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
Last week I met someone in the main car park of my little town and exchanged two jars of homemade preserves (blackcurrant jam and seville marmalade) for a large and very full black bin liner. It sounds very mysterious, doesn’t it?
The bag has since been sitting in my study as the other parts of my life have taken on some deadlines (more later) and I haven’t yet been able to play with the contents. But it keeps reminding me it’s there and every time I take a peek inside I get excited.
So, what on earth did I swap for jam and marmalade?
A fleece. A whole one, from a sheep named Doris. Here are her before and after shots!
She is currently Mandy’s only sheep and, knowing I have taken up spinning, she asked if I would like it. Oh, yes please! It’s completely unprocessed and Mandy and her hubby sheared Doris themselves. Doris is a very clean sheep so there are not too many bits in it. So, I have a new learning curve to go on. Having washed a few locks of fleece is somewhat different to this type of quantity, but I have some notes and I will do some more research. A fine day on the patio seems like a good starting point. I did learn from the tv last night that any remaining less spinable parts of a fleece are excellent for rhubarb – Mandy mentioned this too as being generally good for homegrown fruit etc.
So what kept me away from Doris’ fleece? Well, I have submitted two (yes, two!) designs to a magazine I haven’t worked with before (deadline is next week, but, as you know, I don’t like to get too close to deadlines). Fingers crossed!
Also, I have finished my latest shawl design which I showed you last week and it’s going to be published in the next couple of weeks. It also now has a name – Angel of the North. See if you can tell why:
Finally, the MKAL I have been working on in conjunction with Yarn O’clock begins in 2 weeks!! It is in 7 parts, beginning on July 2nd and each part will be released weekly on Fridays. Because we like to keep you guessing, we’re not even saying what item the mystery knit will become, but you do need to know that for this one we are using Riverknits Chimera and 50g of Nene, both British Bluefaced Leicester 4ply and hand dyed in Northamptonshire (or 50g each of a multicoloured 4ply with a contrasting solid/semisolid one). Yarn kits are available for £25 from Yarn O’clock or you can buy the pattern on its own for £5.00 from me. The needles you will need are 4.5mm (60cm circular or 30cm straight).
Well, this week has seen me doing a lot of knitting and there’s so much of it that I can’t show you! The next MKAL with Yarn O’clock is developing well and I’ve been working on a swatch for a new submission (which I’m tentatively quite excited about).
I can, however, show you the finished tea cosy! It’s a little snug getting it on and off our teapot, but that does at least mean that it doesn’t flop about when pouring and it does a really good job of keeping the pot warm. I’ve had some tea cosies in the past that you end up pouring the tea *through* which is annoying – they’re not designed to be tea-strainers! The Cartref Yarn is good and sturdy and the double layer of yarn is highly insulating. I may need to reinforce further around the steeked edges (to stop the cut ends wiggling free) as it’s going to be pulled around quite a bit by the spout and handle, but that will be easy enough.
There has also been pleasing progress with the border of my new shawl design, using Queensland Yarn’s Llama Lace which is imported by Knitting Fever. Despite the name, this yarn is actually a 4-ply weight as it is 420 yards (384m) per 100g, but it is 100% llama. The shawl doesn’t have a name yet, but it will soon.
The image below shows how well the blocking holds up. The right hand side of the image has been soaked, pinned out and left to dry. This opens up the lace and shows the pattern to its best advantage. The left hand side of the image hasn’t been blocked yet and is more bunched up and almost corrugated. As I mentioned last week, I’m quite impressed by how well the blocked lace (on the right) has coped with being squashed into a small project bag and carted across the country. It’s not perfectly flat still, but it hasn’t been treated with any special care and shows the shawl will work well as a garment in the real world.
If you’re a newsletter subscriber you’ll already know there’s a 20% discount code in this month’s newsletter on the four other knitting designs I have using yarns from the Knitting Fever stable. It can be used multiple times and lasts until the end of June. Of course, you can make the patterns in any brand of yarn you wish, but it might also introduce you to some new yarns. I’ve also added a new subscriber link to my linktr.ee in my social media bios to make it easier for people to sign up.
I’ve also been baking again – banana bread and a sourdough loaf this weekend. There’s nothing quite like sourdough toast. I’m going to need to do some more preserving, having ordered five *bags* of pears instead of the intended five pears last week! There were so many helpful suggestions as to what to make with them on social media last week after I confessed to my lack of attention when ordering the shopping online. I’m planning on pear and ginger jam and bought the sugar this afternoon. The wasps and bees are out in force at present, so I think I’ll be making this early tomorrow morning with the windows shut!
I hope you all have a good week. I’m going to have something very exciting to show you next week and I can’t wait!! Stay safe and keep knitting, Kx
The past few days have seen my lovely wife and I take a road trip to Kent. Although it had been 8 months since I had seen my mum, it was 9 months for her and 17 since I’d been there! It was glorious weather and we made the most of it, taking a walk to the sea front. Fortunately my sister-in-law (the tall one!) knows the town so well she was able to help us avoid the crowds for most of our walk.
Packing to go away as a knitter has two elements. First of all there are the things that everyone needs to take; clothes, toiletries etc. Then there is the matter of which knitting projects to take. Always in the plural as you want to have choice. I took five. And yes, I did work on all of them!
First of all there was the Nordic Tea Cosy by Zoe Carter (@pinsandneedlesuk). The pattern was part of the Nordic themed Knit-Tea Retreat that I attended via the wonders of the internet in February. I had done quite a bit of this already, so it didn’t take long to finish and steek. Now it just needs to be blocked. The Cartref Yarn is so good – I’d never used it before and I did treat myself to a couple of other colours so there is more to come with this yarn. I love how at this angle the pattern looks a little like a grumpy alien!
Then there was the obligatory sock knitting – excellent for car journeys as, with a ‘vanilla’ sock like this one, after the ribbing you get a big chunk where you are just knitting every round with nothing more taxing to pay attention to than keeping track of how many rounds you’ve done. This was another yarn I bought during the Knit-Tea Retreat – RiverKnits Nene 4-ply in “Starry Night” and the yarn is really living up to its name. I didn’t get a whole lot done of this sock as this is for said lovely wife and she does prefer her socks knit to a tight gauge. These are on 2mm needles. The section you can see here contains more than 4000 stitches!
I did a couple more ‘hexiflats’ using up old ends of 4-ply. I think the blue is CoopKnits Socks Yeah! and the green is Alice Starmore‘s Hebridean 2-ply.
The border for my new shawl design in Llama Lace from Knitting Fever is coming on well and the corner has been rounded which is always a good point to get to. The first seven repeats have stayed flat since being blocked (and rolled up and rammed in a project bag), so I have high expectations for how the whole shawl will look once completed.
The final project I was working on I can’t show you as it is the next MKAL with Yarn O’clock. Believe me, though, it uses some truly great yarn and will be lots of fun to knit.
My family (both my mum and my family-by-marriage) really support my knitting and I value the fact they don’t mind me knitting away while I’m with them. I’m lucky that they understand knitters can hold conversations and be just as much a part of what’s going on even when we have needles in our hands.
It’s been so good to reconnect with people recently. The English ‘Rule of 6’ for being indoors was a particular bonus as that hasn’t come into force yet in Wales.
Now that we are back home we’ve started tackling the garden in earnest and have begun the annual battle with the ground elder. I’m hoping the weather holds so we can get our garden looking as neat as my in-laws’.
What are you up to this week? Whatever it is, stay safe and keep knitting or doing whatever makes you happy. Kx
Following last week’s excitement of getting the Little Orme Hat pattern and The Little Orme Collection out into the world (and photographed at the Little Orme, too!), there has been a real change of activity in the past couple of days.
I’ve done lots of knitting on my garment commission and I *so* wish I could show it to you, because I am absolutely in love with it. However, you (and I) will have to wait until October before it gets revealed.
As I can’t tell you very much at all about the current main knitting project in my life, I shall have to focus on the other things I’ve been doing. I was very kindly sent a bag of Bowmont Merino fleece locks a little while ago, and over the past few days I’ve been cleaning them. Fortunately, the kind person who sent them to me also sent a couple of links to some very helpful videos (thank you, Anne M and YouTube!), so I had some idea of how to go about this. The change of colour was quite astounding, although the first dip in really hot soapy water and rinse in even more really hot water left quite a lot to be desired. So, they got dunked again, and this time came out gleaming.
Today I attempted to spin some of them – the idea being to spin the yarn as finely as possible. This was much easier said than done, even to get it to catch onto the leader yarn to get going. Eventually it did though and I got about two and a half locks spun, before frustration at the constant falling apart of the yarn finally got to me. So I took a deep breath and put that to one side for the time being.
And then to console myself I got out a plait of Polworth fibre dyed by Rachael of Cat and Sparrow. I got this at The Knit-Tea Retreat marketplace and it was said to be a great fibre type for newer spinners. I love it. As well as the fact that I’m not attempting to spin as finely as possible with this, it’s a gorgeous fibre that so far is behaving beautifully.
Do you remember me talking about the next Craftucation course I’m working on? It’s called An Introduction to Lace Knitting and goes through all the important aspects of lace knitting. You learn many of the common stitches one at a time (yarn overs and eight types of knit decreases!), before putting them together into a practice piece, as well as learning how to follow both a written lace pattern and a lace chart. You then move onto a similar but larger and slightly more challenging small blanket/throw. In this you learn about lifelines – the amazing lengths of thread that stop your knitting unravelling any further – and how to insert and make use of them. You also work a knitted on lace edging and block your finished piece. How cool is all that? All you need to know before undertaking this course is how to cast on, knit, purl and cast off. If you can follow a basic pattern already that is a bonus.
Here is the practice piece:
I’ve recorded a fair chunk of this course already, but I can’t record the next part until my skin heals a bit more. The sudden change back to very cold weather has caused my knuckles to split and that’s not a great look close up on video. I want people to be looking at what my hands are doing rather than the state they’re in!
Hopefully I’ll be able to record the next section soon, but the joy of these courses is that I’m able to create them on my own schedule. Which is the same for the people who take the courses too – no deadlines, no weekly meetings that might not work in your time-zone – you just work through the course at your own pace, in your own way, with access to the tutors and other students on your course via the individual online course forums. There are videos, downloadable and printable pdfs of notes with the video script transcribed and lots of still pictures as well as the original patterns used in the course. So, if you want to try knitting and would like a course that can work for you and around your schedule, have a look at my beginners’ courses: Knitting for Beginners 1 and Knitting for Beginners 2. These links give me a higher proportion of the course fee than if you simply go to the website so if you’d like to starting learning to knit (or know someone else who would), please do use these links!
My current audiobook, Time’s Convert by Deborah Harkness (the fourth book in the All Souls Trilogy….), has given me one of those weird coincidences. Last week we watched Hamilton on Disney+ (it’s amazing what you get when you upgrade a phone these days), which I found fascinating and really enjoyable. I previously knew nothing about this period of history. Then, Time’s Convert takes me to the same time period and some of the same characters as well! It’s funny how things sometimes line up together in life like that.
It seems I had plenty to tell you about after all, despite not being able to share the Grand Secret Project!
Stay safe and warm, and keep (or start!) knitting, K x
