Tag: Knitting blog

Posted on by — 2 Comments

Coming up for Air

The top edge of a knitted shawl in golden yellow, green and pink, pinned out to dry with a wooden rule to keep the edge straight.

This week I finally feel like I’m starting to get back to stuff that makes me “me”!

I finished the shawl I showed you a sneak peek of last week and on Monday morning I blocked it. I’m really pleased with how it’s come out and I’ll be showing you the whole thing very soon! The blocking is a gentle one, just easing the edges into straight lines and pinning them in place to dry, rather than stretching the lace out to its limit. I happen to have a wooden metre rule (actually as the measurements are in inches, it might be a yard rule) that came with my blocking kit and this was the perfect tool to ensure I was maintaining a straight line as I pinned. The pattern will be available exclusively in kit form from James McIntosh in the spring. Remember you can already get gorgeous kits for County Shawl and Barragán from McIntosh (and, if you already have the ideal yarn for it in your stash, you can buy the pattern on its own for Barragán from me). Some folk do check in with me about kit sales to

I’ve also sent off a submission swatch/sketch for a design that could be published later in the year and had two others accepted recently.

And last Wednesday was spent mostly making 18 jars of Seville orange marmalade. This was made in two batches which is why it took most of the day, as there was no way my jam pan would have coped with 2.5kg fruit, 5kg sugar and 9 pints of water! It tastes delicious.

Last week’s Zoom brioche class went really well and my student completed her entire swatch during the session. I was very impressed and was pleased she said that I could share a pic of her work with you. Isn’t it great?!:

I will be teaching my Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche workshop (pictured above is ‘Next Steps’) at a couple of yarn shows this year and I’m keeping my eyes peeled for when they open their bookings for these so I can let you know.

Last week I mentioned the North West Winter Wool Festival taking place in Blackpool on February 15th and 16th. The opening hours are 10am-4pm for advance ticket holders, and 11am-4pm for tickets bought on the door. This is important as if you don’t have a ticket pre-booked you won’t get in at 10am. So if you want to be sure of a whole day of woolly fun, get yourself an advance ticket now!

I’m really looking forward to this show, although I won’t have my lovely wife acting as my ‘booth babe’ on this occasion, so I shall be flying solo. It’s a pattern only show for me, so I won’t have any kits with me, but there will be lots of wonderful yarn on offer from other vendors that you will be able to pair with any patterns you purchase!

Vendors will be split across two rooms, the Lancastrian Suite and the Louis room, both of which are on the same floor of the hotel and very close to each other. Do make sure to visit both spaces so you don’t miss out on anything.

To date, 73 ticket holders have downloaded their free copy of The Imperial Cowl, which is wonderful. I’m hoping to see lots of them being worn at the show! If you have bought an advance ticket and not downloaded your pattern, please do! The free version of the pattern is only available as a pdf download, and I won’t have any printed copies available until Wonderwool in April!

Writing this reminds me that one more task to add to my list of things to do before I head to Blackpool is to seam the shocking pink version that I knitted on the way to Kent before Christmas. See, I’m still coming up for air! (I also need to block the DK version of Into the Vortex that I knitted much earlier in the year – I think I finished it mid-October…)

The next few days will see my computer and printer working overtime (thank goodness they don’t only work 8 hour shifts!) as I update my inventory and get printing! I’ve double checked that I have spare ink cartridges lined up as well. The ones I buy are really good – expensive, but each colour does 2500 pages and the black does 5000 pages! (and I’ve got two of those on hand, so no fears of running short just yet!).

On a somewhat different note, I have my very first mammogram next week. I’m a little apprehensive about it to be honest, but I will be going as I know that these screening tests save lives. Early detection can just mean that you need to have something removed and then be closely monitored for a few years. If you get invited for a mammogram (or any other type of health screening check) please go. It could save your life.

Bodelwyddan was designed as part of a fund-raiser for Ysbyty Glan Clwyd (that’s Glan Clwyd Hospital to anyone who doesn’t speak Welsh) which is based in the village of Bodelwyddan (pronounced Bod-el-with-an). In October 2023 I donated 50% of sales from this sock pattern to Treasure Chest YGC, a charity whose aim is to support and raise funds for patients who have had or are having surgery or treatment for breast cancer in Glan Clwyd Hospital. I’m going to do the same for all sales of Bodelwyddan during February – so what are you waiting for? Crack open the sock yarn!

That’s all from me for today. Take care, stay safe and, if you get even the smallest chance, do something that makes you happy. K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Signs of Spring?

it’s been quite a week! I took part in the Knit Happy! Summit online as one of the speakers, and I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve had some lovely interactions with some of the 9000 (!!!) people attending the summit including with knitters who watched my presentation on How to Knit a Pi Shawl.

Yesterday I got the chance to watch some of the other presentations from the summit. I particularly enjoyed Jen Parochini’s of One Wild Designs talk on common sense bust darts and I’m looking forward to adding some to an existing sweater pattern next time I knit one! I did design a sweater including darts as part of my City & Guilds course, but it was only written for my own size (at the time). I would still love to revisit and update that design, grading it for different sizes and including instructions for knitters to add their own personalised bust darts. I think it will be quite a big piece of work and I’m hoping I’ll be able to block out some time for it later in the year.

As a result of the Knit Happy! Summit my newsletter subscribers have grown from just over 200 to over 800! In a week! Not what I was expecting at all, and it has made me smile – and hope they stick around for a while. It did involve quickly upgrading to a paid MailChimp plan so it would continue to function, and I’ve also started researching other newsletter/email platforms in case a different provider is something I need to consider in the future.

Yesterday we also had the excitement of a drains survey and we were so glad to hear that everything is fine. It did mean that I went into the back garden (for the first time in a few weeks) and it was wonderful to see the snowdrops in flower and the hellebores making an appearance. Of course today it’s raining hard, so I won’t be able to get any decent photos of them. For some reason, thinking about the snowdrops has reminded me that I really need to find some Seville oranges and get on with marmalade making…

If you’re a long time reader of this blog you will know that I’ve had a few issues with my car in the 15 months I’ve had it and, indeed, I am once again back at the garage. However, today is not a mechanical problem which is very nice! I’m just getting a trim replaced that was snapped two weeks ago while my rear windscreen wash jet was being fixed. Fortunately I will not be paying for that as it wasn’t me that broke it!

Being back at the garage means I am typing this on my iPad and I don’t seem to have the knack of selecting a small amount of text to delete. I just tried to delete two sentences and lost a whole paragraph! Maybe my iPad is trying to save me from myself as it was a little sentimental – I was talking about my Mum’s recent move to a care home (planned and her choice) and clearing her house which she’d been in for over 60 years and which I’d grown up in. It was a big job and I am glad the house sale completed last week.

Everything with Mum got delayed by two weeks (for completely different reasons both the house sale completion and Mum’s move as she ended up in hospital again – complete with a 19-hour wait in various ambulances outside A&E), I find myself at the end of January coming up for air and wondering where the month has gone. I am teaching on Zoom again tonight. Tonight is Next Steps in Two-Colour Brioche Knitting. This is your last chance to book a place!

Last week’s workshop was good. I had just one student attending – from Arizona! – but, as I had no travel, room hire or accommodation costs to cover, we went ahead. She did amazingly well and we even covered how to pick up dropped stitches in two-colour brioche and correcting mistakes. It’s amazing what you can do even when thousands of miles away!

The North West Winter Wool Festival takes place at the Imperial Hotel in Blackpool in just over two weeks. Mark February 15-16 in your calendars and do come if you can. If you buy an advance ticket (only £6 for the day!) you will also get to download a free knitting pattern that is exclusive to the show until mid March. I’ve seen a couple of Imperial Cowls knitted by people who are coming to the show and it never fails to give me a thrill to see items that knitters have made from my patterns and shared with me on social media (Instagram in this case). The one on the left was knitted by Sally and the cowl on the right was knitted by Suzanne. Aren’t they great?!

I’ve been making good progress on a new design that was started in November and I’m on the final stretch, knitting an applied i-cord edging and trying to calculate how much yarn it will use. I know some folk aren’t fans of applied i-cord, but it makes all the difference to this design, giving the edge weight and maintaining the shape well. It does grow surprisingly fast too once you get into the rhythm of it – I did half of one long edge in under an hour on Sunday. Soon I’ll be able to show it to you properly when it’s all finished and been blocked, but for now here’s a sense of it:

I’m using McIntosh BFL 4ply in three glorious spring colours! BFL is short for ‘blue-faced Leicester’, which is a sheep breed and this is a 100% British wool that is a joy to knit with.

Right, that’s all from me for today. Who’s coming to Blackpool? Take care one and all, K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Getting Sorted

It’s been an admin type of day today. Many of my days lately have been full of admin, but it’s mostly not been my own admin, so it’s been good to start to feel a little bit more in control of what I’m doing. So far, I have updated the household accounts, updated the yarn shows I am attending on the website (as far as they have been made public), attempted to book a hair-cut (thwarted as they were shut), applied to another yarn show, planned a choir rehearsal for tomorrow and prepped everything I need for my Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Knitting workshop tonight.

There’s still time for you to book on the brioche workshop – as it’s held on Zoom you don’t even have to leave the house! It’s 7-9pm GMT tonight; all you need to bring is two contrasting colours of DK yarn and a circular 5mm needle. I email the handout to those attending beforehand. You need to be able to confidently knit, purl, yarn over, cast-on and cast-off. The rest I will teach you.

It was good to add some of the yarn shows I’m attending to the website and I’ve tweaked the Events page layout so it’s easier to scroll through. These are the two shows I’m doing in May.

It’s also helped me check which ones I’m teaching at (about half of them!) and I have had a little sneak at how ticket sales are going for some of those workshops. It’s not all brioche at the shows this year. I’ll be teaching moebius knitting at some of them – another technique that seems to be magical!

Another task I undertook this morning was a mammoth stitch counting session. Last night I’d got to the end of Part 14 in a design I’m working on and I was 2 stitches short of what I should have had (254 instead of 256). So, today I counted the stitches at the end of each section from the beginning, checked it against the pattern (and checked the pattern was correct). The way this pattern works, it begins with a single stitch and, once the shape is established, increases 1 stitch every other row. Everything was spot on, right up until the last 3 rows. I’d missed a yarn over right in the middle of the last lace row and I’d missed the last increase on the edge. Both those errors had been made late last night – note to self: don’t knit when tired. Of course, if I’d started checking at the top I would have found the mistakes more quickly, but at least the stitch count throughout the pattern has had a good double-check as well now!

Are you going to the Knit Happy! Summit? If you are and you’ve upgraded your free ticket to the VIP version with the Knit Happy Toolkit, remember to claim your free pattern bundle from me. My contribution to the toolkit is a set of 3 of my knitting patterns – Ogee Lace Scarf or Wrap, Reaching Out and Mirror Mirror Moebius. Each pattern was chosen to help stretch and develop a knitter’s set of skills in different ways and give you three lovely items to wear or gift. There is a host of other free patterns and workshops included as well in the toolkit if you are attending the summit, it’s definitely worth upgrading! (And if you sign up to the summit through my link and then upgrade, I will get a small commission).

I will keep today’s post short, as there is still a lot to do before this evening’s workshop, but I did want to tell you about the film we went to see last night. A Complete Unknown is about Bob Dylan’s early career and I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though I’m not (or wasn’t) a big Dylan fan. It’s a well-told and well-acted story and the music is super. If you get a chance, go and see it!

Til next week, take care and do something that makes you happy. K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Knit (what makes you) Happy

Some people hate routine and really push against it. I have to say I like routine, even though I don’t always stick to the routines I know are good for me, like getting up at the same time every day. I do like knowing what I’m doing and what’s coming up next and knowing where everything is. I spent at least twenty minutes today looking for some very important documents. I did find them, but it was somewhat stressful!

The past month has tested me as there has been little in the way of routine, although several of the days leading up to Christmas were really lovely. Until last Friday I’d been at home for less than 48 hours in three weeks. This is why I haven’t really been posting much on social media lately and also missed last week’s blog post – life has been a little more complicated than expected, but hopefully things will be smoothing out soon. My lovely wife has reminded me of the phrase, “It’ll be alright in the end. And if it’s not alright, it’s not the end”! The other version is, “It’ll be alright in the end, but sometimes it’s a bloody long end!”.

Not a lot of knitting has taken place in this time (in fact I didn’t pick up the needles at all for about 10 days), but I have done a little. My new Haori cardigan is still growing, but somehow I have lost three stitches between when I picked up stitches to work the shoulder and upper body out towards the underarm to the current point – which is 60 rows on. I’m fairly certain it’s occurring at the point where the end of the row joins with the live stitches on the lower body.

I’ve been trying to tell myself it doesn’t matter, but I know that I’ll undo this part of the shoulder/upper body and redo it so the stitch count doesn’t reduce from 100 to 97 unexpectedly. Otherwise I’ll end up trying to mimic it on the other side and may even end up losing more stitches! It may seem like a lot to redo, but in the end that’s what will make me happier.

On the way to Kent before Christmas I did also knit another sample of the Imperial Cowl – the design I created for the North West Winter Wool Festival – see more about that event below. That’s six samples of this cowl I’ve knitted now – it really is a ‘more-ish’ pattern. This one is in shocking pink DK yarn, dyed by LottieKnits that I bought at her trunk show at Yarn O’clock, and it just needs a wash (aka blocking) and seaming. I’ll photograph that one soon.

If you are on my newsletter email list, you will know that in just over a week there is a free knitting summit – the Knit Happy! Summit – taking place and I am one of the speakers! There are more than 25 of us and we have all pre-recorded presentations on a wide variety of knitting topics. I am speaking on ‘How to Knit a Pi-Shawl’. It’s a fascinating technique to create a flat knitted circular item (that may or may not be shawl sized) starting at the centre and working outwards.

The Knit Happy! Summit takes place 23-26th January and you can get your free ticket here. All the presentations are available for 48 hours after they go live. If you want to be able to access them beyond that (or even get a knitter’s toolkit with freebies worth hundreds) you can upgrade your free ticket after you have registered and secured your place.

The Extended Access Pass is $57 (that’s currently less than £47) and gives you early access to all the presentations, lifetime access to watch them and all the presentation notes. The VIP Happy Knitters Toolkit is $77 (less than £64) and gives you all of that, plus tickets to 3 Zoom events that are social knitting/stitching sessions for summit attendees, $425-worth of knitting patterns, workshops and more, and 30-days free membership of Stitch Society which is run by Jessica from Doublethestitches.com who is organising the summit. Full disclosure: If you book your free ticket through my links on here, and then upgrade it, I get a commission.

I’m also doing some teaching this month on Zoom. There are still places available on both workshops!

Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Knitting

21st January, 7-9pm (GMT), Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Knitting, £25 per person

  • Learn this amazing knitting technique to create a wonderfully squishy fabric. We’ll cover the basics of the two colour brioche stitch and the terminology. We’ll also explore a brioche increase and two simple decreases to create geometric shapes in your brioche swatch.
  • Skills required: cast-on, cast-off, knit, purl, yarn over.
  • You will need 2 contrasting colours of DK yarn (approx 7g of each), 5mm circular knitting needles (60cm long is ideal) and a pen or pencil. Needles must be circular for brioche knitting, though we will be knitting flat, not in the round.

28th January, 7-9pm 9GMT), Next Steps in Two-Colour Brioche Knitting, £25 per person

  • Develop your two-colour brioche knitting skills further with increases and decreases to create wonderful geometric and curved shapes.
  • Two increases and three decreases enable you to knit this splendid geometric swatch. Even better, they’re some of the most commonly used incs/decs so you’ll be able to tackle a wide range of brioche patterns after taking this workshop.
  • Skills required – cast-on, cast-off, knit & purl, some experience of knitting basic two-colour brioche stitch.
  • You will need 2 contrasting colours of DK yarn (approx 7g of each), 5mm circular knitting needles (60-80cm is ideal) and a pen or pencil. Needles must be circular for brioche knitting, though we will be knitting flat, not in the round.

My first show of the year is coming up very soon as well. The North West Winter Wool Show is taking place at the Imperial Hotel in Blackpool on 15th-16th February. I’ve mentioned this show to you already as I have designed the exclusive pattern that you get if you purchase an advance ticket! A day ticket is £6 and a weekend pass is just £8! There are going to be 40 vendors and workshops in a beautiful setting and I highly recommend you visit if at all possible.

I will get the website updated very soon with the details of shows I am attending this year. Some of them I can’t list until they reveal their vendors and workshop teachers, but full details will be up soon!

I hope the start of 2025 is treating you well and that you get a chance to do something that makes you happy this week. Until next time, take care, K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

It’s lovely when it works!

A BT home hub with orange lights - not working!

So the last week has been interesting. I had Covid for the first time and it fairly knocked me flat. Two full days in bed, two more days on the sofa not doing anything, two days where I was able to do a bit of work at my desk. Yesterday we left the house briefly for the first time and today we had a walk. My sense of smell completely vanished and it affects your sense of taste far more than I realised. It’s starting to come back now which is a relief. I even cheered when my lovely wife, who’s also been ill, came into the lounge last night and said “It smells of old farts in here!” My reply was “You can smell again – brilliant!”

And this morning we woke to find the broadband in our area is down. So, no Wi-Fi, no landline (thanks full fibre for the digital phone) and, as our thermostat is on the Wi-Fi, I don’t think I can advance the heating either! News via the local Facebook group says it should be fixed tonight, but varies between that being a ‘this evening’ tonight or an ‘early hours of the morning’ tonight.

At least we have the gas fire and plenty of woolly layers! And hurrah for 4G data.

I suspect it’s part of the fallout from the latest storm. We escaped lightly from that. 60+ mph winds all day on Saturday, but no damage and utterly grateful to live up a big hill so no flooding either. Mostly of the town seems to be without broadband at the moment and some have been so for days.

I picked up my knitting again on Sunday, having not done any since last Monday (as Spike Milligan once said: “I told you I was ill!”) and it felt really soothing. It’s a new design, due out next year and I’m looking forward to sharing it with you.

There’s another new design coming out soon which is an exclusive freebie when you buy an advance ticket for the North West Winter Wool Festival. Tickets are on sale already and the link to the pattern will be available soon. The show is in February (15-16) so there’s plenty of time to knit the pattern up and wear it when you come to the show! The pattern will then be publicly available to buy from mid-March. I may even have a photo or two to share with you next week…!

In the meantime, there are some Flying the Shawls 2025 calendars still here that I would love to send to new homes for the new year. You may have spotted my post on Facebook and Instagram yesterday, but if not:

📣 Special Offer while stocks last! 📣

Flying the Shawls 2025 desktop calendar is available via Payhip for £10 + p&p. There are less than 20 copies remaining and they make great presents!

The offer? If you add the calendar to your Payhip basket, you can also add the Fiery Dragon Skin Cowl digital pattern at a whopping 50% discount! No code is required, just click the ‘add to my basket’ button that pops up. The calendar will be posted to you and you will be able to download the pdf of the pattern once you check out both items.

Why did I choose this pattern as the one for such a special offer? It’s a one-skein pattern that knits up quickly and there are options for almost any weight of yarn (apart from lace) included within the pattern. So, if you need to knit a gift that doesn’t take too long and you have 100g of yarn (from 4-ply to chunky), this pattern has you covered. Personally, I’ve knitted this pattern in 4ply, sport weight hand-spun, DK and Chunky hand-spun yarns.

Another joy of Brexit is that rules about selling to the EU (which for the purposes of this new law also includes Northern Ireland) are changing imminently and many small businesses have been discussing what they will and won’t be able to do, so to ensure I don’t accidentally fall foul of any new exporting rules, this offer is only available to folk in Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland) – sorry!

I hope you are keeping dry, warm and well, and that you get to do some things that make you happy this week. Take care, K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Since we’ve no place to go…

Yesterday I was admiring the fuchsia that was still in flower, and today everything is covered in a thick blanket of snow! As I type this, the snow has stopped for now and there are lumps of snow falling off the telephone wires and the thinner tree and bush stems which makes them ‘ping’ back up dramatically. There’s also a blackbird in the garden on the hunt for food and I hope it finds the holly berries and rose hips soon as they start to reappear.

I forget how the snow changes the quality of light in the house – everything is brighter and it seems like a good day to make a short tutorial video or two later on.

On Sunday we were at Stollen & Wolle, held at the RiverKnits studio in Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire. It was a lovely day, being surrounded by the smell of mulled wine, happy creative conversations and, in the afternoon, live music from Becci, Markus and others on the accordion and fiddles! We even had some vegan stollen during the day that was very tasty indeed. I came away with a skein of gorgeous DK yarn from Fruitful Fusion that will be knitted up into one of the samples for a new design coming out early next year. I wound it up before remembering to take a photo of it in the skein.

I also completely forgot to take photos of the other vendors’ stands. There were nine of us visiting vendors in total and I think I got to chat to nearly everyone. As well as us, RiverKnits and Silly Gooze (the printers who share the studio with RiverKnits) there were: Fruit Fusion, Daughter of a Shepherd, Skein Queen, Rauwerk, Telling Yarns, The Wool Library, Allium Threads and ButtonedUp.

It was a beautifully sunny morning at RiverKnits and we were pleased with how many people came – it was a really busy and buzzy atmosphere.

Rain began a little by the later part of the afternoon which led to a wet and dark journey home and there had clearly been some accidents on the road. As I get older I find night driving in the rain more stressful than I used to and many people I’ve spoken to say they feel the same. Do headlights and spray from other vehicles bother you when driving at night?

Today, I will not be travelling anywhere. I have declared a snow day, as have all the local schools. We may go for a walk later (Becci from RiverKnits recommends a snowball fight, which might be a plan if followed up with hot chocolate), but the car is staying on the drive!

That does allow more time for knitting – and video recording as mentioned!

This coming weekend we will be in Welwyn Garden City for Wool-in Garden City – the second time this year as the first one was in January! On Saturday 23rd I will be teaching in the Pop-Up shop in the Howard Centre and on Sunday 24th we will be one of the 19 vendors exhibiting at the wool show at Oaklands College.

Tickets for both brioche workshops are still available at £30 each – you can book a workshop place here (scroll to the bottom of the page, click in the ‘Choose an option’ box, and scroll to the bottom of the list for the two brioche workshops). Entry to the wool show on Sunday is £7 on the door or £6 in advance.

As I’ve been knitting on samples for two new designs, there has only been a little progress with the new cardigan:

That’s all from me for today. If you are coming to Wool-in Garden City on Sunday, please say hello! (I’m hoping the snow will have cleared up by then!)

In the meantime, stay warm and dry as much as you can, and do something that makes you happy. K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

On the Road Again

Saturday’s workshop at Bakewell Wool Gathering was great and all those attending made excellent progress with their first ever brioche knitting.

My lovely wife drove us over to Bakewell – it was our first opportunity to have a look at the town so we had a wander around in the late afternoon sun and bought a couple of vegan Bakewell tarts. The town was incredibly busy so we stopped at Buxton for a meal before continuing home.

Tonight’s Zoom workshop is the follow-on to the Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Knitting workshop that I taught on Saturday and two weeks ago on Zoom: it’s Next Steps in Two-Colour Brioche Knitting. There’s still time to book a place! It runs from 7-9pm BST (that’s GMT +1) and we’ll recap the increase and decreases covered in the Intro workshop and add another one of each for good measure! If you are confident in your basic brioche stitch and want to extend your brioche skills this is definitely the workshop for you.

This coming Saturday is the Designer Day at Ewe Felty Thing and I will be there along with 4 other designers; Nikki Small who runs Ewe Felty Thing, Elizabeth McGuire, Tanya from The Woolly Tangle and Dina of Dina’s Home of Crafts.

As well as my current patterns and kits, I will also have copies of Prynhawn Da with me – available in individual printed format for the first time.

It seemed silly to be at an event in North Wales and not to have one of my Welsh named patterns there!

I highly recommend coming along to the Designer Day – it’s not a ticketed event, just turn up to Ewe Felty Thing, 24 Castle Street, Conwy 10am-5pm this Saturday.

My current commission knitting is coming along and I’m nearly halfway through the second colour. Once that’s done, I’ll need to block, measure, finish and check the pattern and get it all sent off.

If you can’t get to North Wales this weekend, I’ll also be at Stollen & Wolle with RiverKnits and several other amazing creative folk on Sunday 17th November at the RiverKnit studio in Weedon Bec and at Wool-in Garden City on 24th November at Oaklands College, Welwyn Garden City. See my events page for all details and links for tickets.

Take care and do some stuff that makes you happy this week if you can. K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Good Afternoon

I’ve caught up with the frogging I had to do last week and everything is now ticking along nicely with the new design. I should finish the main section of it fairly soon and add the second colour in.

I don’t think I have shown you the finished DK version of Into the Vortex, so here it is!

It still needs to be blocked and it will behave itself much better for photographs once that has been done.

Last Tuesday evening’s Zoom workshop worked very well and the knitters who attended made excellent progress having not tried brioche knitting before. I was really impressed with them and they had a lot of fun too!

I’m teaching the same workshop (Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Knitting) at Bakewell Wool Gathering this Saturday, 1.30-3.30pm. There are still spaces on the workshop if you’d like to attend – you can book in advance or ask on the day if there are still spaces available. You just need to bring 5mm circular needles (minimum 60cm long) with you.

If you already know how to work the basic brioche knit stitch and would like to extend your brioche knitting skills, I would encourage you to sign up for the Next Steps in Two-Colour Brioche Knitting Zoom Workshop on Tuesday October 22nd, 7-9pm, where we are going to work on this swatch:

The community choir (Shelby’s Singers) I lead sang in our town on Saturday afternoon as part of a free music festival. We had an hour’s slot, with the expectation to sing for 45 minutes. That’s a lot of songs! We did 13 songs, finishing with the song that has become ‘ours’ – ‘This is Me’ from The Greatest Showman. We change the final line to ‘This is Us’ and that has been added to the choir hoodies that arrived just in time for the performance!

So, this is us:

Prynhawn Da was published in Knit Now in May and I have now released it as an individual pattern on my website, Payhip and Ravelry. Prynhawn Da is Welsh for ‘good afternoon’, hence the title of today’s blog post! The coasters and placemats are not only pretty in themselves, but they are also a great introduction to Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Pi Shawl construction:

That’s everything from me today. I hope you have a good week and get a chance to do something you enjoy. K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Go Back To Go Forward

The Yarn Harlot (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee) used to say (and probably still does) that fast knitters make big mistakes more quickly. She’s right!

This is what I knitted last week:

Except these are balls of wool, not knitting, so what happened? Sue said “Oh no!” when she saw me frogging this earlier on (frogging – as in you remove the knitting from the needles and ‘rip it, rip it’ out). However, my response to her was a very calm, “Don’t worry, it will be better”.

It had been bugging me that the repeated pattern in this design started alternately on a right side and then a wrong side row. Also that the number of stitches before the actual pattern began kept increasing. That meant I couldn’t condense the pattern and every row had to be written out, which, when it’s for a magazine and every page used matters, is a potential problem.

Lying in bed I wondered whether removing one plain row before the repeat section began would solve both issues I was having, so this morning I went to my charting programme and drew it out and guess what? It works! Five or more pages reduced to two and a half and the pattern becomes easier to follow as well. But it did mean I needed to undo all that yarn you see in the pic above.

Sometimes you have to go back before you can go forward.

This evening I am teaching my Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Workshop via Zoom. There are some major benefits to this: no one has to travel, you can attend from wherever you are as long as you have a reliable internet connection and my camera set-up means that everyone can see what I’m doing at the same time as though I were right next to them. It does mean that I can’t take someone’s knitting and fix it for them, but as long as they can hold it up to their camera I should be able to explain what they need to do differently to make it work. If you already know the basic brioche stitches and want to expand your brioche knitting skills, why not book on the Next Steps in Two-Colour Brioche Knitting Zoom Workshop? It’s on Tuesday 22nd October, 7-9pm (British Summer Time, which is GMT+1).

I had a lovely surprise on Thursday. I knew that my brioche cowl, named Menai, was due to be on the cover of the new issue (Issue 207) of The Knitter magazine, but I hadn’t realised they were also starting my four-part knit-along lace hap shawl Rhiannon in the same issue!

I was asked recently what my favourite fibre to knit with is and the answer was wool (from sheep). That may be because I’m so much more familiar with wool than other animal fibres, but the more you use them, the more you learn!

Both Menai and Rhiannon use alpaca yarn, which I was less familiar with before creating these designs. Rhiannon, the lace hap (square) shawl uses Cascade Yarns Alpaca Lace, which is 100% Alpaca. It was so soft to work with and created such a fluid fabric that I wasn’t sure if the blocking would hold the shapes of the lace stitches clearly, but it did and it blocked out beautifully. I used my hap stretcher to block it, propped up by the radiator.

Menai uses an Alpaca Sock yarn from UK Alpaca, and includes 25% nylon with the alpaca. Again the fabric flowed like water, which is one of the reasons I added the collar to the cowl, as otherwise it simply sat on the shoulders, which isn’t what you want a cowl to do really! Had it been worked in wool, it would have stood up on its own and would have looked completely different, but I’m glad it worked out the way it did with the alpaca as I really like the shape of the finished item which is part cowl and part mini poncho.

*As well as these two designs in issue 207, the County Shawl that I designed for James McIntosh’s Donegal 4ply yarn is in “The Knitter loves…” section!

It’s a great issue, full to brim with gorgeous accessories and some garments as well, from a range of brilliant designers, so if you are a knitter I heartily recommend you get a copy if you can.

I’m going to leave it there for today, get my desk set up for the workshop, and start re-knitting that lovely blue yarn (It’s West Yorkshire Spinners Elements DK).

Have a good week and do some stuff that makes you happy. Kx

Posted on by — Leave a comment

C’est Magnifique

Unusually today is not only blog day, but also the first of the month, which makes it newsletter day as well, so there will be quite some overlap in content between the two!

Yarndale was amazing, if a little chilly! If you came by the stand to say hello and have a browse, thank you so much. Customers said some lovely things about the samples on display and I heard a ‘C’est manifique’ from a group of French knitters which made me very happy. We also sold lots of patterns, kits and calendars during the weekend.

If you didn’t come to the show yourself, then here are a few pics to show you how the cattle pen (yes, that is what it usually is used for) was transformed over the course of three and a half hours on Friday afternoon:

My lovely wife Sue can be seen in one of the pics above having a very well earned sit-down after transporting most of the contents of our stand the entire length of the auction mart on the trolley (the car park was at the opposite end to where our stand was!) She was amazing and also held the fort for much of Saturday afternoon whilst I went to teach an Introduction to Two Colour Brioche Knitting workshop to ten intrepid knitters.

While I was at the stand later on Saturday looking for a pattern on the table, my badge caught on Tiffany (pinned across the front of the table) and snagged it quite badly. Nothing broke, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to fix it to look as if this had never happened!

I’m going to video the process which will hopefully encourage others to fix their own snagged knits.

We made some new friends as well as catching up with old ones – both other vendors and visitors to the show. I think one of the great things about yarn shows is that it’s a rare chance for most of the vendors see each other, so we make the most of catching up in snatched moments between setting up, or even when queueing for the loo!

I told you last week that I was racking my brains trying to work out how on earth I was going to put my banner up at Yarndale and that I eventually bought two mops with handles that unscrewed and had loops in the top. As you can see – the mop handles worked! Cable ties attached the banner to the metal mop handles and lots of string ties the mop handles to the metal rails of the pen (hidden behind the black sheets and Nevern Throw).

If you came by the stand you will have seen the little display of McIntosh yarns with the two designs that I have created with them. County Shawl was launched on Friday and I’m very excited about it. It uses the wonderful Donegal 4ply yarn in three colours. This semi-circular shawl may look complex but all the stitch patterns are slip stitch, knit and purl with a few little short rows to create the rows of bobbles, so it’s very achievable.

James McIntosh has put together three stunning colour-way choices for you as shown in the picture above. The grey and natural yarn pack also includes a gorgeous dark green which is shyly hiding behind the other two skeins. When you select your colour choices you can also choose to have a set of 3.75mm 150cm circular needles from Addi included in your kit. These needles are really nice to use and are very smooth. 

Every kit includes the pattern and I get paid the full pattern price (£6) for every kit sold, which is rather splendid.

I am out and about with my designs again later this month. Ewe Felty Thing are hosting a ‘Designer Day‘ at their shop in Conwy on Saturday October 26 from 10-5, and I will be one of 5 designers taking part. It’s free to come along, so if you are anywhere near the North Wales coast, it would be lovely to see you! 26th October might seem like a long way off now, but it’s actually less than four weeks away!

I have been enjoying knitting my DK version of Into the Vortex and I have nearly finished Part 5 of the seven parts. That’s really good, as something exciting arrived in the post today and means I should be able to finish at least one project before starting a new piece of deadline knitting!

You know the routine now, I think. I’m not going to be able to tell you what it is or who it’s for, or show you my progress with it, but I did want to show you the yarn as the colours are so lovely and the shine from the Tencel content is gorgeous.

Speaking of deadline and commission knitting; keep an eye out for the new issue of The Knitter that comes out later this week as I believe it will include a new design from me!

That’s all from me for today.