Tag: Knitting blog

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All in a Spin

The pastries shown in the pic at the top were from Jusrol from the supermarket that I ‘made’ this afternoon. You just unroll the pastry, spread the cinnamon stuff on, roll up again, slice, bake and drizzle with the icing. Very easy and ideal when you want a pastry and don’t have time to make from scratch or get to a bakers that sell vegan ones. These also happen to be vegan friendly! Perfect for what I needed – you can see I didn’t wait long…

Yarndale preparations are nearly complete, after lots and lots of printing and putting kits together and I have one more delivery arriving today that will be very exciting to reveal at the weekend!

Yesterday’s delivery was more mundane, but very important for my stand set-up: two mops. No, I don’t intend to mop out my pen before setting up my stand; the removable handles will be the supports for my business banner! There is a loop at the top of each handle perfect for a cable tie and I will be able to attach the handles to the rails of the pen with either more cable ties or string (or both). There won’t be a mop head in sight (or even present – as the whole thing comes apart into five pieces, so the mop heads will be staying at home)! I’ll photograph it on Friday as we set up in case you aren’t going to Yarndale and can’t quite picture how it will work.

I did consider broom handles, and also did extensive googling for lengths of wood with pre-drilled holes as I didn’t fancy grappling with Dad’s old Black & Decker drill just before a show, but when I discovered that mop handles tend to have hanging loops at the top (presumably so the mop heads can hang and dry out in between uses) that seemed the way to go. It’s amazing the rabbit holes you can end up going down on the internet when you need to find something very specific that hasn’t been invented for the purpose you need. Funnily enough, the company I bought the banner from don’t sell portable things to suspend said banners from. You might have thought that a search of ‘banner stands’ or ‘frames to hang banners from’ would have produced the solution to my needs, but no! The process of working out what might work and what wouldn’t was quite head spinning and I’m very grateful to all the members of the Yarn Show Vendors group on Facebook who answered my cry for help on how on earth I was going to display my banner. Wonderwool was easy as it could just be hung from hooks over the high temporary walls to the stands and at other events I’ve been able to attach it to the marquee frame (Wool @ J13) or string it between my clothes rails (Pop Up Wool Show), but with the layout I would have at Yarndale that wasn’t going to be an option.

Aside from printing lots of patterns and getting my kits and workshop materials in order, I’ve been doing quite a lot of knitting and some crochet this week. And this time it’s stuff I can show you!

The new sample of Elinor is coming along. I’ve got 20 more rows of the border to do before the edging and I will soon break into the second skein.

These skeins are 1200m, so it’s very very fine laceweight yarn – most laceweight is 800m per skein. I’m wondering whether it will pass the wedding ring test once complete. Very fine lace shawls were said to be able to pass through a wedding ring. however, it will be a big shawl (approx 2m across when complete and my current stitch count is nearing 900 stitches per row), so even with such fine yarn that may not work.

As the rows of Elinor are long and it’s very fine yarn, it’s also been useful to have some knitting on the go that’s easier on the eyeballs. My long loved Manu cardigan, twice mended, has gone under the arms again (despite thorough darning in the past) and I’ve started making a new one. I found some DK yarn in the deep stash which is a bit plumper than the yarn I used previously and I’ve gone up a needle size to keep the fabric supple. I’m not entirely sure the colours are working though. The palest colour (it’s like a lime green in real life) stands out far more than the other shades do. And with the yarn being thicker (and a bit shorter) I’m not sure there’ll be enough for the cardigan at the rate I’m getting through it, even if I leave off the pockets. So, here it is, sitting in temporary time-out while I consider its future.

I will use the yarn, even if not for this cardigan. Maybe I’ll do a Lichfield in colour blocks with the stitch pattern sections in the contrasting colours!?

I’ve woven in the ends of my Mystical Lanterns blanket (apart from the ends of the joining yarn) and it looks very respectable on the back as well as the front now. The left hand pic (with the clear white wavy lines from joining the strips of motifs) is the back.

Last Thursday I was at Yarn O’clock, talking with Anne about patterns that would work well with the new DK Chimera she was expecting from RiverKnits – it’s arrived and you can see it on her social media pages. I remembered that Into the Vortex had originally been written for 50g of the 4ply Chimera and 50g of Nene 4ply (another RiverKnits yarn) and we wondered how the pattern might work knitted in DK on larger needles.

I’ve started an experiment, knitting the first couple of sections of Into the Vortex in John Arbon Knit By Numbers and West Yorkshire Spinners Croft, both of which are DK yarns. I’ve done Parts 1 and 2 on 5.5mm needles (the original 4ply was on 4.5mm) and Part 1 on 5mm needles for comparison. This is because I started on 5.5mm, but the lace section in yellow felt much floppier than the first slipped stitch section in teal, so I’m trying again with 5mm to see if that works better.

It’s probably also due to the character of the two yarns being very different, but I want to see which needle size works best. Once I’ve worked that out and confirmed that the small version of the pattern can be made using 100g of each colour of DK yarn, I’ll add that as an option to the pattern. I’d love to knit one in the DK versions of the original RiverKnits yarns too! I’d forgotten how much fun the vortex shape is to knit as well.

Whilst I was at Yarn O’clock I treated myself to a new book.

Now, Tunisian Crochet is not a technique I’ve tried at all, but it looks really interesting. I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to have a play with it soon. I mean, it’s not like I’m busy or anything, is it…?

That’s all from me for today. If you come to Yarndale at the weekend, please come and say hello! We’re on stand L14. If you can’t make it there, I’ll try to remember to take lots of photos and tell you all about it next week.

Take care one and all, K x

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If at first you don’t succeed…

A very tangled and twisted mess of brightly coloured hand spun yarn held in my hand.

…well you could give up, but that isn’t what I do, is it?

Today both I and Floella (my lovely car) have both had to have a second go at something. She needed a new tyre before she could pass her MOT as one of them was bulging(!), and I needed to sort out the spaghetti tangle that my spinning had become. We have both now succeeded!

You’re probably more interested in the spinning (I hope), so I shall tell you what happened. Last week my singles were coming along nicely and I was spinning it all onto one bobbin with the plan to chain ply some of it into a 3-ply structure and bracelet ply the rest as a 2-ply. Chain plying works really well off a single bobbin, and I started to do this, but didn’t love the effect – I wanted the colours to blend and contrast more and for that I needed to ply the yarn either from two bobbins or by using each end of the singles yarn.

Do you remember that when I posted about spinning last week I mentioned I hadn’t done any spinning for a while? I also forgot that winding 100g of yarn around your wrist and middle finger to prep for bracelet plying is a really stupid idea. Three times I rescued my middle finger from the tightening yarn around it before it went completely blue. And then I could barely get it all off my wrist. I’d also forgotten that I’d bought a tool to use instead of wrapping the yarn around my hand back in June…

So, I did eventually get the 100g of singles spun yarn off my hand, but there was no way I was going to be able to get it to hang nicely from my other wrist while I plied it. It crinkled itself into a telephone wire/spaghetti style ball that I tried to ply from with it on my lap, but that didn’t work either. The photo below is just some of it!

The telephone wire nature of the yarn made me think that it probably had too much twist in it as well and I decided to attempt a rescue. The lump of wool had divided itself almost into two so I snapped the yarn and developed a plan. If I could get this mess back onto two bobbins with approximately half on each, then I could try again with the plying. Very slowly I eased the yarn onto the bobbin, turning the wheel in the opposite direction to remove some of the extra twist. I had to keep stopping to undo knots and tangles, but I got there in the end.

After that I went straight into plying the two strands together – still moving in the opposite direction of the first twist (that’s what you do when you ply singles together), which probably removed a little bit more of the original over-twisting.

I’ve actually ended up with a decent looking yarn with exactly the contrasting changing colours in the two strands that I was after. But blimey, it was hard work and I did for a while considering walking away from it as a lost cause. I’m so glad I didn’t though. It was worth trying again and not giving up!

Today hasn’t just been about spinning and visiting the garage though. I have also pressed send on a pattern that will be published in January and submitted another design idea to another publication. These are both exciting things. I’m hoping the submission will be accepted – and if it is that will be another ‘if at first you don’t succeed’ moment, as the designed has been submitted before elsewhere. This time I’ve reworked the idea, re-swatched and I think it’s now a stronger design all round. Sometimes not being successful first time around leads to an even better result at the end!

I can’t show you the new pattern I’ve just sent off or the submission idea, so there isn’t any new knitting to show you this week. I have done some more crochet, returning to my Mystical Lanterns blanket (another great design by Janie Crow). Two more strips of motifs have been added to it this weekend. It’s about half the size recommended in the pattern at the moment. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll make it any bigger than that – there will be enough yarn – or if I’ll make it the size stated and have it as a cosy lap blanket.

Of course I haven’t forgotten about Yarn Gathering on Sunday!

There are daily posts going out on Instagram and Facebook highlighting each of the 17 vendors attending. If you can make it to The Daniel Owen Centre in Mold on Sunday (CH7 1AP), please come along!

The vendors we have coming are:

Plus, Anne will be opening Yarn O’clock between 12-1pm!

Entry is free, you don’t need to book a ticket, parking in Mold is free on Sundays and you will be able to visit the Mold Food and Drink Festival as well. I’m really excited about co-hosting our third annual Yarn Gathering event with Anne from Yarn O’clock and also being one of the vendors.

If you can’t make it on Sunday, I’ll tell you all about it next week – as well as getting even more exciting about Yarndale at the end of September! Until then, take care and, if at first you don’t succeed… have another go! Kx

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Flying the Shawls

Beth March Shawl, a hand knitted brioche shawl in a cloudy sky forming the shape of a diving sparrowhawk.

Well, last week’s post hasn’t yet united Simon with his mitts and hat – but I live in hope that he will indeed have kept my business card and contact me soon now it’s September.

I realised a while ago that I haven’t done much spinning at all this year, and towards the end of last week I set about putting that right. I chose a lovely vibrant braid of Rambouillet fibre in a colourway called “Lucy” dyed by Sealy MacWheely that I’d bought at Wonderwool Wales in 2023. It reminds me of watermelons and summer. Rather than do anything fancy with it like try to split the braid lengthwise, I just started spinning from the end of the length of fibre and kept going. There isn’t much left to do now! Either I have got faster at spinning or I sat spinning for far longer during the two sessions I used to spin up what’s now on the bobbin than I thought I had. I’m very pleased with how it looks at the moment.

It’s got long blocks of colour at present with some gentle blends at the colour changes. When I get to the plying stage that could change completely depending on which plying technique I choose. If I do a 2-ply and start from the two ends working towards the middle, I could get something quite funky. If I do a 3-ply chain-plied technique the colour blocks will be largely maintained. I’m undecided! Maybe I’ll do half as chain ply and half as a 2-ply and compare the end results!

I’ve been knitting up a storm this week and I’ve used up nearly 200g of 4ply yarn (that’s 800m!) but I can’t show you as it’s a commission. I am really pleased with it and I’m looking forward to seeing it finished and blocked.

It’s a very long time since I went to a gym, but today my body feels just like it used to the day after a big workout! We’ve been trimming the top and sides of the hedge – and it’s very tall – with our pole hedge trimmer. It’s incredibly good at the job, but it’s so heavy! And it’s quite awkward when you basically have to stand with your face in the hedge to reach the very top! It’s getting there though, looking more under control, and we are gradually reclaiming some of the space it had taken from the garden.

If you follow me on social media or subscribe to my monthly newsletter, you will have seen that I have something new and very exciting in stock. Desktop calendars! Bear with me. That may not sound exciting in and of itself, but the pictures really are! When my lovely wife and I photograph my shawls she has long been in the habit of lying on the patio and getting me to throw them in the air above her head. She somehow takes lots of shots while the shawl is in the air and they often create the most amazing shapes!

Sue has been carrying Ronnie and Elastic band desktop calendars in her shop for a while, and she kept saying that a calendar of flying shawls would be just the thing for me! Well, we selected 12 of the best shots that we could also give interesting names to and the finished calendars arrived last week. They are available in my shop and I will also have them with me at Yarn Gathering (Mold, 15th September) and Yarndale (Skipton, 28-29th September).

As an introduction to the calendars, here is the front cover (which is also December), titled “Beth March as ‘Sparrowhawk'” and March, titled “Petulia as ‘Swimmer'”. By coincidence, these both happen to be brioche shawls!

I’ve been thinking about how lucky I am to have a really good wool shop (Yarn O’clock) so close to where I live. Mold is a small market town near me, and it has a great variety of independent shops, including Yarn O’clock. I can think of at least three more proper yarn shops not too far away, each in small North Wales towns (Find Me Knitting in Betws-y-Coed, Ewe Felty Thing in Conwy and Wayfarer Wool Shop in Ruthin).

Today I am visiting Liverpool with my lovely wife, sister-in-law and nephew and, although I don’t need any more yarn in my stash, I decided to look up wool shops in Liverpool. Reader, there aren’t any independent wool shops in Liverpool that show up on Google! There’s the haberdashery in John Lewis and Abakhan in Stafford Street which I may well visit, but I can see nothing else that is an independent ‘destination wool shop’ for a visitor to the city to explore. I imagine the city centre rents are far too high.

Do you have a good wool shop near where you live? If not (and if you are a knitter or crocheter), how do you find quality yarn to work with and discover new brands or hand-dyers? Maybe this is a good time to remind you that we will have 16 amazing vendors at Yarn Gathering in Mold on Sunday 15th September (and Anne will be opening Yarn O’clock between 12-1pm as well that day)?! They are all fairly local to Mold, all being based only an hour or so away. And there will be 201 independent dyers, designers, bag makers and other wonderful folk who work with textiles from all over the country at Yarndale in Skipton on 28-29th September.

That’s all for today – I may have some plied yarn to show you next week! K x

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Desperately Seeking Simon

Three photos. From left: a pair of hand knit mittens in grey brown Herdwick wool, middle: 2 balls of grey brown Herdwick wool, right: a hand knit hat in grey brown Herdwick wool.

It’s an unusual post this week! I’m hoping that the power of the internet and social media can help me out.

At the end of January, at Wool-in Garden City in Welwyn Garden City, I was approached by a chap (Simon) who asked me if I took commissions. I’ll be honest, initially I thought this might be a design commission.

Anyway, it turned out that Simon had bought 2 balls of Herdwick wool a while previously, and wanted them knitted into a pair of mittens and a hat. After hesitating a while as this isn’t the sort of thing I usually say yes to, I agreed. He went home (he lives 10 minutes walk away from the shopping centre in Welwyn Garden City) to get the wool and measure his hands and head and returned promptly. I took the wool and Simon’s hand and head measurements, he took my business card, paid me our agreed fee and I emailed him a receipt through Zettle.

Now, I hadn’t used Zettle a lot by that point. I made an assumption. I assumed that there would be a record of the emailed receipt in my system. There wasn’t. I couldn’t find anything anywhere. So in mid-February, I rang Zettle’s helpline, thinking they would be able to assist. No. They don’t keep a record of the emailed receipts either. This meant I had no way of contacting Simon about his mittens and hat.

What to do? Well, he had said that if he hadn’t heard from me by September he would get in touch. So, I got a simple mitten pattern that I thought should work with the yarn and made the mittens – the gauge was off, so I needed to rejig which size I was making and start again, but one successful pair of mittens was created.

Along with a lot of ‘bits’ of wool – short lengths that were no use for much (apart from maybe saving for darning any future holes). It turned out that something had made itself at home in the balls of wool and had chewed its way through one or two of the plies of the wool in several places! This made part of one ball unusable – and also made me very twitchy. It was almost a relief to find a very dead/long empty case for whichever creature had been living there in the one ball. The other ball was fine. Nevertheless, it went into an airtight ziplock bag after that!

I hadn’t been sure if there would be enough yarn for a hat as well, but Simon had said if possible he wanted a simple skull-cap type hat, and that is what I have made. Being Herdwick, it’s quite firm and not what you’d call soft, but it will keep out the wind and rain!

So, the mittens and hat are completed, but I still can’t contact Simon, who lives 10 minutes walk away from the shopping centre in Welwyn Garden City. I thought I’d found him on Linked In and sent a message, but there was no reply.

If you know a Simon who lives in Welwyn Garden City and commissioned the knitting of a pair of mittens and a hat in Herdwick wool from me in January, please ask him to get in touch. He’s quite tall, white and bald/very closely cropped. The mittens and hat would like to be with the person who paid for them!

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There is a Season

A large rose bed with sweet peas growing up a wooden support.

Each yarn show has its own ‘vibe’, its own season and particular designs that you predict might be popular. The Pop Up Wool Show last Saturday in Port Sunlight is a summer show – and it’s never rained while I’ve been going there – and, as such, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that What Do Points Make? is a popular seller.

The thing that does surprise me a bit is that this garment has been a good seller on all of the three occasions I’ve attended this show! Maybe the fact that I wear this item during the show helps – folk can see how it drapes on a real human. I’m sure the fact that it only takes 1 skein (800m) of lace weight yarn for all except the largest size (shown in blue and purple) is also a big plus! It’s reassuring to me that a knitwear design can be popular for more than just one year.

What Do Points Make? was originally a mystery knit-along for Yarn O’clock and folk had no idea what they were making. The way the garment is constructed (starting at the centre bottom of the back) made several knitters think after knitting Part One that it was going to be a top-down triangular shawl!

I like the fact that there are consistencies when returning to a yarn show. You know how set up works, where everything is, and roughly what to expect during the day/weekend.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that the Pop Up Wool Show was my first ever ‘proper’ yarn show in 2022. I’d had a stall quite often at the local pop up shop before Covid, but that was a general crafts/gifts/small business type pop up shop and not one where the customers were specifically coming for wool related stuff. It’s been really interesting over the past couple of days to look back at the photos from my first stand there in 2022 and comparing it to Saturday’s set-up. I’m quietly proud of how it has developed – though of course several of the designs are still present and correct!

Here’s 2022:

And here is 2024!:

The next show is Yarn Gathering in just under a month, followed by Yarndale just two weeks later. I had thought that Yarndale would be my final show of the year, but there are some more dates sneaking in (!) and when they are confirmed I will add them to my events page on the website. I’m going to be teaching workshops at most of these new events too which is very exciting.

Some yarn arrived yesterday for a commission, with a deadline of (you guessed it) the day after Yarn Gathering. Fortunately I only have to email the pattern to them and not get a knitted sample through the post by that date which does make things simpler. I can’t tell you any more details yet, but it will be out in the world in January 2025.

As the yarn has arrived I have, of course, cast on and started knitting. The pattern is actually already charted out and just needs a written version, including finalising the number of repeats, the yarn usage and measurements – all of which will be confirmed by my actually knitting the item.

Today we had a trip to Bodnant Garden to meet up with some holidaying family members and my lovely wife offered to drive so that I could knit in the car. Very helpful of her and enjoyable for me – and I’ve done an extra 20+ rows that I wouldn’t have been able to have done by now otherwise.

Bodnant was glorious; sunny but not too hot and with lots of plants in flower.

We got there at opening time as well, so it was almost as if we had the place to ourselves at times! The roses smelt heavenly and we now have a new rose on our wish-list – Princess Alexandra of Kent. My photo top right in the block above doesn’t really do it justice.

My car is fixed now by the way. It was so nice to be able to put my foot down a bit on the way home from the garage last week and feel Floella (my car is named after the amazing Floella Benjamin who I idolised on Play School when I was little) react as she should.

Now that I’m knitting a deadline piece I think I will probably have to put the new sample of Elinor Hap Shawl aside for a few weeks. The border is growing, albeit slowly. I’m up to about 880 stitches per row now and I’ve been averaging three rows during two episodes of Silent Witness (we’ve got up to Series 21 now) – that’s about 40 minutes per row. (I don’t knit much slower when I’m not watching telly). Here’s a little section of the border, photographed pinned onto its project bag (I rather like how these colours go together!):

That’s all for today – I’ll get back to you on the progress of the deadline knitting next week!

Take care all, K x

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This Moment

Ronnie, a stuffed toy rhino, flying in the air with blue sky and fluffy white clouds behind him and the tops of trees below him.

Last night we saw about 6 meteors from the Perseid meteor shower over the course of about 30 minutes. It was so lovely to be able to sit in the back garden on our wooden chairs gazing at the sky, randomly pointing and exclaiming, “There’s one!”. There may be more tonight, but as it’s started to rain (and get cooler!) we may not be as lucky seeing them.

It’s been important to grab moments of calm and quiet enjoyment lately as it’s been so busy. We were at the wedding of one of our nephews at the weekend – a beautiful occasion – and I was able to ask Jess, the bride, if she and James had managed to take a few moments during the day to soak it all up. Like we had, she was finding her wedding day was happening more quickly than expected, and I was pleased to hear they had had some time before the buffet to take stock of all the wonderful moments that were making their wedding day an occasion to remember.

We captured moments of the day (and the whole weekend away) in photographs, and some of them are hilarious. These are some of the shots from the wedding – even Ronnie (our rhino) got involved!

It’s also good to put your full focus into experiencing the moment as we did during the ceremony where no photos were taken apart from by the official photographer, and as we did last night looking at the sky and hoping for meteors. Incidentally, This Moment, the title of today’s post, is a beautiful song by Melissa Etheridge, and it just happens to be the song that my lovely wife and I walked out to when we got married. (The chorus begins: “I want to stay here in this moment…”).

Capturing moments sometimes does have to be done by photo or video, especially if you want or need to be able to share it with other people later on. Today I took delivery of a new tool that will help me with making videos and also in my Zoom workshops. It’s the Olivia 2 – a stand to hold your phone horizontally above a surface (and at lots of other angles too), with an adjustable built in light, and it comes with a remote control as well, so you don’t have to make the phone wobble every time you press record, then wait for the shaking of the image to subside before you can actually begin! I had the original version of this phone stand, but I sometimes found it difficult to keep the base out of shot when recording knitting techniques. This updated version has redesigned the construction so the base faces away from you and there is nothing to get in the way of what you are recording, no matter how close up. It’s currently charging up and I’m looking forward to trying it out very soon. I also like how it collapses down into a really compact ‘block’ when you’re not using it. Please excuse the rather busy desk these pics reveal!

So, keep an eye out for more videos going up on my new YouTube channel! And do sign up for my Zoom workshops too:

There are a maximum of 10 spaces on each workshop, to keep it as similar as possible to an in-person workshop, where participants are actively involved and able to ask for help when they need it.

I’ve finished the central square of my new same of Elinor Hap Shawl and am part-way through picking up the stitches for the border – with such fine yarn I had to recount/redo the first side this morning with proper light. I am determined to get all the stitches picked up and on the needles today so that when I am sitting at the garage (again) tomorrow while they fix the car’s judder and lack of ability to accelerate properly (it wasn’t just the spark plugs, apparently the car needs a new ‘coil pack’) I will be able to work on the border.

With this pattern, the central square doesn’t have slip stitch edges and stitches are picked up from the very edge of the garter stitch border. It’s quite a tricky process, added to which there are regular points where you ‘pick up and kfb’, so knitting into the edge twice in the same place to create extra stitches. I might use my new gadget to help record this process this evening!

Because my car was not in the best of health last weekend I got to be a passenger on the way to the wedding and socks happened! Well, one and a half socks, which is still pretty good for a weekend with lots of other things in it! DK yarn and 3mm needles make them grow nice and quickly. The finished sock just needs to be grafted at the toe, but I forgot to take a darning/tapestry needle with me on the trip. The second sock on the right is partway through the gusset. The pattern is Bob (Friend of Dave) by Rachel Coopey and the yarn is Socks Yeah DK from CoopKnits (also Rachel Coopey). I’ve made this pattern quite a few times now, and this time I included my usual reinforced slip stitch pattern on the heel flap.

The final thing I want to tell you about today is very exciting. I have finally got my Barragán wrap pattern online (on ravelry, Payhip and my website – and Lovecrafts once it’s gone through all the approvals there) and I’ve printed out 20 copies ready for the Pop Up Wool Show on Saturday – hurray! So, if you can’t get to the Pop Up Wool Show, you can get yourself a copy online.

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Piece by Piece

Since spending four or five days at Mum’s last week going through ‘the fabric’ and many many other things in the middle of a heatwave, then the next four days photographing and listing many (but not yet all) of the things we brought back onto eBay and Vinted, I feel a little boggled.

One box contained just silk. Now, you probably know that I’m plant-based and I don’t use silk in my knitting, so I’m not going to be using silk fabric to sew with. And there was a lot. If you get the ‘featured photo’ at the top of the post (I know some people don’t see it if they receive the blog by email), that set of three pics is just some of it! There were some factory offcuts from Beckford Silk, lots of post-project offcuts, some whole pieces, one of which was 3m long! I’ve separated them out by size of pieces, bagged them up and listed most of them on eBay. There are some bargains to be had if you like using silk, especially if you like using small pieces!

Did you know you can search by seller on eBay? On the left-hand panel the categories and search filters are listed. If you scroll to the bottom, there’s a ‘More filters’ option. When you click on that a pop-up box appears and one of the selections is ‘Seller’. Select ‘include’ and type in the seller’s username. I’m “knitting33”.

You’ll find a host of other things too, including 7 or 8 Wentworth jigsaws and some Prinknash pottery!

I did go through the three large boxes of patchwork fabric and wadding and managed to organise the fabric by colour. This was partly so it would be easier to work out what I would like to keep or not, and partly so I could find three pieces of fabric to take to a Beginners’ Patchwork class on Saturday! As Mum said last week, “If you’re going to take all that fabric and keep some of it, you’d better learn how to do patchwork!” and she paid for me to go to a Jo Paloma Makes workshop at Amanda’s Fabrics in Mold. Last summer I quilted some placemats that Mum had already made the tops for, but apart from sewing some little hexagons together by hand over paper templates, I’ve not done the actual patchwork before.

Well, Jo is an amazing teacher. I learnt how to make pouch bags at one of her workshops. And she was very thorough, clear and encouraging throughout the four-hour workshop, which quite honestly flew by. We learnt all about the equipment needed and how to use it, whether we were left- or right-handed. I was really pleased that in a class with four students we were equally split between the lefties and righties! I’m usually the only one!

We made a nine patch, photographed it and then cut it up to make a disappearing nine patch. The idea of cutting up the piece that we’d just so carefully measured, sewn together and pressed made me feel for the students of my steeking workshops. That’s where we knit something, reinforce the area we are going to cut, and then take our scissors to our knitting! I had a little of the “But I’ve just made that” feeling that they get! It was worth it though, because the final piece is very pleasing and so different from the basic nine patch!

I can now understand why quite a few of the ‘fat quarters’ in Mum’s stash only had a small corner taken out – it was for the single square in the middle!

One of my friends said to me on the phone yesterday, “How do you have time for patchwork?”, and he may well have a point, what with the day job of designing and knitting, the crochet, spinning, embroidery and lace-making (the last few of which to be fair, I haven’t done much of this year), let alone the occasional baking and trying to keep on top of the garden, but we’ll see.

However, I have done some more on my new sample of Elinor Hap Shawl, and I’m just over two thirds of the way through the centre square! On current progress I should be on the border by next week, if all goes well. I do seem to be having a green phase…

I am starting to get everything ready for the Pop Up Wool Show in Port Sunlight on August 17th, 10-4pm. It’s a lovely show and if you’re anywhere near the north west I thoroughly encourage you to come. Tickets are £4 and are available on the door. The image lower right is my stand at last year’s show.

I will have my Barragán shawl pattern with me for the first time, the whole Bargello Aurora Collection, and copies of most of my other designs! As I currently have 60+ designs in my portfolio I can’t bring all of them, but if you are coming to the show and there’s a particular pattern you would like to see, let me know and I’ll make sure to bring it with me.

And then, only four weeks after the Pop Up Wool Show, is our own Yarn Gathering! I can’t stress enough how exciting it is to be bringing this little yarn event to Mold again for its third year. Anne from Yarn O’clock and I were so pleased when we had a flurry of ‘new-to-Yarn-Gathering’ folk asking if they could apply to exhibit with us, all of whom were near to Mold and some folk who we recently discovered and invited, and that is why we expanded into an extra room. Do make the effort to come upstairs if you can – I’ll be one of the exhibitors up there!

16 vendors is still small in the grand scheme of things (the Pop Up Wool Show has 28 this year, Buxton Wool Gathering was about 50, Yarndale will be 201 – yes, I counted them!), but Yarn Gathering is steadily building and it’s great that people want to come back year on year.

All our vendors will be travelling approximately an hour or less to get to Yarn Gathering in Mold (in some cases, only a few minutes!), so we really are showcasing local talent! And, it’s free entry!

There are no refreshments available at the event, but as the Mold Food & Drink Festival is happening during the same weekend, we don’t think you’ll go hungry or thirsty!

There’s lots happening during the rest of this week and I’ll tell you all about it next Tuesday. Until then, do some stuff that makes you happy, and stay safe. K x

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Melting

The centre square of Elinor is nearly halfway done! The yarn is working up nicely, although I had to switch from using the yarn from the centre of the ‘cake’ to the outside as it kept snarling up and getting in a massive tangle as I pulled the strand of yarn from the centre. 

There has been slower progress in the last couple of days – I’ve only done 4 rows – as we’re down at Mum’s doing the most enormous sort through of some of her stuff; fabric, garden tools and clearing out cupboards in the garage that haven’t been opened in years. That hasn’t left much time or energy left for lace knitting, especially as it’s so hot it feels like we’re melting! I’m typing on the iPad today, so I’ll add links into the post in a couple of days when I’m back with my laptop.

If you’re on social media, you may have seen that on Saturday I launched a YouTube channel! There are currently 10 videos on there that are also on my website as free tutorial videos – and I’m hoping that, as YouTube is the go-to place for many people, these videos will have the opportunity to reach a wider audience than if they are just on my own website. There will be more added to the channel, including a look at my design process and introductions to some of my designs.

Bargello Aurora Wrap, Cowl & Scarf is now live! Yesterday I did a post about why you might choose to knit the wrap and there will be posts later in the week about the benefits of choosing to knit the cowl or the scarf.

My complete pattern for Barragán is very nearly ready. It was originally published as a four part knit-along in The Knitter between September and December last year, using two colours of McIntosh BFL 4ply.

I’m adding in the needle size that the wrap/shawl was originally designed with (3.25mm), which uses 161g of each of the two colours of 4ply yarn. When the pattern was published in the magazine it was accompanied by a subscription offer of 150g of each colour of the yarn for the shawl, so I had to reduce the needle size to 3mm to reduce the tension and therefore the quantity of yarn required. Even with the reduced needle size it was a little ’tight’ on yarn, and I certainly know of one knitter who ran out as their personal knitting tension was fractionally looser than mine, even though the 150g subscription skeins were on the generous side and actually weighed a little more than 150g. See? Tension again – it really does matter!

Therefore, whilst I am also retaining the smaller needles and lower yarn quantities as an option in the pattern, I am strongly recommending that if you do have 200g of each colour of yarn, to use the larger needle size and have a relaxing time knitting. Or, if you only have 150g of each colour, to use the smaller needles and to also follow the newly added instructions for making Part Three of the shawl shorter by working one less repeat of the stitch pattern. That way, a knitter can create a completed shawl with the available yarn without the fear of ‘yarn chicken’.

McIntosh will be offering Barragán shawl kits with 200g of each colour from here on, but I wanted to keep the lower yarn quantity in the pattern as an option in case anyone is gifted the yarn from the subscription offer.

My next yarn show is in just a couple of weeks! The Pop-Up Wool Show is a 1 day event, on 17th August, 10am-4pm. The show is held in a beautiful building, Hulme Hall in Port Sunlight, which is only a stone’s throw from The Lady Lever Art Gallery. You could visit both! Entry to the Pop-Up Wool Show costs £4 and tickets are available on the door as well as in advance. It’s always a great show, so if you can make it over to Port Sunlight on August 17th, please come and say hello!

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Smiling

We spent last week in Kent visiting friends and family and the week culminated in going to see The Manic Street Preachers / Suede at Dreamland in Margate. It was very good, and you can read more about it (along with a fantastic Ronnie photo) over on my lovely wife’s blog, Singing as the Darkness Lifts and see why James Dean Bradfield shouted a “Thank you!” to us. She does an audio version too!

I had finished knitting my Bargello Aurora scarf before we left for Kent and I blocked it the day we got home. Yesterday it was ready for me to remove the pins and finish the ends off. I’m very pleased with it and I’m looking forward to taking some photos of it on Daisy (one of my dress form mannequins) later on today to add to the pattern.

The updated pattern will go live on all my platforms (Ravelry, Payhip, Lovecrafts and my website) on Friday, so you only have to wait three more days.

Since we got home I’ve also woven in all the ends on my Persian Tiles Blanket, designed by Janie Crow. It does need a final wash to allow the border and seams to relax and lie flatter, and I’m watching the weather forecast carefully to choose a consistently dry day to do this so it can dry outside.

This project has had so much attention on Twitter every time I’ve posted about it. I can only hope that one day one of my own designs will be admired as much!

My new Elinor Hap Shawl sample is steadily growing. I’ve done three and a half pattern repeats of the 15 that make up the centre square so far. I’m enjoying knitting this one again and the finer lace weight yarn is giving a really soft fabric It’s rather wide with 191 stitches in this section, but then there’s just the border and the edging. The whole shawl uses traditional lace stitch patterns. The stitch pattern in the centre square is called Smiling Diamonds – once it’s been blocked you’ll be able to see why more easily!

For a while now I’ve been planning to run some Zoom Workshops and yesterday I finally booked them in! All workshops are 2 hours long, running from 7-9pm (British Summer Time/GMT+1) and cost £25 per person. I’ve put a 10-person limit on each the workshops so that people can interact and get the most out of it.

Zoom Workshops currently available are:

Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Knitting – Tuesday 8th October

Fair Isle (Stranded) Knitting – Saturday 12th October

Next Steps in Two-Colour Brioche Knitting – Tuesday 22nd October

I’ll be adding these workshops to the Events page on my website later. The links above go straight to the relevant TicketSource page where you can see all the details and book a place if you wish.

I’ve been thinking about swatching a lot lately and have been doing quite a bit of it too.

Swatching as a designer is like playing and I love it. During our week away I had my squared paper and pencil out along with my needles and yarn, and knitted 7 different swatches around an idea I had until I finally cracked it with the 8th swatch. It wasn’t a random idea; I’m working on a submission for publication and there is a brief – techniques to include and a level of difficulty to provide, as well as specific yarns/colours they’re looking to use. I’ll be drawing up the submission document this week and I really hope it’s accepted. Of course, as these swatches are for a design submission I can’t show them to you, but I did enjoy making them and tweaking the idea until I got to the Goldilocks ‘just right’ moment.

The other type of swatching I’ve been thinking about is tension swatching. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but a knitter’s claim that they ‘always knit to tension’ and therefore don’t need to swatch before starting a project is so strange to me. They might generally turn out the ‘recommended tension’ on a yarn ball band, but that doesn’t mean anything when it comes to a pattern.

The pattern tension is the designer’s or sample knitter’s tension – it’s the number of stitches and rows that they got across 10cm/4in when working a specific stitch pattern on a specific needle. Any two knitters given the same needles and the same yarn are highly likely to knit to a different tension – sometimes wildly different. Even a small difference adds up over a larger piece of knitting and can even result in a knitter running out of yarn if they were unaware their tension was looser than that in the pattern, as it creates a larger finished item which inevitably uses more yarn.

Here are two swatches knitted by different people using the same yarn and needle size. The swatches themselves are different sizes because a different number of stitches were cast on and a different number of rows were knitted. It’s the size of the stitches themselves that is important.

I can see they look different, but perhaps not very different. It’s only the stocking stitch sections that will be measured – the borders are just to help the swatches lie flat and not curl up.

When measured the smaller swatch has 24.5 sts x 34 rows over 10cm and the larger swatch has 23.5 sts x 33.5 rows over 10cm. That sounds very similar, doesn’t it? It’ll be fine, won’t it? Not necessarily. Scale it up. Say it was for something that has 500 stitches. For the knitter of the smaller swatch that fabric would be 204cm wide, but for the knitter of the larger swatch the same number of stitches would be nearly 213cm wide. That’s a difference of 9cm in the finished items for the same number of stitches!

What’s the solution? It’s easy! Knit a tension swatch in the given stitch pattern and needle size (make it 12-15cm in each direction). Wash it and dry flat, or block more firmly with pins if the pattern says to. Then measure 10cm across the stitches and count them, and measure again down the rows and count them. Compare these numbers to the tension given in the pattern. If you get fewer stitches than the pattern tension states your tension is looser, so try again with a smaller needle. If you get more stitches your tension is tighter, so try again with a bigger needle. Wash and dry this new swatch and measure it. Stitch gauge (tension) is more important than row gauge as it’s harder to adjust around. Patterns often say “continue in pattern as set for another XX rows or until work measures XX cm”. This allows a knitter to adjust the number of rows worked if necessary to achieve the right length – this is much easier to do than adjusting the number of stitches.

So many knitters refuse to take the step of knitting and measuring a tension swatch, saying it’s a waste of time, but surely it’s more of a waste of time (and money) to knit a whole garment that doesn’t fit you, or to run out of yarn just before you finish (if your tension is looser) and then have to buy another ball/skein (if you can find it still for sale)? If you’re a knitter who is reluctant to swatch before a project, please give it a go! You might find it saves you time and money in the long run – and who wouldn’t appreciate that?

That’s all from me for today. Take care and do something that makes you smile this week. K x

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Sock it to ‘em

One good thing about being the passenger on a long car journey is that there is plenty of knitting time. And so I have finally finished Sue’s socks that I began while we were at Wonderwool in April. The variegations in the yarn (dyed by Weku Yarn) are very striking and the pooling shifts in unpredictable ways, giving a dynamic effect. It does mean that the texture of the sock pattern gets a little lost unless you are close up, but Sue assures me that they are very comfortable and she loves them. I used my Bodelwyddan sock pattern, making the fourth size of five.

I cut out 7 rounds of the foot before the toe, following my own instructions: “Cont as set, working through Rnds 1-10 of Leg Patt for another 37 (40:42:45:42) rnds, or until sock is 4 (41⁄2:5:51⁄2:6) cm shorter than wearer’s foot from heel to big toe. Check for fit if possible.” The highlighted numbers just show the size I was making.

it really is important to check for fit on the foot length as the size made is chosen by leg circumference (with potential for shifting between sizes on the foot). The length suggested is the ‘standard’ length for each circumference, but who is standard? We’re all different and that’s what makes hand knit socks special – they have the capacity to fit the wearer perfectly.

Last week I was anticipating having a new design out in Issue 204 of The Knitter and I was a bit disappointed when it wasn’t there! However, I have since found out that it’s been held back to Issue 207 for a very lovely reason, so in three month’s time, I shall be able to tell you all about it!

So, my update to Bargello Aurora is ready, and I just need to get photos of the blocked scarf into the pattern before it can be published. Another design of my that is getting an update is Elinor Hap Shawl. This is the ‘sister’ pattern to Marianne Half Hap and I’m enjoying knitting up a new sample for it as well as thinking about ways to improve the layout of the written pattern and charts.

I’m using a particularly fine lace weight for this sample. It’s Ripples Crafts Knockan Laceweight in ‘A Slice of Lime’, a 100% merino wool with 1200m per 100g. Let of the laceweight yarn I’ve used before has been 800m per 100g, so this is superfine, but it does mean I only need 2 skeins for the whole shawl, rather than 3! The pattern will list the length of yarn used as well, so. If you have laceweight yarn that comes in 50g skeins you’ll be able to be as precise as possible when deciding how many are needed for this shawl.

I have finished my Persian Tiles blanket! This photo is not the finished article, but it is the most recent photo I can show you.

There are six rounds of border all the way around the blanket as well now. I do need to weave in all the ends from the seaming and the border and give it a final block (simply hand wash gently and dry it flat). One of the octagons has its red and orange petals facing the wrong way – B2 if you look at it like a map reference – but as many lovely folk have said on social media it gives it character, makes it unique and is a good reminder that nothing is perfect! I really enjoyed making this blanket and if you fancy doing some crochet from a very well written pattern I highly recommend anything by Janie Crow who designed this.


You may have noticed a new tab on my website. “Supporting Small!” is a new initiative from Amanda who owns Moorlands Wool and Crafts, a lovely yarn shop in Leek, Staffordshire, who I met last year. Supporting Small! is a way of supporting other small businesses, indie makers & dyers, celebrating their individuality & craftmanship, to create a vibrant & diverse craft community.
By having a page on our websites we can highlight to our customers other small businesses who are involved who we think are great and who they may not have come across before. So far I just have links and info for Moorlands Wool and Crafts and Yarn Barf, an indie dyer who specialises in really vibrant colours. It’s a reciprocal scheme so you’ll find a link to my website on each of their Supporting Small! pages as well. There will be more added soon as I start to spread the word among my contacts nearer home.

Speaking of things nearer home, did you know it’s less than 9 weeks until Yarn Gathering? We have 16 vendors this year, including 6 vendors who are new to Yarn Gathering this year!

Our confirmed vendors for 2024 are:

Cefn Llan Fibre Flock, Gwennol Designer Handknits, Idris Emporium, Jenny’s Crafts, Kath Andrews Designs, Lottieknits, Penny Stitch Craft, Sheep Floof, SKD Yarns, The Soggy Kookaburra, The Woolly Tangle, The Yarn Artist, Trevor Blackburn, Under an English Sky, Weki Wool, Wild Field Fibre

The date for your diary is 15th September 2024, 10am-4pm at The Daniel Owen Centre in Mold, CH7 1AP. Entry is FREE and no ticket is required.
As Yarn Gathering takes place on a Sunday, parking in town is also free and there is a car park next to the venue with some spaces for Blue Badge holders.

There will be four vendors upstairs. If you cannot access the stairs we will do our best to ensure you can see what is on offer upstairs via video and any items you wish to see will be brought down for your consideration.

The Mold Food & Drink Festival also takes place the same weekend as Yarn Gathering and we encourage you t visit this event too while you are here. It will mean that one of the town car parks is out of use as that is where the Food Festival is based. This can be seen clearly on the map on the Yarn Gathering page.

That’s all from me for today. Have a good week and I hope to show you lots of progress on Elinor next week! K x