I’ve caught up with the frogging I had to do last week and everything is now ticking along nicely with the new design. I should finish the main section of it fairly soon and add the second colour in.
I don’t think I have shown you the finished DK version of Into the Vortex, so here it is!
It still needs to be blocked and it will behave itself much better for photographs once that has been done.
Last Tuesday evening’s Zoom workshop worked very well and the knitters who attended made excellent progress having not tried brioche knitting before. I was really impressed with them and they had a lot of fun too!
I’m teaching the same workshop (Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Knitting) at Bakewell Wool Gathering this Saturday, 1.30-3.30pm. There are still spaces on the workshop if you’d like to attend – you can book in advance or ask on the day if there are still spaces available. You just need to bring 5mm circular needles (minimum 60cm long) with you.
If you already know how to work the basic brioche knit stitch and would like to extend your brioche knitting skills, I would encourage you to sign up for the Next Steps in Two-Colour Brioche Knitting Zoom Workshop on Tuesday October 22nd, 7-9pm, where we are going to work on this swatch:
The community choir (Shelby’s Singers) I lead sang in our town on Saturday afternoon as part of a free music festival. We had an hour’s slot, with the expectation to sing for 45 minutes. That’s a lot of songs! We did 13 songs, finishing with the song that has become ‘ours’ – ‘This is Me’ from The Greatest Showman. We change the final line to ‘This is Us’ and that has been added to the choir hoodies that arrived just in time for the performance!
So, this is us:
Prynhawn Da was published in Knit Now in May and I have now released it as an individual pattern on my website, Payhip and Ravelry. Prynhawn Da is Welsh for ‘good afternoon’, hence the title of today’s blog post! The coasters and placemats are not only pretty in themselves, but they are also a great introduction to Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Pi Shawl construction:
That’s everything from me today. I hope you have a good week and get a chance to do something you enjoy. K x
The Yarn Harlot (Stephanie Pearl-McPhee) used to say (and probably still does) that fast knitters make big mistakes more quickly. She’s right!
This is what I knitted last week:
Except these are balls of wool, not knitting, so what happened? Sue said “Oh no!” when she saw me frogging this earlier on (frogging – as in you remove the knitting from the needles and ‘rip it, rip it’ out). However, my response to her was a very calm, “Don’t worry, it will be better”.
It had been bugging me that the repeated pattern in this design started alternately on a right side and then a wrong side row. Also that the number of stitches before the actual pattern began kept increasing. That meant I couldn’t condense the pattern and every row had to be written out, which, when it’s for a magazine and every page used matters, is a potential problem.
Lying in bed I wondered whether removing one plain row before the repeat section began would solve both issues I was having, so this morning I went to my charting programme and drew it out and guess what? It works! Five or more pages reduced to two and a half and the pattern becomes easier to follow as well. But it did mean I needed to undo all that yarn you see in the pic above.
Sometimes you have to go back before you can go forward.
This evening I am teaching my Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Workshop via Zoom. There are some major benefits to this: no one has to travel, you can attend from wherever you are as long as you have a reliable internet connection and my camera set-up means that everyone can see what I’m doing at the same time as though I were right next to them. It does mean that I can’t take someone’s knitting and fix it for them, but as long as they can hold it up to their camera I should be able to explain what they need to do differently to make it work. If you already know the basic brioche stitches and want to expand your brioche knitting skills, why not book on the Next Steps in Two-Colour Brioche Knitting Zoom Workshop? It’s on Tuesday 22nd October, 7-9pm (British Summer Time, which is GMT+1).
I had a lovely surprise on Thursday. I knew that my brioche cowl, named Menai, was due to be on the cover of the new issue (Issue 207) of The Knitter magazine, but I hadn’t realised they were also starting my four-part knit-along lace hap shawl Rhiannon in the same issue!
I was asked recently what my favourite fibre to knit with is and the answer was wool (from sheep). That may be because I’m so much more familiar with wool than other animal fibres, but the more you use them, the more you learn!
Both Menai and Rhiannon use alpaca yarn, which I was less familiar with before creating these designs. Rhiannon, the lace hap (square) shawl uses Cascade Yarns Alpaca Lace, which is 100% Alpaca. It was so soft to work with and created such a fluid fabric that I wasn’t sure if the blocking would hold the shapes of the lace stitches clearly, but it did and it blocked out beautifully. I used my hap stretcher to block it, propped up by the radiator.
Menai uses an Alpaca Sock yarn from UK Alpaca, and includes 25% nylon with the alpaca. Again the fabric flowed like water, which is one of the reasons I added the collar to the cowl, as otherwise it simply sat on the shoulders, which isn’t what you want a cowl to do really! Had it been worked in wool, it would have stood up on its own and would have looked completely different, but I’m glad it worked out the way it did with the alpaca as I really like the shape of the finished item which is part cowl and part mini poncho.
*As well as these two designs in issue 207, the County Shawl that I designed for James McIntosh’s Donegal 4ply yarn is in “The Knitter loves…” section!
It’s a great issue, full to brim with gorgeous accessories and some garments as well, from a range of brilliant designers, so if you are a knitter I heartily recommend you get a copy if you can.
I’m going to leave it there for today, get my desk set up for the workshop, and start re-knitting that lovely blue yarn (It’s West Yorkshire Spinners Elements DK).
Have a good week and do some stuff that makes you happy. Kx
Unusually today is not only blog day, but also the first of the month, which makes it newsletter day as well, so there will be quite some overlap in content between the two!
Yarndale was amazing, if a little chilly! If you came by the stand to say hello and have a browse, thank you so much. Customers said some lovely things about the samples on display and I heard a ‘C’est manifique’ from a group of French knitters which made me very happy. We also sold lots of patterns, kits and calendars during the weekend.
If you didn’t come to the show yourself, then here are a few pics to show you how the cattle pen (yes, that is what it usually is used for) was transformed over the course of three and a half hours on Friday afternoon:
My lovely wife Sue can be seen in one of the pics above having a very well earned sit-down after transporting most of the contents of our stand the entire length of the auction mart on the trolley (the car park was at the opposite end to where our stand was!) She was amazing and also held the fort for much of Saturday afternoon whilst I went to teach an Introduction to Two Colour Brioche Knitting workshop to ten intrepid knitters.
While I was at the stand later on Saturday looking for a pattern on the table, my badge caught on Tiffany (pinned across the front of the table) and snagged it quite badly. Nothing broke, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to fix it to look as if this had never happened!
I’m going to video the process which will hopefully encourage others to fix their own snagged knits.
We made some new friends as well as catching up with old ones – both other vendors and visitors to the show. I think one of the great things about yarn shows is that it’s a rare chance for most of the vendors see each other, so we make the most of catching up in snatched moments between setting up, or even when queueing for the loo!
I told you last week that I was racking my brains trying to work out how on earth I was going to put my banner up at Yarndale and that I eventually bought two mops with handles that unscrewed and had loops in the top. As you can see – the mop handles worked! Cable ties attached the banner to the metal mop handles and lots of string ties the mop handles to the metal rails of the pen (hidden behind the black sheets and Nevern Throw).
If you came by the stand you will have seen the little display of McIntosh yarns with the two designs that I have created with them. County Shawl was launched on Friday and I’m very excited about it. It uses the wonderful Donegal 4ply yarn in three colours. This semi-circular shawl may look complex but all the stitch patterns are slip stitch, knit and purl with a few little short rows to create the rows of bobbles, so it’s very achievable.
James McIntosh has put together three stunning colour-way choices for you as shown in the picture above. The grey and natural yarn pack also includes a gorgeous dark green which is shyly hiding behind the other two skeins. When you select your colour choices you can also choose to have a set of 3.75mm 150cm circular needles from Addi included in your kit. These needles are really nice to use and are very smooth.
Every kit includes the pattern and I get paid the full pattern price (£6) for every kit sold, which is rather splendid.
I am out and about with my designs again later this month. Ewe Felty Thing are hosting a ‘Designer Day‘ at their shop in Conwy on Saturday October 26 from 10-5, and I will be one of 5 designers taking part. It’s free to come along, so if you are anywhere near the North Wales coast, it would be lovely to see you! 26th October might seem like a long way off now, but it’s actually less than four weeks away!
I have been enjoying knitting my DK version of Into the Vortex and I have nearly finished Part 5 of the seven parts. That’s really good, as something exciting arrived in the post today and means I should be able to finish at least one project before starting a new piece of deadline knitting!
You know the routine now, I think. I’m not going to be able to tell you what it is or who it’s for, or show you my progress with it, but I did want to show you the yarn as the colours are so lovely and the shine from the Tencel content is gorgeous.
Speaking of deadline and commission knitting; keep an eye out for the new issue of The Knitter that comes out later this week as I believe it will include a new design from me!
…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!
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
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.
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
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!
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!
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
Well, Wool@J13 (that’s ‘Wool at Junction 13’ as it’s near Junction 13 of the M6, sometimes referred to as ‘Woolly J’) is done and we are home. I still need to go through all the samples and check if anything needs freshening up with a re-block or just folding in a different way, but everything else is back where it should be.
I know I’ve said this before, but Wool@J13 is a very different kind of yarn show. First of all, it’s in a field and the parking is in a different field down the road. Most of the vendors are in the ‘shop til you drop’ marquee that is a bit like a circus tent with its yellow and white stripes, with others in individual gazebos in the ‘gazebo village’. There are also two tents for workshops. So far, so yarn show, just with a slightly different setting.
Here’s my stand in the marquee, with Sue wearing her ‘Add value, bring joy’ T-shirt. She did, and does, every day!
Then as well as the marquee and gazebo village, there’s a small stage tent, with plenty of chairs and tables arranged in front of it. Throughout the weekend there’s live entertainment and you can sit and enjoy that as you eat your lunch from one of the street food vendors, or just soak up the music as you go round the stands. Last year Jo from Second City Yarns also entertained us inside the marquee with her cello playing. However, this year she had a broken finger, so couldn’t play. Ingrid (who it is almost impossible to say no to!) asked what instrument I played, and when I told her that I mostly sing, and yes, I did sing a cappella (unaccompanied) sometimes, asked if I’d like to do a turn in the marquee? I said yes! So, on Sunday afternoon when it wasn’t too busy and wouldn’t be interrupting too many potential sales, Ingrid gently blew her whistle, and I sang Misty and Unforgettable. It wasn’t until afterwards that I told her I hadn’t sung a solo in public in about 7 years…! I did enjoy it and there’s a short clip of the end of Misty floating about somewhere on Facebook if you want to see the evidence.
Bryn, my new brioche cowl designed especially for first time brioche knitters (or, as Tamsin from The Left Hookery put it, ‘brioche virgins’…!) , was well received and the kit, forever now to be known as ‘Bryn in a Tin’, sold well. The blues colourway was particularly popular.
I will be putting this kit and several others on to the website in the next few days, so if you want one, but can’t get to a yarn show, you can order online!
I had a nice surprise yesterday. I received an email telling me I had a Payhip review and clicked on it to see the details. It was a super review from someone who had bought the Pride and Progress Pride Knitting Kit bundle:
Cute kit – perfectly packaged!
A great kit for a beginner, or someone who wants to make a Pride flag without investing in massive balls of yarn. You got plenty of yarn and great instructions all packed in an enveloped that fitted through the letter box. I made my first flag straight away! – Nessa H.
That wasn’t the only surprise though. I also discovered there were nine other Payhip reviews (all 5 star) waiting to be moderated and published! So, now if someone has reviewed a pattern or kit on Payhip, the review is there on the product page for folk to see, and I’ve selected a few for testimonials at the bottom of my main Payhip shop page. I’m not sure how I didn’t know the reviews were sitting there – some are a year old! But I’m so glad to have found them and to know that folk are enjoying what I do.
Speaking of folk enjoying my work… If you get my newsletter or have seen my social media posts at the weekend, you’ll know that I saw some of my designs ‘in the wild’ at the weekend. It’s always such a buzz, especially when the knitter tells you they’ve really enjoyed knitting the project and that the pattern was clear and really easy to follow. I mean, that’s what I always aim for, but until someone tells you that that WAS their experience, you don’t really know for sure. From the left the patterns are: What Do Points Make?, Meg March Shawl and Branwen Shawl.
My Persian Tiles blanket is making progress – I only have 9 more motifs to finish off with the last two rounds now (that’s about three evenings worth)! Then I need to block them and put it all together. Can you see the different from last week? I am glad I followed Jane Crowfoot’s recommendation to make them ‘production line’ style as you can memorise the round you are working on easily and just repeat it, and you don’t have to keep getting a different coloured ball of wool out.
I’ve made a little progress with my Bargello Scarf. It’s less than I’d intended, and I think that’s because finishing each of the crochet motifs is so addictive! I am however, nearly at the halfway point now.
I am really looking forward to being able to photograph all three samples (the wrap, cowl and scarf) together as a set, ready for the relaunch of the pattern. It’s going to look so dramatic!
I also got a bit more of Sue’s sock done while we were away. Socks are the perfect travel knitting, as they take up so little room – and that was an important consideration with the car being so full of stuff for the show. I will definitely be on at least the second sock by the time of the next show (Pop Up Wool Show on August 18th), even if I haven’t finished them by then. I’m using my Bodelwyddan pattern, making the 4th size.
Plans for Yarn Gathering 2024 are coming on well. It’s being held on Sunday September 15th, from 10am -4pm.
You will be pleased to know that entry to the event is still FREE, and once again it is happening at the same time as the Mold Food and Drink Festival, so you can combine visiting the two events! And as it’s on Sunday, there are no parking charges in Mold!
We will have more vendors than ever this year – 16 or 17 – and because of that we are expanding into more of the Daniel Owen Centre.
We have previously used the main hall and the cafe space. This year we are using those two areas again, and are also using the largest of the upstairs rooms. We know that stairs aren’t great for everyone, but (as someone who has bungalow legs myself and isn’t great with stairs) I can say that they are decent stairs. The treads are deep enough to get your foot on, the steps themselves are not too high, and there are sturdy handrails on both sides. If you can’t access the first floor at all, we can take a video to show you what is up there and bring down things you particularly want to see.
Yarn Gathering now has its own Facebook page as well as an Instagram account, and we will be posting about each of our lovely vendors – who are all still fairly local – leading up to the event. Do come – we’re sure you’ll enjoy it.
That’s all from me today. I was going to pick the blackcurrants or do some weeding in the front garden, but it’s raining (again!) so that can wait. Take care and have a good week, K x
Last week I promised I would show you my progress with my Persian Tiles Blanket, designed by Jane Crowfoot and my Bargello Aurora Scarf. I’m quite pleased with both.
The large motifs for the blanket are on their final three rounds.
One of these 16 motifs is complete – that’s the one I made first and one to the left of it has a dark blue round with stitches of different heights that changes it from a flower / star to an octagon. I hope to have completed this round on all the other 14 motifs by next week and perhaps have begun the cream round with the stitches that cross over each other – that’s the hardest bit in my opinion.
As for the Bargello Aurora Scarf, I’m just over a third of the way through it! It probably could have been more, but since I got home from my *second* trip to the midlands last week (it was planned, but it was a lot of driving), I’ve been crocheting in the evenings instead.
There will be nine blocks of the stripe pattern repeat in total. Yesterday I wrangled with inkscape, a programme I use for drawing .svg files for schematics. I don’t use it very often, so remembering how to move nodes (the points where the lines change direction) etc and edit files took longer than I would have liked, but I do now have schematics for the cowl and the scarf as well as the wrap.
I won’t have copies of the updated Bargello Aurora pattern with me at Wool@J13 this weekend as I want to finish the scarf sample first and double check the measurements and yarn quantities used, but I will have it at the Pop Up Wool Show in Port Sunlight on August 18th and it will hopefully be available online before then as well.
There will be new designs and new kits at Wool@J13 though! Leaf & Vine has returned to me as I told you last week and I will have printed copies of that, the new brioche cowl (now named Bryn!) will be there in both printed pattern and kit form (with kits comprising the pattern, yarn and a stitch marker in a tin), and the pride kits will be there with the same bundle offer as online.
The Bryn Brioche Cowl kits all contain the same amount of yarn, allowing you to simply choose your colours and then decide which size you want to make.
That’s quite a few items having their first show outing! I was going through my inventory list and as well as these ‘brand new to shows’ designs, there will be about 20 other products that I didn’t have with me last year at Wool@J13, including patterns, kits, postcards and hand-spun yarn. I just hope I can fit it all into my car and then into my stand space! (Barragán will be making its show debut at the Pop Up Wool Show).
I have a new brioche knitting workshop coming up in a couple of weeks! Next Steps in Two-Colour Brioche Knitting is ideal for knitters who have learnt the basic two-colour brioche stitch and now want to explore the technique further. Knitters will create this amazing swatch, learning increases and decreases that will open up a whole range of brioche knitting patterns.
The workshop is being held at Shaz’s Shabby Chic in Buckley on July 10th, 6.30-8.30 and the full details can be found on my events page as well as on ticketsource where you can book a workshop place.
I will also be running this workshop AND my Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Knitting workshop as online Zoom events later in the year, so keep your eyes peeled for those if this is a knitting technique you’d like to explore, but you can’t get to North Wales (or to Yarndale in North Yorkshire, where I am teaching Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Knitting on Saturday 28th September – there are just 3 spaces left on the Yarndale workshop).
I haven’t been at home much this week with the double trip to the midlands, but we have been able to get into the garden this weekend. There has been some serious pruning of the box at the bottom of the garden (it was almost twice as tall as us!) and we’ve even trimmed the hedge! Well, some of it. We couldn’t get right down to the bottom because the box was in the way, but now that’s been brought back under control we’ll be able to finish the hedge off. This is the hedge that acts as a backdrop for many of my photos of knitting when it’s modelled on a human! Our neighbour used to cut our side every year while we were away in the summer, but since he died (quite a number of years ago now), we’ve had someone in to do it twice, but it hasn’t been enough – and we felt it used to get more of a tickle than a prune anyway. I reckon we’ve lost at least two feet of garden to the hedge, judging from how much it came in front of the bottom garage window. So, we bit the bullet and bought a pole hedge trimmer. We took off about a foot from the width of the hedge on Sunday, but we still need to remove more. We are being very careful – gloves, proper shoes and so on. This pic gives some idea of how much the hedge has overgrown – that’s after we trimmed a foot or so off (and bevelled the corner to get more light into the garage)!
The veg has been very poor this year, with everything apart from a few kale plants having been eaten by slugs or snails. However the fruit bushes are looking mighty fine, and the blackcurrants are ready to be picked!
Jam making time is coming near. Maybe after the weekend?
That’s all from me today. The next time I write it will be July! Which reminds me, if you’d like to receive exclusive discount codes and more, then do sign up for my monthly newsletter, which comes out at the start of each month.
