Tag: Learn something new

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Winter Winds

A middle aged white woman with vibrant blue hair and a purple coat stands on Llandudno Pier with the Great Orme and the sea in the background. Round her neck is a hand knitted shawl, wrapped like a scarf, in bands of gradient turquoise garter stitch and cream garter stitch lace. Her hair is being blown all around by the wind.

We went to Llandudno on Sunday. Our main mission was to photograph Llandudno Promenade. on the pier and also on the promenade. Sue even lay down on the slipway to photograph the shawl flying as I threw it in the air above her. We hadn’t banked on it being *quite* so windy and cold, but we had a lot of fun. We also managed to get lunch at The Cottage Loaf which warmed us up a treat afterwards!

The shaw pattern is now with my tech editor and it should be having a relaunch in the second half of February.

Part Two of Am Byth MKAL was released on Friday and the photo below shows you Part One and a little bit more. I even did a little video to help folk with the 1-5 increase that is used during Part Two. If you are joining in with the MKAL and want some help with that, head to my Free Video Tutorials pages.

Two typos were discovered in the Special Stitches section (not the pattern itself, just the explanation of two of the cables) of Am Byth MKAL Part Two. It’s really annoying when these slip through, but it’s been corrected and the new version has been sent out to all those who signed up for email updates. If you missed it, the instructions affected are 2/2 RPC and 2/1 RPC which had the knits and purls the wrong way round (doh!). They should read as follows:

  • 2/2 RPC          Sl 2 sts to CN and hold at back, k2, p2 from CN
  • 2/1 RPC          Sl 1 st to CN and hold at back, k2, p1 from CN

Do keep sharing progress if you are knitting along with us using the hashtags #AmBythMKAL and #Yomkal.

Yesterday afternoon I spent a couple of hours at Caffi isa, having a cup of tea (which turned into two!) and working on one of my current projects. The time spent away from other distractions was clearly helpful as last night I cast the shawl off and I blocked it this morning! This is Petulia, the third of my shawl designs for RiverKnits. As you can see it’s two colour brioche knitting and it has THE best shape – it’s just SO funky. The lighter coloured yarn is Chimera and the darker yarn is Nene 4-ply – both of which are fabulous yarns to work with.

I’m working on the chart now – brioche charts are always fun – and I’m thinking of including the sketch I used to work from as well as the chart and the written pattern. It’s a little bit like the idea of Stitchmaps, but simplified even more to give just the details of the movement of lines on the right side/light coloured rows (increases, decreases etc).

Keep an eye out for Petulia, as this shawl will hopefully be coming out in the next few months (once the charts, pattern, tech editing and photography are done).

The reason for my being at Caffi isa yesterday was so that anyone who was interested in Knitting for Beginners classes could come and have a chat with me or even have a mini taster session to see if they were interested. Actually, the one person who did come (hi Bev!) wanted to ask advice about picking up for thumbs on mitts and gloves. She’d seen my announcement that I’d be there on social media and thought she’d see if I had a spare five minutes. Well, I certainly did! Hence the second cup of tea and a lovely chat. I’m hoping to get some bookings in the next couple of days, otherwise I’ll probably need to postpone. Anyone can book a place by emailing me at kathandrewsdesigns@icloud.com or sending me a message on Facebook or Instagram.

My Sealy MacWheely fibre is now fully fledged yarn, skeined, washed and dried. I think it looks fantastic, even though there are occasional places in the yarn where the ply isn’t quite as even as you might wish for – but it is hand-spun, so it’s not meant to look the same as commercially spun yarn, is it?

Now I just need to decide which fibre I’m going to spin next!

I know I showed you this embroidery last week, but I’ve actually managed to make quite a lot of progress with it and have found the right angle for the photograph to show the stitches I’ve been doing! I’ve been working on the white and very pale beige stitches (beige currently on the needle here). If it wasn’t for the daylight magnifying lamp I wouldn’t have a hope, but these colours are (whisper it) nearly done and it *should* be a little bit easier with darker/brighter threads.

I shall be taking this with me tomorrow to Mum’s so she can see it in person, along with the current issue of The Knitter (my design is on the cover, did I mention that!?), and my Am Byth. I should probably take my socks in progress too as they are not going to finish themselves! I’m only there until Friday and there will be a lot of other things to do, but I don’t want to get caught out again like I was that other time, when I only took one project and finished it the first evening I was there!

I also made blackcurrant jam this week – but I forgot to photograph it. It’s VERY good, even though the blackcurrants had been in the freezer since July 2021…

Anyway, that’s all from me for now. Take care, stay warm and do some stuff that makes you happy this week. K x

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Slowly Does It

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Antici…pation!

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

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

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

Stacked Stitches Samples

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

Fox Paws close-up (design by Xandy Peters)

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

This is what they will be making:

Moebius Headband

which on a larger scale can become this cowl:

Striped Moebius Cowl

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

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

But in use they look like this!

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

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

Cleo on the Nevern Throw Expansion Pack

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take care one and all, K x

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Summer Rain

A blue knitted lace swatch pinned out on a purple foam mat.

The past couple of days have been something else weather-wise and I’ve been hunkered down in the house with the curtains and windows closed. I did walk to the new bakers on Monday morning. I was out of the house for 15 minutes around 9am. By late Monday afternoon, my forearm was hot and red – I could hardly believe I’d been sunburnt at that time in the morning in such a short space of time, but I had!

The wind starting getting up yesterday afternoon, but it was still around 34 Celsius outside and 27 in the house. This morning was a different matter though. There was a lively breeze still and the air was cool and more breathable than it has been for days. And then – it rained! Good steady rain that lasted for over an hour. It might even help our courgettes grow.

All of this is a long way of saying, ‘this week’s blog post is a day late because it was too hot yesterday to think/write’. If you follow me on social media you will have seen my little post giving a heads up on it, along with the rescued roses. The roses were gifted to my lovely wife, but with the heat they had all drooped within less than 24 hours. Mum’s wonderful suggestion was to cut the stems off and float them in a bowl of water. It works beautifully.

Lots of woolly things have been coming to fruition this week (as well as the gooseberries being harvested and the red and blackcurrants being ready to be harvested).

My new online course, Introduction to Lace Knitting, is now live on Craftucation! The course is £40, for which you get lifetime access to the four hours of course videos, downloadable materials, including a pdf of the full video transcripts with still photos and access to the student forums (where you can ask questions of me and other students). There’s lots more information on the course when you click on the link or the image above.

I have finished and cast off the second RiverKnits shawl, the one using the rainbow minis of Nene 4-ply. This yarn is gorgeous; it’s 100% Bluefaced Leicester Wool, the colours are mesmerising and it blocks like a dream! The pattern is all typed up and has gone to the tech editor. So, there should be two new designs coming out in September with RiverKnits yarns! RiverKnits will have a 6-month exclusivity period on them, so you’ll be able to buy the pattern (or kit!) directly from them only to start with. After this initial period I’ll be selling the pattern as well.

I’ve also finished knitting and typing up the pattern that will be launched at the Pop-Up Wool Show in Port Sunlight on August 20th.

It’s an advent calendar of 24 mini socks (12 pairs) made with WYS ColourLab DK, using a mix of their solid and Zandra Rhodes shades and the pattern also includes a bonus Day 25 larger sock pattern – if you’re feeling particularly generous to the recipient! It would also be a great stash busting pattern.

I will have kits in two different colourways as well as the pattern on its own. The mini socks are big enough to hold all sorts of little treats – even those small little skeins of yarn that many dyers or yarn shops create now!

Why sell an advent calendar pattern in August? Well, with 24 little socks to knit before Dec 1st, I need to allow knitters plenty of time to create the calendar so it can be filled! There are 14 weeks between August 20th and December 1st, so you could knit one or two socks per week and you’ll be on schedule. (I knitted six on Monday…!)

There are many ends now to weave in and hanging loops to sew on, but I held off from doing that until they were all complete so I knew how much yarn the pattern needed. Once I’ve got all the ends woven in, the loops attached and the socks hanging on their ribbon, I’ll show you the finished article again in all its glory.

I definitely couldn’t have concentrated long enough yesterday to tell you about all of these things coherently! I hope the weather is bearable where you are. Take care and stay hydrated. K x

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And, breathe…

Last week I finished by promising to tell you about the spinning and baking I’ve been doing, as well as how the workshops went and all about next month’s knit-a-long!

Let’s start with the workshops. It was probably the longest amount of time I had (a) been on my feet and (b) spoken for, in over three and a half years. In other words, since I left the classroom!

Five hours of workshops went SO fast. Not just for me, but also for the lovely knitters who were there. In both the morning and afternoon sessions phrases such as “It’s not that time already, is it?!”, “I’ve never known two and a half hours go so quickly” and “Really? Only 10 minutes left? No!” could be heard. (Of course, because we were all so focused I completely missed the opportunity to take any photographs of their progress. Must do better next time!).

Lots was learnt, including the magic that is mattress stitch as part of the Finishing Techniques workshop. I love seeing the faces of knitters during this process. Most don’t believe they won’t be able to see the lime green yarn they are seaming their grey squares with, and when it proves to be true, it’s just a delight. Also we unpicked why different types of decrease are used and the importance of mirrored decreases to make your project look balanced.

The Introduction to Sock Knitting in the afternoon went even faster than I had anticipated, and everyone turned a heel successfully. I had an email yesterday from one of the attendees that made me so happy and I’m going to share part of it with you (with her permission):

“Thanks a million for all your guidance on Saturday. Just learning to knit on 4 needles was great, but to become a wool engineer apprentice and turn a heel was brilliant!”

Yvonne

We didn’t manage to get the graft done at the toe, however, so I promised to record a video showing how this is done and I have now uploaded this to my social media platforms. I wanted to get this up as soon as I could for my workshop attendees, but now I also need to add closed captions to the video.

This is the third little techniques video I have recorded and put on Facebook etc and this morning it occurred to me that they should really be on my website too. So, the Knitting Tuition page now has a new section: Free Video Tutorials! I’ll get the captions done on the toe graft video before uploading that one, but there are two others you can have a look at already. It will give you a little flavour of my Craftucation courses as well (though none of the videos are duplicated from there).

A still shot from a short knitting techniques video. My hands are holding needles and yarn with a multicoloured shawl in progress underneath them. The knitting is resting on a wooden desk with a coaster partly in view to the left.

Another addition to the website today is a section for next month’s Knit-A-Long! We are knitting Calon Cariad together, a lovely shawl whose name means ‘The Heart of Love’. We begin on February 11th with a Cast-On Party on Zoom at 7pm!! We’ll run the KAL over five weeks and there will be prizes 🎁. If you want to join in, the click ‘going’ on the KAL event and/or the KAL Cast-on Party event on my Facebook page, or just send me a message! All the details are here.

There are even kits available – I’m especially fond of the Erika Knight Wool Local which knits up beautifully in this pattern.

In other news, I have finished the scarf sample for Small Acts and that just needs blocking and photographing properly. I’m aiming to get the pattern out by the weekend. If you’re a subscriber look out for an extra (short) email with a discount code!

A large mid-indigo blue scarf lies in a heap on an oatmeal coloured carpet. There are two large mirrored cables running up the centre, flanked by two small mirrored cables at the sides. In between the cables are columns of moss stitch and the scarf has a narrow garter stitch edging.

Spinning is fun at the moment and I have starting on my second batch of Colours of Cambria fibre (this colour way is ‘Coast’). I wanted to create fairly regular repeats of the colours but I am not confident at judging the quantity when dividing the fibre into sections, so I came up with another approach. I set a timer on my phone for 15 minutes. I spin one colour from the sequence during that time and when the timer goes off, I stop and break that colour, ready to start with the next one when I spin again. Not only is this hopefully going to give me some good stripes/blocks of colour in the yarn, it also encourages me to spin more on a daily basis, even when I am busy, as 15 minutes can usually be slotted in somewhere!

An overhead shot of a bobbin on the spinning wheel. There is some soft green fibre at the bottom of the image waiting to be spun next. On the bobbin can be seen two shades of blue, a golden yellow and a little of the green. The yarn is spun quite finely.

I made the sourdough bagels that I have been wanting to try for a while. They weren’t as hard as I had anticipated, but I do think I over-baked them a little. It was a good taste, and nicely chewy, but a little too crunchy/firm on the outside. Next time, check five minutes sooner!

Eight uncooked bagels sit on a dark grey baking sheet waiting to be boiled before baking.
Cooked bagels on a cooling rack with the bamboo kitchen worktop visible behind. Four bagels are fully visible, with two partially shown on the left and one on the right. They are dark golden brown in colour with lighter centres.

We even managed to squeeze in a visit to the Little Orme where we saw the largest group of Seals I’ve ever seen there. They looked so happy and relaxed on the beach and were chatting away to each other quite a lot! It made us relax too, and even though there were quite a few people up there on Sunday (some even had telephoto lenses and tripods for their cameras, so the word about the seals must have got about), it was really peaceful. We sat on a bench and ate a little homemade picnic, all wrapped up against the wind and it was lovely. The perfect balance to the ‘business’ of the day before.

A pebble beach covered with 30-40 seals as well as some larger stones and big rocks. Seen from the cliff edge above with a bit of the sea-glass coloured sea visible on the right and the cliff wall on the far side of beach showing at the top of the picture.

Take care, stay warm and do more of what makes you happy, K x

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Getting Ready

January is a strange month. It seems to either be very, very grey and dark, or bright blue skies and freezing cold.

I was fooled earlier today by the amount of sunshine and went into Mold without a coat or hat, just my large Into the Vortex shawl wrapped several times round my neck. Although this foolishness has left me with a cold head, it was quite useful as one of the things I was doing was having a look at the venue for Saturday’s workshops and it let me know that thermals are the order of the day. I’ve been there for events before, but never when running one and needing to know things like where the light (and heat) switches are and whether the windows open. Spoiler – of course they don’t, it’s a listed church hall, with leaded church windows! It’s a great space – huge and light with lots of tables and very comfortable chairs.

Photo © David Dixon

The workshops are both fully booked now and everything is prepped and ready. The swatches have been blocked. The mini sock samples have been made (one each to examine and compare with the workshop members’ own work as they go, rather than passing one round as we would have done in the ‘before times’). The bottles of water and wrapped biscuits have been bought, along with anti-viral wipes for the tables and gel for hands.

And I have a new toy! A small whiteboard on a ring of casters that takes a flip chart on it as well. This will be far better than me drawing on a scrap of paper that not everyone around the table can see properly and, sometimes, the teacher in me needs to literally illustrate a point!

Last week I was hoping to have finished my Water Dragon Shawl by now. However, the yarn for my scarf sample of Small Acts arrived shortly after writing the blog, and I needed to get cracking with knitting that up. It’s nearly done and will be ready for the pattern release at the end of the month.

I’ve also been spinning and baking more, but I’ll tell you all about that next week, along with how the workshops went and all about next month’s knit-a-long!

Take care, stay warm and do more of what makes you happy, K x

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Mine!

This has rapidly turned into a week of finishing things.

On Saturday I plied the yarn I’ve been spinning, I skeined it on Sunday and washed it on Monday. Today it is dry and it is glorious! It’s Cambrian Wool which uses fleece from Welsh Mules. These are a cross between Welsh Mountain sheep and Blue Faced Leicester. The back of the packet the fibre came in says; “These sheep produce wool with beautiful sheen and incredible bounce and a long staple length”. The fibre came in five 20g coils, each of a different colour and collectively named ‘Mine’, from Hilltop Cloud. The colours really remind me of a trip to Parys Mountain a few years ago.

I have the skein next to me as I write and I can’t stop looking at it. The long staple means that it’s fairly easy to spin without the fibre vanishing out of your hands and it does have the most incredible sheen and is SO squishy. I think it’s about a DK weight, which is what I was aiming for, so I am a happy spinner here. 😊

Also finished is the Percy Pig jigsaw that I was given for Christmas. It’s the smallest of the jigsaws at 500 pieces, but I think was far harder than any of the 1000 piece ones will prove to be. I was convinced I’d made a mistake in it earlier on as I just couldn’t find one particular piece, but once I had placed all the pieces that were laid out on the table, that gap was still there! Perhaps there was a piece missing? I’d checked the floor already. I even swept my arm (carefully) underneath the green felt cloth the jigsaw was on in case it had become caught on the fabric as I unrolled the jigsaw. But no. And then I found it! It was upside down (of course) and wedged underneath a wooden coaster on the tablecloth. It was very satisfying to put that last piece in. I’ve left the puzzle complete until my lovely wife comes home, partly so she can see it and partly so I can be a little bit proud of my perseverance every time I go into the kitchen.

ALSO finished today… drumroll please…is the second secret project! It needs washing and blocking, but the actual construction is DONE, including a graft. I’m really pleased with it and I hope the magazine will be too. The next step is to block it, measure it, finish typing up the pattern and contact the mag to see if they want it now or if I should hold on to it until nearer the deadline (which is April). Unfortunately I can’t share pics with you yet, but it is lovely, though I say it myself.

Finally, I have finished the squares for the (full) Finishing Techniques workshop. Fourteen of them, two each for the six class members and two for me, all ready to be seamed and have stitches picked up from. They are currently blocking in the lounge. That’s seven hours work there!

There are still a few spaces on the Introduction to Sock Knitting workshop on the afternoon of Jan 22nd if you are near Mold at all that day.

A not-yet-finished thing that has nevertheless been making progress is one of my projects from Fasten Off YAL, the Water Dragon Shawl by Red and the Wolf Designs. I knitted three rows last night. That doesn’t sound like much, does it? But each row is now 1121 stitches long and takes about an hour. There are 14 rows left. I’m hoping to get it finished by the end of this week. Because it is so long I’m photographing it with the needle looped in a coil, showing all 70 stitch markers in use. Some things I knit as gifts (there’s one of those in progress at the moment too), and some things I knit for myself – this one is definitely one of the latter – it’s mine!

The blue of the yarn isn’t showing up quite right today, but that might be the light – it’s very sunny! In fact, I’m now going for a quick walk to make the most of it.

I hope you have a good week, enjoy the sunshine if you get some and keep doing what makes you happy.

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It’s a Good Day

My Little Orme Cowl was published last Friday on all the platforms I use; here/Payhip, Lovecrafts and Ravelry – be wary of Rav if you have any visual sensitivity, it’s caused lots of problems since the redesign in June. I’ve done the calculations for cast-on numbers for the three sizes of hat and the charts are also done. I don’t have a deadline for getting the hat out there, but it would be nice to finish the collection sooner rather than later. However, something rather exciting has also come up. 😊

I had some great news yesterday. It was particularly pleasing as I had pretty much decided I wasn’t going to get a ‘yes’, but I did! I had a design submission accepted for a UK knitting magazine later in the year. It will be published in October, which sounds like ages away, but there’s so much to happen before then.

The deadline is June 1st. Between then and publication it will be checked by technical editors, the pattern will be laid out by professional magazine people and the garment will be photographed to its best advantage. Any queries will come back to me to answer and I will make any corrections to the pattern and send it back to be re-checked.

Between now and June 1st is even more exciting! I have put in my yarn support request and should get notice of what yarn I will be using (and then receive it) within a couple of weeks. See how time is ticking already? During that ‘wait’ time I can do some maths. Maths, you say? Why, yes, there are a lot of numbers involved in designing a garment in nine sizes, especially when motifs are involved. I know what size I’m required to knit and although it will be too small for me to wear afterwards, it will certainly be quicker to make than a ‘me-sized’ one. I’m sure it will fit a friend!

So, there’s writing the pattern, calculating the numbers for the different sizes (this is called grading), typing the pattern up according to the magazine’s style sheet (they all have their own particular ways of doing things), knitting the design and posting it to the magazine’s office. Suddenly June 1st seems awfully near.

This is when I become ever more grateful to have my journal. One of my tasks for today is mapping out all the different elements I need to do and to tie in all the other plates that I’m determined to keep spinning as well.

I have now successfully recorded one section of An Introduction to Lace Knitting, my third Craftucation course, (Knitting for Beginners 1 and Knitting for Beginners 2 are here) and I have finalised (and slightly simplified) my plans for the main project involved, as well as knitting a sample version of it. My initial plan was to get this published by the end of April and I would still like to achieve this, but as a self-imposed deadline, there can be flexibility.

Happy dance for being busy – especially with some of them being things that will/could pay! It’s a really good incentive to cut back on the online scrabble too.

The sourdough baking is going quite well, incidentally. There are some sesame-topped buns proving in the kitchen right now. One of the benefits of this type of baking is there are decent stretches of time in between stages so they can be used as blocks of knitting, planning, writing or recording time. And then there’s something lovely to eat at the end of it – with any luck.

I’ve only spun once in the past week, but I do intend to keep going with that as well. I think that if I can get into the habit of little and often with it there will be more improvement than doing an hour once a week.

Something will probably have to give at some point and it will undoubtedly be the dusting that goes first! I’ll let you know. 😉

Keep knitting / doing what makes you happy and stay safe, K x

P.S. It’s a Good Day sung by Peggy Lee is a great song and is quite likely to get your feet tapping.