A brief catch up with some old friends this afternoon talking about our gardens reminded me that we never did plant any vegetable seeds this year. However, the rhubarb, raspberries and other fruit bushes will no doubt be extremely grateful for the rain we have had today, especially after the extreme heatwave last week. The cooler weather has been very welcome to me certainly.
I had thought I might have been able to show you a completed back of the short version of Leaf & Vine cardigan, but my needles have been busy with something else. A call for submissions came in last Tuesday evening with a very interesting concept, but with only a week until the deadline which is tomorrow I’ve been busy knitting up different samples and working out how best to present my ideas. The swatches dried really quickly on Sunday afternoon, helped by the fact that I took the blocking mat outside and weighted it down on the patio table – it’s a good job I didn’t try doing that today! Of course, as it’s a submission for a possible publication I can’t share any photos with you at this stage, but I’m quite excited about the idea. If it doesn’t get accepted, I’ll definitely self-publish this one!
I have done a little more on the cardigan, even though I haven’t finished the back. There are only about 16 rows left to work on the back now. It’s going to grow quite a lot when it’s blocked.
I also did a tiny bit more on the small Spring Breeze Hat yesterday as Sue drove us down to the Midlands to visit my Mum. It was only a tiny bit as I discovered that it’s quite difficult knitting on a smaller circular needle (3.25mm and 40cm long) when the roads are quite bumpy!
Speaking of the Midlands – it’s not long now until the Midlands Wool Festival! This is a brand new yarn show being held at Wolverhampton Racecourse on July 11th and 12th. You can buy tickets in advance or on the door and it would be lovely to see you if you are local to the area. Our stand will be in the Ringside Suite. I’m teaching both afternoons as well and there are just three places left on each day’s workshop, so if you’d like to learn to knit two-colour brioche, get in touch to book a place!
Next week I’ll tell you more about the other shows coming up this summer and, who knows, maybe I will have finished the back of Leaf & Vine this time?!
Today’s post photo is one of the flying shawls – Into the Vortex spinning through the air, which feels appropriate for this week’s post! The past few weeks have felt a little bit like a juggling act . I’ve been working on a design commission (and exploring possibilities for another), relaunched Ice Diamond Mitts, launched Making Tracks as an individual pattern, been preparing for The Wool Monty and for an online talk I’m giving the day after The Wool Monty about my design process, started to promote Yarn Gathering, have been invigilating A-level and GCSE exams, teaching piano, singing in the church choir, visiting my Mum, celebrating my lovely wife’s birthday and accompanying her to some appointments. It’s been quite busy! There are a couple of things I haven’t done in as timely a fashion as I’d intended, but my trusty bullet journal usually helps me keep track of what I should be doing – as long as I remember to write things in there in the first place! I suppose this is what is meant by a ‘portfolio career’? Doing lots of different jobs at the same time.
To help with my preparation for the show at the weekend (and for all yarn shows in the future) I’ve made myself a list of things that will always need doing/planning beforehand. This kind of thing is helpful for me so I don’t end up in a situation where, for example, I’m at a show and then realise I haven’t brought the workshop samples with me. It’s too late to go home and fetch them at that point! I’m definitely a list person – are you?
With all this recent busy-ness I don’t have any modelled photos of my grey 4-ply sample of What Do Points Make? yet. I have taken a few photos this morning on the mannequin and on a hanger and I’m sure I’ll get some modelled shots during The Wool Monty.
I haven’t written this month’s newsletter yet either, but I’m assuming that as I’d sent out a short one about the launch of Making Tracks on May 27th, people wouldn’t mind not hearing from me again immediately! If you’ve been waiting for the June Newsletter and wondering where it’s got to, that’s why.
I have made some progress with my short version of Leaf & Vine and reached the point where you cast on for the integral (very short) sleeves. It looks as though the stitch pattern on the left is taller than that on the right hand side, but that’s due to how it behaves before blocking. Once blocked it’s all the same height – and quite a bit longer than it looks at present! What you can see is most of the left side of the back. This is one of the things that continues to fascinate me about lace knitting – how different stitch patterns can behave before and after blocking – and that’s another reason why blocking lace knitting is so important!
Have you put Sunday 20th September in your diaries? Yarn Gathering will take place once again at the Daniel Owen Centre in Mold (Ch7 1AP), 10am – 4pm and entrance is still free! I’m not sure free entry will always be possible in future years, so do make the most of it this year. We have 13 vendors for you to enjoy, spread across three spaces. See the webpage for more Yarn Gathering info. Thanks to Laura for updating our logo once more.
Writing about Yarn Gathering has reminded me that I need to make the flyers and social badges for the vendors to share with their customers and followers – another thing to add to the journal list!
It’s going to be a short one today as there are lots of things to do – including the less fun stuff like ironing some clothes! Have a good week and next week I’ll tell you all about how The Wool Monty was for us. I’m really looking forward to this show, please do come and say hello if you come to the show – we’re on stand 2! I’ll also tell you how my talk about my design progress went next time. K x
Making Tracks was launched last week as an individual pattern as the rights returned to me six months after it was first published in The Knitter magazine. I have to admit that a heatwave (and one that was the UK’s hottest May on record) was probably not the best time to launch a cabled jumper, because although the pattern pages have had lots of views, no-one was in a jumper knitting mood and no copies have yet been sold!
Mind you, with the sudden change back to ‘more appropriate’ weather for the time of year – along with thunder storms and some very heavy showers – you never know! It’s cool enough now to start knitting a jumper and it would certainly be ready to wear by autumn.
I have been blocking something that I cannot show you – you’ll get to see it in October – but I’m pleased with how it’s come out and I’m looking forward to sharing it with you. I’ve just taken the pins out and left it to relax on the blocking mats as I want to see how much it pulls back in when no longer under tension.
I’ve already been promising myself (and customers at yarn shows) that I would knit a sample of the short version of Leaf & Vine and I cast on this week. Because the short version still has quite deep armholes, I’m already halfway through the length of the body before I do the sleeve cast-on! Having been knitting longer garments recently, this seems really short, but I must remember that the length will grow when the lace is blocked and the overall measurements are good. I’m knitting it using a lovely light 4 ply yarn that I bought from Jo at Second City Yarns. It’s an undyed yarn in light grey.
I’ve been getting everything ready for our next show, which is The Wool Monty. This is held at Magna in Sheffield and is famous for being super inclusive. We received our lanyards, set-up info (including directions on how to get to the room I’m teaching in on Sunday morning!) and a copy of the show brochure through the post yesterday and I think it’s going to be an impressive event.
I’ve sorted out the kits, so I can bring a good range of kits in one big box, rather than bring absolutely everything in two! I’ve decided on the pattern inventory and printed anything that was needed, and I know that everything we are bringing will fit in the car. I’ve even ironed the black cotton double sheet that goes on the table. Now all I need to do is sort the sample bags out, so that the new patterns are in them and any samples of designs not going with us aren’t!
The weekend after The Wool Monty I am due to be teaching at Ewe Felty Thing once more. The last workshop (on Steeking) had to be postponed as not enough people had booked to make it viable for the shop to run, so I’m really hoping that some lovely knitters will want to expand their brioche knitting skills and/or learned how to use the stacked stitches technique, which is exemplified in the designs of Xandy Peters. If either of these workshops sound like fun to you – please do book a place and come along! There’s cake, drinks, biscuits and laughs as well as lots of knitting and top tips.
Here are just two designs you could knit with these techniques:
Meg March
On the left is Meg March Shawl designed by me, and on the right is Fox Paws designed by Xandy Peters. Pictured is the scarf I knitted using this pattern (photographed before I wove the ends in!).
Brioche designs can be either very geometric or organic in their lines, but the key feature is how the main colour creates lines that can draw shapes. You’re using two colours, but one colour at a time, working each row once with the main colour (the light colour here), then once again with the background colour (the dark colour here).
Stacked stitches is a fabulous technique where, again, you only use only colour at a time. No stranding or bobbins of little colours, just a whole row of one colour that take wonderful twists and turns by working increases and decreases on top of each other – hence the ‘stacked’ in the name!
It’s struck me that all the pictures I’ve shared with you today have clear lines in the designs, just formed in different ways; through cables, lace, brioche and stacked stitches. It never ceases to amaze me how versatile knitting is and how we can create beautiful and detailed fabrics with just yarn and needles!
That’s all from me today. I’m hoping that I’ll have some photos of my grey 4 ply What Do Points Make? to share with you next week. I didn’t want to get ‘official’ pics taken until I’d refreshed the blue of my hair, but that is now done, so we are good to go (in between the rain showers!).
Take care and have a good week. I hope you get to do something you enjoy. K x
If you are a newsletter subscriber you may wish to check your inbox – there is a cheeky discount waiting exclusively for you to celebrate the relaunch of Ice Diamond Mitts. I’ve changed the yarn used to the gorgeous Welsh Cambrian Wool and knitted new samples in each size. The pattern has been re-written to make it clear and easier to follow and the lengths for each size have been slightly shortened, making the mitts easier to wear and also ensuring that even the largest size uses only 90m/45g yarn for a pair! You can seem from the photos that the smallest size still needs its ends weaving in and also that it looks really cool if you knit the ribbing in a contrasting colour! I did this partly to see how it would look and also because I didn’t have enough yarn of one colour that wasn’t red for a small mitt.
The photos on the wooden table are of the large size, the ones on the black background are medium and small.
Following hard on the heels of Ice Diamond Mitts will be my own self-published version of Making Tracks, which was first published last November in The Knitter. I just need to insert the charts into my own format of the pattern and add some of my new photos. The rights for this jumper return to me towards the end of this month and so I will have printed copies with me at The Wool Monty in June!
Making Tracks is a cabled men’s jumper with saddle shoulders and a round neck, knitted in pieces and seamed. The jumper is designed in 8 sizes (S-5X), with 10-12.5cm positive ease. Positive ease might sound ‘fancy’ but that just means how much bigger a garment is than your actual body measurements. If you had no ease on something it would be your exact body measurements. (If you have negative ease then the piece is smaller than you are, but hopefully stretchy enough so that it can be put on and then cling to the contours of your body). Positive ease on a garment means you can move in a garment and probably wear layers under it and approx 10cm (4″) is the amount of positive ease for a ‘standard’ fit to a jumper/top.
You may remember my mentioning that this jumper was modelled on a female model when published in The Knitter. It’s the same jumper and it was designed as a man’s jumper, but they didn’t have a male model available for the photoshoot. What those photos do show is that Making Tracks also looks good when worn by a woman. It gives more of a ‘boyfriend fit’ feel, and the sleeves are a bit longer than you might expect on a woman’s jumper, but it still works well!
If you want to knit this sweater for a woman you may wish to check the underarm length of the intended wearer. You can reduce the length of the sleeve easily as there is plenty of straight sleeve knitting between the increases and the point where the sleeve joins the body.
We had a day out yesterday, meeting up with some friends in Coventry. It was a super day. We visited the cathedral (both the bombed ruins of the old cathedral and the new cathedral next to it), walked, feasted and chatted lots. I recall going to Coventry Cathedral once on a school trip when I was quite young – and definitely too young too appreciate the beauty of the modern design when I had grown up going to churches that were hundreds of years old.
It finally occurred to me yesterday why concrete was a good idea for parts of the design of the new cathedral in Coventry. As well as being entirely fitting for the brutalist design, it was probably the only way to get the cathedral built quickly. Entirely stone built cathedrals can take more than a century to build. For example, Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is finally structurally complete with the final piece of the central tower being put into position in February this year (building work began in 1882 and Gaudi took over as chief architect in 1883!), but construction will continue for another decade. The design for Coventry Cathedral was chosen in 1952 by competition, the foundation stone was laid by Queen Elizabeth II in 1956 and the finished building was consecrated in 1962. So there were just 10 years from “this one please” to it being opened. That’s incredible. The building is also full of modern art on the floor, walls, windows and in sculpture. Even the way the organ pipes are positioned looks like a work of art. The 23m x 8m tapestry behind the altar is mind-blowing, not just in how it looks, but in how it was made – in one piece! That must have been one enormous loom!
The ruins of the old cathedral, bombed in 1940, are also a very powerful place. “Father Forgive” was ordered to be carved behind the altar by the bishop of the time. It’s amazing that so much of the outer walls, as well as the tower and the spire survived. The cross has been made with some of the burnt remains of the original building.
It was a visit to Lichfield (including visiting the cathedral) with these same friends that inspired my Lichfield cardigan. So, who knows, perhaps yesterday’s trip to Coventry will result in a new design?
That’s all for today. Have a good week, and I hope you get to do something you enjoy. Perhaps it will be casting on some Ice Diamond Mitts? K x
We got home from the East Anglia Yarn Festival yesterday, successfully completing the third yarn show of the year. As always at EAYF it was a lot of fun, and we saw some old friends who we only see at this show, both visitors and other vendors. This included Victoria who I first met in person at EAYF in 2024 after knowing each other on social media beforehand and have been delighted to catch up with each year since. This year she brought her completed Am Byth hat to show me – knitted in a yarn containing camel fibre, it was super soft and silky and a very different beast fabric-wise to the original sample in WYS Croft DK – which is on display just behind her head!
One visitor wore her Meg March Shawl on the Saturday, to great admiration – and then returned on the Sunday wearing her Tiffany shawl!
If you’re on social media you may well have seen these pics already (apologies for the overlap!), but I know that several readers of this blog aren’t, and I didn’t want them to miss out!
I was most impressed by the knitting and greatly honoured too that she was wearing my shawl designs on both days of the show, especially as this was a show where Stephen West was present (sharing the same space two weekends on the trot!? Goodness!) and so there were a huge number of Stephen West shawls in attendance as folk queued for selfies. I was also highly delighted that he admired my Meg March Shawl and asked if I’d designed it on Sunday morning before opening when the vendors get a chance to wander around and chat with each other. I heard him say to Eddie of Madrigal Yarns while they were behind me that people at the show just had ‘mad technical skills’ and then realised they were talking about my shawl, so of course we had to chat!
Sue and I shared the most outrageously gorgeous vegan cinnamon bun on Saturday morning from Swirl of Norwich, who did very good business, selling out of most of their buns both days.
Since we got home we’ve been busy, catching up on the house and washing, and I’ve been weaving in the ends of the design commission that has a deadline of this coming Friday. Final checks of everything were completed this morning, the sample has been posted and the pattern and ‘all associated files’ – charts and schematic – have been emailed! Completed, done and dusted well before the deadline. I’m very pleased – I just hope they like it!
Now I’ve emailed the pattern I really need to sort out my desk. It hasn’t quite got to archeological strata levels, but it’s not far off – large working drawings, printed schematics, draft print outs of the pattern, inter-spliced with other paperwork. I know where everything is, but I also know that my brain will function more smoothly on the next things when it’s all tidied away.
The next things for me are to update the website with workshops and shows that are coming up and to start putting kits together in the new boxes ready for Wonderwool. I know there are technically four and a half weeks until Wonderwool, but that time will go by fast. We have nine more shows this year, six or seven of which I am teaching at (yay!), so there is a fair bit to update!
I’m also looking forward to my next workshops which are in less than two weeks at Ewe Felty Thing. I’ll be teaching an Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche Knitting and Stranded Knitting there on April 4th. The brioche workshop has sold out, but there are spaces on the stranded knitting workshop (10.30-12.30, 4th April)!
Closer to home, there are just 10 days left before Anne closes Yarn O’clock for good! Everything is now 20% off, so now would be a very good time to make a final visit (or two) while you still have the chance! I still can’t quite believe that very soon she’s not going to be there as she’s just celebrated the shop’s 10th birthday. However, all good things must come to an end one day and this particular ‘one day’ is April 4th. Don’t miss your chance.
I’ve also been knitting this.
It’s a Bryn Brioche Cowl, in a new-to-me (and new-to-everyone as it made its debut at East Anglia Yarn Festival!) yarn from Weku Yarn. If you watched Game of Wool, that’s Lydia’s and her sister Hannah’s company. Watch this space.
Until next week, take care and I hope you get a chance to do some stuff that makes you happy. Goodness knows we all need that! K x
P.S. If you don’t know the Queen song ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, I highly recommend a listen!
Knitted ones at any rate! I designed Ice Diamond Mitts five and a half years ago and I’ve been knitting a new sample from the pattern this week. I’ve just reached the point where the stitches for the thumb are divided away from the rest of the stitches. Diamond patterns are a common feature of lace knitting as they are easy to create with correctly placed decreases and yarn overs and create clear and pleasing shapes in your knitting.
I find it fascinating that, while the design and pattern are clearly mine and my style of pattern writing has changed little since 2020, in some ways following the pattern is almost like knitting someone else’s pattern – it feels quite distant. I suppose that’s hardly surprising as I’ve only knitted these mitts once before and I’ve created 44 other designs since then (I’m also including the ones I’ve designed and made and are due to be published soon)! That’s an average of 8 designs per year – which may not sound like a lot, but it’s quite a chunk of work.
Last weekend was very much a musical one. Saturday was the Spring Market in our local shopping precinct where Shelby’s Singers performed 14 (yes!) songs to the shoppers and I bounced around in front of them waving my arms, sorry, conducted them. Then on Sunday it was choral evensong at the church where I sing in the choir. From Erasure, Alex Warren and the Great Showman to Stanford in Bb and Purcell! Quite a mix.
This weekend sees our second show of the year (of 12!) at TexStyle in Manchester, followed by East Anglia Yarn Festival in Norwich the next weekend. Both are patterns only, so no kits, but we will still have all the samples for the designs we are bringing with us so folk can see in person what they will be creating.
I’ve finished knitting my current commission and I now need to block the pieces and seam it (and make any tweaks to the pattern’s other sizes if necessary at that point – I’m looking at you, neckline!). It feels good to be at this stage 17 days before the deadline – especially with two shows added to the mix!
Now that I’ve finished the knitting of this design I can really get cracking with knitting the mitts, and finishing my DK Into the Vortex as well.
The brown boxes have arrived for my kits – being made of cardboard and arriving ‘flat’ means they take up far less room in the house than 100 tins would have done! In fact, I don’t think I would ever have ordered 100 tins at a time precisely for this reason. Yes, that really is 100 boxes. Or will be, when I make them up.
I’m considering adding needles to some of my kits, specifically Twisted which needs special short interchangeable needle tips plus an 80cm cable to make the smaller version and not everyone has these. Do you think this would be useful – a kit that includes the needles where the needles required are ‘non-standard’?
If you bought an advance ticket to the North West Winter Wool Festival and have not yet downloaded your free hot water bottle cover pattern, now is the time to do it! The download code will stop working at the end of the day on Sunday 15th March. 158 people have taken advantage of this offer which is an increase on those who downloaded The Imperial Cowl last year (125).
We are almost ready for Friday – the parking has been booked, the unloading time-slot at Manchester Central has been booked, the patterns printed, the samples checked, float made ready and the snacks bought! Now I just need to refresh the blue of my hair, and keep all the other plates spinning.
That’s all from me for today. Keep your heads up and I hope you are able to do something that makes you happy this week. K x
Having finally blocked my size four 4ply sample of What Do Points Make? I have sewn some very small side seams and woven in all the ends. It’s come out larger than the laceweight version in both length and width, but not ridiculously so. This 4ply yarn (Little Bird Sock from LottieKnits) is a gorgeously bouncy yarn with 365m to 100g so it’s slightly thicker than most 4ply yarns which tend to be 400m to 100g so this might be partly it’s come out a little bigger than expected. I absolutely love it. As a contrast with the laceweight size 4 sample, with this one I matched the colour changes on each side. I’ll get a photo of me wearing it soon, but for now, here it is on a hanger.
I also have chosen the yarn for my size three 4ply sample of What Do Points Make? and in a complete change from all my other versions of this design, I have chosen a neutral solid colour – grey! It is classic and the finished garment will go with everything. And this one is slightly thinner than many 4ply yarns with 440m per 100g, so it should be closer to the original measurements.
I’ve started a new sample of Ice Diamond Mitts using Cambrian Wool DK in Welsh Red. Their DK weight yarn is more towards the heavy DK/worsted weight end with 200m per 100g so these will be just as cosy as the originals that were knit in worsted weight yarn and in a more practical colour for mitts!
Lorelai Wrap is now live on my website, Payhip and Ravelry stores!
Newsletter subscribers will be getting an email in the next day or so with a time-limited discount code for the pattern, so if you think that sounds good and you’re not already a subscriber, why not sign up?
I can hardly believe that TexStyle is happening in less than two weeks and East Anglia Yarn Festival is the weekend after! If you are coming to either of these shows, please do come and say hello. I will be on stand H6 at TexStyle, pretty much in the middle of the hall. I don’t yet know the floor plan for EAYF, but we are all in one space so it shouldn’t be too hard to find me! I have designer stands at both of these events, so I will only be selling printed patterns.
It’s impossible to know what to say about what is happening in the world at the moment. All I can hope is that you and your loved ones are safe and as happy as you can be. These little narcissi have opened up this week in our front lawn (sorry, front moss) and are giving me hope that nature is pressing on regardless of what us silly humans are doing to the planet and each other.
Until next week, take care and do something that makes you happy. K x
I completed my 4-ply version of What Do Points Make? late last year, but with the reduction of space in the lounge with the Christmas tree up and all the busy-ness at the start of the year, I have only recently got around to blocking it. I have to admit that pinned out it looks like a large pair of trousers, but, once it is released from the blocking boards, I will fold the narrow pieces over, sew some side seams, weave the ends in and it will be a loose flowing throw-over. I’m hoping to have it with me at the shows are doing in March – TexStyle and East Anglia Yarn Festival (or EAYF).
You can see from the schematic (the line drawing on the right) that the measurements are bigger in the 4-ply version (that’s the bigger font) than for the laceweight (smaller font). I’d made the largest size. Not quite a ‘whole size’ different but definitely bigger. It might be interesting for me to knit a size 3 4-ply version as well and see what size that comes out. At least I know it wouldn’t take up quite so much room on the lounge floor!
I’ve also made some progress with my DK version of Into the Vortex. I seem to be in a ‘scaling up’ mode at the moment! This is coming out nicely and it will be interesting to see how much of the pattern I can work with 100g of each colour. The DK Chimera from RiverKnits is an absolute delight to use – really bouncy and full of so much colour. This photo doesn’t do the yarns justice as the colours look a lot brighter in real life.
I’m also cracking on with my latest design that had me purchasing a protractor and then doing calculations with both tan and cos. (no pics as it’s for a magazine). The surprising thing is that it looks quite simple in the sketch (and on the needles), it’s just the way I constructed it that caused me some head scratching in terms of making sure all the sizes work and especially that the larger sizes won’t have the top falling off the shoulders. I can’t wait for you to see it!
The sleeveless jumper design I was working on for a knitty.com submission has taken a back seat for a while – I’m not happy with the neck line and armholes when worn and there’s a weird band right across the middle of the chest that might be due to have used re-purposed yarn. I’m going to knit another sample in new yarn and work out how to improve/change the neck and armholes so they make the top look properly finished. I know I can’t do that in time for their current deadline, especially with the other top on a March deadline too. Sometimes, I have to admit that I can’t do everything and let something go.
Some exciting news for me, and possibly for you as well if you live near Glasgow, is that a number of my printed patterns are currently winging their way to For The Love of Yarn in Rogart Street. I saw a video of their shop recently and it’s enormous and beautifully stocked! If we ever get the chance to go to Glasgow – I’ve never been – I will definitely be paying the shop a visit.
On the garden front, we have one daffodil in flower in the front lawn, our deep red camellia is beginning to flower and the hellebores and snowdrops and still going strong. It also looks as though all the chunks of rhubarb crown we planted have taken – all of them have bright green leaves topping even brighter pink stalks. So I think that’s seven rhubarb plants we now have. I think we’re going to be giving rhubarb away come the summer!
And we still have flowers from my Mum’s amaryllis – even though the second flower stalk fell over and had to be cut off.
That’s everything from me for today. I hope you have a good week and get to do some stuff that makes you happy. K x
As if by magic – a second sock appeared! Well, not magic obviously, by spending some time knitting. It’s funny that many people experience what is known as ‘second sock syndrome’, where they they will happily zip through making the first sock of a pair, but stall on the second. I seem to have the opposite. Once one sock is made, the other wants to get done and make the socks ready for use. It’s also helpful that this past week we have been taking things a little more gently due to a nasty throat/chest virus thing that got me first and then moved on to my lovely wife. I’m much better and she is just starting to come out of it. It has meant that we’ve spent a bit more time watching Grantchester (we’re almost up to the end of Series 3) and I’ve been knitting.
I’ve also started another DK version of Into the Vortex. I know I knitted one of these a while ago, but I wasn’t in love with the colours, so it’s still sitting there waiting to be blocked. However, I decided that this time I would keep it more in line with the original. RiverKnits now have a DK version of their Chimera yarn – and it was the 4ply version of this that we used in the original design along with their Nene 4ply, both of which are British Bluefaced Leicester yarns. I’m using the Chimera DK in the colourway ‘The Fifth Element’.
I’m going to pair it with a deep purple skein of West Yorkshire Spinners Fleece, which is another Bluefaced Leicester yarn. Bluefaced Leicester (BFL) is a breed of sheep, so this means the yarn is made solely from the fleeces of that breed of sheep.
Yesterday saw me doing more maths than I have done in over 30 years! I needed to calculate how deep the front neck drop of a new design can be. You might think the depth of the front neck drop (where the fabric at the front stops for the neck) is just a matter of choice and in many designs it is, but this design has an unusual shape and this measurement will dictate whether the top falls off the shoulders or not (and I would prefer not!).
I knew the length of one side of the triangle and all three angles (courtesy of this very fancy protractor that I bought on Saturday), but I had to google how to calculate the other lengths as I couldn’t remember! I knew it was likely to be something to do with sin/cos/tan, but it’s been a very long time since I last used those things. Hurrah for BBC bitesize and other maths support websites. It was time for the calculator and the tan function! Weirdly, I also found a TAN function in Excel, but it didn’t give me anywhere near the same result (and I know the calculator version is correct as I knew the side length I was trying to work out was going to be close in length to the one I knew, and the results I was getting from my attempts using TAN in Excel were nowhere near close). So, there are obviously some hidden extras that I need to learn before I can use Excel to work those things out for me.
On Sunday I got to take some pics of Lorelai Wrap, as Jo, a friend from my church choir, had kindly agreed to model it for me. Even the weather co-operated by stopping raining for a while. I got some great shots and this is the one that is going to be the main pic on the front cover of the pattern:
Lorelai Wrap will be available in printed form at the North West Winter Wool Festival in Blackpool this coming weekend and online within the week. It was first published in The Knitter magazine six months ago. It’s knitted in one piece using 4.5mm needles (you can use straight needles) and Jamieson’s of Shetland Ultra Lace, which is a beautiful yarn with a mix of 50% Shetland wool and 50% Lambswool. I used the colourway ‘Strawberry Crush’ – there are 39 other colours in this yarn to choose from if that’s not the colour for you!
That’s everything from me today. If you’re coming to Blackpool at the weekend do stop by and say hello – our stand is right near the door (stand B9) so you can’t miss us! If you’re not coming to Blackpool for the North West Winter Wool Festival, don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about it next week. Until then, take care, K x
So, this is post no.250! I had no idea when I started this blog that I would still be writing 5 years later. I’ve missed a few weeks along the way, but not many, and a lot has happened during this time.
The main post photo shows Sue and me at Rhos at the weekend – it’s been a while since we were there and it’s still a wonderful place to be and to walk. And we love the newly sandy beach – I even had a paddle!
During the past few years, as well as increasing my adventures to yarn shows and publishing quite a few patterns, I’ve also been getting increasingly involved with music once more. Now I sing in one choir and lead another. I have instrumental pupils again as well as teaching knitting. This pleases me.
My lovely wife is walking up Snowdon at the weekend. At night. They register at 11.30pm and there is a big list of stuff they have to have (including a head torch!). She’s not going alone; her sister is walking up too, along with about 140 other people. They expect to be back down at about 6.30am. My role is to drive them there and home again afterwards and that is fine with me – I’m better at walking in the daylight! The walk is being organised by Macmillan. If you feel like making a donation to a very worthy cause, then here is the link:
Next month I will be back in the learning seat as I take a week-long introductory course in tech editing knitting patterns. It seems only logical to put my attention-to-detail brain that homes in on any error (unless it’s my own, in which case I can be quite blind to it) to use!
Last week I finished the poppy I was knitting and did some more on my 4-ply version of What Do Points Make? I will photograph the latter for next week’s post. For now, here is the completed poppy. It isn’t the same pattern as those being made at Mum’s care home, but I don’t think they minded too much.
I am currently working on two new designs. One uses four colours and will be revealed soon – I’m knitting up two samples in different yarns. The other one is a submission involving cables and the softest yarn I’ve used for a while. I can’t tell you any more about that at the moment as the yarn hasn’t even been launched by the company yet, so I’m extra lucky to be able to experience it in advance – it’s a bit like a film critic being able to see a film before the release date, I suppose.
I got my contributor copy of The Knitter today and saw the gorgeous photos of my Lorelai wrap. It looks super and Issue 218 is still available in the shops! There are a host of gorgeous designs in this issue – well worth a read.
If you are anywhere near Mold and enjoy yarn based crafts, do come to Yarn Gathering on Sunday September 14th!
We will have dyers, weavers, spinners, designers and more at the Daniel Owen Centre in Mold with lots of amazing things to see, learn about and buy. Entry is free and Yarn O’clock is likely to be opening her shop for a couple of hours too!
I realise today’s post has a lot of different things in, but that’s because today my head has a lot of things in it! I promise to show you the progress on my What Do Points Make? next week and you could show me the progress you are making on your knitting or other creative endeavours in the comments – I’d love to see!
