A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that Anne at Yarn O’clock and I have been planning something for September. Well, it’s going to be happening!
We are hosting a small yarn gathering in Mold on Sunday 18th September!! We’ll be open 10-4, which will allow you plenty of time to visit us AND the Mold Food and Drink Festival which will also be happening that weekend.
There’s a dedicated page on the website that has the full details and the same page will be on Yarn O’clock’s website too.
On the subject of yarnie events, did I mention I’m going to be exhibiting at the Pop-Up Wool Show in Port Sunlight this year? It’s at Hulme Hall on Saturday 20th August. Although the exhibitor list isn’t fully up to date on their website, I will be there! It’ll be my first event of this kind since the ‘before times’ and my first proper wool show – exciting! I’ve been checking through my designs and planning which ones I will have kits for there. There will also be a completely new pattern launched at the show – with kits! Suffice to say that I came away from Yarn O’clock with bags-a-bulging this morning!
At the weekend I worked out that I’m currently working on four designs, with a fifth submitted yesterday, a sixth swatched that will be submitted next week and two others that will be worked on in the coming months. One of those will be a mystery knit-along, but it won’t be happening until October. This is probably why I’ve not had a huge amount of knitting that I can actually share with you recently…
So here is a sneak peek at my progress with the Rainbow minis from RiverKnits:
I’m loving these greens! With 20g of each colour, it’s possible to plan the design so the colour changes fit in nicely, and with 12 colours to play with I’m always keen to jump into the project bag to check out what the next one is going to be.
What else have I been up to? Well, I’ve started spinning some chunkier yarn. I’ve got 200g of undyed Polwarth that is a dream to spin with and, as I knew it wouldn’t be all knotty and misbehaved, so it seemed like the perfect choice to practice spinning thicker singles. It’s working out really well at the moment, but I’m going to have to weigh what’s left to work out when to start the second bobbin. This yarn won’t be chain plied (3-ply), so the two strands will need to be on separate bobbins, as there’s no way I’m going to wrap 200g yarn round my wrist to bracelet ply it (working from both ends of the yarn simultaneously)!
I’ve sort of found room for all the embroidery floss and other bits and bobs I came back with last week, but I’ll probably end up reorganising the study again at some point as I don’t think everything is in an entirely logical place yet. However, that will need to wait a little while!
My ‘Safe Space’ cross-stitch, designed by Peppermint Purple is making some progress. I’ve decided to do one flag at a time, rather than complete one colour at a time and it’s making it much easier. Of the 33 flags in the design, I’m on my fifth.
I’m so pleased the design includes a map identifying all the flags as there are lots I don’t know. I also didn’t realise before that the gender queer flag uses the same colours as terfs use (the suffragette colours) and which are ALSO my old college colours (purple, white, and green).
I’ve also been working on ironing out the issues with the pdf that will accompany my next Craftucation course (An Introduction to Knitting) – Graeme, the amazing tech wizard behind their website, had to do some rummaging to work out why I was unable to edit it and figure out some workarounds. I can now make it behave and get photos on the same page as their captions (I’d list that under ‘quite important’!) with a little bit of prodding. There’s one more section (5 chapters) left to do and (I’ve done 22 chapters already!) then it can be uploaded for approval and listing.
On Sunday we spotted a ripening raspberry in the garden, so very soon I hope to be able to share pics of our first harvest of the summer with you. The blackcurrants are nearly ready to pick as well!
So, after last week’s own goal of knitting from the wrong chart, I’m all sorted again. The correct chart has been completed and blocked (and I’m so glad I bothered!) and I’m halfway through one of the other new charts in the Nevern Throw Expansion Pack. Yes, I really do use that many pins when I want completely straight edges – especially when the vertical edges have the two yarns twisted at the end of every row.
I’ve been helping Mum sort through some of the mountain of craft supplies she has – some of it has gone off to the church fete and some of it will be re-homed with me! (I will find room, I will find room).
Having rediscovered stitching, Mum has let me raid her embroidery floss collection (and there was a lot!). These beauties are now joining my stash:
I’ve finished her socks and have been able to get the toe shaping just right, with the classic and very scientific approach of getting her to try one on and pinching the end until it felt like it fitted. She’s very pleased with them. So, it’s not all been a one-way street.
I’ve also finished the fibre I’ve been spinning for the past couple of months (I posted these shots on my socials yesterday):
And! The rainbow of Riverknits Nene minis is starting to turn into something fabulous… Here’s a sneaky close-up to tempt you!
My phone’s personal hotspot is being a little temperamental today, so I’m not going to write much more, but I hope that, despite the awfulness of much of the world at the moment, you are able to find some moments of peace and tranquility. I find that looking at and playing with yarn helps.
At the weekend I had one of those moments that most knitters have had at some point. I’d completed something, washed and blocked it, photographed it and THEN I noticed an error.
If this was just going to be a thing for me it wouldn’t have mattered so much, but it is a sample of one of the squares from the Nevern Throw Expansion Pack (coming soon!). And the error was fairly significant – I’d knitted the square from an old version of the chart. I mean, I could have decided to just go with that version of the chart and forget about the new version, but there was a reason I’d altered it and I wanted it to be correct. So, now it’s all been frogged and reskeined and is dry yarn again, ready to be used once more. I found a little more of the same yarn and so have been able to start again – this time definitely working from the correct chart! The first third of it is in the main blog picture.
I remember the Yarn Harlot writing on her blog (possibly more than once) that the thing about being a fast knitter was that she was able to make bigger mistakes more quickly – it certainly felt a bit like that for me! The lesson I need to learn is to throw out old print outs once I make updates – or at least label them as not being the most recent version!
I’ve been doing some other stranded knitting as well. When we were at the RiverKnits Open Day last month, Sue chose some yarn from the Travel Knitter for me to use knitting up her poem that I’d translated into morse code. It has begun! Her name will certainly be nice and clear. I’m hoping the morse code will become clearer as I go on. It’s quite odd to think that I’m quite literally knitting the poem backwards as each round (line) goes from right to left and from the bottom to the top, so I will knit the first word of the title last!
The spinning is slowly making progress. This is (still) the gradient yarn from Cassiopeia Yarns that I bought at Wonderwool in April. It’s not until I look back at the photos of its progress that I realise just how much the colour has changed – it’s so gradual and subtle that you hardly notice at the time. I’m hoping to finish and ply this by the end of the month.
This was the view I had the other afternoon when I was doing some work in the study. That pigeon looked really comfortable on Medium’s head and sat there for quite some time! He’s called Medium, because when Sue bought him he had a label on his underside that said “Medium Lion”. The rose is The Poet’s Wife and it’s settling in nicely with lots of buds ready to bloom.
The shawl in Aysgarth yarn from RiverKnits is complete! Like, really complete. Washed, blocked, ends woven in, gauge measured etc. The pattern is written up and with the tech editor! Isn’t the Sloe Gin colour gorgeous?
That means that I’m on to the Nene rainbow minis – yay! I’m so excited with these colours and I love that I get to knit in a rainbow in June, Pride month.
Leaf & Vine Cardigan is out!! The physical book is not out for another week or so, but you can see (and buy) the individual pattern and the whole Haven: Knit Lace Patterns eBook of 13 lovely lace designs on KnitPicks.
This afternoon I had a very productive meeting with Anne at Yarn O’clock. We are planning something exciting and yarnified to take place in Mold during the weekend of the Mold Food Festival – there will be more details coming soon! (I’ve linked to the food festival’s picture gallery page, just because the home page is very meaty).
Random observation of the day: “The Humming Chorus” from Madame Butterfly sounds awfully like “Bring Him Home” from Les Mis!
Take care one and all, and remember the sunscreen and water. K x
Designing for external publications has quite a long lead time. Even more so when it’s for a book rather than a monthly magazine. Last month I was able to share with you my excitement about my Ceridwen wrap being on the front cover of The Knitter issue 176.
*This* month I am finally able to share with you my latest design for Knit Picks. Leaf & Vine is knit using Palette, a wonderful non-superwash 4-ply weight Peruvian Highland wool, that comes in over 150 colours.
Leaf & Vine is going to be in a collection called “Haven: Knit Lace Patterns”. It’s a lightweight summer cardigan with very short sleeves incorporated into the body and it comes in TEN sizes with finished chest measurements of 38-71″. It’s intended to be worn with 7-10″ positive ease (that means 7-10″ bigger than your own body measurements).
The photo on the left is one of Knit Picks’ own photos on their model. The photo on the right is a close-up of my sample (in a different size) on my mannequin. I took this photo in mid-November – when summer seemed so very far away!
These are ‘sneak peek’ pics as the book that the pattern is in is published tomorrow (about 11am PST – which is about 7pm British Summer Time).
For those of you who don’t know, Knit Picks is a large American yarn company. They publish various pattern collections in books each year, featuring their yarns, which run to a specific theme. For example, Nevern Throw was in “Entwined: Celtic Cables Collection”. They also have an extensive range of individual patterns.
I’m really looking forward to seeing the physical book as they are always really great – super layout, fab photography and high quality paper and printing – and you CAN get the physical book posted to you in the UK without excessive postage charges. I’ll be posting more about Haven and Leaf & Vine in particular in the coming days with links to the patterns once the book is out.
Mum’s bedsocks had a mini hibernation recently while I was working on a couple of other designs (and racing to finish Sue’s embroidery), but I’m back on them again now. I started the second sock on Sunday whilst watching My Name is Leon – at various points I had to put the knitting down as I was so gripped by it (and at times because of tears). If you have BBC iPlayer, look it up – it’s brilliant.
It’s a good job that I’m back on the socks as I need to have something small to knit with me this afternoon. The dentist appointment has finally arrived and I have no cold and the precautionary lateral flow test I did this morning was clear. I’m finally going to get my filling fixed…!
If you follow me on social media you’ll have seen a few random close-up shots over the past couple of weeks of some purple and silver grey knitting in progress. It’s a design for RiverKnits using their Aysgarth yarn which is 100% Wensleydale wool. The colours are called Sloe Gin and Antique Pewter.
This morning, I cast off! I now need to block it and finish writing up the pattern before it gets sent off to the tech editor. You will get to see the whole thing sometime in September!
One more viewing recommendation before I go and floss one last time. We recently watched “Falling for Figaro” on Netflix and it was brilliant. I absolutely loved it and heartily recommend you to watch it if you get a chance (it’s got Joanna Lumley in it too).
I think that’s all I’ve got time for today – wish me luck at the dentist and take care of yourselves. K x
Last week I promised a round-up of the Calon Cariad shawls, didn’t I? Well, I’ve had a scour through the images posted in my Facebook group, posted on Instagram with the hashtag or sent to me and this is a good mix! I know for certain that Anne’s (top left) is finished, but I don’t have a picture of it post blocking.
I think you’ll agree they all did a fabulous job! I know there are some other knitters out there who also made a start on their shawl and if you are one of them and have some progress to show, please send me a pic!
Speaking of progress… things are happening in the veg plot! As well as the chives flowering profusely, the broad beans are starting to make their presence felt more and I’ve planted the edamame beans and the squash and courgette plants. The rhubarb is also finally finding its feet after we split the crown and moved it, giving various parts away and the raspberries, red and blackcurrants and apple tree all look like they’re going to be quite productive this year!
It’s not a massive garden, but it’s got a lot in it (including the ground elder which I’ve chosen not to show you)!
I made some ‘same-day’ sourdough rolls yesterday – it’s a quicker process which uses more sourdough starter than the regular recipe (100g instead of 50g) and they came out of the oven a mere 13 hours after feeding Audrey2 (my starter). My lovely wife chose her two favourite ones this morning for her lunch before I’d remembered to photograph them! They are lush.
I have been doing quite a bit of knitting this week, but sadly none of it is stuff I can show you at the moment. I’ve also been doing lots of Excel spreadsheet magic, calculating (and recalculating) the sleeves for the sweater I’m working on. It makes life so much easier when you can make the formulae do the hard work for you (and when you know the ones you need), and then also round the results up/down/to a specific multiple. I’m going to cast on the sleeve for the third time later on and hope that it will be third time lucky. Fortunately, WYS Fleece DK is a very forgiving yarn!
The workshops I mentioned last week are filling up. The Two-Colour Brioche class is full (which is good as that is the first one – next week!), Beginners’ Crochet has one or two spaces left and there are spaces on the Closed Ring Cables workshop.
And on Saturday I get to see some sheep! We are going to the Riverknits Open Day which I’m really looking forward to.
I’ll tell you all about that next week – the blog post will be on Wednesday next week and I’ll tell you about the Brioche workshop then too!
Til then, take care and make time to do some of what makes you happy. K x
If you saw my newsletter yesterday, you will have seen that it is ten years (almost – it was June 2012) since my first pattern was published in a magazine and it made the front cover. That was Knit Now, Issue 11, with New York Nights.
On Thursday 12th May, the Issue 176 of The Knitter will hit the shops and the pattern on the front cover is one of mine!! It’s the first pattern I’ve had published in this magazine and this is something that has been a goal of mine for a little while. The styling is beautiful and it suits the model so well.
As you can imagine I’ve been very excited about this design and to finally see it yesterday when the magazine came through my door was a bit of a dream! I’ll be writing more about this and the wonderful yarn I got to knit it with from Thursday.
To celebrate, I treated myself to a pair of earrings from a local shop. Shaz’s Shabby Chic has recently moved to new, bigger premises, and it was my first time visiting the new shop yesterday. I found these gorgeous silver earrings with a Celtic knot engraved into them, made by a local jewellery maker, and I love them.
The cold has very nearly gone by the way – it was ‘just’ a cold, thank goodness, but it was still a bit grotty. I am very glad to be able to go about my day again without having to cough or blow my nose every few minutes!
I promised you a round-up of the finished Calon Cariad shawls from our KAL, and I am aware that I have not yet delivered – this is something I definitely will include next week. If you were taking part in the #CalonCariadKAL, please do send me a pic of your finished shawl (or as far as you’ve got with it) as I’d love to show them all together.
New workshops are now available to book via Anne at Yarn O’clock! Spaces are limited, so if you want to come, book a place soon.
May 24th, 6.30-9pm – Two-Colour Brioche Knitting, £35
June 7th, 7-9pm – Beginners Crochet, £30
June 7th, 7-9pm – Beginners Crochet, £30
June 21st, 6.30-9pm – Closed Ring Cables, £35
The workshops will be held in the Cafe of the Daniel Owen Centre, Mold. Full details are on the Yarn O’clock website.
If you follow me on social media (Twitter, Instagram or Facebook), you will have seen my post yesterday explaining that this week’s blog post would be delayed a day. If you’ve been waiting and didn’t know, I’m sorry. It will be worth the wait though, promise!
On Sunday I went to Wonderwool at the Royal Welsh Showground, Builth Wells. It has long been my favourite yarn show, partly because the scale of the buildings means you can move about freely and there are plenty of areas of seating as well as a HUGE number of vendors exhibiting their wares.
It was wonderful and slightly overwhelming to be back at a real live yarn show. It’s the first one I’ve been to since Yarndale in September 2019, in the ‘before times’ and I haven’t seen this many human beings in one day since then. There were people who I’ve only communicated with online before, via Zoom or social media, that I was able to talk to face to face for the first time. I think it says something about how effective Zoom and FaceTime are that it didn’t feel as though I hadn’t ‘met’ some of these people ‘in the flesh’ before.
So, as you can see from the main image, I came back with quite a haul of goodies. Let’s have a look at them, shall we?
Fibre for spinning first!
This is a wonderful braid of British Bluefaced Leicester dyed by Sealy MacWheely. It was my first purchase of the day and the colours and softness just made me grin. That and the lovely Katie who dyed it was so great to chat to. 😊 I’m thinking a chain ply would give me a great striped yarn, but I might just do a 2-ply and go for some funky barber-pole stripes.
This little beauty is a Merino gradient dyed by Cassiopeia Yarns. Again, it’s utterly soft and I’m going to adore spinning it. This one is definitely going to be chain plied as I want to maintain the gorgeous gradient effect from one end to the other. Maybe superfine for a lace shawl?
Rachael from Cat and Sparrow sold me this wonderful braid of Polwarth. The colourway is called ‘Ar Lan y Môr’ which is Welsh for ‘Beside the Sea’ and it is also the name of a traditional Welsh folk song. It was only today that I realised this is the same colourway I bought from her before via the online version of the Knit-Tea Retreat last year, which is now a yarn that Mum is gradually knitting into a cowl! Rachael is one of the people it was hard to believe I’d never met ‘in real life’ before as we’ve chatted online quite a bit and it was super to chat face to face on Sunday.
I’d not come across Velvet Sixpence before, but this braid told me it was definitely coming home with me! Another Polwarth (SO soft and a delight to spin), I think this one is going to become something for my lovely wife, as orange is very much her colour.
So, that was the fibre – now on to the yarn!
The first ball of yarn that came into my possession on Sunday was free!! I went up to the Simply Knitting / The Knitter stand and was offered the opportunity to spin the wheel. Whichever colour the arrow landed on indicated the basket from which I could select a ball of yarn. Cool, eh? I was delighted to find this ball of self-striping Novita yarn. It’s an aran weight 75% wool, 25% polyamide which will make either some chunky bedsocks or a hat. The yarn is actually striped with three distinct shades of blue and a green, although at first glance you might think the palest blue is white. And I had a chat with Kirstie and the ladies too!
Now this yarn is something special. Northampton Shear laceweight yarn from Riverknits. It was lovely to meet Becci and Markus in person and chat away. Again, I encountered them first through the Knit-Tea Retreat and then followed them on social media (that sounds a bit like stalking, doesn’t it? I promise it wasn’t!). Markus joined in with our most recent KAL – Calon Cariad – and he knit his from this very yarn. The shawl was on display as part of their stall which was very exciting to see and I wish I’d taken a photo – though you can see it if you look at the Riverknits Instagram page. Northampton Shear is a single ply yarn that is 100% Shetland wool from Braunston, Northamptonshire that is spun & hand dyed in the UK. The way the dye is picked up over the natural colours of the wool is stunning, giving a really, rich layered effect.
This skein of ‘Dark Forest’ from Mothy and the Squid was one of the later purchases of the day. I love the range of greens in the yarn and also the black that stripes through it in places. Being a Superwash Merino / nylon mix this will make long lasting socks, but it is also soft and silky enough for something close to your neck.
I’d not heard of The Crafty Bird before, but the range of colours she had were lovely. This is ‘Crisp Autumn Day’. It’s another Superwash Merino / Nylon mix, but it’s a different base from the green above. It’s also slightly thinner as 100g brings a very generous 425m.
I love Kauni yarns with the really long colour shifts, though I’ve only used their 4-ply so far. SKD Yarns sell this and it’s really quite funny to have travelled nearly 100 miles to buy a ball of yarn from people who are based less than five miles from where I live! The colours are really me. It was my cheapest wool purchase of the day, at £8.42 for 800m laceweight – an absolute bargain!
I’ve made a pair of Raggsocks from a kit from Midwinter Yarns before and they are my mum’s favourite bedsocks, guaranteed to fit no matter what her ankles are up to. So, I thought I would make another pair and this colourway is just right for her. Mr Midwinter looked very dashing in his kilt and I spoke to a lovely lady (not Estelle, but possibly her mum) who almost got me buying a sweater’s worth of their Ulligen Recycled Yarn (made from scraps of wool from the textiles industry that would otherwise go to waste) for a ‘Confetti’ sweater by Veera Valimaki. I resisted the urge (just about), but I’m sure it’s a yarn I will be using at some point – it was fab.
Finally, there were some non-wool purchases – apart from the cup of tea and vegan fruit cake that were very much appreciated!
First off all, I bought a pattern from Anniken Allis and had a nice chat with her. I know I design lace shawls myself, but this is a shape I’ve neither knitted nor used myself before and it really intrigues me. The lace patterns in it are beautiful too. I think the wedge shape in the centre makes it a Faroese style shawl. Maybe I will use some of the laceweight yarn I bought on Sunday for it and make a double Wonderwool momento!
As I was travelling from Wonderwool to Mum’s on Sunday afternoon, and it was her birthday on Monday, I really wanted to be able to find her a little gift from the show as part of her birthday present. These hand coiled coasters from Lilliputwight were perfect! They’re in the centre of the picture here. Unfortunately I didn’t take a separate photo of them before I left Mum’s yesterday. She is very happy with them – particularly as they go very well with her quilted placemats and the coiled rope means they have a much more ‘grabby’ surface than the glossy picture coasters she has, making them practical as well as beautiful.
You couldn’t miss the amazing hand-turned pot in the picture above, could you? It’s stunning and the blue/green is from two resin inserts that were sandwiched into the wood before turning. This was a gift for Sue, my lovely wife. It was given immediate pride of place among her pen pots (which is what I thought she would use it for), though I’ve yet to show her the magic that occurs when you place a light inside the pot – it glows through the resin! The pot was from Turning Amber Woodcraft, the husband to All Wool that Ends Wool who were right at the end of Hall 2.
What a haul, eh? As well as talking to lots of stallholders, one of the lovely things about a show like this is striking up conversation with likeminded people when you sit down for a cup of tea. I encountered several friends during the day as well which was great – it’s always good to see some familiar faces in a crowd!
Yarn shows are also a place where you can wear your hand-knits knowing they’ll be appreciated by others for the work that has gone into it as well as the colour of the yarn or pretty shape.
I chose to wear my Meg March shawl and got so many compliments on it. I know that knitters always want to know the pattern name of pieces they admire, so I went prepared by taking some of my Moo business cards. I’m glad I did as I ended up handing out quite a few and even sold two copies of the pattern during the day to people I’d spoken to! (Thanks Sealy MacWheely and Roy!).
It was quite a day – a real grand day out. Wearing a mask for the whole day was no problem – though I did nearly forget I was wearing it at one point when I went to sip my water – that could have been messy.
So, you can see why after that and a couple of days at Mum’s I was not really capable of writing this post when I got home yesterday evening – it’s taken two and a half hours as it is!!
The rest of today will be spent catching up with stuff, patting yarn and fibre and continuing to work on the still photos for my new online course.
Take care, stay safe and do what makes you happy, K x
This week has flown past – I can hardly believe I’m writing another blog post already!
The main image of today’s post is the Helmet hat I made for Sue from my hand spun yarn, the pattern coming from Woolly Wormhead‘s Introspection collection. I realised I hadn’t taken a photo of her wearing it since it was blocked – and this overhead shot shows the crown decreases really nicely.
Some good news – I have finished recording and editing my videos for my new Craftucation course, An Introduction to Lace Knitting. They are currently in the process of being uploaded to the website and that just leaves the final bits of transcriptions to write and the still images to capture from the videos for the pdf downloads. Hurrah!
In a week or so I will upload one of the introductory chapters here – they are free to view before buying the course anyway, to give you a flavour of it. That’s probably better than showing you the out-takes where I end up blowing raspberries at myself for tripping over my words!
Looking back at last week’s post, I see that more knitting progress has occurred than I’d realised. The first of my Good Riddance Socks by Laur of the Blings Designs is complete and I’m just about to start the short row heel on the second one.
I’ve also passed the half-way mark on my ‘secret’ project, so that will be complete in the next couple of weeks which is fabulous as it gives me plenty of time before the deadline. I really wish I could show you this, but you are going to LOVE it when you do eventually get to see it – in September. The yarn was dyed especially for me to match a picture I sent the dyer. The picture relates closely to the name of the pattern. The dyer will then be making yarn kits for the pattern to coincide with publication in September!
I don’t yet have photos of everyone’s finished Calon Cariad shawls, but they are going to make a stunning collection when I do manage to bring them all together. Some people are still working on them I know. It was lovely to get feedback about including Zoom events as part of a KAL. Those who attended really appreciated them and said it gave them more of a sense that they were taking part in a group event, rather than just knitting and sharing photos of their work online. It’s something I think I will do with future KALs and MKALs – though I might need to invest in the Zoom package that stops your meeting unceremoniously ending after 40 minutes!
The embroidery of Mum has stalled a bit, although I did do a couple of hours on it yesterday for the first time in a while. I’m not sure I can see the difference yet from my previous update photo as my current colour – dark brown – is so close to the black that it’s hard to see. I have decided the next colour I choose to work will have a clear contrast with the dark brown, black and olive green there so far. I need to be able to see some progress being made. What do you think?
A book I pre-ordered back in August arrived recently. The Sourdough Whisperer by Elaine Boddy. It’s the second of her books that I’ve had and they are both brilliant. I love the tips and tricks and ways to revive and boost your starter and different things to try if your dough isn’t behaving the way you want it to. As you may remember I’ve had some spectacular failures in my baking adventures (total frisbees!) as well as successes and this book mentions the effect that being in a hard or soft water area can have. We have incredibly soft water, so I followed the suggestion to reduce the water content by 30g and it worked a treat. At first I wasn’t sure all the flour would mix in, but it did and we’ve been enjoying a cracking loaf for the past few days.
It had finally stopped raining and drizzling – there was even some sunshine! – so I interrupted my blog writing to grab the opportunity to go for a walk. Less than ten minutes out the door en route to the post office the rain began once more. Just a little fall of rain. It’s a shame we weren’t wearing our hats when we went out!
This Friday is the Show & Tell Zoom for our Calon Cariad Knit-along! It seems to have come around really quickly, even though I moved this final event back a week. There are prizes for contributions on social media and anyone who has completed their shawl gets the chance of winning a fabulous book of shawls; Nordic Shawls by Karen Skriver Lauger. If you click on the photo, you get taken to yesterday’s social media post which has more info.
Yesterday, for the first time in I don’t know how long, I went to a friend’s house for lunch. It seems like such a small thing but, apart from eating at my Mum’s house and my in-laws’, I don’t think I’ve had a meal at someone else’s house since the start of the pandemic. It was lovely! Homemade carrot and spinach soup with sourdough bread and a homemade vegan pear and date crumble.
Another thing that happened yesterday was that I took delivery of a VERY large Kaffe Fassett blanket that needed to have the centre seamed with the four pieces of the border. This was not knitted by me, but by a lovely chap whose hand-knitted, but *literally* moth-eaten, jumpers I rescued a few years ago. I’ve already seamed the four edge pieces together and now just need to insert the middle. That’s about six metres of mattress stitch, possibly more. We couldn’t lay it out flat on my lounge floor as it is just too big, so I may end up spreading it on the bed to line up the edges and secure them with lockable stitch markers before bundling it back up again and just having the area I’m working on over my knees. I’ll get a photograph of it somehow once it’s all sewn together and share it with you all as long as Chris (the knitter and owner of the blanket) doesn’t mind.
There has been some progress on my Gridlock Mitts by Karen Butler. I’ve nearly finished the second one!! Some knitting was done at the dentist last Friday and some this morning. I got a temporary filling at the dentist – my first instinct had been correct and pretty much the entire filling had come out. That led to discovery of another tooth with fractures through it and X-rays which showed a few other things. So, a permanent filling and fixing of the fractures is scheduled for the next available appointment – in May! This seems to be a recurrent theme at present – one thing gets investigated and something else gets picked up along the way. Hurrah for the NHS!
Spring is definitely making its presence felt this week – the bumble bees are giant and the spring flowers are really getting going. I’m even typing this outside in the garden. We planted some red cowslips last year that I’d completely forgotten about until this week when I saw them in flower again. Aren’t they fab?
Do you remember the colour repeats I was trying out with coloured pencils in my journal last week? I thought I had chosen exactly the right one, but 32 rows in I had to admit that it just wasn’t working for me. That meant pulling out (frogging) 24 rows and picking the stitches back up, then returning to my original plan, which (guess what?) actually works. That doesn’t sound too bad does it? 24 rows. Now, think about the fact that each of those rows has 673 stitches in it. Can you see why I stayed in denial for so long, before I admitted I wasn’t happy with how the design was looking?
The rows are very long, but there are several good reasons for that. This is a design that has a lot of stitches in one pattern repeat and it creates a zig-zag effect, so those stitches take up far less width than they would on a straight row. Also, being a zig-zag means that you need fewer rows overall to get the height of the finished item AND by working the pattern along the long edge there are fewer colour changes and therefore fewer ends to weave in. So, whilst it might seem like a silly number of stitches, it will be worth it. And I’ve already re-worked four of the rows I had to rip out. It will be a while until I can share this design with you, but I do love it. Which is why I had to get the colour order/depth exactly right.
Sitting here on the patio I’m looking at the veg patch and thinking it really needs hoeing. That will be one of tomorrow’s jobs I think, as I can’t actually plant the veg seed until the forget-me-nots have made room!
Take care, get out in the sunshine if you can and keep knitting. K x
So, I’m back at Mum’s for a few days and she is home from her two week ‘adventure’. Cleo the cat was pleased to see me yesterday and even graced me with her presence on my lap twice this morning! She and Mum were very glad to see each other again today as well and Cleo is keeping a close eye on her to make sure she’s staying put!
I haven’t started my embroidery yet. I was two colours short (I did get a message that they were delivered today), but I have prepared my fabric and even put a bright red running stitch through the horizontal and vertical axes. It’s definitely going to be something I need to use my Serious Readers light for – even with my brand new glasses! I’m using exactly the same fabric as for Dad’s so they’ll look right together, and I’d forgotten just how small the weave is.
I’m playing with ideas for lace swatches again – one of my favourite types of ‘Call for Submissions’ is for a lace design. This time I’m taking a slightly different approach. I’ve gone through my favourite stitch dictionary and written down the names and page numbers of the ones that really appeal as well as the number of sts and rows per repeat. Instead of trying each stitch pattern out separately, when I cast on for my swatches I’ll pair up ones that I think will look good together and ones that have row repeats that are multiples of each other – eg one with a 24-row repeat and one with an 8-row repeat and swatch them together. One reason for this approach is to check whether the row gauge on selected stitch patterns matches (after blocking), as if I want panels of different stitch patterns they’ll need to. Another is to not only make the pattern and chart writing simpler, but make things easier for knitters too!
I mentioned having some exciting news last week. The big reveal begins on Friday, but I can tell you that I have an adult garment coming out in Knit Now on October 7th! I’m so proud of it and the way it has been styled in the photos is gorgeous. If you have the current issue of Knit Now, it’s one of the photos on the “coming next month” page near the back 🥳. (I can share photos on Social Media from October 1st – and will add a pic to this blog post then as well).
Because of knitting the above-mentioned garment (back in March/April/May) and then working on our MKAL with Yarn O’clock (Into the Vortex), my advent calendar sweater (yarn from Bear in Sheep’s Clothing, pattern Serenity by Joji Locatelli from Interpretations Volume 2 became sadly neglected. I have now returned to it and realised that I far prefer knitting sleeves two at a time, but on separate needles and that I also needles some more really short needle tips for small circumferences. With these things in hand progress is being made. The sleeves only need another 8cm or so and then it’s just the neckband, weaving in ends and blocking! I have brought it with me along with my stuff for lace swatching in the hope that I will be able to crack on and at least get the sleeves finished. You can tell it’s been ignored for a while can’t you? All those creases!
Have you been caught up in the fuel panic? I needed to get some to come here (it’s 120 miles from home) and did manage to get some on my first attempt, although the only option was the new E5 petrol, which I hadn’t had before. I’d always wondered what the E5/E10 sticker meant inside my fuel cap cover. I’m just so thankful that my car is a self-charging hybrid and doesn’t use a huge amount of petrol. I’ll still have just under half a tank by the time I get home. The staff on the forecourt at Tesco Mold were doing such a good job, cheerfully checking that everyone knew what was available and showing people into different lanes to keep the queues moving and the mini roundabout clear.
That’s all from me for today. Take care, stay safe and do more of what you love, K x
