Tag: Knitting Design

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500 Miles

The East Anglia Yarn Festival was fabulous and I think I enjoyed it even more than last year. I think it’s so nice when you can do an event more than once, as things are more familiar the second time round. I had forgotten quite how far away Norwich is from North Wales – the journey was 250 miles each way, but it was absolutely worth it.

Laura, who organises the show, and her team make the event run really smoothly and the layout makes it easy to find everything you need. It even felt quicker setting up despite doing it on my own. My lovely wife was in a different part of the country on Friday, but made it to Norfolk on Friday evening, ready to help. I even had extra help on hand from an old uni friend who came to the show to support what we’re doing, and quickly said yes to the tentative email of “Would you be able/willing to man the stand during my workshop and be my booth bade if Sue doesn’t make it here by then?”. It was definitely the prospect of being a booth babe that got his attention – he said as much! We had a great chat catching up when I wasn’t teaching, and he and Sue had a little competition while I was teaching over who could be the most successful pattern seller – I think they drew.

It was so lovely to see some of my designs in the wild during the show. Our first customer of the weekend was wearing her Into The Vortex which she had bought the pattern and yarn for at the show last year – and she bought two more patterns on Saturday! I also saw a Tiffany being worn. It’s so lovely when people come back after knitting a design and say, “I loved it and it was easy to follow.” And it’s also really nice when they follow it up with “and now I’m going to buy another/more of your designs”! It makes me feel trusted.

The workshop itself was super. The meeting rooms of the main event space are well lit and really warm. I even had to turn one of the heaters off! I had four students in the class, none of whom had tried two-colour brioche knitting before and they all did really well. This is what they created in two hours – as well as learning lots of new concepts, terminology and tricks to help them get it right!

We had hoped to be wearing our spangly new badges at EAYF, but they didn’t arrive in time. Boo. But they arrived today – hurrah! – so they will get their first outing next month at Wonderwool Wales on April 26-27th. I may even wear mine at the trunk show at Yarn O’clock on Saturday April 12th! Please note that one of the badges does indeed have the job description of ‘Booth Babe’.

One of my plans for March was to finish knitting the border of Elinor Hap Shawl – and I have! I’ve even started the edging and I have done nearly half of one side.

There are a lot of repeats of the edging (208 in total I think), but it is only a 10-row pattern repeat, so it’s quite easy to chalk up half a dozen in an evening. I don’t think I’ll finish the edging this month though, as there was an exciting delivery just before we left for EAYF and there’s another parcel attempting to make it’s way to me as well (which, if it’s what I think it is, is something scrummy from Shetland!) and should be at the local post office for me to collect on Thursday.

It occurred to me that it would be a good idea to remind folk that I also give individual online knitting tuition as well as group workshops. This can be useful if there’s a technique you want to learn and you don’t want to wait until a workshop is advertised or if you think you would fare better in a one-to-one setting than a group one. Individual tuition is currently £25 per hour and can be booked by simply emailing me. I haven’t got as far as setting up an online calendar where you can choose a time slot yet, but it’s on the way.

The Imperial Cowl had a good reception at the weekend. People liked the fact that you could knit it flat or in the round and that there are video links included the pattern too. We sold six copies of the pattern at the show and one online (using the exclusive subscriber discount – did you know I do those for newsletter subscribers?), which may not sound like a lot, but as the pattern had already been downloaded by 127 people from the North West Winter Wool Festival, I think that’s pretty good! That’s over 130 copies of the pattern out in the world and hopefully being used!

This afternoon I had my annual dentist check-up. This involves driving into Chester, which I don’t do nearly as much as I used to when I was teaching full time. All was well and as I walked back to the car park I went past a shop that had a window painted with three words I couldn’t ignore: We Sell Yarn. Despite having been surrounded by yarn all weekend I had to go in, didn’t I? I had a lovely chat to the owner, who explained that it had been a plant shop, hence the name The Green Rooms, and she had recently shifted to selling yarn. They also host lots of workshops, particularly for crochet. I bought a ball of self-striping sock yarn that contains 50% wool and 25% bamboo as well as the 25% nylon that will make the socks hardwearing. The bamboo makes the yarn feel quite silky and I’ll be interested to see how it knits up.

It was a long drive home yesterday – over five and a half hours – and I’ve deliberately taken today at a slightly slower pace. Later this week I will hopefully be getting my rear passenger door fixed so it opens again. I have been able to rejig the way I pack the car for shows to allow for this irritation, but it will be so much easier when all doors function as intended once more! On Saturday Shelby’s Singers will be singing at the Buckley Spring Market in the shopping precinct in town at 1pm, for about an hour. We have our final rehearsal for that tomorrow! I’ll tell you all about that next week. Until then, take care. K x

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Coming Together

The sofa bed arrived promptly on Wednesday morning and the delivery chaps were friendly and helpful. We had chosen the second option for delivery (at £50) where they put the boxes in the room of your choice (rather than the leave them at the front door option for £25, or the put everything together and take away all the packaging option for £100!) but we discovered it required more building than the chap in the shop had said…

Not just sliding the pull-out part of the mattress under the frame of the sofa, but bolting the arms of the sofa onto the folding part (the seat/back) and a few other bits besides. And the pictures on the instructions were tiny and faint line drawings, so naturally we ending up putting the arms on the wrong sides.

It was only when we’d attached both arms and were looking at it that I said I was sure the front of the arms were supposed to be flush with the front of the seat – and they absolutely weren’t! I wish I’d taken a photo at that point as it did rather look like a mutant sofa! So, we took it all apart again and started from the beginning and this time we got it right. We even checked that we can change it from sofa to bed and back again. And we can! It’s not flashy, but it’s comfortable and it suits our needs perfectly, and we’ve already made more use of this room since last Wednesday than we had in ages before then. I’ve even played the piano now I can get to it easily again.

The border of Elinor Hap Shawl now only has 2 rows left to go and then I’ll be knitting the edging.

Each row is taking somewhere between 30-40 minutes at present as there are over 940 sts per row, but once I get on to the edging I’ll be able to see my progress more quickly, as the edging grows and works its way steadily around the four sides of the shawl.

I’ve printed out copies of The Imperial Cowl ready for East Anglia Yarn Festival and I’ve prepped my newsletter that’s going out tomorrow.

The pattern will go on general sale on Saturday 15th March! That’s this Saturday. At 10am for printed copies when the show opens and at 8am for online sales. Newsletter subscribers will be getting a code in their newsletter on Wednesday for a 20% discount for digital copies of this pattern, but it only lasts for 48 hours, from 8am March 15th until 8am March 17th (GMT – London time). So if you fancy a discount, sign up now, before the newsletter goes out at 9am tomorrow!

I’m really looking forward to East Anglia Yarn Festival and I’m hoping there’ll be a chance to go into Norwich at some point over the weekend, which we didn’t do at all last year. There are still a few things to do before Friday, but it’s all under control and mostly I’m ready. I don’t think you would believe that if you saw the state of my desk at present, but it’s true, I promise! I think you can still book for the brioche workshop on Saturday afternoon (1-3pm), but remember you need a show ticket as well.

It’s been quite a busy day today, so I shall keep today’s post short and sweet, and I shall tell you all about my adventures at EAYF when I write again next week. Until then, take care and do something that makes you happy. Kx

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The Siren Song of Spring

This week has involved lots of scrubbing and hauling. Scrubbing of walls, floors and other surfaces and hauling around of furniture. We had decided that it would be more sensible to have a sofa bed in the spare room rather than a full double bed that is used once in a blue moon and takes up most of the space.

So, we visited all the shops in our area (in the same retail park, fortunately!) to look at the sofa beds on offer and chose the one most suited for our needs (and space) which was, of course, the one we saw first. We have removed the old bed and cleaned the room thoroughly, including moving the wardrobes with heavy sliding mirrored doors which hadn’t been moved since we built them over a decade ago! We moved the Clavinova (full sized electric piano) into the hallway to be squeezed around until it can go back in and we even hired one of those Rug Doctor machines and cleaned the carpet!

The room is now refreshed and awaiting the delivery of the sofa-bed tomorrow. Not only will this free up more space in the spare room, it will also turn it into a room we can make more use of, either for playing music or even giving music lessons, or for my lovely wife’s coaching sessions, or just for somewhere else to ‘be’ in the house. We even took the opportunity to go through the contents of our wardrobes thoroughly and be honest about what we were or weren’t going to wear again, since everything had to come out of them anyway before we could even try to move them.

So, unsurprisingly, I’ve been aching a bit since the weekend when most of this took place! This may also be due to having spent an hour or so in the garden on Friday – the first gardening I’ve done in months. I pruned the apple tree, cut back the autumn fruiting raspberries, pruned the blackcurrant, one of the gooseberry bushes and one of the roses and made a start on pruning the redcurrant.

Spring must be well and truly on her way and we are hearing her siren call!

I finished my Haori Cardigan last Tuesday, spent a couple of days weaving in the ends and then wore it the very next day – without even blocking/washing it (shocking!). To be fair, the main thing that blocking this will do is possibly to straighten out the neckband for a short time before it heeds its own siren call of stocking stitch and rolls inward again. I’m really pleased with it and I know I will be wearing it a lot.

Finishing this (and awaiting the arrival of yarn for a couple of commissions) means I’ve returned to knitting my new sample of Elinor Hap Shawl.

This new sample is in a superfine lace weight (1200m per 100g) but the shawl can still be knitted in ‘standard’ laceweight yarn (800m per 100g). My old sample had become a bit bobbly and had lost some of its stitch definition as it’s something I wear often – it certainly isn’t fit for being a display sample, which this new shawl will be!

Do you remember I showed you the beautiful Tencel yarn from Penny Stitch Craft that she kindly gave me to design with at the North West Winter Wool Festival? I’ve knitted up a basic stocking stitch swatch on 4mm needles to see how it behaves and it has a lovely drape and sheen.

The next task is to experiment with a lace swatch, probably on slightly larger needles and see how it holds the stitches after blocking. It should work well, judging from the stocking stitch swatch. I wonder what final design these skeins will become?!

As we have now left February I have been able to count up the number of Bodelwyddan copies sold during the month, both online and at the North West Winter Wool Festival, and I am delighted to say that you bought 12 copies which has enabled me to make a donation of £36 to Treasure Chest YGC. Thank you if you were one of the people who bought a copy. YGC stands for Ysbyty Glan Clwyd which is Welsh for Glan Clwyd Hospital and the Treasure Chest charity raises money to support those having breast cancer treatment there. I originally wrote the Bodelwyddan sock pattern as part of a fundraiser for this charity so it made sense to me to use it again for the same charity during the month I had my first mammogram! (It all went smoothly and I’m just waiting for the results now).

On Sunday night we went to a concert in Manchester at Aviva Studios. We were going to hear Mary Chapin Carpenter singing with two other people of whom I’d not previously heard. It was fantastic! We were far nearer the front than “Row L” suggested (2nd row!) and all the musicians were phenomenal.

I was particularly entranced by the multi-tasking of the percussionist (he did way more than calling him a ‘drummer’ might suggest). This photo was taken before the concert began, from my seat! If you get a chance to hear Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis or Karine Polwart at all (they were the other two singers – both Scottish folk musicians), then do! The three of them and their band have a new album called “Looking For The Thread” which is simply beautiful.

Today is also Pancake Day (or Shrove Tuesday, if you prefer), so I am hoping to make pancakes later. This is a slightly more complex task when they’re vegan pancakes, but I know I have a good recipe somewhere! I just hope we’ve got all the ingredients we need. I’ll let you know next week! Until then, take care and I hope you get the chance to do some things you really enjoy and maybe listen to the siren song of spring. K x

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Blue like my Hair

Several times during the past month, I have been stopped by strangers asking me about my hair colour. Sometimes they just want to tell me they think it’s fab. On one occasion (outside the Co-Op in Kidderminster) a lady called across the car park to ask which came first – my shoulder bag or my hair? They are basically the same colour! She was quite tickled when I said my hair came first.

As my hair has been blue/teal for nearly six and a half years, I sometimes forget that it’s not a ‘standard’ colour and get surprised when folk comment on it. But it is quite different from the ‘norm’ for hair colour and also from what it would look like if it was left ‘au naturel’, when it would be brown at the back and mostly white at the front! I did start to see more of the white resurfacing last month when I simply didn’t have time amongst everything else to keep the colour topped up, and I have to admit I felt much more ‘me’ once I’d been able to dye it again.

Something I noticed years ago at Knit Camp in Stirling in, I think, 2013, was that a large group of knitters was likely to have more people with unusually coloured hair than among the general population. At Knit Camp there was a lot of purple in evidence, although mine was still undyed at that time. I’m not sure if the general trend among creative types is towards brightly coloured hair still though – I will have to pay attention this coming weekend at the North West Winter Wool Festival (at the Imperial Hotel in Blackpool).

Personally, I love having blue hair and it has become quite a trademark – when checking in to set up at a Buxton Wool Gathering a couple of years ago (the first time I had attended), the organisers knew who I was without my even having to give my name! As they said, there weren’t a lot of folk trading with them who had blue hair.

We used to have coloured wine glasses – each with the bottom of the glass a different colour and Sue would always give me the one that was “Blue like my hair”, so it became a phrase. Blue has been my favourite colour since I was a small child and had a peddled blue plastic car – at some point I will locate and share a photo of toddler me ‘driving’ that car! Looking around the house I see now there are lots of blue things – and walls! Whenever given the option it seems I will plump for a particular type of blue!

Do you have a favourite colour? One that you are drawn to over and over again? What is it? Do you know why you love it so much? I’d love to hear about it!

Later this afternoon I will once again be topping up the blueness of my hair in readiness for the North West Winter Wool Festival at the weekend. I’m really looking forward to this show. Shirley has worked really hard getting everything organised for us, and it’s going to be fun to stay at the same venue as the event as well! No long drives after setting up to try to find the accommodation, or worrying about navigating the traffic on a Saturday morning! Blackpool isn’t as far away as I’d thought either – apple maps was giving me a drive time of an hour and a half the other day when I looked up the journey which is very reasonable. I will allow extra time though, because with the M6 you never know. If you are coming to the show, please do say hello – and if you’ve got an Imperial Cowl with you, please do show me!

Thank you to everyone who has bought a copy of Bodelwyddan already this month – I’ve sold 6 copies of this pattern so far this month (and we’re not even halfway through February yet!) so at minimum there will be a donation of £18 to Treasure Chest YGC, a charity that raises money for those having treatment for breast cancer at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd (hence the ‘YGC’ – it’s Glan Clwyd Hospital). I’m hoping there will be some more sales before the end of the month to increase the donation I’ll be making. Both digital and paper sales of Bodelwyddan will be included.

If you can’t make it to Blackpool at the weekend, don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about it next week. Until then, take care, and do something with your favourite colour! K x

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Coming up for Air

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Signs of Spring?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Getting Sorted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Knit (what makes you) Happy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Knitting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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It’s lovely when it works!

A BT home hub with orange lights - not working!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

📣 Special Offer while stocks last! 📣

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

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

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

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

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

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Since we’ve no place to go…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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