Tag: Knitting Workshop

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Follow Your Arrow

View of Llandudno pier and the Great Orme as seen from the Promenade. The sky is blue and so is the sea!

The song ‘Follow Your Arrow‘ by Kacey Musgraves has been a proper ear-worm for me this week. I’ve even been singing it in the shower! If you’ve never heard it, I highly recommend a listen.

There are changes are afoot in our household, with my lovely wife moving on from primary school headship to a new pathway of her own devising, and I may be doing some musical stuff in our local community in the near future as well as continuing to knit up a storm. I’ve even been brave and set foot on a big wheel – the one pictured in the main image of Llandudno pier! Once we got moving (after sitting at the top for far too long) it was quite spectacular.

In the meantime, I am preparing for four knitting workshops this month and for Yarn Gathering on Sunday 17th! As part of this, there has been a lot of printing happening today. As you might expect, some of the printing has been patterns, but there have also been posters, risk assessments, pattern spreadsheets and public liability insurance certificates!

A slightly less fun part of today has been trying to find out why my car insurance renewal quote for this year is 50% higher than last year’s premium. That’s without any changes to the policy (and no claims) at all! Fortunately I got to speak to a really helpful woman on the phone, explained the changes I do need to make, and she is going to ring me back on Friday when she’s heard back from the underwriters and then we’ll look at possible discounts. Argh. At least I know I’ll be speaking to the same person, so I won’t have to go through everything again from the beginning.

Admin is one of those things that has to be done and it’s something I generally don’t mind. Having had a week of visitors and then visiting Kent, the only work I’ve been doing is social media and knitting, so I’ve had to catch up with myself a bit today, which means I’m noticing the admin more than usual!

But the knitting? Well! I thought I might have moved on to the sleeves of Lichfield by today, didn’t I? Haha! I’ve done both the sleeves (apart from the very tops of them – I need to decide whether or not to knit the extra four rows added by the tech editor just before the final cast off rows) AND I only have two rows and the cast-off left to do on the neckband.

That means the shoulder seams are already done as well. Although, now I’ve seen the photos of it lying flat I think I might redo the neckband to shift the stitch pick up a little on the left hand front (right side of image). This will get rid of the little ‘pull-up’ I can see at the bottom of the neck band.

Do you see how the stitch pattern in the back panel lines up perfectly with that of the neckband? It does that for every size. That type of detail is important to me as it makes a design (and a garment knitted from it) look really finished and precise.

Once I’ve re-done the neckband and done the last little bits at the tops of the sleeve caps (I’ll probably add the extra rows in one sleeve, leave the balls of yarn attached, pin them to the body of the cardigan and decide which fit I like best, then redo the top of the other sleeve cap to match), that’s ALL the knitting done. Then it’s blocking time, seaming and weaving in the ends. With any luck (and if the weather isn’t too hot) I’ll be wearing it at Yarn Gathering, although I can’t sell the pattern myself until next January.

It’s been an eye-opener knitting a waist-length garment in my size. It’s so much quicker than something long that supposedly ‘hides’ your hips/bum, but in reality does nothing of the sort. That sounds pretty obvious when you think about it, but the full circumference of knitting happens at the bottom of a garment, so to take off 6-9 inches of fabric is a lot of knitting removed from the equation. This might make it sound as though I don’t enjoy knitting. I do – I love it. But I also know (and have been told by other knitters) that it can get very frustrating when it can literally take months to complete a garment when making a larger size. I also seem to be using slightly less yarn than I’d calculated which is interesting. I started each section with a new ball, but I only used 3 on the back, 2 on each sleeve and 1 on each front. It’s 1 so far on the neckband, but that might become 2. Add in a 10% buffer and we’re looking at 12 x 50g balls rather than 13 for size 7. Another saving! I can see potentially more waist-length garments (or ones with a waist-length option) in future designs…!

Anyway, I hope Yarn O’clock doesn’t mind my ‘borrowing’ this photo, but I thought this was an excellent placement of a diversion sign – and a great example of ‘follow your arrow’ too! Why not divert into a yarn shop (though ideally not while still in a car)? On the day of Yarn Gathering (September 17th, 10-4), Yarn O’clock will also be open from 1-2pm.

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May Day!

I wish I could share a pic of my desk with you right now. It’s rather overflowing with work! However, I can’t show you, because one of the things on it is the finished child’s cardigan that no-one will see until August, and there’s also piles of pattern printouts and schematics with various measurements relating to that. On the right side of the desk is a stack of stitch dictionaries with a small heap of knitted and blocked swatches on top, ready for the next design! I’ve even started using the top of my printer as a desk extension, which probably isn’t very good for it…

Now that it’s May we finally have some warmth here. I walked to the post office earlier with sandals on! I have good news on the seedlings too – they are sprouting well. As long as they survive we should have some homegrown broad beans, dwarf French beans, mange tout, coriander, and courgettes so far. I’m having to do regular sweeps of our click-together plastic-covered greenhouse to check for slugs and snails; I just lob them into the patch of ground elder and tell them to munch on the new shoots of that instead. Pics soon!

The cardigan is done and even has its buttons sewn on (pics in July when it’s published). I have recovered from the shock I had at the weekend end when I opened the pattern file only to discover several pages were missing! Fortunately I had printed the pattern out as I was working on it. I also discovered an older version saved in the back ups on ‘Time Machine’ from two weeks ago that mysteriously had more of the pattern than the current version and I was able to recover that, which saved quite a bit of re-typing.

I can’t imagine how five pages of a Word doc vanished, unless something went very wonky when I was using my new iPad and I accidentally deleted them without even realising? Something similar happened with my Excel spreadsheet file for the same design a few weeks ago too – maybe there’s something I’m leaning on on the screen? Losing work is NOT something I want to experience on a regular basis!

This afternoon I’ve been chomping through the numbers, double checking they all work and make sense – and result in a garment of the proportions intended for all sizes! I’m really pleased with the sample. It’s made using West Yorkshire Spinners Elements DK and includes two of the new seasons’ colours.

If you’ve been following my social media over the past week or so, you’ll know that I’ve been knitting my own version of Tiffany, one of the shawls I designed for RiverKnits. It uses their Nene 4ply Shadow Rainbow minis set and the colours are so rich and saturated that you could just sit and look at the yarn for hours. However, I had a shawl to knit – with the aim of having it ready to display at Buxton Wool Gathering, which is now only 5 days away!

This morning I finished the shawl and photographed it before I went on to block it.

I videoed the blocking process. It’s quite an ‘aggressive’ block and it tends to make my blocking mats lift up at the edges. You also need to put the pins into the mats at a steep angle to stop them pinging out. You’ll see in the vid that I end up weighing the edges of the blocking mats down. The end of the video is cut off as my phone ran out of space – the video was 37 minutes long at that point! Don’t worry though – I’ve edited it and sped it up A LOT so it now takes less than 90 seconds!

Blocking Tiffany

Yes, I really do measure each point of the shawl from the cast-on tab at the centre top of the shawl. This makes sure it’s a semicircle. The finished blocking is a heck of a lot larger than when the shawl comes off the needles, and you need to leave it pinned until it is completely dry. It will pull back in by about 3.5cm on the radius once the pins are removed and I think it will look stunning at the show.

Speaking of Buxton Wool Gathering, here’s a reminder of the details. It’s being held at Buxton Pavilion Gardens, St. John’s Road, Buxton, Derbyshire, SK17 6BE. There’s a pay and display car park and food and drink available both at the venue and in the town which is only a short stroll.

Please note that the show is on Sunday and Monday (as Saturday is the Coronation). Tickets bought in advance allow entry from 10am, tickets bought on the door allow entry from 11am.

Buxton is closely followed by Wool @J13 on May 13th and 14th!

My Moebius Knitting Workshop at Yarn O’clock on May 18th (£35, 6.30-9pm) still has a couple of places on it. If you want to understand and learn to create the unique structure of a true moebius ring and how this technique can be used for wonderful neckwear and more, this is the class for you! Learn two Moebius cast-ons and create a simple headband. Ring Anne at Yarn O’clock (01352 218082) to book a place!

I’ve also recently been invited to have a stall at the Cheshire Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers Friendship Day the following weekend, which was a lovely surprise! If you’re a member of the guild or one of the other local guilds they invite to join them, you’ll see me there!

I think this is my busiest month yet in terms of events – everything is on my ‘where I’ll be‘ page on the website.

I’ll tell you all about how things went at Buxton next week! Til then, take care, enjoy the sunshine if you can, and do some stuff that makes you happy, K x

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Have You Any Wool?

It’s been a full week, with much of it being dedicated to my next design commission. The pattern is written for the back and both fronts and for the sleeves up to the underarms. So, really it’s just the sleeve caps and the collar to do in terms of writing/grading. This design is in 10 sizes. The sample size required will be too small for me to wear once I get it back, but it does mean that it will take less time to knit! The yarn arrived a few days ago and it’s a really gorgeous, vibrant colour:

It’s a really soft pure wool yarn that I’ll tell you more about in the coming weeks. Later on today I’m going to cast-on the back for the sample! Hurrah!

This evening I’m teaching a stranded colour-work workshop at Yarn O’clock. Stranded colour-work is one of my favourite knitting techniques, as you’ll know if you’ve looked at my pattern pages. It used to almost always be referred to as Fair Isle knitting, but the term stranded colour-work is becoming more common now. The idea is having two contrasting yarns being used in each row, one as the background colour and one as the pattern colour, and handling the yarns so they create neat ‘floats’ or strands of yarn across the back and a consistent colour-work design on the front. I’ll be taking some of stranded designs with me this evening for the knitters to examine and help them understand what they are aiming for.

This is what they are going to be making:

I’ve left the yarn ends loose on this swatch deliberately so I can demonstrate how to weave the ends in tonight.

As well as working on my new design, I’ve been making good progress with my Umbriel sweater in Cirro from The Fibre Co. I found a few issues with numbers and mirrored instructions in the back shoulders and front of the pattern and have made a note of them. I ended up counting stitches in one row at least six times, along with checking the fabric for dropped stitches, before going back to the pattern and doing some maths. One too many stitches instructed to be knit after an initial cast-off caused me quite a headache for a good few minutes! I have now finished the whole body and I’m pleased with it:

The next stage is to seam the shoulders. Stitches are then picked up around the armholes to work the sleeves top down. I might do both at once, or I might just make notes of any changes I have to make as I go. Knitting two sleeves at once avoids the ‘sleeve island’ that many knitters often feel marooned on, and it does mean that the sleeves are highly likely to match – so long as you remember to swap between the two sleeves every one or two rounds. However, I often prefer to make sure a sleeve works for me, writing down any changes to the pattern, going quite slowly with the first and then knit the second one more quickly from my notes. Also, there is always the possibility of getting the two balls of yarn tangled or more seriously mixed up by knitting on a sleeve with the yarn from the other, or forgetting to switch between the two or it just feeling like a sleeve is taking twice as long as it should (because you’re making two at once)!

I probably won’t start the sleeves now until after Buxton Wool Gathering.

In preparation for Buxton Wool Gathering, I’ve printed even more patterns over the past couple of days, including the final version of Am Byth, which is also available as an update for those who’ve already bought it, and Bargello Aurora Wrap which was first published in The Knitter in September (Issue 180). Before the printing could take place, the photos had to be taken and much laughter and fun was had on Saturday afternoon in the garden as Sue took over 200 pics! At least with so many to choose from I can be ruthless about the ones I don’t like – these are usually the ones that catch me looking gormless or pulling an odd face!

Am Byth
Bargello Aurora Wrap

Am Byth is already available in my online stores, and Bargello Aurora Wrap is available as part of The Knitter issue 180 either as a back issue or as an ebook on Ravelry. I’m going to add Bargello Aurora Wrap as a single pattern to my online stores after the show at Buxton this weekend.

I’m really looking forward to Buxton. I’ll be heading there on Friday to set up in the afternoon and my lovely wife will join me later in the weekend as my ‘booth babe’ – the amazing person who talks enthusiastically to knitters, helps find things, get cups of tea and holds the fort when I need the loo!

I’ll be on Stand 31, circled in orange and a full list of vendors can be seen here.

It’s only £5 entry for the day or £8 for a weekend ticket, which is very good value I think. Held in the Buxton Pavilion Gardens, the show is open 10am-4pm on both days, with entry from 11am for those who buy tickets on the door.

The only potential spanner in the works at the moment is the weather forecast. We woke up to a centimetre of snow here in North Wales this morning. It’s all gone now – even though it took some of it until about an hour ago to melt where the sun wasn’t shining. I usually like snow, but not when I need to travel in it. Still, the tyres are all good and I’m going to allow myself plenty of time. But please keep your fingers crossed for good weather for me anyway?

I’ll tell you all about how it went next week! ‘Til then, take care, stay warm and do something that makes you happy. K x

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Everything Happens at Once

It’s been a productive week and one that got busier as it went along! It seems as though my work is building momentum currently and that’s really quite exciting. This wouldn’t have been possible while I was a full-time school teacher as I just wasn’t able to put the time in to yarn-based stuff to get things happening.

The socks are finished as I intended and, as you can see, they fit me really well. I can’t wear them ‘properly’ yet as I want to use them as a teaching aid at my sock workshops at Yarn O’clock on Thursday and there wouldn’t be time to wash and dry them between now and Thursday evening. The yarn is from RiverKnits – it’s the cormo wool 4-ply version of their 2022 Open Day Special yarn, dyed with Lola from Third Vault Yarns, and the colourway is called ‘Ankh Morpork’. The pattern is the basic sock pattern I always use for me; 2.25mm needles, 80 stitches to cast on, rib for a while, stocking stitch for a while, heel flap, heel turn, gusset decreases to 68 or 72 sts (68 in this case), work foot straight for a bit, toe decreases, graft. What some people call a ‘vanilla’ sock.

Yesterday’s beginner knitting class went well. It was still just the one lady attending and she got on really well. I forgot to take a photo of her bunting triangle, so instead, here’s a pic of the one I made. She did some extra eyelet rows in hers too! I rather like the extra eyelets – it keeps it interesting and add extra practice of yarn overs too! Our next class will be in two weeks, with the focus on using knit and purl stitches to create texture. I’ll be adding it as an event to Facebook to see if that helps encourage folk to book a place.

I chose my next fibre and started spinning it. I’ve got 200g of this lovely Bluefaced Leicester wool. It’s dyed by FibreHut and the colourway is called ‘Faded Blooms’ which I think suits it well. As I’ve got more fibre to play with, I decided to spin this one a little thicker. The singles are (mostly) coming out around a DK weight and I’m hoping the plied yarn will be somewhere between an aran and a chunky weight. I do need to concentrate to avoid drifting back to spinning finely though. It’s certainly eating up the fibre more quickly spinning this way!

The final section of our mystery knit-along, Am Byth, was published on Friday and I’ve done two videos to help folk with certain technical aspects. One was for the 5 stitches to 1 stitch decrease and I’ve been absolutely astounded at how many views it has had on Twitter – at the time of writing, over 1700! I will add this one to the website as well. The other video I recorded was for one of the cast-off options. it’s a sewn cast-off that gives a fabulous finish to a ribbed fabric, but it’s not one that everyone knows.

Also, now the larger cables are complete, can you see why I called it ‘Am Byth’? Am byth is Welsh for ‘forever’, and these closed cables look like the eternity symbol (when you hold the knitting on its side!).

I’ve also started getting ready for Buxton Wool Gathering – which is now less than four weeks away!! These are the filing cases I transport and store my printed patterns in and I’ve been going through my patterns spreadsheet, deciding which patterns I need more copies of, and I started printing more out today. The next thing to do is to go through the kits and see what I’ve got and what I could do with replenishing. Although, at a pretty big yarn show (there will be 54 vendors) it’s not as if folk won’t be able to get some gorgeous yarns from the other stalls to knit my designs with.

Part Two of Branwen is in the new issue of The Knitter that is in the shops from Thursday. It’s a knit-along shawl (but not a mystery) using West Yorkshire Spinners Fleece. It’s a lovely DK yarn made with Bluefaced Leicester wool. There are three more parts to the pattern after this one, and I will of course be publishing the whole pattern once I receive the rights back. This also means that if you want to read the interview with me in Issue 185 you have one day left to visit WHSmith and buy a copy!

Yesterday I had two more design submissions accepted which is lovely and very exciting, and one of the reasons for added busying! I set up the Excel spreadsheet for the first one that’s due and started working on that this afternoon. I bet you didn’t know designing knitting patterns was so glamorous, eh?! Seriously though, it’s amazing how much easier the process is with a few formulae up my sleeve – it helps turns one set of numbers into ten far more quickly than I could ever do on my own. Afterwards, I go through it all and make sure it’s still elegant and all the sizes represent the design concept ‘authentically’. Wow, that sounds a bit pretentious, but it basically means if you have a sweater with a design where, for example, a cable hits the shoulder just by the neckline in one size, it needs to be positioned so that it hits the shoulder in the same place in all the sizes. The geek in me loves playing with the numbers to make it all work.

There have been one or two less fabulous things that have happened this week too – but that’s the way of the world, isn’t it? One of the things was that I broke ANOTHER tooth this morning whilst eating my breakfast. At least I already have a dentist appointment in two weeks… I think I need to go back to porridge oats stirred through plant-based yoghurt, it’s far less hazardous than a bowl of cereal!

Anyway, take care one and all and don’t go clicking any links in your notifications until you’re absolutely certain you know who it’s from! And do something that makes you happy this week. K x

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Put Your Best Foot Forward

A panoramic photo showing one left foot and five right feet on a pale gold carpet. The left foot is just touching a red foam mat.

Sometimes photographing knitting has surprising results! I was trying to get a shot of something that is 220cm long and I couldn’t fit it all in, so decided to try the panoramic feature – I wasn’t expecting it to give me five right feet!

It seems appropriate as a photo for today (though I’ve cropped it to remove the knitting as that is yet to be published), as I want to write about sock knitting.

A panoramic photo showing one left foot and five right feet on a pale gold carpet. The left foot is just touching a red foam mat.

There are many ways to knit a sock: top down, bottom up or even flat and seamed!

Heels can have a variety of structures including the afterthought heel where you knit the whole sock as a straight tube and then add the heel in afterwards.

Needles also give a range of choice – double pointed needles (dpns), a tiny circular needle, two circular needles or one long one using the magic loop technique. There are also flexible needles that are a cross between dpns and circular needles that you use in a set of three.

Depending on the needles you use, you can knit one sock and then the other, or both at the same time – or even knit one inside the other!

With all these options there are bound to be some techniques that a knitter favours or dislikes.

Personally, although I generally love using circular needles for most things, when knitting socks I tend to return time and again to double pointed needles – those or the flexible version.

I also prefer to knit them one at a time, top down, with a reinforced slip stitch heel flap and a gusset structure. My lovely wife and I both find this type of sock fits us best. Short row heels are great for self-striping yarn, but I haven’t yet managed to get the fit right for myself.

I’ve finally reached the foot of the second sock of the pair I started in October (!) using RiverKnits‘ Open Day 2022 Special in the colourway ‘Ankh Morpork’, having finished the gusset decreases this afternoon.

The joy of hand knitted socks is that you can make sure they fit you: if you have particularly pointy toes you can adjust the toe shaping to suit; if you have one foot a different length or shape than the other you can make them slightly different; if, like me, your ankles/lower legs are larger than your feet your socks can have more stitches in the leg than the foot. Shop bought socks do not offer this type of customisation.

For me, once I reach the heel flap on a sock my progress tends to speed up. I think because there are small clear sections it’s easier to plan and see the end result: I’ll knit the heel flap and heel turn one day, the gusset decreases another and then I’m on to the foot and it’s not long until the toe decreases start. That might also explain why I’m not a big fan of afterthought heels – knitting a long tube with no shaping until the toe feels a bit endless!

Heel Flap, Heel Turn, Sock Gusset

I’m teaching a workshop on sock knitting at Yarn O’clock on February 16th, 6.30pm – 9pm. There are one or two spaces left. Contact Anne at Yarn O’clock if you want to book.

We won’t be working on a full size sock, but one very similar to the advent mini socks; that means you’ll be able to work through all the sections of a top down heel flap sock in one workshop.

My intention is for my RiverKnits socks to be finished by the workshop so folk can see how the structure scales up to full size.

In case you thought I’d forgotten about it, my Am Byth MKAL is all up to date! Part Three will be released on Friday 10th and I will be uploading a video for one of the cast-off options. I’ll share my completed Parts 1 and 2 here next week (and on social media this Thursday).

The garden is showing signs of spring! We have snowdrops, primroses, hellebores, cyclamen and crocuses in flower and there are some very early daffodils about to open. I can’t remember if I told you we planted about 70 in the late autumn, mostly in the lawn, with flowering times from late Jan/early Feb until late May. It’s good to see them start to emerge. The rhubarb is also starting to peak above ground level again as well. Here is one of the front garden borders with lots of lovely flowers in bloom:

As you can see, I don’t believe in removing all dead leaves from the borders – the worms will do that eventually and I think it helps protect the ground from the worst frosts.

That’s all from me today. Take care, stay warm and do something that makes you happy this week. K x

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All At Once

Three wooden spoons lie face down on a darker wooden desk. The back of each is decorated with a pyrography design of two comical sheep. A fourth spoon is just visible at the top of the image.

It’s one of those week’s where everything is happening at once and some of them are coming to fruition after quite a while!

I’m on the final flag of my Safe Space cross stitch! Once that is complete I shall do the final bit of cross stitch (the word “Welcome” in the middle), then crack on with the outlining and blackwork.

I do want to get this finished in 2022 and it’s starting to look more feasible, which is very encouraging.

On Thursday I will be teaching my Introduction to Two Colour Brioche Knitting workshop. I’ve re-jigged the course and re-written the notes, and therefore also re-knitted the samples! We’re going to start with straight brioche knitting with a garter stitch border so folk can get comfortable with the brioche stitches before having to deal with the fancy cast-on. We’re also using DK yarn this time, so the stitches will be bigger and it will be easier to see how it all works.

Brioche front
Brioche back

Once the straight sample is done we’ll move on to the Italian two-colour brioche cast-on and add an increase and a decrease into the mix!

Brioche leaf front
Brioche leaf back

On Friday I’m launching Nevern Lap Blanket on my website, Payhip, Ravelry and Lovecrafts. Newsletter subscribers have had their discount codes already! The pattern is already live on KnitPicks and it’s selling well so far. If you’re not a subscriber and you can’t wait until Friday you can buy it there!

Nevern Lap Blanket on sofa
Nevern Lap Blanket on floor

And on Saturday I have a stall at the Christmas Fayre at The Rise in Buckley! It’s open 10am – 4pm, so if you’re in Buckley and you still have any Christmas shopping to do, this will be the place to come. (This pic is from a post on their facebook page in October, so there probably aren’t stalls still available now!)

I will have my knitting patterns, kits and pyrography (wood-burning) decorated coasters, hearts, wooden spoons and spatulas with me. I’m really looking forward to it, and have been adding a couple of items to my products in preparation – sheep- themed wooden spoons!

Among other kits, I will have the Mini Socks Advent Calendar kits with me. You may think this a bit strange as Advent has already begun, but bear with me… If you start now for next year and knit one sock every week or so you will be ready without having to knit lots and lots all at once!

Speaking of Advent and Christmas things, how cool is this post box topper? It’s on the post box outside the Spar in Buckley and was made by a group of knitters who meet regularly in the town. A huge amount of work has gone into it and it looks very impressive. It makes me smile every time I go to the post office (which is in the Spar) – a frequent activity at present!

I do have a very exciting piece of news to share with you. Next March I will be a vendor at the Buxton Wool Gathering! This is held in the Buxton Pavilion Gardens and tickets are only £5 for the day, or £8 for the whole weekend, which is brilliant value. There will be over 50 exhibitors there alongside me, so lots to enjoy as well as the beautiful town of Buxton to explore.

I’ve paid for my table, booked the accommodation, but somehow when the leaflets came through the post that was what made it feel totally real.

As well as all this I’ve been selecting a few more patterns from the #FastenOffYAL pattern sale (which finishes at midnight on 8th December Eastern Standard Time – that’s 5am on the 9th GMT), and this morning I wound the yarn for the next design I’m going to cast on. It’s Confluence Cowl by Mary W Martin and it’s a new technique to me as well as being a pattern from a new-to-me designer. Two yarns are held together and knitted together for the main fabric and then some magic is worked so that there are different cables on each side of the fabric! I’m using two colours of Amble from The Fibre Co. It’s a sport weight rather than fingering weight yarn, but it’s so soft and I think it will work really well.

All in all, the rest of the week is quite a busy one, but in a very good way. The Christmas presents are mostly posted (or wrapped if they’re not going in the post) and the cards are written, so I can tick the most pressing aspects of home Christmas prep off the list, which is a great feeling at this stage. I even remembered to feed the Christmas cake with brandy at the weekend – you should have seen my lovely wife’s face when she walked into the kitchen at 11am to see me putting the brandy bottle back on the shelf…!

That’s all from me today – quite enough, I hear you say – so I will leave you with this: Mae smygu’n ofnadwy, dw i’n hoffi cerddoriaeth a dw i eisiau paned a bisgedi! (Translation: Smoking is terrible, I like music and I want a cup of tea and some biscuits!)

Take care one and all, K x

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Slowly Does It

A flatfish sourdough loaf is held in the right hand above the bread board. It has been cut and the crumb (cut side) is held up to show the camera.

I’ve done three hours of knitting today and I can’t show it to you (it’s for the next MKAL!), but there are some other things making some (albeit slow) progress that I can share with you.

Over the past couple of days I’ve made my first sourdough loaf in quite a while. The dough was still very soft when it went into the fridge overnight and spread a lot when I tipped it out of the banneton this morning. It’s a little on the flat side, but nothing like the frisbees that I have been known to create in the past. And, regardless of how it looks, it tastes amazing.

I’m pleased with the crumb – not too many large holes. Next time I will try reducing the quantity of water as I think in the past that has helped create a dough that holds together more before baking. Lots of sourdough bakers keep a journal of all their bakes with details of temperature, timings and quantities of everything. I could do that, but I’m not sure I’d remember!

My sock is growing. If you remember I’m using RiverKnits Open Day 2022 Show yarn in 100% Cormo wool. It’s not a breed I’ve come across before, but it’s knitting up really nicely. I paused a little with this over the weekend as I wasn’t sure if I’d made the leg too long. I knew the answer was to try it on and if the top of the cuff was tight on my calf I would need to rip out the foot, gusset, heel turn and heel flap and a little of the leg. You can probably tell from that list that I was not keen on this option, but I knew that if the socks were tight at the top they would either sag down my legs or stay in the drawer unworn. So, I was putting off the moment of finding out. Eventually I plucked up the courage and tried it on – it fits! Phew!

I don’t often knit ‘regular’ socks for myself, but when I do I knit them top down with 80 stitches on 2.25mm needles. I do a slip stitch heel flap and reduce the foot down to either 72 or 68 stitches over the gusset. I’m hoping to finish the pair by the end of the month, but then I’ve also challenged myself to finish my ‘Safe Space’ embroidery this month as well, so we shall see – I may have been somewhat over optimistic when I set my monthly goals as I do actually need to do some work as well!

Speaking of which! The Safe Space embroidery is coming on – the big flag at the bottom left that I posted about yesterday is now more than half finished.

I was able to do some of it in front of the telly last night with the aid of my little Serious Readers lamp that came as a freebie (!) with my desk lamp. They are both great and the little one is charged by USB which has proved handy in power cuts (while the battery lasts!).

I’m going to set up a new page on the website of “Where I’ll be” as I’m doing more workshops and other events now. In the meantime, there is an Introduction to Two Colour Brioche Knitting workshop coming up on December 8th (Thursday) at Yarn O’clock that has a couple of spaces remaining. Contact Anne at Yarn O’clock if you would like to book a place.

I’m trying out Mastodon as a new social media platform and am gently finding my way around. If you are on there you can find me as @KathAndrews@toot.wales – it’s also encouraged me to have a go at learning Welsh and I’m on Day 3 of my adventures with Duolingo. So I now know how to say “Noswaith dda, Kath dw i. Sut dych chi? Dw i wedi blino!” That’s “Good evening, I’m Kath. How are you? I’m tired!”

So, as ‘dw i wedi blino’, I’m going to stop here, make dinner (bread plus curry made yesterday!), have a cup of tea and put my feet up for a little while before watching ‘quiz night’ on BBC2. Take care one and all. Hwyl! K x

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Home again, home again

A collection of stacked stitches knitted swatches all in different 3-colour combinations grouped together on a white table

Market (and retreat) are done.

The Knit-Tea Retreat at Insole Court in Llandaff, Cardiff, was wonderful. The organisers, Zoë and Jennie, were so kind and helpful (and organised!) and the attendees were such a great bunch of people that it made the weekend feel like a real pleasure even though I was working. It doesn’t get much better than that, does it?

Everyone did so well in both workshops, learning new and unusual knitting techniques. Here are some pictures of what they achieved in the Stacked Stitches and Moebius Knitting workshops.

Two days before the retreat started (on my birthday) I decided to design a new stacked stitches sample to include in the class. (This is a very *me* thing to do). I like it – it’s similar to Hungarian Point Bargello tapestry stitch and also reminds me of geometric 60s wallpaper! I also like the fact you can work the 12-row repeat as often as you want until you decide to cast off.

Zigzag Stacked Stitches

This swatch was knitted using leftover ColourLab DK. While I was at the Sunday afternoon marketplace I had a look at the Cartref Yarn stand (run by Zoë and Jennie, the retreat organisers) and bought these three skeins of gorgeous 4-ply:

Cartref Yarn in purple, yellow and orange

The plan is to develop the zigzag swatch into a design that can be made using either 4-ply or DK (there will be two versions of the pattern depending on the yarn used). The DK version will be made using three very beautiful skeins of Black and Blue Welsh Wool from Midwinter Yarns – so it will be a design fully created in Wales with Welsh materials.

The zigzag swatch replaced the little mat/coaster in the workshop – the sample on the right of the picture below – that had been based on a section of Xandy Peters’ Ribbon Candy Scarf.

Stacked Stitches Swatches

The scarf is fabulous by the way and the pattern can be found at knitty.com.

Ribbon Candy Scarf by Xandy Peters

As well as the two workshops on Saturday, there was a social evening with a bring-and-take table, a raffle and a great mass ordering of take-aways – the combined aromas of pizza, Chinese and curry was surprisingly lovely!

Even though I hadn’t taken anything for the bring-and-take table because I hadn’t known about it, I was encouraged to have a look and found this little gem of sock yarn. It’s a 50g skein from Pixel Atlantis, a dyer from Edinburgh. 50g is enough for 1 sock, and I plan to find another 50g skein in one of the colours from this variegated one and combine them to make a ‘same but different’ not quite matching pair! The colourway is called “The Ghost of Christmas Past”.

Pixel Atlantis sock yarn

Then there was the raffle – there were some amazing prizes on offer here. I had donated a printed copy of The Little Orme Collection (hat, mitts and cowl) and there was also a whole yarn advent calendar, a project bag and lots of wonderful yarn. When my number was called I chose a skein of yarn that reminds me of raspberry sorbet. It was dyed by Owl About Yarn (that’s Jennie’s other yarn business!) for one of the past retreats. Isn’t it lush?!

Owl About Yarn skein

You may think that after lots of workshops folk would have had enough of knitting, but no! In each tea and cake break in the middle of the workshops we returned to the Carriage House Hall where refreshments were had and where everyone picked up their own knitting again for half an hour. The same was true at lunchtime and in the evening. I made quite a bit of progress on my sock using RiverKnits’ Open Day Special yarn.

Sock using RiverKnits’ yarn

I even worked on a jumper (I cast on at the Travelodge on Friday night) with yarn I had bought back in March or April!

Umbriel 1

For me Sunday was all about the marketplace. Retreat attendees mostly spent the morning either lino printing or doing yoga for crafters. I was very grateful the weather was not stormy as forecast and was able to bring the contents of my Yaris into the hall without getting soaked, ready to set up just before lunch. (Packing up was another story as the rain had begun again by then. I was VERY grateful to have lots of help taking everything back to the car).

The 6 foot clothes rail works really well and I was so relieved that I could remember how it fitted together!

Knit-Tea Retreat Marketplace Stand Kath Andrews Designs

I had *everything* with me and put out just over half of it. It was particularly wonderful seeing several of the knitters who had been in my moebius knitting workshop the day before buying moebius patterns!

Since getting home I have been taking it easy and yesterday I caught up with the Doctor Who special whilst continuing with my Morph hat by Woolly Wormhead. I really like the construction and I’m interested to see how the brim decreases work on the next/final round of squares – it’ll reduce the circumference by a third.

Morph body nearly complete

What have you been up to over the past couple of days?

Take care one and all, K x

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Antici…pation!

I’ve got to that stage of preparing for an event where I’m both excited and impatient for it to start whilst also wanting just that extra bit of time to go over everything once more.

I’m talking about The Knit-Tea Retreat happening this weekend at Insole Court, Llandaff, Cardiff. I’ll be teaching two workshops on Saturday; Stacked Stitches in the morning and Moebius Knitting in the afternoon. Then on Sunday afternoon it’s the Marketplace! My workshop notes are complete and printed out (which is designed to stop me ‘tweaking’ the workshops any further), my patterns are all printed and most things are ready to go in the car on Friday, although the study does look a little too full right now!

The Stacked Stitches workshop is really cool and I’m pleased with the new sample I’ve devised for knitters to develop their understanding and use of the technique (on the right). Following that we move on to knitting a small coaster/mat that is based on a small part of the Ribbon Candy Scarf by Xandy Peters (on the left).

Stacked Stitches Samples

Once knitters are confident with the technique they will be able to put it into practice in full size projects. This is a close-up of part of the Fox Paws scarf, designed by Xandy Peters, that I made as my first ever piece of stacked stitches knitting. It was a real challenge and so satisfying to see the patterns come together as the extreme increases and decreases were completed.

Fox Paws close-up (design by Xandy Peters)

The Moebius Knitting workshop shows two ways to create this mind-bending 3D impossibility without having to simply knit a flat strip and add a twist before seaming it. I have two designs so far that are Moebius cowls and I’m hoping that knitters who take this workshop may want to try one of them after Saturday afternoon!

This is what they will be making:

Moebius Headband

which on a larger scale can become this cowl:

Striped Moebius Cowl

These two Moebius cowl designs include lace. Mirror Mirror Moebius is on the left and Forest Ferns Moebius is on the right. Both pictures show them laid flat as for blocking.

Mirror Mirror Moebius by Kath Andrews
Forest Ferns Moebius by Kath Andrews, blocking

But in use they look like this!

Mirror Mirror Moebius by Kath Andrews, photo © KnitPicks
Forest Ferns Moebius by Kath Andrews

Last week I showed you the progress being made on the Nevern Throw Expansion Pack and my Morph hat from Woolly Wormhead’s new collection, Cuboidal. What I forgot to show you was Cleo, in full attention seeking mode. She doesn’t like it if I sit on Mum’s sofa without being available for cuddles and she had the perfect way to stop me knitting – by sitting on it!

Cleo on the Nevern Throw Expansion Pack

It is now complete and I am very pleased with the overall result. All that now needs to be done is for me to put the charts and main basic info together in a single file. As it is the expansion pack, you will need the main Nevern Throw pattern as well for the information about putting the squares together. I hope to get this up on all my platforms in the next couple of weeks.

Nevern Throw Expansion Pack sampler by Kath Andrews
Nevern Throw Expansion Pack by Kath Andrews folded to show back as well as front

The light must be very different at my house to Mum’s as the colours of this have come out very differently from last week’s photos!

And Morph has grown a lot – but there is still quite a way to go. It is one BIG hat!! The top corners will be folded in once finished as it is an envelope slouch – I’ve tried to give a sense of how that works in the right hand image below. Being made entirely from mitred squares I had been concerned there would be lots of ends to weave in, but as you can see from the inside of the hat in the right hand photo that isn’t the case at all. You only break the yarn when moving from one round of squares to the next.

Morph Hat in progress (design by Woolly Wormhead)
Inside of Morph Hat in progress (design by Woolly Wormhead)

I also finally got back to my Safe Space embroidery by Peppermint Purple this morning. This is growing more slowly, probably because I chose to make the cross-stitch version rather than the blackwork version, but I wanted it to be bold and vibrant and I think it is definitely that.

Safe Space cross stitch in progress (design by Peppermint Purple)

I’m looking forward to being amongst knitters all weekend and I’m really honoured to have been invited by Zoë and Jennie who organise The Knit-Tea Retreats to be one of their tutors this time around and to share my knowledge of two slightly less well known knitting techniques. I also feel the responsibility to ensure the knitters attending my workshops have a good time as well as learn new things. I’ll never forget a workshop I attended at Knit Camp in Stirling where one tutor told us off for talking and helping each other! Apparently she was the only one qualified to give advice, even though there were so many of us she couldn’t get round us all… Some things stay with you, don’t they?

If you are near Cardiff on Sunday afternoon – do pop over to the marketplace at Insole Court and say hello. It’s open to the public and entry is free! And I’ll tell you all about how it went next week.

Take care one and all, K x

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What a Week

The top part of a partly completed blackwork and cross-stitch embroidery. Four colours are used, green, black and two shades of brown, and it is a geometric pattern based on nested squares at 45 degree angles to each other.

RiverKnits‘ Open Day on Saturday was wonderful. A gorgeously sunny day that wasn’t too hot, with friendly, welcoming people to chat to and relieve of their yarn (usually in exchange for money!).

I got to meet some lovely dyers I hadn’t encountered before, such as Larissa from Travel Knitter, from whom I got this intensely coloured sock yarn. This will become a cowl with a poem by my lovely wife that has been translated into Morse code!:

and Ishrat from Fruitful Fusion, whose colour palette was so varied. I fell for this skein of 4-ply, called ‘Spring Bloom’, which reminds me very much of the colours in our front border:

It was lovely to see Becci and Markus again and make some plans (intrigued? good! I’ll tell you more soon). I came away with these wonderful skeins of Aysgarth and something else that I’m not going to share with you yet!

I also bought some of the Open Day Show Special yarn, dyed jointly by Becci from RiverKnits and Lola from Third Vault Yarns, and called ‘Ankh-Morpork’ in reference to the covers of the Terry Pratchett Discworld books that inspired the colourway. A skein of Cormo in the darker batch for me, and a skein of Corriedale and Mohair for Anne, whose birthday it is today! (Happy Birthday Anne, glad you love it!). This is my skein:

As well as all of this yarny goodness, I treated myself to some new washi tape from Katie Green Bean. I was tempted by this at Wonderwool and seeing it again I couldn’t resist. Washi tape with hand drawn sheep! How could you resist??

So, we had a great couple of hours there and also chatted with Sharon from Dragon Hill Studio, talked to the sheep, listened to Johnny from Garthenor Organic talk about the process of transforming fibre into wool and went for a walk around the little village of Weedon Bec and along the canal towpath.

The walk was particularly important as it had taken three and a half hours to get there (traffic delays plus a much-needed service station stop added to the two and a half we had expected) and then nearly three and a half to get home (more traffic). Another time I will work out a route that bypasses the M6 completely…!

And then last night was the first of a series of three workshops in Mold, in conjunction with Anne at Yarn O’clock. We had the cafe of the Daniel Owen Centre, which is a good, well-lit space with plenty of tables that they didn’t mind us moving around to suit.

The workshop was two-colour brioche knitting and the six ladies who attended were wonderful! Despite being a bit flummoxed initially by the Italian two-colour cast-on, they all persevered with good humour and made great progress! Everyone got the main fabric sorted out, learnt how to do an increase and all tried a right-leaning decrease. We didn’t get as far as the sewn cast-off, but they have a reliable youtube link to refer to if they want to try it and several other options were given as well.

The next workshop is in two weeks at the same venue and is Beginners’ Crochet – there are still a couple of spaces on that one.

In designing news I have completed the charts for my Nevern Expansion Pack and will be knitting a couple of samples of the (six!) new squares soon. Two of them are based on this part of the Nevern Cross:

The veg patch is filling out, the embroidery I started recently (main pic) is going well (and the deadline is looking slightly more reachable) and I’ve even got the rest of my summer clothes out of the vacuum pack bag in the wardrobe!

So that’s been the week in my little world. I’ve deliberately not written about wider events as some of them are beyond words, but if you have been impacted by what’s been occurring around the world recently, I am so sorry.

Hold your loved ones close when you can and tell them you love them. Stay safe and make stuff. K x