% off, so now would be a very good time to make a final visit (or two) while you still have the chance! I still can’t quite believe that very soon she’s not going to be there as she’s just celebrated the shop’s 10th birthday. However, all good things must come to an end one day and this particular ‘one day’ is April 4th. Don’t miss your chance.
I’ve also been knitting this.
It’s a Bryn Brioche Cowl, in a new-to-me (and new-to-everyone as it made its debut at East Anglia Yarn Festival!) yarn from Weku Yarn. If you watched Game of Wool, that’s Lydia’s and her sister Hannah’s company. Watch this space.
Until next week, take care and I hope you get a chance to do some stuff that makes you happy. Goodness knows we all need that! K x
P.S. If you don’t know the Queen song ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, I highly recommend a listen!
This week feels very short and in a way it is – we have just four days in between returning from one big show – TexStyle in Manchester – and going to another one – East Anglia Yarn Festival just outside Norwich. Unsurprisingly therefore, my printer is working overtime as I type and I’m awaiting a delivery of A3 paper today as I may be about to run out!
TexStyle was a lot of fun as you’ll know if you’ve seen my social media posts. The hardest part was finding the loading bay for the venue when we arrived as the pictures with arrows on supplied by the venue were the kind that only make any sense when you already know where to go! I ended up in a lay-by of a side street ringing one of the organisers and saying: “Please help – I’m lost!” Michelle was a superstar and, having experienced the same issues herself the day before, was able to direct me exactly where to go. Once we arrived the system worked like clockwork: our booking code for unloading was scanned and we were shown where to park and unload from. There were venue staff on hand for those who needed help unloading and each stand already had a little ‘bus-stop’ style name attached to it so it was easy to find where we were positioned in the hall. I moved the car to the car-park underneath the venue once it was empty and returned to get set up with Sue.
Being in Manchester meant we were able to commute which we’ve never done for a weekend show before and I have to say it was lovely to fall back into our own bed at the end of the day!
Travelling into Manchester on Saturday morning was fairly quiet on the roads, apart from when one of the warning lights came on in my car – along with its associated ‘ping’! It was a ‘headlamp low’ warning and sure enough, once we were ensconced in our favourite parking spot and able to check, one of my main headlights had blown. This led to a large number of phone calls between Sue and Quickfit, then Halfords and between me and Lookers (the nearest Kia dealership). We finally discovered that Halfords in Trafford would probably have the correct bulb in stock and would be able to fit it, but they closed at 6pm and the show was open until 5pm… As you can imagine this was all a little distracting and worrying, especially as the show was incredibly busy on Saturday. However, at 2pm when it got a little calmer, I let the organisers know that I was popping out and why and left Sue in charge of the stand while I ventured to Halfords. They were so helpful and kind – got my headlight fixed really quickly and I was back at the show just after 3pm, feeling much happier – and I think my relief showed!
I even got the confidence up to go and say hello to Stephen West (and I got a hug!) after Sue and Ronnie set the example of being brave. If you’re a knitter you have probably heard of Stephen West, he’s a ‘big name’ in the knitting world and had a stand at the show.
However, back to the show itself. It was lovely to meet some of the people who follow me here and elsewhere online, including Anthony who brought his gorgeous Fiery Dragon Skin Cowl to show me in person. I’d seen a photo, but the actual knitting had so much colour and texture in it – and was knitted really well too! I also saw the finished version of Stitches and Jack‘s Imperial Cowl that she was wearing, and Jenny from the Bowland Guild was wearing her Tiffany Shawl too! Both beautifully knitted and worn with style. Because it was so busy and I didn’t think of it until later I didn’t get any pics of these lovely projects, but I know that Stitches and Jacks is likely to be podcasting about it soon – she did get a pic of us! She has talked about the process of knitting The Imperial Cowl in Episode 106 of her podcast (starting at about 22 minutes in).
Saturday was so busy that we barely stopped all day and so it was a bit of a relief that Sunday was quieter. I think the combination of Mothers’ Day, a St Patrick’s Day parade and a football match all taking place on Sunday had meant that most people had decided to come on the Saturday. It actually gave us a chance to have a proper chat to lots of the other vendors and start to plan the design of our stand for next weekend at EAYF as well as have a little dance in the empty space opposite us.
Although both of these shows are ‘patterns only’ for me, everything still takes up quite a lot of space as folk like/need to see the samples before they buy the pattern and next weekend our stand will be smaller, so we’re going for a slightly different approach. No table, just the pull up pattern stands, the double height rail and the cage to display samples that don’t hang well. We’ll have 32 of our most popular and newest designs with us rather than the 50 we brought to Manchester, but the layout should mean folk can still get in to the smaller space and have a look at everything fairly easily.
Looks impressive, don’t you think!?
On a related note, if you bought a copy of Nevern Lap Blanket (probably on Sunday) or a Heart in my Hands Hat (on Saturday – it was purchased alongside the Little Orme Hat) and find you only have the outermost pages of the pattern, please do get in touch and we’ll fix that for you.
One of the downsides of not using staples in our patterns is that sometimes the inner pages get left behind when a pattern is picked out of the display. The benefits of not using staples are tangible though – by not using staples it keeps the cost of producing the patterns down (partly as I would have to outsource the printing of patterns if they were stapled which would likely require a price rise), and staples are a ‘snag-risk’ for yarn when knitting.
That’s all from me today – I am heading to the dentist very soon for my annual check-up, and then it’s back to prepping for next weekend as well as finishing seaming my current commission (it’s blocked beautifully). I also need to update my website so you can see all the shows we’ll be at and where I’ll be teaching as more events have now published their vendor lists.
See you all next week! Until then, take care and do something that makes you happy. K x
Knitted ones at any rate! I designed Ice Diamond Mitts five and a half years ago and I’ve been knitting a new sample from the pattern this week. I’ve just reached the point where the stitches for the thumb are divided away from the rest of the stitches. Diamond patterns are a common feature of lace knitting as they are easy to create with correctly placed decreases and yarn overs and create clear and pleasing shapes in your knitting.
I find it fascinating that, while the design and pattern are clearly mine and my style of pattern writing has changed little since 2020, in some ways following the pattern is almost like knitting someone else’s pattern – it feels quite distant. I suppose that’s hardly surprising as I’ve only knitted these mitts once before and I’ve created 44 other designs since then (I’m also including the ones I’ve designed and made and are due to be published soon)! That’s an average of 8 designs per year – which may not sound like a lot, but it’s quite a chunk of work.
Last weekend was very much a musical one. Saturday was the Spring Market in our local shopping precinct where Shelby’s Singers performed 14 (yes!) songs to the shoppers and I bounced around in front of them waving my arms, sorry, conducted them. Then on Sunday it was choral evensong at the church where I sing in the choir. From Erasure, Alex Warren and the Great Showman to Stanford in Bb and Purcell! Quite a mix.
This weekend sees our second show of the year (of 12!) at TexStyle in Manchester, followed by East Anglia Yarn Festival in Norwich the next weekend. Both are patterns only, so no kits, but we will still have all the samples for the designs we are bringing with us so folk can see in person what they will be creating.
I’ve finished knitting my current commission and I now need to block the pieces and seam it (and make any tweaks to the pattern’s other sizes if necessary at that point – I’m looking at you, neckline!). It feels good to be at this stage 17 days before the deadline – especially with two shows added to the mix!
Now that I’ve finished the knitting of this design I can really get cracking with knitting the mitts, and finishing my DK Into the Vortex as well.
The brown boxes have arrived for my kits – being made of cardboard and arriving ‘flat’ means they take up far less room in the house than 100 tins would have done! In fact, I don’t think I would ever have ordered 100 tins at a time precisely for this reason. Yes, that really is 100 boxes. Or will be, when I make them up.
I’m considering adding needles to some of my kits, specifically Twisted which needs special short interchangeable needle tips plus an 80cm cable to make the smaller version and not everyone has these. Do you think this would be useful – a kit that includes the needles where the needles required are ‘non-standard’?
If you bought an advance ticket to the North West Winter Wool Festival and have not yet downloaded your free hot water bottle cover pattern, now is the time to do it! The download code will stop working at the end of the day on Sunday 15th March. 158 people have taken advantage of this offer which is an increase on those who downloaded The Imperial Cowl last year (125).
We are almost ready for Friday – the parking has been booked, the unloading time-slot at Manchester Central has been booked, the patterns printed, the samples checked, float made ready and the snacks bought! Now I just need to refresh the blue of my hair, and keep all the other plates spinning.
That’s all from me for today. Keep your heads up and I hope you are able to do something that makes you happy this week. K x
Having finally blocked my size four 4ply sample of What Do Points Make? I have sewn some very small side seams and woven in all the ends. It’s come out larger than the laceweight version in both length and width, but not ridiculously so. This 4ply yarn (Little Bird Sock from LottieKnits) is a gorgeously bouncy yarn with 365m to 100g so it’s slightly thicker than most 4ply yarns which tend to be 400m to 100g so this might be partly it’s come out a little bigger than expected. I absolutely love it. As a contrast with the laceweight size 4 sample, with this one I matched the colour changes on each side. I’ll get a photo of me wearing it soon, but for now, here it is on a hanger.
I also have chosen the yarn for my size three 4ply sample of What Do Points Make? and in a complete change from all my other versions of this design, I have chosen a neutral solid colour – grey! It is classic and the finished garment will go with everything. And this one is slightly thinner than many 4ply yarns with 440m per 100g, so it should be closer to the original measurements.
I’ve started a new sample of Ice Diamond Mitts using Cambrian Wool DK in Welsh Red. Their DK weight yarn is more towards the heavy DK/worsted weight end with 200m per 100g so these will be just as cosy as the originals that were knit in worsted weight yarn and in a more practical colour for mitts!
Lorelai Wrap is now live on my website, Payhip and Ravelry stores!
Newsletter subscribers will be getting an email in the next day or so with a time-limited discount code for the pattern, so if you think that sounds good and you’re not already a subscriber, why not sign up?
I can hardly believe that TexStyle is happening in less than two weeks and East Anglia Yarn Festival is the weekend after! If you are coming to either of these shows, please do come and say hello. I will be on stand H6 at TexStyle, pretty much in the middle of the hall. I don’t yet know the floor plan for EAYF, but we are all in one space so it shouldn’t be too hard to find me! I have designer stands at both of these events, so I will only be selling printed patterns.
It’s impossible to know what to say about what is happening in the world at the moment. All I can hope is that you and your loved ones are safe and as happy as you can be. These little narcissi have opened up this week in our front lawn (sorry, front moss) and are giving me hope that nature is pressing on regardless of what us silly humans are doing to the planet and each other.
Until next week, take care and do something that makes you happy. K x
I completed my 4-ply version of What Do Points Make? late last year, but with the reduction of space in the lounge with the Christmas tree up and all the busy-ness at the start of the year, I have only recently got around to blocking it. I have to admit that pinned out it looks like a large pair of trousers, but, once it is released from the blocking boards, I will fold the narrow pieces over, sew some side seams, weave the ends in and it will be a loose flowing throw-over. I’m hoping to have it with me at the shows are doing in March – TexStyle and East Anglia Yarn Festival (or EAYF).
You can see from the schematic (the line drawing on the right) that the measurements are bigger in the 4-ply version (that’s the bigger font) than for the laceweight (smaller font). I’d made the largest size. Not quite a ‘whole size’ different but definitely bigger. It might be interesting for me to knit a size 3 4-ply version as well and see what size that comes out. At least I know it wouldn’t take up quite so much room on the lounge floor!
I’ve also made some progress with my DK version of Into the Vortex. I seem to be in a ‘scaling up’ mode at the moment! This is coming out nicely and it will be interesting to see how much of the pattern I can work with 100g of each colour. The DK Chimera from RiverKnits is an absolute delight to use – really bouncy and full of so much colour. This photo doesn’t do the yarns justice as the colours look a lot brighter in real life.
I’m also cracking on with my latest design that had me purchasing a protractor and then doing calculations with both tan and cos. (no pics as it’s for a magazine). The surprising thing is that it looks quite simple in the sketch (and on the needles), it’s just the way I constructed it that caused me some head scratching in terms of making sure all the sizes work and especially that the larger sizes won’t have the top falling off the shoulders. I can’t wait for you to see it!
The sleeveless jumper design I was working on for a knitty.com submission has taken a back seat for a while – I’m not happy with the neck line and armholes when worn and there’s a weird band right across the middle of the chest that might be due to have used re-purposed yarn. I’m going to knit another sample in new yarn and work out how to improve/change the neck and armholes so they make the top look properly finished. I know I can’t do that in time for their current deadline, especially with the other top on a March deadline too. Sometimes, I have to admit that I can’t do everything and let something go.
Some exciting news for me, and possibly for you as well if you live near Glasgow, is that a number of my printed patterns are currently winging their way to For The Love of Yarn in Rogart Street. I saw a video of their shop recently and it’s enormous and beautifully stocked! If we ever get the chance to go to Glasgow – I’ve never been – I will definitely be paying the shop a visit.
On the garden front, we have one daffodil in flower in the front lawn, our deep red camellia is beginning to flower and the hellebores and snowdrops and still going strong. It also looks as though all the chunks of rhubarb crown we planted have taken – all of them have bright green leaves topping even brighter pink stalks. So I think that’s seven rhubarb plants we now have. I think we’re going to be giving rhubarb away come the summer!
And we still have flowers from my Mum’s amaryllis – even though the second flower stalk fell over and had to be cut off.
That’s everything from me for today. I hope you have a good week and get to do some stuff that makes you happy. K x
We had a great time in Blackpool at the North West Winter Wool Festival last weekend. Being the first show of the season it was particularly exciting to catch up with other vendors who we haven’t seen for a few months and also meet some new ones and make new friends! Shirley and Trevor were very organised and great hosts for the event.
We didn’t venture as far as the piers or the tower as the hotel the show was held in was at the far north end of Blackpool, but we had some bracing walks along the promenade and enjoyed some great chips and mushy peas. We did, however, experience the in-hotel entertainment on Friday night which included a cabaret singer who encouraged audience participation and also bingo! We didn’t win anything, but another vendor on our table did so we shared his joy.
It was wonderful to talk to knitters about their plans and ideas for the patterns they chose. One lady was even planning on spinning the yarn she was going to use for a lace shawl design she purchased. A couple of people told me they had knitted some of my patterns in the past and really enjoyed them, which always gives me a boost. One lady was wearing her beautifully knitted Tiffany shawl in bright rainbow shades and it was delightful. Jo Knit Sew showed me her Bryn Brioche Cowl which she knitted as her first brioche project before diving into a very intricate brioche shawl (I’ve seen that in progress and it’s stunning as well).
I also met and taught some wonderful people how to knit brioche on Saturday and how to knit a moebius on Sunday. I was very impressed with all of them and with the amount of learning that went on during those hours.
Lately I haven’t bought anything while I’ve been at a yarn show, but this time I treated myself to two things. A little ‘Scoopy’ from Bowfiddle Yarns which has a magnet in the base to help you hold on to your metal stitch markers and which changes colour in the most mesmerising way.
Also, I was given three beautiful mini skeins for my birthday which came from Jo at Second City Yarns. I’ve been thinking about what to make with them and I decided I need a good neutral yarn to go with the colours. So I got four mini skeins from Jo. They really help to make the colours sing when put together!
The Seaside Winter Cosy pattern is now live on my website, payhip and Ravelry, so you can now buy the pattern! It’s knitted in the round in four colours of DK yarn and you can choose to either seam the bottom (as in the picture below) or add poppers to the bottom to make the hot water bottle removable.
Next month we have two shows back to back! TexStyle is in Manchester on 14-15th March at Manchester Central (previously known as the G-Mex centre) and East Anglia Yarn Festival is the following weekend on 21-22nd March at the Norfolk Showground Arena just outside Norwich. If you come to either of these events, please do stop by and say hello!
That’s all from me today – I’m about to crack on with a new design that the yarn arrived for last Thursday! Have a good week, stay safe and do something that makes you happy. K x
As if by magic – a second sock appeared! Well, not magic obviously, by spending some time knitting. It’s funny that many people experience what is known as ‘second sock syndrome’, where they they will happily zip through making the first sock of a pair, but stall on the second. I seem to have the opposite. Once one sock is made, the other wants to get done and make the socks ready for use. It’s also helpful that this past week we have been taking things a little more gently due to a nasty throat/chest virus thing that got me first and then moved on to my lovely wife. I’m much better and she is just starting to come out of it. It has meant that we’ve spent a bit more time watching Grantchester (we’re almost up to the end of Series 3) and I’ve been knitting.
I’ve also started another DK version of Into the Vortex. I know I knitted one of these a while ago, but I wasn’t in love with the colours, so it’s still sitting there waiting to be blocked. However, I decided that this time I would keep it more in line with the original. RiverKnits now have a DK version of their Chimera yarn – and it was the 4ply version of this that we used in the original design along with their Nene 4ply, both of which are British Bluefaced Leicester yarns. I’m using the Chimera DK in the colourway ‘The Fifth Element’.
I’m going to pair it with a deep purple skein of West Yorkshire Spinners Fleece, which is another Bluefaced Leicester yarn. Bluefaced Leicester (BFL) is a breed of sheep, so this means the yarn is made solely from the fleeces of that breed of sheep.
Yesterday saw me doing more maths than I have done in over 30 years! I needed to calculate how deep the front neck drop of a new design can be. You might think the depth of the front neck drop (where the fabric at the front stops for the neck) is just a matter of choice and in many designs it is, but this design has an unusual shape and this measurement will dictate whether the top falls off the shoulders or not (and I would prefer not!).
I knew the length of one side of the triangle and all three angles (courtesy of this very fancy protractor that I bought on Saturday), but I had to google how to calculate the other lengths as I couldn’t remember! I knew it was likely to be something to do with sin/cos/tan, but it’s been a very long time since I last used those things. Hurrah for BBC bitesize and other maths support websites. It was time for the calculator and the tan function! Weirdly, I also found a TAN function in Excel, but it didn’t give me anywhere near the same result (and I know the calculator version is correct as I knew the side length I was trying to work out was going to be close in length to the one I knew, and the results I was getting from my attempts using TAN in Excel were nowhere near close). So, there are obviously some hidden extras that I need to learn before I can use Excel to work those things out for me.
On Sunday I got to take some pics of Lorelai Wrap, as Jo, a friend from my church choir, had kindly agreed to model it for me. Even the weather co-operated by stopping raining for a while. I got some great shots and this is the one that is going to be the main pic on the front cover of the pattern:
Lorelai Wrap will be available in printed form at the North West Winter Wool Festival in Blackpool this coming weekend and online within the week. It was first published in The Knitter magazine six months ago. It’s knitted in one piece using 4.5mm needles (you can use straight needles) and Jamieson’s of Shetland Ultra Lace, which is a beautiful yarn with a mix of 50% Shetland wool and 50% Lambswool. I used the colourway ‘Strawberry Crush’ – there are 39 other colours in this yarn to choose from if that’s not the colour for you!
That’s everything from me today. If you’re coming to Blackpool at the weekend do stop by and say hello – our stand is right near the door (stand B9) so you can’t miss us! If you’re not coming to Blackpool for the North West Winter Wool Festival, don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about it next week. Until then, take care, K x
So, I did it. I finally finished the first sock last night. Well, almost. I still need to graft the remaining 12 stitches at the toe. This sock has a graft that is at 90 degrees to the usual one. Instead of joining the remaining stitches top and bottom along the top of the toes, this one decreases more (which is why I only have 12 stitches left rather than 24) then joins the left and right stitches together down the centre of the toes. I can’t remember where I first came across this toe shape for socks, but it works really well.
The reason it’s taken me so long to get back to this sock is that I’ve knitted the front neck of the jumper design I’ve been working on three times. I mistrusted my first calculations thinking the neck would be too low, so I ripped that out, made the neckline higher and knitted it again. It seemed fine. Joined one shoulder seam, knitted the neckband. Again it seemed ok (this is with me draping it around Sue to check fit). Joined the other shoulder seam and all of a sudden the neck looked really small. It was indeed not easy to get over the head. So! I undid one shoulder seam, ripped out the neckband, undid the other shoulder seam, ripped back the front neck to 2cm lower than the too-small one. I re-knitted it all – holding my breath and also making the neckband shorter with a looser cast-off. This time, once I’d seamed one shoulder and knitted the neckband, I joined the other shoulder seam with lockable stitch markers to check it would actually go over the head. Phew! At least there were no sleeves to worry about, so I just had armhole ribbing to knit and side seams to sew before it was finished. And I can’t even show you any pics because it’s for a design submission.
I realised today that we are already in February and I haven’t yet sent out a single newsletter. If you are a newsletter subscriber and are wondering where your newsletters have gone, don’t worry – there will be one this week!
I mentioned a while ago that I’m scaling back / rethinking my kits. I’m also looking at changing the packaging from tins to cardboard boxes. There are several reasons for this – not least of which is cost, but also the fact that the empty cardboard boxes come flat and so take up far less room in our little bungalow! I think I’ve found the right size – it’s almost the same size as the larger tins were and now I’m choosing between natural brown and white.
I’m leaning towards the brown as I think that will show off the white sticker with the kit details far better and the white looks like it could get grubby quite quickly. I had considered black cardboard boxes to match the black cloths and metal cubes I use at yarn shows, but looking at them closely the black dye seems to rub off where the box is folded and I was then worried about it rubbing off on customers hands etc!
This week my local yarn shop, Yarn O’clock, announced that, after 10 years of trading, the shop will be closing in April. This is very sad for me. Anne, who owns the shop, hired me to teach my first knitting workshops, commissioned seven mystery knit-alongs from me and has sold me the yarn for nearly all of my kits! And of course, Anne and I have brought Yarn Gathering to Mold for four years. And when things were difficult for me personally a number of years ago, Anne’s shop was just about the only place I was able to leave the house to go to – it was my safe space. Things won’t be the same without her there, but as she put in her social media announcement, all good things must come to an end. I wish her so much joy for her new adventures, but will really miss being able to pop in, even though I haven’t been there as much as I would have liked over the past year or so. If you have a chance to visit Yarn O’clock before it closes in April I highly recommend it! Natural fibres with a focus on British yarn and a lovely range of needles, patterns and other items too.
It’s not long now until my first show of the year – the North West Winter Wool Show. If you have bought an advance ticket you will have a code to download the Seaside Winter Cosy pattern for free!
I will also have printed copies of the pattern with me at the show for sale for those people who buy a show ticket on the day – or in case anyone who already has their own copy of the pattern wants to buy one as a gift for someone else. If you do have an advance show ticket you have until March 15th (one month after the end of the show) to download your free copy of the pattern.
Until next week, take care of yourselves and each other and do something that makes you happy. K x
I went to my local yarn shop’s (Yarn O’clock) social evening last week and, as I’d hoped, made some good progress on the sock. The gusset decreases are now completed and I’m on the main part of the foot. In theory it shouldn’t take long now to finish this sock, but that only works if you actually pick it up and I haven’t done any more on it since last Wednesday!
Why not? Well, I’ve been working on my new design which should also have been nearing completion. Except I did a stitch count when I was partway through the armhole decreases only to find I was one stitch over what I should have had. One stitch?! That’s not a lot! No, but this is the sample for the design so it needs to be correct (and front and back need to match) and it turns out I’d missed the decrease from the ribbing to the main body. So back it went! Frogging with the emotional support of a cup of tea and some bourbons. I’m about two-thirds of the way back to the arm-holes now.
As a change from the historical fiction and Terry Pratchett novels I tend to listen to, I have recently been listening to a book called Tiny Habits by B J Fogg (that link takes you to the Tiny Habits website). It’s a fascinating approach to getting yourself to do things you want to do, but haven’t yet managed, by breaking your goal right down to the tiniest first step and then just doing that. There’s a lot more to it than that obviously, including a lot of celebrating yourself each time you do the thing (however tiny) you’re setting out to do, and I think I may need to listen to the book a second time in order to get the full approach clear in my head. But it’s an appealing idea – you don’t have to do ‘the thing’ (whatever it is) all at once – break it down, do the first bit until that seems easy, then add the next step.
Mum recently gave us an amaryllis plant to look after. She was given it at Christmas time and, without a window sill in her room, she was worried that it wouldn’t get enough sunlight to really grow. It’s been on our kitchen window sill and growing like mad and I’ve been photographing its progress and sharing it with Mum.
Yesterday the flower bud finally began to open!
If you’re anything like me, you might have been reading the news and social media over the past few weeks and despairing. It’s hard to know what to do or say that doesn’t seem trite or performative, but if you are in the US, please make your feelings known to your representatives. If you are in the UK, please use your votes wisely in the coming months and years to ensure we don’t end up with a similar situation. Many knitters and crafters I am in contact with online have been told to ‘stick to their knitting’ when mentioning what is going on in the outside world, but knitting has always been political.
Knitting was a way of sharing intelligence during the Second World War (for example, through code knitted into fabric by women who sat by railway lines and watched who and what was moving where, or knitters who listened in to conversations and then added useful coded intelligence into their knitting) and as a way of protesting. A number of years ago we saw a knitted sampler in a Guernsey war museum that had a ‘pretty’ textured border around the edge. It had been knitted by a prisoner of war. The textured pattern was morse code for something along the lines of “Hitler is a ****” – I don’t remember the exact phrase, but you get the idea! I think the accompanying information said that the officers in the camp had claimed the sampler to display in their offices, which was ironic, considering the hidden message!
If you are a crafter you may have seen a rising number of patterns available with protest slogans included on them or patterns that are symbolic, such as the red Norwegian knitted caps that are getting a lot of attention currently. These were a visible symbol of resistance during World War II and wearing them became banned in 1942 as the Nazi’s were intimidated by the unity and resistance they represented and they are being knitted again as a form of protest against what is happening in the US, specifically with ICE. Some folk are embracing the idea – especially where proceeds from the pattern or sales/donations of the hats are going to help those in need, others think it is pointless or that individuals are ‘trying to monetise’ the situation. Am I going to knit one? Probably not; I am not in the US and it would cost too much to post one to someone there. But as John Stuart Mill, said in 1867 (not Edmund Burke): “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
Knitters and designers on social media are often expected to respond to causes and events with grand statements or high profile sales with money going to the relevant cause. Equally they can get told to keep politics off their posts and ‘stick to their knitting’. There’s not a lot I personally can do in practical terms – I still need to promote my designs on social media rather than posting about current events every day. But do know that although I am not continuously shouting from the rooftops about the world turning upside down, I am very aware of it. My Dad went up Sword Beach in Normandy three days after D-Day to help rid the world of fascism. I can’t imagine what he would say about seeing what is happening in the world now.
On a related note, today is Holocaust Memorial Day.
Look after one another and do something that makes you happy. Until next week, take care, K x
