Tag: lace knitting

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Consider Yourself ‘Wool-In’!

I’m sorry about the corniness of today’s post title, but I just couldn’t resist it. After rehearsing ‘Consider Yourself’ with Shelby’s Singers (our local community choir) last Wednesday, and now being at Welwyn Garden City for the week long wool festival that is Wool-in Garden City, that twist on the lyrics just won’t leave my head!

How are you after Storm Isha? It sounded pretty scary outside to me, but there didn’t seem to be any major damage where we are.

I’m having such a lovely time at Wool-in Garden City. I’ve met a whole new bunch of fab yarnie people, given a talk about my work as a designer (!) and taught 8 people how to knit two-colour brioche. The folk standing around the edge might have picked up a tip or two as well!

The mayor of Welwyn Garden City opened the event on Saturday morning, cutting the obligatory ribbon, and he and his wife spent time talking to every exhibitor as well.

A week long show as a pop up shop is a big undertaking, especially for the organisers, and I can’t thank Helen and Naomi and their extra volunteers enough. They’ve been helpful, kind, friendly and encouraging throughout. We have the opportunity to take time out from the event, at which point folk can pay for items from our stands at the central cash desk. As some of the exhibitors also have full time a Monday to Friday jobs this means they can continue with their regular lives and have their work on display and on sale at the same time – a brilliant idea.

I got very excited about having some of my designs in the window of the shop too…

As a result of a conversation I had at the weekend, I took my courage in my hands and wrote an email I’m now nervously awaiting a reply for. It could be very exciting.

As well as all this, there has been some knitting!

The sleeves for the adult version of Honeybun are gradually growing and I’m getting closer to the armhole shaping. this is one of the two sleeves – I’m doing them both at the same time on the same needle, but photographing them both together is proving to be tricky!

My small Petulia grew by 40 rows at the weekend.

And I finally swatched for and started (twice) my chunky version of Fiery Dragon Skin Cowl.

This will be added to the original pattern once I’ve got all the details down and photos of the finished sample. This is using my handspun yarn that I made last year from Velvet Sixpence in Polwarth wool. I have to say I was impressed that it coped so well with being frogged twice and re-knitted. I usually keep my swatches, but as I only have this one ball of yarn and I didn’t know how much I would need for the cowl, I decided not to risk it.

By the end of Monday it was nearly finished!

And I did finish the socks before going to Wool-in Garden City!

I’m really looking forward to the rest of the event this week and I will take lots more photos of everyone else’s stands to share on social media and to show you next week.

We were woken up by an owl this morning – another addition to the list of wildlife we’ve seen or heard in the area.

Until next week, take care and try not to get blown away by Storm Jocelyn! K x

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The Final Countdown!

Part of a folded black lace knitted shawl on a pale carpet with yarn ends that need to be woven in

We have snow! Just under an inch lying on the paths, roads, garden and roof. I’m hoping it melts more before I have to go out this afternoon and doesn’t just freeze…

The Process exhibition at Qube in Oswestry is now open. I’ve not been to visit in person yet, but the photographs show it to be a fabulous exhibition, with a wide range of arts on show. The A4 folder on the table contains all my preliminary drawings/sketches/colour exploration – everything! If you happen to visit, let me know what you think!

This does mean that I won’t have the sample of Honeybun with me at Wool-in Garden City, but I will have copies of the pattern! I’m very excited about this wool festival. The materials for my brioche workshop on Sunday morning are all weighed, sorted into bags, notes printed – and I think the workshop is sold out with 8 knitters booked in! My patterns are all printed and ready to display and my samples are packed away in their travel bags (apart from Nevern Throw which is currently one of many layers on the bed!)

On Saturday, 12-2pm, I am taking part in a Meet the Designers talk alongside Jane Crowfoot and Gurinder Kaur Hatchard. Tickets for this talk are free, but you do need to book a place. It’s been really interesting preparing for this talk as it’s a bit different from the Zoom event I took part in last month for Fasten-off Yarn-along. Then each of the designers was asked the same question in turn and we had a couple of minutes to answer it. For this I have up to half an hour to talk about how I got into designing, my favourite knitting techniques and the inspiration behind some of my designs. That’s quite a different prospect!

When Helen, one of the organisers, said there would be a TV we could plug a USB into for a slideshow I went for that option in my planning. It’s helped me to organise my thoughts and put some of my inspiration images next to finished items! I will have a tech-free option with physical samples and notes too – just in case!

Last Wednesday’s Introduction to Lace Knitting workshop went really well. Both the knitters there gained a lot from it and were quite rightly very pleased with what they produced! I started the workshop with a demonstration of blocking lace – the pink swatch was 12cm long on the right angled sides before blocking and the same edges were 18cm once pinned! Several days after the pins were removed the finished size has relaxed to 16cm. Folk who don’t block lace need to remember that (while that is their choice) not doing so will affect the finished size of their knitting as well as the appearance of it!

I’ve been on a ‘finishing off’ roll this week with my knitting. I’ve finished my second Barragán Shawl, apart from seaming the cast-on and cast-off edges of the knitted-on edging, then blocking it and weaving in the ends.

I’ve blocked Diamonds in the Breeze and that now needs to have its ends woven in before posting it off to its final home. (Top tip: leave weaving ends in until after blocking, especially with lace, to avoid have puckered sections where the woven ends stopped the knitting being fully stretched)

Sue’s socks are completed and already in use! This is my standard ‘vanilla’ sock pattern that Sue likes for her socks – no fancy textures, 80 sts per round on 2mm needles to give a firm long lasting fabric.

The second sock of the pair of Bodelwyddan socks I have been working on got started on Sunday and I’m already on the gusset – I’ve been taking note of the number of stitches worked as I go and I’m currently up to 8308 (plus another 80 for the cast-on)! If you ever receive a pair of hand-knit socks from anyone, know that a lot of time and love went into making them for you and treasure them well.

The photo on the left here with just the cuff and the first repeat of the pattern got a LOT of attention on Twitter on Sunday – it came with the caption “This is what 2000 stitches of a hand knitted sock looks like”. At the time of writing this little post has had 145 likes and over 2000 views!

I am hoping to finish this sock before I go to Wool-in Garden City and then I can focus on knitting my smaller Petulia shawl and get back to the sleeves for my adult version of Honeybun. There are other projects on the needles and in the pipeline as well; I’m trying to work on things in order of priority at the moment!

Do remember that I’ve got my year-long discount on – if you are a member of my FaceBook group you can get 10% off all patterns beginning with A or B this month (by using the code posted in the group) and if you are a monthly newsletter subscriber you can get 20% off the same patterns (by using the code sent in the last newsletter). If that sounds appealing to you and you’re not in either group of folk – sign up to the newsletter here!

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The next job of the day is to tidy my desk – it is somewhat jumbled at present! Take care folks, stay warm and do something that makes you happy this week. Maybe visit an exhibition! My next blog post will come to you from Welwyn Garden City! K x

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Picture This

It’s unusual not have lots of pics in my blog posts, but the website is misbehaving and I can’t add image blocks at the moment. I will come back and add them in as soon as it lets me! Edit – pics have now been added!

I’ve been busy planning my Two-Colour Brioche Knitting workshop for Wool-in Garden City this week. It’s fully booked with 8 knitters which is very exciting! I’ve combined two of my previous classes so that the maximum number of brioche stitches can be knitted, allowing knitters to get really comfortable with the technique, as well as learning an increase and a decrease.

The yarn I’m using is the same yarn I used for Twisted, Poldale DK from Town End Yarns, and it’s really lovely. A good high twist DK yarn with lots of body and bounce – perfect for brioche knitting.

Yesterday I delivered everything for my contribution to the Process exhibition at Qube in Oswestry. I can’t wait to see how the whole exhibition looks once Gemma has put it all together – it opens on Friday. I decided to include a photograph of the Size 18 body blocking on its boards, rather than the actual pinned out knitting. This was for a couple of reasons; 1. it would take up a lot of space and be potentially awkward to display with lots of pins in the blocking boards, and 2. if the body of the cardigan was in Oswestry until mid February, progress on it for the next month would be limited to finishing the sleeves!

Apart from knitting a new swatch for the brioche workshop, my knitting this week has been all on Barragán Shawl Part 4 – the knitted-on edging. A few days ago Sue asked me how long I thought it would take to complete and I (rather over-dramatically) said, “Forever!” It is however, looking much more likely that I will finish it before Friday. I must remember to video some of the single and multiple joins before I do get to the end though.

As you may know, I’ve been wearing clothes from The Slow Wardrobe for a number of years now. Two of the early skirts I bought were a black linen skirt and a gorgeous green check wool one, rather like suiting fabric, with linen panels top and bottom. But they were in the small size and I haven’t been able to wear these two skirts for years (since well before 2017!). In November I finally did what Linda had suggested when I saw her at Wonderwool Wales in April and sent the skirts back to her for enlargement. I could possibly have tackled this myself, but it involved taking the pockets off, before adding a panel at one of the seams and then reattaching the pockets which I didn’t feel confident doing. So, for a very reasonable fee, Linda has enlarged both skirts, adding new elastic at the same time and I can finally wear them again. This makes me very happy!

Lichfield, my cropped cardigan design inspired by Lichfield Cathedral, is now printed out and ready to head to Wool-in Garden City with me.

Somehow a lot of errors got into it during the editing process, which I only discovered when knitting my own Size 7 version from the magazine, but my printed copies, complete with new photos, are fully correct and will be added to my online platfoms very soon. The Knitter has also published errata for the magazine version (which themselves will be updated soon with two more corrections) and folk from the mag have been very helpful in trying to get to the bottom of how the gremlins got into the pattern in the first place. It’s a long list of errata and I would hate folk to think that was how I sent the pattern in!

I had a lovely moment in our local Aldi the other day. I heard a young voice behind me say “Hello Kath”, and turned to see one of the children who came to sing with Shelby’s Singers at the Buckley Christmas Market with her Dad. She wanted to know if we were going to be singing Christmas songs again on Wednesdays. I said that we were going to be singing a whole range of new songs, a lot of them from musicals (including ‘Tomorrow’ from Annie and ‘Consider Yourself’ from Oliver!) and there was a very enthusiastic response. It is great to see the enjoyment that can be gained from singing with others so clear in the next generation – and I’m already looking forward to tomorrow’s rehearsal.

That’s all from me for today. By the next time I write I’ll have taught a one-to-one session on sewing up a sweater, an Introduction to Lace Knitting workshop, sung at an Epiphany Carol service, had a covid booster jab and been on a cinema and meal ‘date night’ with my lovely wife. I’m looking forward to all of these in very different ways! Take care of yourselves and stay warm. K x

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Process

The body of a hand knitted cardigan in light purple with bands of slip stitch colour work along the bottom is pinned out on red foam mats.

So, it’s 2024! The rain hasn’t yet stopped enough for us to go out for a walk since our midnight walk on New Year’s Eve where we saw and heard lots of fireworks in the neighbourhood. I’m hoping we’ll be able to get out soon, but at least for now we are warm and dry and once again thankful to live high up. The garage might get water in it from the steep driveway if the rain pours too heavily, but the house is pretty safe from flooding.

Floella, my lovely estate car, did her longest yet journey since I’ve had her, all the way down to Kent to visit my in-laws and back via Worcestershire to visit my mum. We were away for nearly a week and, while it is lovely to catch up with everyone, there’s nothing quite like your own bed!

Since we’ve been back I’ve been very busy, preparing to take part in an exhibition at Qube in Oswestry. I’ve never had my work displayed in an exhibition before, so this is quite exciting. It’s all about ‘Process’ and that is such a major part of being a designer. Folk usually only see the finished product, and I think it will be interesting to see all the different things that go into developing a design. I’ve focussed on Joseph’s Jacket, which was one of my assessment pieces for my City & Guilds in 2012 and which much later – in 2018! – became Honeybun Cardigan. And the process is still continuing, as this is the design I am currently developing into adult sizes. I’ve blocked the body now and that will be included in the exhibition too. The design process covers 11 years with this pattern!

As I said, I’m taking part in the exhibition – there will be lots of other artists and designers working in different media taking part as well, so it should be a really interesting exhibition. It’s open from January 12th until February 12th and admission is free. The full details of the ‘Process’ exhibition aren’t yet up on the website, but I’m sure they will be soon.

In addition to sorting out all my drafts, samples, swatches and notes for the exhibition, I’ve been getting ready for Wool-in Garden City which takes place in less than 3 weeks! Patterns are printed (all bar one), kits are now in snazzy tins which also make them a lot easier to transport and to display, and I’ve been adding price labels and codes to everything. I’m teaching a brioche workshop while I’m there and taking part in a designer talk too, so it should be a really fun week. And it is a WHOLE week! I’ve never done an event this long before and I’m really interested to see how the central cash desk for all exhibitors works. Tickets are still available for the Preview Evening on January 19th, 5.30-8.30pm – entry to the event during the rest of the week is free and unticketed.

I’m going to be increasing some of my pattern prices this year (not all), starting with garments. Adult garments with 8 or more sizes (currently Of Night and Light and Reaching Out) will be £8 and children’s garments with 5 sizes will be £7 (currently Honeybun). This change has already taken place on all my platforms. Later in the year I will be increasing the price of those that have multiple sizes such as my hat patterns and the more complex designs such as Drifting Leaves (that one is 20 pages!). These increases will be to £6 or £7 from £5. I know price rises are the last thing anyone wants, and believe me, I have thought long and hard about it.

To make up for the price rises, I will be running a year-long (!) discount in my facebook group and for my monthly newsletter subscribers. I know many people subscribe to my weekly blog and receive this as an email, but what I am referring to here is the monthly newsletter, which is different – you can sign up to my newsletter here.

Each month all patterns beginning with specified letters will be reduced for those folks (10% off for FB group members and 20% for monthly newsletter subscribers). This month covers letters A and B and that includes 11 patterns! They are:

Besides all this admin and travelling I have actually done some knitting as well! I have finished the black lace Diamonds in the Breeze shawl I have been knitting for my friend Lucy’s 50th birthday and that just needs to be blocked now. I’m pleased with how the yarn (Drops Baby Merino) worked up and it will be very soft around Lucy’s shoulders.

If you’d like to learn to knit lace there’s still time to sign up for my Introduction to Lace Knitting workshop in Buckley on Wednesday 10th January (6.30-8.30pm).

I have started Part 4 (the edging) of my Barragan KAL which came out in The Knitter on Wednesday 29th December. I’ve got photos of both the front and the back of the shawl here so you can see how the knitted-on edging works. The line of stitches along the back is the back of the joining stitch. From the front the join is almost invisible. I’m going to do a short video of the joining stitch soon too.

Sue’s sock now has more than half a partner – I cast the second one on on the journey up to Edinburgh if you remember and it’s been a good evening knit when I don’t want to have to keep my eye on a chart or pattern!

And I have begun my small version of Petulia! It was very exciting to see kits for Petulia from RiverKnits featured among “The Knitter Loves…” in this month’s issue of the magazine. Becci is seen modelling the large asymmetrical version of the shawl as shown on the front of the pattern.

The smaller version is symmetrical and I’m using RiverKnits Chimera and Nene 4ply again (bought from Yarn O’clock), but in a very different colourway to the orginal large shawl.

I love the vibrancy and autumnal feel of the leaf shapes. I’m knitting this project with a fixed circular Lantern Moon needle from McIntosh and it’s super smooth to use – really lovely.

The rain is still falling and it’s looking highly unlikely that a walk today will be possible (especially as my lovely wife is in a poetry event on Zoom for the next couple of hours). So, instead I shall settle down with a cup of tea and my new journal and work out some plans for the year/month/week/tomorrow and maybe even do some embroidery.

Take care and stay warm and dry. K x

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Jingle All The Way

On Saturday my lovely wife and I attended the Buckley Christmas Market and had a really great day talking to everyone who stopped by the stand to look, ask questions, chat and buy things. It’s been the most successful Christmas event I’ve had a stand at, and the atmosphere in the shopping precinct was buzzing and busy. The coasters were particularly popular!

Buckley Town Band played in the morning and Shelby’s Place Singers gave their inaugural performance of six Christmas songs in the afternoon! We were even accompanied by some very rhythmic jingle bells which added greatly to the festive feel. I’ve already started thinking about what we’ll learn to sing in the New Year ready for the next market at Easter time!

It was a full day; we arrived to set up at 7.30am and the market finished at 4pm – we were very glad to get everything back into the car and then into the house before the storm winds really took off!

Today I finished Part 3 of Barragán Shawl KAL which, as you no doubt know by now, is being published in four parts by The Knitter. I surprised myself by using slightly more yarn than I’d expected to (though I did still have enough), and I’ve been trying to work out why. My conclusion is that the first time I knitted it, while I was designing it, I was knitting faster. I was working to a deadline and I had to knit several sections of the shawl twice, ripping it out when I wasn’t fully satisfied with links between parts.

This time I’ve been ‘knitting along’. I worked out how many rows I need to knit each day to complete one part of the shawl before the next part was published and, for the most part, I’ve only been knitting that much. This difference in both speed and focus makes me wonder if my tension while I’ve been knitting this second shawl has been looser as I’ve been more relaxed about it? Relaxed, that is, apart from today when I began to wonder if there would be a game of yarn chicken in my future (there wasn’t!) and so knitted the final two full repeats of the stitch pattern in one go.

It’s made me think about tension/gauge again and how frustrating it is when knitters say they never knit a tension swatch as they always ‘knit to tension’. How can they? The tension listed on any given pattern is that of the designer while they were working on the pattern – not that of anyone else, and it’s entirely possible that a change of needle size might be required to achieve the stated tension. But that can only be discovered by working, washing and blocking a swatch.

The stitches and rows listed on a yarn ball band are considered the ‘standard’ tension for that yarn when working stocking stitch using specified needles, but that doesn’t mean that is your tension, nor that it is the designers’ tension. And what if the designer is using different needles from the ‘standard’ ones for that yarn weight, such as with lace knitting, where the needle size tends to be larger than you’d use for stocking stitch? In those cases the ‘standard’ tension is almost irrelevant – or at least guaranteed to be different from that of the pattern. And, as it seems, speed of knitting and levels of relaxation can also make a difference to a knitter’s tension, as even a slight change in tension that doesn’t show up much in stitch or row counts can fractionally affect how much yarn each stitch is using.

It’s a fascinating topic and it’s really interesting to me how knitters vary so much in their tension. I’ll probably write more about this in the future and I’m even tempted to get some data by measuring the (unblocked) tension of knitters in workshops who will all be using the same yarn and needle sizes, but who undoubtedly will have different tensions in what they are producing.

All that remains now is Part 4 (out on December 28th) which is the edging worked in the buff colour and the all-important blocking.

The other project I’ve made some progress with this week is the adult version of Honeybun. The colour work sections of the sleeves are now complete and I’m soon to move into the stocking stitch section where the increases happen.

I shall work on this while I watch Vigil later this evening! If you’ve not seen any of this and have access to iPlayer I highly recommend it. There have been 2 episodes so far and it is really rather gripping.

Have you had a look at my ‘Where I’ll Be’ page on the website lately? There are some more things to add (once the exhibitors for events are publicly announced), but it’s looking like an exciting 2024 for me.

Highlights so far:

  • 10th January – Introduction to Lace Knitting workshop at Shaz’s Shabby Chic in Buckley, 6.30-8.30pm
  • 19-26th January – Wool-in Garden City. A week-long yarn festival in the Howard Centre at Welwyn Garden City. During this event I will be taking part in a ‘Meet the Designer’ panel discussion with other designers (on Sat 20th) and teaching an Introduction to Brioche Knitting workshop (on Sun 21st).
  • 9-10th March – East Anglia Yarn Festival at the Norfolk Showground Arena, Norwich
  • 18-19th May – Buxton Wool Gathering at the Pavilion Gardens in Buxton
  • And we are hoping to run Yarn Gathering in Mold again in September!

Add to this three additional yarn shows I’ve been accepted for and you can see that the year is going to be busy! Thank goodness for Floella (my new-to-me estate car) who will be essential in transporting everything to each event.

Next week will be my final blog post of 2023 as I will be taking a week off between Christmas and New Year. Thank you for reading my posts – and especially those of you who take the time to comment; it’s always very much appreciated.

Until next week, take care and stay warm. K x

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It’s All Happening

The Honeybun sleeves are cast-on and growing!

I finally cast them on yesterday, having decided that the calculations are now good, certainly up to the armholes. I’ve decided to knit them both at the same time, which creates a bit of a yarn tangle at times when the contrast colours are being used, but it should be much more manageable once I get the last one of those done, and I’m back to just one ball of yarn per sleeve. If you knit garments, how do you approach sleeves? Do you knit them one at a time or tackle them both together?

The second half of our Twisted workshop last Thursday went really well – and at least one of the knitters has a completed moebius brioche cowl!

Many thanks as always to Anne at Yarn O’clock for hosting us and keeping everyone well supplied with hot drinks and biscuits.The pattern for Twisted will be available next Monday – yay! – and that means there will be discount heading its way to newsletter subscribers. If you’re not yet a newsletter subscriber but you’d like a 25% discount code for this pattern, you can sign up here:

The pattern will include a link to a really excellent video of a moebius cast-on by the amazing Cat Bordhi, which will be a great help to those unfamiliar with this technique.

The latest issue of The Knitter (196) came out last Wednesday and Part 3 of Barragán, my KAL shawl design, is in it. I’ve been keeping up with my daily progress on this and posting pics on my Instagram and Facebook stories, but for those of you not on those platforms, it’s currently looking like this (with a few extra rows worked since this photo was taken):

Once I finish the “Diamond Fantasia” pattern on this side of the shawl I cast off, rotate the shawl and work the same section again at the other end. This is how I managed to keep the shawl symmetrical, even though it was a rectangle with 4 parts to the pattern, each of which needed to be different!

I’ve finished the first sock of this pair of Bodelwyddan socks and I’m enjoying how the colours change in the yarn.

I thought it would just be a long repeating stripe, but it seems to slowly bounce back and forth between the two main shades of purple and teal. It’s a Zauberball yarn with the colour way name of “Smoking Area”. I’m not 100% convinced the length is correct, so I won’t weave the toe yarn end in yet until it’s been tried on for size by its recipient.

The Fasten Off Yarn-along is going well – there are posts and activities on most social media platforms and bingo cards you can complete, with a choice depending on whether you want to try out lots of different patterns or focus on one:

This is the third year I’ve taken part and there’s such a lovely atmosphere of folk supporting and raising up other designers and sharing gems they find. There are 96 designers taking part this year, all of whom have patterns available somewhere other than Ravelry and while the event as a whole goes on until New Year’s Even, the pattern sale continues until the end of Friday 8th December (American Eastern Time – which is pretty much Saturday morning here in the UK). You can get 25% off a vast swathe of the designers’ patterns by using the event code “FO2023”. For me that code works on Payhip and on Ravelry and it applies to all my self-published single patterns. Head to the Fasten Off YAL website to check out all the details – the patterns are even searchable this year.

There’s been some more embroidery happening too. Can you see a difference in the bottom left part?

The next few days have quite a few events taking place – I’m teaching a workshop on cable knitting tomorrow at Shaz’s Shabby Chic in Buckley, then my lovely wife and I have a stall at a school Christmas Fair on Thursday.

On Saturday it’s the Buckley Christmas Market in the shopping precinct where I shall be wearing two (metaphorical) hats! I shall have a stall, where my lovely wife will also have her cards, calendars and poetry collection, AND I shall be leading our little community choir in singing Christmas songs. Do come along if you can – the event runs from 9am until 4pm. Buckley Town Band will be playing too – and they are great!

So, as you can see there is a lot happening. And on Sunday just gone (Advent Sunday) I sang at the Advent carol service at St Mary Without-the-Walls Handbridge. It’s been so good to get back to singing again, and to feel that I can trust my voice once more. It really can be a case of ‘use it or lose it’ and I’m going to be singing there as much as my other commitments allow. There were some other additional people drafted in for this service and it was good to see some friendly faces from my previous life as a music teacher – some of whom I haven’t seen since I left the classroom in 2018!

And as it’s now Advent, the tree is up!

That’s all for now. I’ll be updating my “Where I’ll Be” page later on so you can see some of the exciting things lined up for 2024! Take care one and all, K x

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Metamorphosis

I’ve been to Evesham again over the past few days to do the reverse of last week; collecting Mum from her respite week and settling her back at home. I got back only a couple of hours ago, so today’s post will mostly be photos!

The quinces became jelly (though they needed a bit of help from me to do so)! I was secretly quite relieved that several of them were past their best (translation: starting to rot…) as, even when those ones were discarded I had 7 pounds of fruit that had to be cooked in 2 batches. That gave 4.25 pints of juice which turned into 7+ jars of jelly.

I finished the body of the adult Honeybun! It really is starting to look like a garment now. The sleeves have been calculated to the armholes twice now – having refreshed my memory of raglan-style sleeves via Shirley Paden’s Knitwear Design Workshop book that the full sleeve width should be 2.5cm more than a regular sleeve. It’s amazing how differently the colours came out in these two photos – you almost wouldn’t believe it was the same garment. Neither is quite right…

I also finished the first of this pair of socks for Sue. It looks a bit odd on the table, but I think that might be the angle I took the photo at. Yarn is from deep, deep stash, bought many moons ago.

I’m getting really excited about Wool-in Garden City in January. This will be a week-long event in a disused shop in Welwyn Garden City shopping centre. There’s a ticketed preview evening on Friday 19th and there are workshops, talks and demonstrations throughout the week.

I’m taking part in a ‘Meet the Designers’ talk on Saturday 20th 12 – 2 pm alongside Jane Crowfoot and Gurinder Kaur Hatchard where we will be talking about our crochet and knitting patterns and our creative journey into designing. (For reference, Jane Crowfoot is the designer of the crochet Mystical Lanterns blanket I’m making, so I will have to try very hard not to be too much of a fan-girl!).

Then on Sunday 11am-1pm I’m giving an ‘Introduction to Brioche Knitting’ workshop.

Tickets for all events can be purchased from the show website.

Currently running is the ‘off-Ravelry’ Fasten Off Yarn-along and I’m one of 95 participating designers! There’s a sale period for everyone’s eligible designs (for me, that’s all my single self-published patterns) that runs until 8th December and the whole event runs until December 31st. The discount during the sale period is 25% and the code is the same across the entire event for all designers – FO2023. Please note the difference between the capital “O” and the numeral “0” in the code! There are games and lots of social media activities on almost every platform you can imagine – the hashtag to search for is #FastenOffYAL.

If you’re near Flintshire and want to expand your knitting skills, I’m teaching two workshops at Shaz’s Shabby Chic in Buckley in December. Knitting Cables (both with and without a cable needle!) on Dec 6th and Introduction to Lace Knitting on Dec 13th. Both workshops are 6.30-8.30pm and are £25 per person including yarn.

That’s all from me today – apart from to let you know that my car door got fixed. The electrics in the lock had failed. Stay warm, stay safe and I tell you all about the second part of the Twisted workshop (which happens this Thursday) next time. K x

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Fruitful

Having a more organised workspace has already made a big difference to how I feel about being in the study and I think it has had a positive effect on my levels of productivity too!

I also had a chat with the resident coach-in-training about my lack of progress with my embroidery, and through that I was able to pinpoint a few things that were holding me back from working on it and ways I could get past them. As a result I can now see some definite progress has been made since I last photographed the embroidery in July.

Mum’s embroidery Nov 2023

Part of what was getting in my way was the feeling that my aim of completing a square at a time was so huge that it felt overwhelming. My current goal is to set 30 minutes on the timer and do however much I do in that time, rather like my approach to spinning. With this approach I’ve done 2 hours of stitching in the past week, as opposed to the ‘nothing at all’ of the past few months.

I haven’t posted anything on social media since last Friday, which is most unlike me. It’s been a bit busy. My passenger car door doesn’t get looked at (and hopefully fixed) until Thursday, but yesterday I was exploring the capacity of my amazing boot space by taking mum to a local nursing home for a respite/trial week. Once the back seats are down it really is tardis-like and this bodes very well for show transportation. Fortunately a friend was also able to help out – she was the one who actually transported Mum there, as although all her stuff fitted in my car, she herself couldn’t get in with the passenger door not working!

Naturally, visiting Mum involved more than just taking her to her respite week. I am also now the owner of a large box of quinces and will be making quince jelly for the first time this week. The weird looking furry bits aren’t mould – they’re just what the fruit is covered with as it is growing. It will be washed off before they go in the jam pan! They smell quite amazing already.

On to the knitting. The adult version of Honeybun is now speeding along. I’ve tweaked and triple checked all the calculations for the armhole and neck decreases and the back should be completed this evening. The main colour in this photo has not come out true to life, but you get the idea! This is the full length version in Size 18. There are 20 sizes, UK4 to UK42, and two length options for each.

Once the body is done, there are the sleeves to calculate and the stitch counts for the button band. Then it’s a case of finishing the knitting, blocking and getting the pattern to the tech editor.

I don’t think the pattern will be ready for my first show next year (Wool-in Garden City in January), but it should definitely be printed and available for the second one (East Anglia Yarn Festival in March)! I’ll tell you more about upcoming shows soon.

Both pairs of socks I’m knitting are growing. Sue’s socks have a completed gusset on the first foot and it’s just plain knitting for 30 rounds now until I get to the toe. Good TV knitting.

This extra pair of Bodelwyddan socks have a nearly completed gusset as well. These are Large, reducing down to Medium (4th size to 3rd size).

You might be able to see where the extra decreases are positioned near the needle. This is so the decreases don’t just continue from the main gusset and go underneath the foot, which could be uncomfortable.

We finally had the first part of the Twisted Workshop last Thursday at Yarn O’clock (postponed because I was ill). Everyone did really well, learning so many new skills and techniques that I think their heads were truly mashed by the end of the evening. The yarn we are using for the workshop is Podale DK and it’s a great choice. We began by getting the knitters to select their two colours to use and using the B&W feature on our phone cameras to help check they really were different in tonal value (one dark and one light).

This was as far as we got by the end of the first session.

The knitters have a little bit of homework to do before the next session completing their current round. Then next time they get to learn the final stitch and then repeat the whole stitch pattern once more to complete the cowl (and reinforce what they learnt last time!).

I bought some yarn this afternoon online. You may remember that my old school-friend treated us to a very special afternoon tea at the Pump Room in Bath where she is part of the piano trio for my 50th birthday. Wanting to celebrate her 50th in a similar way I have offered to knit her any of my designs in the colour of her choice – even black! I knew the choice was likely to be black, as that is the uniform of musicians, and her design choice is Diamonds in the Breeze, a lovely geometric lace shawl in a sport-weight yarn, originally worked using 2 skeins of Juniper Moon Farm Patagonia Organic Merino in a dark green. I’m really looking forward to knitting this design again and enjoyed scouring the internet for an appropriate yarn in a true black

That’s all from me today. Take care, K x

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Getting Organised

Yesterday I woke up with a light bulb idea. My study (smallest bedroom) has been more and more difficult to keep tidy, partly because some of the boxes I need fairly regular access to were awkwardly positioned and so was some of the shelving.

I thought that if I swapped one of the wooden bookcases with one of the sets of metal shelving many of these issues would be solved. And they were, but getting to that point took a lot of shifting of ‘stuff’; moving everything off one set of shelves and then moving the shelves (all to elsewhere in our bungalow). Then taking everything off the bookcase I was moving (including unplugging and relocating the wifi hub), moving that bookcase, cleaning and hoovering all the spaces revealed in the process and finally, putting everything back together in its new positions.

I’ve only permanently moved one thing elsewhere and disposed of two other smaller items, but it feels much better and I can actually get to my swatches box and all my yarn boxes without having to shift a ton of other stuff first!

It’s not my most ‘instagrammable’ photo, but it’s organised and will really help me keep the rest of the room tidier. The metal shelving on the left was where the wooden bookcase on the right now is.

I was also very grateful that my lovely wife refrained from reminding me she had suggested this set-up when I first bought the second set of metal shelving, until after all the moving, cleaning and reloading of shelves was finished.

We’re halfway through November now, and I took a look at my ‘want to do’ list for the month this morning. It seems that nothing has been checked off! Two of the things are ongoing daily ones (stay hydrated and walk 3km per day), so they won’t be ticked until the end of the month, but I was surprised that nothing else has been either. But then I remembered that I started the month with a terrible cold that lingered to the end of the first week, and I also checked my other list of ‘need to do’ things and saw that the majority of those have been achieved.

I have had to add an item to the ‘need to do’ list as well – get the front passenger car door fixed. Last Friday it decided to stop opening, even though the car was not locked. And, of course, it was raining. Sue is now having to travel in the back until next week when I have an appointment to see if the clever car people can fix it. Perhaps I should start practising ‘taxi’ style conversations?

On the knitting side I have nearly completed the magazine piece I am working on – it will be published in May next year (so I can’t show it to you, but it’s very pretty and in three colours of cotton).

Part 2 of Barragán Shawl – the knitalong shawl being published by The Knitter – will be finished tomorrow. Part 3 will be out in the next issue on November 29th. The stitches on the bottom left are live stitches on a silicon stitch holder cord – Part 3 will be worked off both sides of the shawl, just as Part 2 has been.

I am knitting another pair of Bodelwyddan socks. These are a Zauberball yarn, but have a much longer colour repeat than others I’ve used. I rather like it! I’m hoping I’ll be able to work it so the second sock matches the first more or less in colour, starting with grey to teal and ending with pink on the foot.

…and Sue’s socks have seen a little progress too – these are on my ‘want to do’ list. The trouble is “Knit Sue’s socks” is rather vague. I should have carried on with the SMART targets and specified something like ‘Complete one sock’.

I haven’t done any more on my adult version of Honeybun in the past week or so, but I’ll return to that tomorrow.

For the past several months my embroidery of Mum’s photo has been on my list of things to do, but it has lain untouched. I’m trying to work out why. I know I will be pleased with it when it is finally done – I just need to work out what is stopping me and how to get past it. I’ve put so much time into the embroidery that I don’t want to just abandon it, but it is incredibly tiny and I think I used too many colours when I converted the photo into a chart, so it’s quite hard to follow. I might ask Sue to practice her coaching skills on me for this one!

On Sunday I sang in a service for the first time in years. I really enjoyed it and everyone was really friendly and welcoming – and we all coped well with the semi darkness as there was a total power cut of half the street just before the service! I’ll be singing in their advent carol service as well on Sunday 3rd December. It’s at 6.30pm at St Mary Without-the-Walls, Handbridge, Chester, if anyone fancies coming. The ‘Without-the-Walls’ part of the name doesn’t mean the church has no walls, just that it’s outside (without as opposed to within) the city walls.

There are still a couple of spaces available in the Twisted workshop at Yarn O’clock. Part One is this Thursday (16th) and Part Two is November 30th. Full details can be found here. You can see all three versions of the cowl layered up on Dolly the dress form in the picture of the ‘great reorganisation’.

That’s all from me today. Stay warm and dry and out of the wind if you can, and I hope you can do some stuff that makes you happy. Kx

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Dw i ddim yn rhugl…

…yn Gymraeg, ond dw i’n dysgu! (I am not fluent in Welsh, but I am learning!)

Yesterday I hit a big milestone in my Duolingo progress – a 365 day streak! That means I’ve been learning Welsh for a whole year. Some days it’s only a quick 3-minute lesson, but that’s balanced with days where I focus for quite some time.

I am still really enjoying it and that is from someone who thought they weren’t that good at languages. I ‘did’ French and German at school to GCSE and got As in both, but it was never something I actually enjoyed – and I certainly wouldn’t have practised every single day for a year by choice!

But I’m motivated. I want to understand the adverts and signs around us when we’re out. I want to be able to watch S4C and listen to Radio Cymru! I want to read stories in Welsh, and continue to find relevant Welsh things for knitting inspiration and pattern names.

Living in Wales all signs and official communications are bilingual. It was quite funny when I bought my new car as my V5, being an official document, was bilingual, and the chap doing the hand-over had to keep turning it over to find the English sections.

So, I’m quite proud of my one-year achievement. It doesn’t say anything about how much I’ve learnt or how ‘rhugl’ (fluent) I’m getting, but it does say quite a bit about the importance of regular practice.

When you’re learning anything new, you need to keep doing it, over and over. That’s one of the reasons that my absolute beginner’s workshop sends knitters away with a project bag, needles, more wool and more stuffing and the pattern they’ve just used, so they can make more little creatures. If they were to just borrow the needles during the workshop and only have enough yarn to make the one creature in the workshop, they would need a lot of extra motivation to then go out and buy the materials to knit more. But if they’ve taken everything home with them and it’s right there? Making it easy for people to practice and repeat the new motions of knitting helps them to become fluent knitters. Just like Duolingo makes it easy for me to practise Welsh every day.

Tying in with this idea of practising new skills to help embed them through repetition, I’m going to be linking upcoming workshops with relevant patterns of mine. I’ll take the samples with me to the workshops along with copies of the printed patterns and talk about them on social media in the lead-up to the workshops. Some of my designs even came about as a result of developing workshops!

For example, Jodie Scarf was designed from the three slip stitch patterns I teach in my slip stitch workshop, and Small Acts came from the swatch I created for my Knitting Cables workshop.

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I had been hoping to be well enough last Thursday to teach the first part of Twisted (the 2-part moebius brioche cowl workshop at Yarn O’clock), but unfortunately my cold had other ideas, so it has all been moved back two weeks. Part 1 of Twisted is now on 16th November and Part 2 is on 30th November. So, you still have time to book if you’re interested in learning this combination of techniques (ring Anne at Yarn O’clock on 01352 218082).

This is an unusual one to tie other designs in with, as it’s the only moebius brioche or even brioche-in-the-round design I have so far, but I do have two other moebius designs which folk may well be interested in, and I have plenty of brioche designs that are worked flat!

Coming up in December I will be running my Knitting Cables workshop on Dec 6th and Introduction to Lace Knitting on Dec 13th, both at Shaz’s Shabby Chic in Buckley.

The flyers say that the skills needed for each workshop are to be able to knit, purl, cast-on and cast-off, and that really is it. Everything else is taught during the workshop. So, if you’d like to develop your knitting skills and become more fluent in the language of knitting – now’s your chance!

And, by the way – Branwen is out now as a single, self-published pattern!