Tag: Knitting Design

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Oh What a Show!

Wow, what a show! East Anglia Yarn Festival on the outskirts of Norwich was the furthest we’ve travelled for a yarn show, but it was worth every mile. My amazing wife, Sue, has been the most enormous help and support throughout the lead-up to the show and during it and makes a splendid booth babe! Ronnie wanted to join in too, so we made sure he got into some of the photos.

The organisation of the show was fabulous (thanks to Laura and all the volunteers) and everyone was so friendly and helpful. One of our neighbours, Folkestone Harbour Yarn, even let me hang two shawls on hangers from the top of her gridwall! Some of Suzi’s yarn is dyed with natural dyes and some with acid dyes and the range of colours is super – there are even some proper fluorescent neons!

Speaking of stall neighbours, everyone near us was lovely and although I didn’t manage to take photos of anyone else’s stand, I highly recommend giving their websites a visit. On the other side of us was Felt Fusion whose colours are amazing and included some funky zebra striped yarns, whilst behind us was Coastal Colours who also have gorgeous hand-dyed yarns and great needle sets too. Opposite was another designer, Victoria Marchant Knits, who specialises in size-inclusive designs with patterns where you can mix and match the body and sleeve sizes – I’m going to have to get one of these for myself! Next to her were Alex Collins who makes lovely bags and Skein Queen with even more wonderful hand-dyed yarn. It was great too to catch up with Charmaine from YarnTings who was at Wool-in Garden City and Tanya from The Woolly Tangle who had also travelled from North Wales!

One of the helpful things about vending at a yarn show rather than going as a visitor is that I tend to spend less! On this occasion I bought two things! Some rather wonderful buttons from The Button Box Devon for – you guessed it – the adult version of Honeybun, and a sweater pattern from An Caitin Beag which I saw Marna wearing at the show and just loved the way it moved and swayed with her. I haven’t sewn the buttons on yet – that’s a job for tomorrow.

Last week I picked up a lot of yarn from Yarn O’clock for kits, including yarn for new Meg March Shawl kits! This is my only kit that won’t come in a tin as the six skeins of yarn wouldn’t fit, but look at that lovely squishiness! The kit includes 6 x 100g skeins of hand-dyed Fyberspates Vivacious 4-ply (100% Merino Wool) in Blush and Verdigris (the original colours for the design), a printed copy of the 16-page pattern and a lockable stitch marker. There will only be 5 of these kits available, priced at £120 each, so if it appeals to you, don’t forget to visit us in Hall 3 at WonderWool Wales, April 27th & 28th!

I’ve done a lot of knitting this week, but sadly I can’t show you any of it yet! Sorry! I must try to include some knitting or crochet this week that isn’t for publication – maybe I’ll start my Catnip sweater…?

Whatever you’ve been up to this week, I hope you are well, safe and warm. Too many folk out there aren’t. As well as being a fabulous booth babe this weekend, Sue also helped with the hosting of a Zoom launch of the poetry anthology To Light The Trails, Poems By Women In A Violent World, published by Sídhe Press and available from Amazon. Sue was one of the editors of this anthology. It was a powerful evening listening to all the poets read their work. The book is important and worth a read.

Take care all, K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Change

I have enjoyed our walks the past few days and I am so grateful that we can get into country lanes quite quickly from our doorstep. These are some of the lovely sights I’ve seen recently on two separate walks. I love watching the clouds in the late afternoon – the light on them is magical, but fleeting.

There’s activity in one of the fields that may be the beginnings of a new housing estate down this lane, so I’m not sure how much longer we’ll have this peaceful route for, but I’m determined to make the most of it while we can.

There are signs of spring in the garden too which is really encouraging. (Yes, I know, I really need to cut those hellebore leaves back, and I will, soon!) There’s lots of work that needs to be done in the garden and I feel a bit guilty that I haven’t been out there much, but now there are increasing hours of daylight, hopefully I should be able to!

Yarn arrived at the end of last week for two new designs and I’m about to get started with one of them later today. I won’t be able to share the designs with you until publication (July and September respectively), so instead, here is the yarn itself. Isn’t it fabulous?!

I can hardly believe that in three days time I will be in the Norfolk Showground Arena, setting up for the East Anglia Yarn Festival! I printed out a few extra copies of patterns today, and have been planning the layout of our space. It’s 2m x 2m and I want to make the best use of it possible.

When we go to Wonderwool Wales next month it will be a very different set-up. The space we have there is 4m x 3m! I had applied for a 3m x 3m space, but they only had a 4m space left and asked if I would be willing to take that. Yes please, and thank you!

I’ve been working on a shawl design this week and it’s coming on really well, despite having had to rip out approx. 100 rows and rejig things a bit. It’s a semi-circular shape, and I was using a standard half-pi shawl construction but, because the fabric is not lace, it doesn’t stretch out in segments in the same way that, for example, my Tiffany shawl does. This has led me to experiment with the spacing of the increase rows and it’s looking SO much better now than it did. Now there are no funny sections where everything is stretched out and then goes all puffy (and there were…) – so I count that a big success!

One of the things I really need to be better at is trusting my gut when it’s telling me that something isn’t working out quite the way I’d thought it would. I was about 20 rows away from the weird puffy increase row when I thought it wasn’t right, but did I stop then? No. I kept knitting, initially telling myself it would block out. When I was coming up to the next increase row and I could tell the fabric was going to do the same thing, but possibly more-so, I had the brainwave of changing the rate and placement of increases. I tried it out and it worked a lot better, but I still kept going, ignoring that earlier section. Why did I do this? Then one evening I sat down to work on it, saw the part I wasn’t happy with and suddenly realised it would be a good idea to use the same tweak to the increases there as well. So, out 100 rows came! The small balls are all ripped out knitting. The large white ball only has the ripped out yarn wrapped around it.

All of these small balls have now been re-knitted and I have to say, this is a great, sturdy yarn. It hasn’t minded a bit! It’s Donegal Rich Tweed 4ply by McIntosh and it’s behaved perfectly well being knitted, ripped out and re-knitted.

I’m really looking forward to showing you this shawl – I love how the three colours and the different slip stitch patterns work together.

Until next Tuesday – when I shall have lots to tell you about EAYF – take care and do stuff that makes you happy. K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Scale

One of the things I didn’t expect to need as a knitwear designer was a set of kitchen scales that measure to 0.1g. But it has been so useful on many occasions. Most recently I have been using it to calculate how much of each of the main and contrast colours I’ve used for the sample of the adult version of Honeybun Cardigan. I can tell you now that each 50g ball of Rowan Summerlite 4ply actually tends to contain between 51g and 52.2g. I’m glad I had some full balls of yarn left over, as I hadn’t thought to weigh them before I started. If I’d assumed the balls were exactly 50g and simply weighed what was left I’d have been slightly underestimating my usage. It would only have been by a couple of grams for each of the contrast colours, but that scales up to about 20g when you’re looking at 9 or 10 balls of the main colour – even more so for the largest sizes.

I am pleased to have finished the cardigan. The shoulder shaping has worked a treat. The ends are all woven in and the pattern is now with my tech editor (hi Deb!). The only thing left for me to do with the sample is to choose and sew on 9 buttons. And possibly give it another wash.

Something else I’ve been thinking about regarding scale (and scales) is my Fiery Dragon Skin Cowl! I first designed this in 2019 using Knitting Fever’s Painted Desert 4-ply in the now discontinued colour way Show Stopper (left-hand pic below). Painted Desert is a lovely yarn with gradual colour changes (a bit like the Zauberball Crazy sock yarn).

You may have seen photos of the orange chunky-ish hand-spun version I made for Sue while we were at Wool-in Garden City. I’m currently updating the pattern so it includes options for DK, Aran and Chunky weight yarns as well as the original 4ply. The cowl itself is knit in the round and, to make life easier for folk, I’ve also included a knit-flat stitch pattern so you can swatch easily. This means you can use the pattern with any yarn you want (particularly useful for hand-spun yarns which can vary a lot from the commercial standards of weight/length) by swatching and doing a tiny bit of maths to work out how many stitches to cast on for the size you’d like. Fortunately it’s a 10-stitch pattern repeat, so that part is quite simple!

I love how the texture of the stitch pattern looks and behaves with different weights of yarn – it gives such a varied character to the finished fabric of the cowl.

I’m really excited about East Anglia Yarn Festival (where I’ll be in less than two weeks!), where Caramel Slice will have its debut as a single pattern (having been originally published in The Knitter last August).

It’ll be the first time I’ve exhibited at this particular event and also the first time I’ve sold only patterns at a yarn show (so there will not be any wooden items, kits or project bags etc). My patterns are printed and ready – I’ll be bring 640 with me (of 41 designs), so there should be plenty! This is what 640 printed patterns looks like:

It may not look terribly exciting like this, but wait until it’s all on display! Taking 41 designs with me to EAYF does mean there will be 20+ designs staying at home, but they will still be available online if I don’t have something in particular with me that a knitter is after.

I’ve been working with slipped stitches a lot lately – and I’m doing another design at the moment using slip stitches, but there are other techniques I’m enjoying currently too – particularly brioche and cables! Here’s a sneak peek at some cool cable work:

Isn’t the yarn gorgeous? Now, you probably know I don’t use silk, so what’s making this yarn so shiny? It’s TencelTM which is a fibre made from wood pulp. The yarn is HeartSpun DK from Woolly Chic, a long DK at 250m/100g with 70% Bluefaced Leicester wool and 30% TencelTM in the colourway Marmalade 2022. Helen from Woolly Chic was one of the organisers of Wool-in Garden City and this was where I got the yarn (and the commission to design something lovely with it!)

There are just two and a bit days left if you want to take advantage of the February online pattern discount for members of my Facebook group and subscribers to my monthly newsletter. This month’s discounts are for patterns beginning with C or D. Pictured below are the patterns that applies to: Calon Cariad, Ceridwen, Codetta Shawl, Croeso Baby Blanket, Diamonds in the Breeze and Drifting Leaves.

It’s a 10% discount for Facebook group members or a 20% discount for newsletter subscribers. From Friday 1st March the discount changes to patterns beginning with E or F. Those will be Elinor Hap Shawl, Fiery Dragon Skin Cowl, Forest Ferns Moebius and Furrowed Fields Scarf. Sign up for the newsletter (my “Mailchimp audience”) or join my Facebook group if this appeals to you!

That’s everything from me for today – I’m heading back to my knitting now! Take care of yourselves and each other. K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Try, try again

Before writing a new blog post I like to re-read the one from the previous week. This gives me a sense of what I’ve actually accomplished in the intervening 7 days – and it’s often a surprise!

For example, last week I had just made the first of nine Persian granny squares for my Persian Tiles Blanket, designed by Jane Crowfoot. By Friday evening I had these…!

The other eight are nearly complete! In her talk at Wool-in Garden City, Jane Crowfoot recommended taking a ‘production line’ approach when making several motifs that are the same and I can see why – it really is a lot quicker and easier to do, and you don’t have to keep changing yarn colour or hook size so often either! The double treble stitches that cross over and attach onto stitches three rounds in are quite tricky and the number of times I have to restart those is quite amusing!

After posting photos of the sleeves of my adult Honeybun cardigan blocking last Tuesday, there has been a lot of work and change with this design. I realised, after I’d seamed the sleeves and started to pin them to the body, that I’d forgotten to include the main underarm cast-off from the body into the sleeve shaping. This meant I wouldn’t be able to successfully seam the sleeves to the body at all, and the whole sleeve cap for both sleeves would need to be ripped out. It also meant I had to completely recalculate the sleeve cap decreases and the shoulder shaping.

It was a bit galling having to go backwards quite so much, but at least I only needed to undo about an inch of the sleeve seam in order to get the stitches back on the needle.

From there I was able to reknit both sleeve caps and seam the sleeves to the body.

Having popped to Yarn O’clock on Saturday afternoon to get a 120cm 2.5mm needle, I picked up stitches all around the body for the button band – somewhere around 900 sts. By Sunday evening I had worked the 14-row button band, calculating the position of the buttonholes to my satisfaction and included an extra bit of shaping near the neck from my Caramel Slice design. I cast off almost half of the stitches and got my lovely wife Sue to try it on. It’s not her style of thing at all, but she will model almost anything to help me out! Once it was on an actual person I could see the extra neck shaping did not work in this design. It was an increase worked every other row, starting in the row after the pick-up…

So, guess what? The button band got ripped back to the pick-up (no way I was going to pick up all those stitches from scratch again if I could help it) and off we went again. I’m now back on the cast-off for the second time, without the extra neck shaping. It looks much better and I really do think that by tonight it will be finished.

Then I just have to weave in the rest of the ends, calculate the button band pick-ups and buttonholes for the other 19 sizes and check the pattern through. Oh, and choose, buy and sew on the buttons. I think I might wash and block the whole completed cardigan as well. I’ve booked the pattern in with my tech editor – fingers crossed it will be ready for Wonderwool Wales in April!

There isn’t a lot else I have to show you this week – although I have updated my “Where I’ll Be” page, so do have a look at that.

My sister-in-law has been visiting for the past few days and, as well as all of us having fun and laughter here, she and Sue greatly enjoyed the snooker semi-final at Llandudno. I stayed home and knitted – snooker isn’t really my thing and it’s good for them to have some proper ‘sister-time’ too.

I’ve got quite a range of other designs coming up soon – hopefully I will be able to tease you with a few sneak peeks at some swatches for new ideas next week. Hint – there will be slip stitches and cables involved in some of them, as well as lace and brioche in others!

Until then, take care and stay warm. K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Pancake Day

Is it just me, or does the sleeve look like a fish opening its mouth for dinner, when the picture is sideways?

As you can see, the sleeves of Adult Honeybun are complete, washed and blocked! If you zoom in you can probably see the shoulder shaping in the top few rows of the sleeve cap – it is meant to be a subtle shaping feature.

The sleeves are also now dry as I took this photo three days ago, so later on I shall be seaming them. I wouldn’t usually seam the sleeves before attaching them to the body of a garment, but as the body is all in one piece it actually is easier to make everything fit this way round.

After sewing the underarm seam, I shall attach the sleeves to the body and then I’m ready to calculate and knit the button band. The trickiest thing will be working out the stitch counts for each section of each size and exactly where to position the buttonholes. Getting the button band around the corners will mostly be the same as for the child’s version of Honeybun.

I’m really looking forward to having some pancakes later – with sugar and lemon juice, just like we had them when I was a child, with too much of both, so they are crunchy and sour at the same time! How will you have your pancakes, if you have them?

I’ve got six more workshops planned and tickets are available for them all. They are published on Facebook and Ticketsource, although I do need to add them to my website as well. Here is the flyer that lists them all:

I did a little more crochet last night – behold the first of nine Persian Granny Squares that will help the octagons join together in the Persian Tiles Blanket designed by Janie Crow.

Before I went down to Mum’s last week, she asked me if I wanted to buy any marmalade oranges from her local fruit and veg shop. I wasn’t sure I would have time to make marmalade this year (and had I left it too late in any case?), but I checked how much we had left. We have lots and lots of jams and jellies, but marmalade? 4 jars. That was all. No way that would last us a year, so I did pick up some seville oranges and on Saturday I made 8 more jars. Next year I’ll try and plan ahead a little better!

I’m getting excited about the upcoming East Anglia Yarn Festival, and as well as planning which designs and samples to take with me, I’m planning which designs will go in the shiny new pop-up display stand. It has five levels and the big benefit of this stand over the table top ones is that you can see the picture on the front of each pattern at a glance. And then it folds down into a bag to make it easy to transport. Genius design!

I’ve done so much more knitting this week and I can’t show you any of it yet, so instead I shall leave you will a pic of the rather splendid amaryllis that we got for Christmas. The first flower spike had been making a bid for freedom whilst the bulb was still in the box and grew horizontal. This one, however, is much more upright! There’s some two-colour brioche inspiration potential in the patterning on the petals too!

Until next week, take care and enjoy your pancakes if you have them. K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Housiversary

Part of a crocheted octagon motif from the Persian Tiles blanket by Janie Crow. It is in orange, red, dark blue, teal, yellow, light blue and cream.

Twenty years ago today we moved into our bungalow. Moving from our little flat we thought that we’d never run out of space again. How naive we were!

Regular clear outs and de-clutters have to happen to help us still fit into our home that has become more and more ‘us’ over the years. During the time we’ve been here, pretty much the only things that haven’t been changed are the walls and the bathroom (apart from the basin which had to be replaced). The garden has grown along with us too: the daffodils we planted in the lawn last year are starting to come up, the roses and fruit bushes are ready for pruning and the hellebores and snowdrops look beautiful.

It’s made me think about how things can change over time so that even though technically you’re in the same place, in other ways you’re definitely not.

When we moved in I was 30, teaching music (still part-time then) and singing as a regular alto dep at the cathedral. Now I’m 50, I’ve been out of the classroom for 5 1/2 years, I’m working with yarn full time, designing, teaching knitting, exhibiting at yarn shows and I’m singing again.

Back in the day I had made a couple of (quite simple) crochet jumpers and I loved them. I made a couple of granny square blankets too. Then I didn’t do any crochet for years, apart from the odd edging to a piece of knitting or an amigurumi, such as the unicorn I made for my sister-in-law and the Pikachu I made for Sue.

Then last year I started the Mystical Lanterns blanket designed by Janie Crow and loved it. I’ve not yet finished it, but it’s coming on. And last week I began my most challenging crochet project yet – the Persian Tiles blanket, again designed by Janie Crow. I’ve completed one octagon motif which was very successful and tried a small granny triangle which is a little lopsided at the moment.

Persian Tiles octagon motif

It’s so good to learn new things, especially when you teach – getting yourself into the place of ‘not knowing’ is really valuable to understand what it feels like for your students!

I mentioned exhibiting at yarn shows. I’ve already publicised that I’ll be at East Anglia Yarn Festival (EAYF) in Norwich next month and Buxton Wool Gathering in May.

I can now let you know that I’ll also be at Wonderwool Wales in April! This is held at the Royal Welsh Showground in Builth Wells and has always been my favourite show to visit, so I’m thrilled to be exhibiting there.

I’ll be back at the Pop-Up Wool Show in Port Sunlight too in August. And there may be more shows to tell you about in the coming months as well!!

In terms of designing, I’m juggling a couple of things at the moment. The sleeves for the adult Honeybun are nearly complete – I just need to work out how to add the extra shoulder shaping into the pattern writing.

Then the button band and it’s off to the tech editor! Fingers crossed it will be ready for Wonderwool.

I’m also working on a lovely reversible cowl which I hope will be out quite soon (no pics of that yet).

I bought some fab yarn at Ewe & Ply on Saturday and it’s already being used!

Caramel Slice was first published in The Knitter in August last year and the rights have now returned to me. The pattern is now in my own format and I’ve taken some new photos with Shelby modelling the cardigan. Once these have been fully edited and added to the pattern it will be ready to be published and I will have printed copies of the pattern with me at EAYF!

I’m at my mum’s until tomorrow – Cleo the cat says hello:

And I’ll say goodbye until next week!

Take care all and have a good week, K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Fire It Up

A close up of knitted brioche in fiery autumnal colours. The pattern has a motif of interlocking leaves.

We had a wonderful time at Wool-in Garden City as you will know if you’ve seen any of my social media posts. The part I was nervous about (giving a talk as part of the Meet the Designers session) was great fun and my workshop students were amazing. An unexpected bonus was meeting a completely different set of vendors from the ones I have previously come to know at the shows I did last year. I think this must be because the location was that bit further away. It’s nice to expand my network of yarnie folk – and, just like the people I’ve met previously, they were such a warm, welcoming collection of people. As the event lasted a whole week, it gave proper time to talk to everyone and I got some excellent advice and top tips from other vendors and designers, most of whom are far more experienced than me in the business of yarn shows!

Do you remember how much I’ve been enjoying making my Mystical Lanterns blanket? I decided it was about time I extended my crochet skills further and I now have a copy of Persian Tiles blanket, also designed by Janie Crow. For Mystical Lanterns I took the opportunity to use some yarn that had been in my stash for a while and I’m loving the random colour approach of ‘pick a ball out of the bag without looking at it – whatever it is, that’s the next colour you use’ (it’s not finished yet, but it is growing well). However, for Persian Tiles I’ve decided to go down the traditional route of matching the colours of the original design. Not exactly, as I’m using West Yorkshire Spinners ColourLab DK rather than the Stylecraft used in the pattern, but I’m very pleased with the shades I’ve got. I already had the red and cream and picked up the rest this afternoon at Yarn O’clock. I like ColourLab as it’s pure wool and not desperately expensive and I use it in workshops quite a lot. The yardage isn’t as long as the Stylecraft at 225m/100g rather than 295m/100g, but I’m hoping it will be enough – if not, I’ll just have to top individual colours if I run out.

I realised this morning that there’s been a definite colour theme going on recently in what I’ve been knitting – perhaps I’m channelling orange to combat the darkness of the winter evenings (and some of the days)? I know that I’d love to go to Shetland for the Up Helly Aa fire festival one year.

Some exciting things will be happening soon with the lightest orange in that picture – watch this space!

The orange/fiery theme continues with my small Petulia which has grown quite a bit since last Tuesday! This pattern is currently exclusively available from RiverKnits as either a kit or just the pattern.

Speaking of exciting things happening soon, here’s another picture of beautiful yarn that is going to become something lovely in the near future.

This is Donegal Rich Tweed 4-ply from McIntosh in the colours Rossnowlagh, Raphoe and Ardara. Aren’t they gorgeous!?

At the beginning of the month I launched my year-long discount for members of my Facebook group (the imaginatively named ‘Kath Andrews Designs’ group) and subscribers to my monthly newsletters. Folk receive a discount code they can use each month (as often as they like) on specific patterns which change each month, so by the end of the year, my full portfolio will have been included. Facebook group members can get 10% off the full price of patterns and newsletter subscribers can get 20% off. January has been all patterns beginning with A or B – 11 designs in total. February will be – you guessed it – all patterns beginning with C or D.

This year-long discount has been introduced partly as a thank you to folk for signing up to the newsletter or joining the group and partly as a balance against the price changes I have been bringing in.

Garments are now £7 (for those with 4-7 sizes) or £8 (for those with 8+ sizes).

All other patterns are now £6 with the exception of my very simple patterns (Beginners Bunting Triangles, Furrowed Fields Scarf) and baby blankets (Croeso Baby Blanket and Nos Da), which are £5.

Those of you buying online in the UK won’t actually see a difference in price on the £6 patterns on platforms such as Payhip. Patterns will have already been costing you £6 because VAT was added on top of the main pattern price (the extra 20% is then kept by the website and passed on to the government).

However, I didn’t really like the fact that the price you paid depended on where you lived. So, I’ve now included any VAT due on digital patterns within the price – and raised the basic pattern price to cover this. This means that if you live in the US, patterns will cost you a little more and I will receive a little more. If you live in the UK (where VAT is 20% on digital patterns), patterns will cost you the same as they previously did and I will receive the same as I previously did.

It may sound a bit complicated, but it isn’t really. You’ll just see a single price that is the same for a given pattern regardless of where in the world you are.

Enough of the maths! During the rest of this week I will be putting Caramel Slice into my own format and continuing to knit the sleeves of the adult version of Honeybun (as well as playing with some fiery coloured yarns!). I’m nearly at the full width of the sleeves and then once I get to the sleeve cap things will progress quite rapidly as the stitch count drops.

We are hoping to visit the Process exhibition at Qube in Oswestry soon as well. The exhibition continues until 12th February and is open Monday-Friday 9-5 and Sat 9.30-12.30.

I’m hoping to have some completed sleeves to show you next week (and maybe a few other things too!). Until then, take care and stay warm. K x

Posted on by — 2 Comments

Consider Yourself ‘Wool-In’!

I’m sorry about the corniness of today’s post title, but I just couldn’t resist it. After rehearsing ‘Consider Yourself’ with Shelby’s Singers (our local community choir) last Wednesday, and now being at Welwyn Garden City for the week long wool festival that is Wool-in Garden City, that twist on the lyrics just won’t leave my head!

How are you after Storm Isha? It sounded pretty scary outside to me, but there didn’t seem to be any major damage where we are.

I’m having such a lovely time at Wool-in Garden City. I’ve met a whole new bunch of fab yarnie people, given a talk about my work as a designer (!) and taught 8 people how to knit two-colour brioche. The folk standing around the edge might have picked up a tip or two as well!

The mayor of Welwyn Garden City opened the event on Saturday morning, cutting the obligatory ribbon, and he and his wife spent time talking to every exhibitor as well.

A week long show as a pop up shop is a big undertaking, especially for the organisers, and I can’t thank Helen and Naomi and their extra volunteers enough. They’ve been helpful, kind, friendly and encouraging throughout. We have the opportunity to take time out from the event, at which point folk can pay for items from our stands at the central cash desk. As some of the exhibitors also have full time a Monday to Friday jobs this means they can continue with their regular lives and have their work on display and on sale at the same time – a brilliant idea.

I got very excited about having some of my designs in the window of the shop too…

As a result of a conversation I had at the weekend, I took my courage in my hands and wrote an email I’m now nervously awaiting a reply for. It could be very exciting.

As well as all this, there has been some knitting!

The sleeves for the adult version of Honeybun are gradually growing and I’m getting closer to the armhole shaping. this is one of the two sleeves – I’m doing them both at the same time on the same needle, but photographing them both together is proving to be tricky!

My small Petulia grew by 40 rows at the weekend.

And I finally swatched for and started (twice) my chunky version of Fiery Dragon Skin Cowl.

This will be added to the original pattern once I’ve got all the details down and photos of the finished sample. This is using my handspun yarn that I made last year from Velvet Sixpence in Polwarth wool. I have to say I was impressed that it coped so well with being frogged twice and re-knitted. I usually keep my swatches, but as I only have this one ball of yarn and I didn’t know how much I would need for the cowl, I decided not to risk it.

By the end of Monday it was nearly finished!

And I did finish the socks before going to Wool-in Garden City!

I’m really looking forward to the rest of the event this week and I will take lots more photos of everyone else’s stands to share on social media and to show you next week.

We were woken up by an owl this morning – another addition to the list of wildlife we’ve seen or heard in the area.

Until next week, take care and try not to get blown away by Storm Jocelyn! K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

The Final Countdown!

Part of a folded black lace knitted shawl on a pale carpet with yarn ends that need to be woven in

We have snow! Just under an inch lying on the paths, roads, garden and roof. I’m hoping it melts more before I have to go out this afternoon and doesn’t just freeze…

The Process exhibition at Qube in Oswestry is now open. I’ve not been to visit in person yet, but the photographs show it to be a fabulous exhibition, with a wide range of arts on show. The A4 folder on the table contains all my preliminary drawings/sketches/colour exploration – everything! If you happen to visit, let me know what you think!

This does mean that I won’t have the sample of Honeybun with me at Wool-in Garden City, but I will have copies of the pattern! I’m very excited about this wool festival. The materials for my brioche workshop on Sunday morning are all weighed, sorted into bags, notes printed – and I think the workshop is sold out with 8 knitters booked in! My patterns are all printed and ready to display and my samples are packed away in their travel bags (apart from Nevern Throw which is currently one of many layers on the bed!)

On Saturday, 12-2pm, I am taking part in a Meet the Designers talk alongside Jane Crowfoot and Gurinder Kaur Hatchard. Tickets for this talk are free, but you do need to book a place. It’s been really interesting preparing for this talk as it’s a bit different from the Zoom event I took part in last month for Fasten-off Yarn-along. Then each of the designers was asked the same question in turn and we had a couple of minutes to answer it. For this I have up to half an hour to talk about how I got into designing, my favourite knitting techniques and the inspiration behind some of my designs. That’s quite a different prospect!

When Helen, one of the organisers, said there would be a TV we could plug a USB into for a slideshow I went for that option in my planning. It’s helped me to organise my thoughts and put some of my inspiration images next to finished items! I will have a tech-free option with physical samples and notes too – just in case!

Last Wednesday’s Introduction to Lace Knitting workshop went really well. Both the knitters there gained a lot from it and were quite rightly very pleased with what they produced! I started the workshop with a demonstration of blocking lace – the pink swatch was 12cm long on the right angled sides before blocking and the same edges were 18cm once pinned! Several days after the pins were removed the finished size has relaxed to 16cm. Folk who don’t block lace need to remember that (while that is their choice) not doing so will affect the finished size of their knitting as well as the appearance of it!

I’ve been on a ‘finishing off’ roll this week with my knitting. I’ve finished my second Barragán Shawl, apart from seaming the cast-on and cast-off edges of the knitted-on edging, then blocking it and weaving in the ends.

I’ve blocked Diamonds in the Breeze and that now needs to have its ends woven in before posting it off to its final home. (Top tip: leave weaving ends in until after blocking, especially with lace, to avoid have puckered sections where the woven ends stopped the knitting being fully stretched)

Sue’s socks are completed and already in use! This is my standard ‘vanilla’ sock pattern that Sue likes for her socks – no fancy textures, 80 sts per round on 2mm needles to give a firm long lasting fabric.

The second sock of the pair of Bodelwyddan socks I have been working on got started on Sunday and I’m already on the gusset – I’ve been taking note of the number of stitches worked as I go and I’m currently up to 8308 (plus another 80 for the cast-on)! If you ever receive a pair of hand-knit socks from anyone, know that a lot of time and love went into making them for you and treasure them well.

The photo on the left here with just the cuff and the first repeat of the pattern got a LOT of attention on Twitter on Sunday – it came with the caption “This is what 2000 stitches of a hand knitted sock looks like”. At the time of writing this little post has had 145 likes and over 2000 views!

I am hoping to finish this sock before I go to Wool-in Garden City and then I can focus on knitting my smaller Petulia shawl and get back to the sleeves for my adult version of Honeybun. There are other projects on the needles and in the pipeline as well; I’m trying to work on things in order of priority at the moment!

Do remember that I’ve got my year-long discount on – if you are a member of my FaceBook group you can get 10% off all patterns beginning with A or B this month (by using the code posted in the group) and if you are a monthly newsletter subscriber you can get 20% off the same patterns (by using the code sent in the last newsletter). If that sounds appealing to you and you’re not in either group of folk – sign up to the newsletter here!

By clicking submit, you agree to share your e-mail address with the site owner and MailChimp to receive marketing, updates, and other e-mails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those e-mails to opt out at any time.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

The next job of the day is to tidy my desk – it is somewhat jumbled at present! Take care folks, stay warm and do something that makes you happy this week. Maybe visit an exhibition! My next blog post will come to you from Welwyn Garden City! K x

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Picture This

It’s unusual not have lots of pics in my blog posts, but the website is misbehaving and I can’t add image blocks at the moment. I will come back and add them in as soon as it lets me! Edit – pics have now been added!

I’ve been busy planning my Two-Colour Brioche Knitting workshop for Wool-in Garden City this week. It’s fully booked with 8 knitters which is very exciting! I’ve combined two of my previous classes so that the maximum number of brioche stitches can be knitted, allowing knitters to get really comfortable with the technique, as well as learning an increase and a decrease.

The yarn I’m using is the same yarn I used for Twisted, Poldale DK from Town End Yarns, and it’s really lovely. A good high twist DK yarn with lots of body and bounce – perfect for brioche knitting.

Yesterday I delivered everything for my contribution to the Process exhibition at Qube in Oswestry. I can’t wait to see how the whole exhibition looks once Gemma has put it all together – it opens on Friday. I decided to include a photograph of the Size 18 body blocking on its boards, rather than the actual pinned out knitting. This was for a couple of reasons; 1. it would take up a lot of space and be potentially awkward to display with lots of pins in the blocking boards, and 2. if the body of the cardigan was in Oswestry until mid February, progress on it for the next month would be limited to finishing the sleeves!

Apart from knitting a new swatch for the brioche workshop, my knitting this week has been all on Barragán Shawl Part 4 – the knitted-on edging. A few days ago Sue asked me how long I thought it would take to complete and I (rather over-dramatically) said, “Forever!” It is however, looking much more likely that I will finish it before Friday. I must remember to video some of the single and multiple joins before I do get to the end though.

As you may know, I’ve been wearing clothes from The Slow Wardrobe for a number of years now. Two of the early skirts I bought were a black linen skirt and a gorgeous green check wool one, rather like suiting fabric, with linen panels top and bottom. But they were in the small size and I haven’t been able to wear these two skirts for years (since well before 2017!). In November I finally did what Linda had suggested when I saw her at Wonderwool Wales in April and sent the skirts back to her for enlargement. I could possibly have tackled this myself, but it involved taking the pockets off, before adding a panel at one of the seams and then reattaching the pockets which I didn’t feel confident doing. So, for a very reasonable fee, Linda has enlarged both skirts, adding new elastic at the same time and I can finally wear them again. This makes me very happy!

Lichfield, my cropped cardigan design inspired by Lichfield Cathedral, is now printed out and ready to head to Wool-in Garden City with me.

Somehow a lot of errors got into it during the editing process, which I only discovered when knitting my own Size 7 version from the magazine, but my printed copies, complete with new photos, are fully correct and will be added to my online platfoms very soon. The Knitter has also published errata for the magazine version (which themselves will be updated soon with two more corrections) and folk from the mag have been very helpful in trying to get to the bottom of how the gremlins got into the pattern in the first place. It’s a long list of errata and I would hate folk to think that was how I sent the pattern in!

I had a lovely moment in our local Aldi the other day. I heard a young voice behind me say “Hello Kath”, and turned to see one of the children who came to sing with Shelby’s Singers at the Buckley Christmas Market with her Dad. She wanted to know if we were going to be singing Christmas songs again on Wednesdays. I said that we were going to be singing a whole range of new songs, a lot of them from musicals (including ‘Tomorrow’ from Annie and ‘Consider Yourself’ from Oliver!) and there was a very enthusiastic response. It is great to see the enjoyment that can be gained from singing with others so clear in the next generation – and I’m already looking forward to tomorrow’s rehearsal.

That’s all from me for today. By the next time I write I’ll have taught a one-to-one session on sewing up a sweater, an Introduction to Lace Knitting workshop, sung at an Epiphany Carol service, had a covid booster jab and been on a cinema and meal ‘date night’ with my lovely wife. I’m looking forward to all of these in very different ways! Take care of yourselves and stay warm. K x