Tag: Makers gonna make

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Community

Progress has been made on the sock this week with the majority of the gusset decreases completed. This is less progress than you might expect in a week, but that is partly because I am just over halfway through knitting (and writing the pattern for) the design I mentioned in last week’s post.

My spreadsheet for that design is large, but the pattern is (I think) nicely concise, without including any of those phrases that annoy me so much and are often used when a publication needs to save space, such as “Work as for Left side, reversing shaping”. I know this is a common phrase, but it relies on a certain level of knowledge and skill from the knitter to be able to do that, which a less experienced knitter might not have, and therefore can potentially exclude people from making the design. It is important to me that my patterns include the full instructions required and don’t make you guess what you need to do. Inclusivity in pattern writing is about more than the size range!

Some exciting news is that my brioche workshop at the North West Winter Wool Festival in Blackpool next month (Saturday 14th Feb) has sold out! There are still 8 spaces on the moebius knitting workshop on Sunday 15th Feb, so if you are going to that event and would like to learn how to knit what looks like a totally impossible shape, you can!

Also, a reminder that if you are going to that show, please do get an advance ticket as you will then get a code to download the Seaside Winter Cosy pattern for FREE!

The floorplan for the North West Winter Wool Festival has just been released too – which makes everything seem much more real! We will be on B9 which is just by the door, so you can’t miss us! If I’m not on the stand in the afternoon it’ll be because I’m teaching, but my lovely wife Sue will be there to help you.

After two weeks of lots of extra work, complete with the novelty of having colleagues again (with the invigilation for mocks), next week will feel a little quiet I think. I do enjoy working at home, by and for myself, but there is really something to be said for that 10 minute chat in the staff room before everyone cracks on with the next part of the day. Even if it’s just about something very ordinary. Actually, during the past week or so, I have been able to enjoy that moment of time much more than when I was teaching full time as, in this role, I have no last minute planning/marking/photocopying/furniture rearrangement etc to do, and I even have an allotted starting time, which never existed in my previous school role.

Tomorrow I am going to the social evening at Yarn O’clock, which I haven’t been able to do for quite some time as it has usually clashed with other commitments. I’m really looking forward to it and am planning to take the sock, with the intention of getting onto the foot during the evening. So, hopefully there will be more progress to see next week – maybe even a completed sock, who knows?!

By the way, no one commented on last week’s post for the opportunity to win some free tickets to the new TexStyle show in Manchester, so I am extending the opportunity into this week as well with the draw now scheduled for Friday 30th January. Don’t be shy if you’d like to go and you’d like a pair of free tickets (so you can take a friend too)!

TexStyle is a fibre AND textile event with a massive range of crafts represented. Just see this list below which is taken from the TexStyle website to give you some idea:

  • Basketry
  • Crochet and hooking
  • Cross stitch
  • Demonstrations
  • Dyeing
  • Felting
  • Finished items
  • Gallery display
  • Home decor
  • Knitting
  • Lace, embroidery and blackwork
  • Macrame
  • Quilting
  • Sewing
  • Spinning
  • Stationery
  • Tufting
  • Upholstery
  • Weaving

There seems to be a bit of a community theme in what I have been thinking and writing about today – whether that is of the knitting/crafting community or a community of colleagues engaged in the same work. I hope you have a week with some positive connections in one or more of your communities, and that you get a chance to do something that makes you happy. Take care, K x

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Advent – a time of waiting

On Sunday I sang at the Advent carol service at the church where I am a member of the choir. There was quite a bit of plainchant (we did the Palestrina Advent Responsory and the ‘Great O Antiphons’ as well as the much more modern The Lamb by Taverner and some good solid advent hymns. Before the service began the rector said there were some children in the congregation in Christmas jumpers and that perhaps they thought they were going to get Christmas carols rather than Advent carols. They are very different! Advent is a time of waiting and anticipation.

A tradition here is that we put our Christmas tree up on Advent Sunday, so it is now in pride of place in the lounge, complete with lots of decorations. Some are new, some are as old as I am. Some are homemade and some are bought. There are even a couple of glass baubles she and Dad bought when they were first married. Putting the tree up and decorating it (two separate things!) always takes much longer than we expect, perhaps because it also involves moving furniture to other rooms in order to make room for the tree! We now have an armchair in the kitchen and a rocking chair in the front room where I teach. The other result of having put the Christmas tree up, is that I know realise I will have to wait until it comes down again (on January 6th) to block my 4ply What Do Points Make? as there simply isn’t enough floorspace anywhere at the moment. Another example of Advent being a time of waiting and anticipation, perhaps!?

Later today I will be getting my sewing machine out as I have some mending to do. A couple of months ago we were re-arranging the front room ready for piano lessons and I caught the pocket of one of my smocks under the radiator. I have been meaning to mend it ever since.

And then in the past couple of weeks I have discovered that two of my skirts are going on a seam and one of my favourite dresses has a hole developing so I really need to get these things fixed.

Of course, these are all garments from The Slow Wardrobe and I have had them for years (I think you can tell that in the case of the purple skirt), but I want to keep them going for several more years. It’s all the more important as Linda has moved to France and isn’t currently selling any new clothes! I really can’t imagine wearing anything else on a day to day basis. I can’t decide at the moment whether to patch the dress or try to darn it. Any suggestions welcome!

Making Tracks is now out in issue 222 of The Knitter! It looks great on the model.

This is the jumper I was writing about earlier in the year where it took me three tries to get the sleeves exactly the way I wanted them. The yarn quantities are quite large because it was designed as a man’s jumper and therefore the body and sleeves are longer than might be expected in a woman’s garment. As long as you have completed all the sleeve increases you can make the sleeves the length *you* want them to be. The same goes for the body. When I republish this as an individual pattern in six months I think I will add in additional length measurements for body and sleeves for female sizing charts as well, and include yarn quantities if following these length measurements.

The knitted gnome is complete and will be delivered to his new home at the end of the week. I’m very pleased with how it turned out! I think I will make one for us to keep as well, maybe reversing the colours.

I completed my tech editing course last week!

As well as this badge I have a certificate and now I just need some people who would like me to edit their knitting patterns!

Our final yarn show of the year is happening soon! On Saturday December 13th we will be at Yuletide Yarnies at Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings. There will be mince pies and live music too! £5 for advance tickets bought online or £7.50 on the door.

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Making and Baking

This weekend I did some baking for the first time in absolutely ages. I made biscuits that are the simplest things ever and they are lovely. The recipe suggested dividing the mixture into three and adding chocolate chips, lemon zest and almonds to get a trio of different flavours, but we just had them plain as we didn’t have any of those extra ingredients, but we did have marg that needed using up as it was near it’s date, flour, sugar and semolina! You can find the recipe here.

I have finally finished my 4-ply version of What Do Points Make?! I decided to make the fourth colour match on each side to be consistent with what I’d done with each of the other colour changes. I used hardly any of the fourth colour, you can see it on the top outer corners – in fact that yarn still weighed over 100g once I’d finished!

The next step is blocking it and I will do that this week – it takes up quite a lot of space on the floor as I will be pinning it out in the shape in the photo above, unless I decide to fold the fronts over while it’s blocking as in the photo below, but then it has double thickness so takes longer to dry.

I had to cancel and postpone a few things last week as my cold took its course, but I’m much better now and looking forward to teaching moebius knitting tomorrow night!

I think I mentioned that I will be teaching both brioche knitting and moebius knitting at the North West Winter Wool Festival in Blackpool next February. The workshops are now available to book and the times are as follows:

  • Two-Colour Brioche Knitting: Saturday 14th February 2026, 1.30-3.30pm (2 hours), £25 including yarn and handouts
  • Moebius Knitting: Sunday 15th February 2026, 1-3.30pm (2.5 hours), £36 including needles, yarn and handouts

I will also add links to these on my Events page of the website. Do remember also that when you book an advance ticket for the North West Winter Wool Festival you will get a code to download the Seaside Winter Cosy hot water bottle cover knitting pattern for free! It can be made in four colours of DK yarn. Two different yarn brands are suggested, but you can use any brand you prefer and there are two finishing option, either to add poppers/press-studs or to seam the bottom edge closed.

When I was invited to take part in Stollen & Wolle once again this year, November 16th seemed a very long way off, but it’s happening in less than 3 weeks! The RiverKnits studio is in a lovely setting in Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire, and last year’s event was super. This year there are eight vendors and the renowned Susan Crawford is a guest speaker, which is even more exciting! If you can get to that area of the country on November 16th I would highly recommend it. Tickets are only £5 with under 16s and carers attending for free, and the lovely RiverKnits folk have requested that you book in advance if you can as it helps their caterers to know how many people to expect.

I had a chance to get right into my baskets in the lounge this week and found a crochet project that had been languishing there for about two years – using yarn that had been in my stash for far longer! I’d done three different squares, trying out a couple of patterns from a book and a pattern I’d found online and left it at that. Now I’ve chosen my favourite one and I’m using it as the centre of what should become a huge granny square. I’ve now had the sense to label the balls of yarn with numbers so I’m not squinting at them in the lamplight trying to work out which shade come next!

That’s all from me for today. What have you been making recently? Take care and I hope you get the chance to do something that makes you happy this week. K x

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A Slice of Lime?

I’ve been working on an updated version of Elinor Hap Shawl (one of the reasons I’ve been knitting a new sample of it) and it was fascinating to see how I used to write things. It’s funny how when you go to update an old pattern you suddenly notice how your standard ‘house style’ has gradually changed over the past six years! I’m now so used to writing patterns with capital letters for a lot of the instructions (for example: K2, K2tog, yo, K3, yo, SSK), that seeing it all in lower case apart from the first instruction feels strange (that previous example would be: K2, k2tog, yo, k3, yo, ssk). It’s a fairly niche thing to be interested in, but that might be why I’ve signed up for an introduction to tech editing in October!

We took lots of photos of Elinor Hap Shawl yesterday and I’ve added some of those to the updated version of the pattern, as well as tweaking a few things that needed to be phrased better. The updated version of the pattern will be live very soon – probably tomorrow! By the way, isn’t the colour incredible?! The colour is called A Slice of Lime and it’s dyed by Ripples Crafts. It’s the finest yarn I’ve ever used at 1200m per 100g and the shawl uses approx 2000m (yes, 2km!) of yarn, yet it only weighs about 165g!

Over the weekend we also made a video of the process of blocking the shawl on the hap stretcher and also one of putting the hap stretcher together. The versions of the videos on social media came out really small for some reason. I sped them up in iMovie so they each last just over 1 minute. In reality it was about 20 minutes for each part of the process. I figured no-one wanted to see that! I had to remove the sound anyway as there was a lot of background noise and I wasn’t saying anything particularly useful! It was more along the lines of “Oh heck, we’ve put this piece on upside down…” or other words to that effect!

Here are the videos in case you missed them:

We also took lots of photos of Draig y mor (that’s Sea Dragon in Welsh, there should be a circumflex on the ‘o’, but I can’t work out how to do that in WordPress), including one of it flying in the air and it really does look like a flying dragon!! This new design is currently with my tech editor and I’m hoping to get it ready to launch at one of the shows I’m attending in August. The yarn is a gorgeous 100% Tencel DK dyed by Penny Stitch Craft.

See that photo in the middle of the top row? See the big black dot on my head? That’s a massive bumblebee that was playing around. I’ve got a zoomed in shot of it where it seems to be looking right at the camera!

I’ve realised that even with my reactive glasses I find it hard not to close my eyes outside when I’m having my photo taken!

We’ve had rain for the most of today and I am so grateful that I finally picked the blackcurrants yesterday. To be honest, nearly half of them were already on the ground when I got to them and they were so ripe they were falling from the bush as I touched them. So they got picked, picked over, washed, washed again, dried a bit and then frozen. I realised they were so ripe that they would just go off if I didn’t either immediately freeze them or make jam. It was way too hot for jam making, so into the freezer they went. If I’d delayed picking them any longer and left them out in today’s rain they would have been ruined! So, yay to yesterday morning getting up early and picking them before it got too hot. Boo to waking up this morning with a really stiff and sore back… Must be getting old!

I’ve finally started a 4-ply version of What Do Points Make?! I’ve been thinking about doing this for a couple of years now and it’s coming on a treat. I’ll get proper pics to you next week, but for now, here’s the start of it, doing a very good impression of a top-down triangular shawl. I’m using three skeins from a five skein set of gorgeous yarn from LottieKnits. I’ve had it for seven years, so I doubt she’s making the same colourway now, but she still has lots of lovely stuff! Go and have a look!

Right, that’s all from me for this week. Take care, stay cool and do something that makes you happy this week. K x

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Making Movies!

Today whilst awaiting a UPS collection I have been making videos on how to do a provisional cast-on. I also recorded a bit on how not to do one as well!

When I first encountered a pattern that used a provisional cast-on, I thought I just needed to use a different yarn, cast on in my usual way and then change yarn and possibly needle size. Wrong! It’s called provisional because it has to be undone and removed and it’s really hard to remove a regular cast-on. See part two of the video for evidence of this!

Why did I make a video? Because it occurred to me that there are bound to be other knitters who are encountering a provisional cast-on for the first time. Especially if they are knitting Rhiannon Hap Shawl which launched as a single pattern last Friday and it would be helpful for them to see how it works!

I’m only going to upload Part 1 here, because it takes ages to upload and I don’t want to slow down your ability to load the blog page. Both parts of the video will be on my youtube channel later on.

Because it’s taken a while to get the video recorded, add captions and uploaded, today’s blog will be a little shorter!

I have sad news on the broad bean front. I planted six really happy looking plants into the veg patch last week and now there is just one half eaten plant left. The others have been munched away. I have however picked a lot of gooseberries and the blackcurrants and remaining redcurrants are ready to pick as well.

These gooseberries have been top and tailed and are now in the freezer ready for when it is cool enough to enjoy crumble again. There are more gooseberries on the bushes too – I’m just waiting for them to full ripen before picking them.

Maybe spiky plants are the way forward? Something that the slugs and snails won’t dare approach? Although, having said that, the two newest gooseberry bushes had very few leaves left by the time I got to them – caterpillars I think.

It was a busy knitting week last week. I got the rights back to Rhiannon Hap Shawl and launched that on Friday. Thank you to everyone who has bought a copy of the pattern so far!

I posted off the big jumper and emailed the pattern and all ‘associated files’ to the publisher! (Also on Friday!).

I finished the gorgeous Tencel shawl I’ve been working on using yarn dyed by Penny Stitch Craft. I’m going to call it Draig y Môr which is Welsh for ‘Sea Dragon’. I love how the edging shaping works at the point of the shawl and it reminds me of dragon wings and I also love how the stitch pattern of the edging looks like waves and the main yarn colour (although called “Oil Slick” which you perhaps wouldn’t want to find in the sea) looks like the complex colours of the sea. Proper photos will follow soon! As will the pattern, once it’s been formatted and checked thoroughly – note to self: contact tech editor!

And… because I finished all those things I have been able to return to knitting the edging on my new sample of Elinor – another hap shawl! I turned the final corner yesterday and I’m on the final side. Only 40 reps of the edging left to do!!

What have you been up to this week? K x

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A Windy Day

The first Yarnies at the Flaxmill on Saturday was a great success. The organisers (Clare of Wild Field Fibre and Chantelle of Bijoux Events) did a splendid job and we had a really good day. We had the prime spot just inside the entrance and it was a great opportunity to give my new roller banner its first outing. Fortunately, once it was in a large space such as the Dye House at Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings, the banner didn’t seem quite so enormous as it had done at home!

It was a surprisingly windy day on Saturday – it was the first day that the weather began to change and we were glad to have our flasks of tea with us. Not just to drink, but to weigh the legs of the roller banner down and stop it blowing over backwards! See if you can spot them in this video I took just before we opened:

Each of the samples has a new label with a little more information and positioned in a way that makes it easier for folk to access. You would not believe how long it took to do those! Each one was hand stamped with my logo and allowed to dry overnight (I made 2 batches of 50 as I ran out partway through) and then each label was handwritten. But I think it was worth it! Of course, I only did new labels for the samples I took with me on Saturday, so there are still lots more to do!

There were some fabulous vendors at the show, some of whom I see regularly at events and others who I only see occasionally. Our lovely stand neighbour on Saturday was Allium Threads who dyes yarn, fibre and embroidery threads with natural dyes. I’ve seen them at the Pop-Up Wool Show in Port

A wonderful surprise in the morning came from Deb of Dyelution who brought her finished Heart in my Hands Hat to show me. She had knitted it in some of her own hand-dyed yarns, and had it on display with the yarns during the day so visitors could see how the yarns look knitted up. It looks gorgeous!

Another lovely surprise came at the end of the day from Marianne of Penny Stitch Craft who brought over a couple of mini skeins of her 4ply Tencel yarn for me to play and experiment with. What a gift!

I’ve started developing some ideas for a design using her Tencel DK, and I can’t wait to get my current sweater design finished so I can concentrate on it properly!

Speaking of the sweater – both the sleeves now have a full complement of increases! I now ‘just’ have to:

  • knit both sleeves straight to the full length
  • cast off for the saddle shoulder
  • knit the saddle for each sleeve (remembering they are not the same, as half the saddle on each sleeve completes the back neck)
  • block all the pieces
  • seam the pieces together at the shoulders
  • knit the neckband
  • seam the body and sleeves
  • finish the written pattern
  • double check the pattern and the charts
  • and then send it off!

I’m so glad I started this in plenty of time. If anyone ever knits you a sweater, be in no doubt that they love you!

I didn’t actually do any work on the sweater yesterday as I was busy updating my samples and workshop notes for the two workshops I’m teaching tomorrow in Cheadle: Introduction to Sock Knitting and Introduction to Lace Knitting. I knitted one of my mini socks with each section in a different colour to help with understanding the anatomy of a sock, and it was surprising to see that (at this size) the largest section was the gusset (in blue)! By contrast, the heel turn (in green), which creates a lot of the magic of a top-down/heel flap sock, is really tiny!

I quite like the look of the rainbow sock – I might even knit up a full size pair!

Since the weather changed at the weekend, we’ve had lots of much-needed rain. It actually hasn’t stopped today, so I’m hoping that our water butt will be getting replenished a bit. The seedlings in trays have been moved from the garage to the patio and are loving this weather – as are the broad bean seedlings that I sowed directly into the veg patch – I’m just hoping the slugs don’t find them too soon now they are finally growing! Hopefully I will be able to take some pics of the seedlings during the week and show you next Tuesday how they are getting on.

It’s strange to think after three yarn shows in quick succession (Wonderwool, Buxton Wool Gathering and Yarnies at the Flaxmill) that our next one isn’t until August! That will be the North East Wool Show at Newcastle Racecourse. I’m teaching a brioche workshop there and ticket sales for that are made directly through me, so if you’d like to learn how to knit two-colour brioche and will be in the Newcastle area on August 10th, do get in touch!

That’s all for today. I hope you have a good week and manage to do some stuff that makes you smile. Take care, K x

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A Room with a View

We had a lovely weekend at Buxton Wool Gathering and we had the best view of the Pavilion Gardens building from the lounge of the flat we were staying in! The weather was lovely on both days of the show and we even had a chance to soak up the sun with an early lunch before setting up on Friday.

It was so nice to talk to visitors and other vendors about all things yarn and knitting during the weekend and one of the most exciting things was spotting that our first customer of the show was wearing a Marianne Half Hap shawl that she’d made with her own handspun laceweight yarn. It’s stunning!

I’ve also gathered together the top 5 selling patterns from the weekend to share with you. They were:

In joint third place: Gnarly Roots, Nevern Lap Blanket and Nevern Throw:

In second place: Petulia:

And in first place: Lichfield!

Having had such a long run of dry and sunny weather, it was a surprise to wake up to the sound of rain! There wasn’t much this morning, but we’ve had a little more and the broad beans are finally starting to show themselves in the veg patch. The seeds that we started off in seed trays are looking more developed and we may even have some veg of our own to eat later in the year! We’ve been enjoying lots of rhubarb in the meantime though.

Last week I told you about the need to rewrite the sleeve instructions for my current design. I’m now on the third iteration of the sleeves and I’m happy with them. After the second version wasn’t behaving the way I wanted (Tuesday-Wednesday) I decided not to rip it out straight away, but wait and see how the third version went (Thursday onwards) – partly so I could compare the two, rather than just try to remember the previous version! I’m so glad it’s now where I want it to be, and I can just knit away and follow the instructions.

It’s been a while since I did two shows on consecutive weekends and this Saturday sees us at Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings, now an English Heritage property, for Yarnies at the Flaxmill, a new yarn show. It’s a single day even and it will be open from 11-5pm. There will be alpacas too!

Every show leads you to consider what works well and what could be even better, and today I’ve been re-writing lots of sample labels. The new labels will help folk to see more easily what a pattern is knitted in, the variations it has and any extra features such as if it’s reversible! We’re not bringing everything with us to Shrewsbury, so I still have some to do! Some of the patterns and samples will be staying at home but we will still have 44 patterns with us (and all the knitting kits) so there will be plenty of choice!

There are still spaces on the knitting workshops at Sew Woolly in Cheadle next week!

Introduction to Sock Knitting covers knitting a top-down sock, from the cast-on to the toe graft, via the heel turn. Wednesday 28th May, 10am-12.30pm.

Introduction to Lace Knitting teaches you how to include deliberate holes in your knitting! Learn how to use specific decreases to create directional lines and patterns in your knitting and how to follow a written lace pattern and a chart. Wednesday 28th May, 1.30-4pm.

Yarn and handouts are included for both workshops (£35 each). Ring Sew Woolly on 07905 741969 to book a place.

I’m considering offering another online knit along. I’ve done a couple of these – one was for Calon Cariad and another was for any pattern of your choice and they were both great fun, seeing other people’s projects develop and chatting about all sorts of things as we knitted. I’m looking at whether there’s interest for another of these. So, with this in mind, here’s a poll!

That’s all from me for today. Take care and I hope you get a chance to do some stuff that makes you happy during the week.K x

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500 Miles

The East Anglia Yarn Festival was fabulous and I think I enjoyed it even more than last year. I think it’s so nice when you can do an event more than once, as things are more familiar the second time round. I had forgotten quite how far away Norwich is from North Wales – the journey was 250 miles each way, but it was absolutely worth it.

Laura, who organises the show, and her team make the event run really smoothly and the layout makes it easy to find everything you need. It even felt quicker setting up despite doing it on my own. My lovely wife was in a different part of the country on Friday, but made it to Norfolk on Friday evening, ready to help. I even had extra help on hand from an old uni friend who came to the show to support what we’re doing, and quickly said yes to the tentative email of “Would you be able/willing to man the stand during my workshop and be my booth bade if Sue doesn’t make it here by then?”. It was definitely the prospect of being a booth babe that got his attention – he said as much! We had a great chat catching up when I wasn’t teaching, and he and Sue had a little competition while I was teaching over who could be the most successful pattern seller – I think they drew.

It was so lovely to see some of my designs in the wild during the show. Our first customer of the weekend was wearing her Into The Vortex which she had bought the pattern and yarn for at the show last year – and she bought two more patterns on Saturday! I also saw a Tiffany being worn. It’s so lovely when people come back after knitting a design and say, “I loved it and it was easy to follow.” And it’s also really nice when they follow it up with “and now I’m going to buy another/more of your designs”! It makes me feel trusted.

The workshop itself was super. The meeting rooms of the main event space are well lit and really warm. I even had to turn one of the heaters off! I had four students in the class, none of whom had tried two-colour brioche knitting before and they all did really well. This is what they created in two hours – as well as learning lots of new concepts, terminology and tricks to help them get it right!

We had hoped to be wearing our spangly new badges at EAYF, but they didn’t arrive in time. Boo. But they arrived today – hurrah! – so they will get their first outing next month at Wonderwool Wales on April 26-27th. I may even wear mine at the trunk show at Yarn O’clock on Saturday April 12th! Please note that one of the badges does indeed have the job description of ‘Booth Babe’.

One of my plans for March was to finish knitting the border of Elinor Hap Shawl – and I have! I’ve even started the edging and I have done nearly half of one side.

There are a lot of repeats of the edging (208 in total I think), but it is only a 10-row pattern repeat, so it’s quite easy to chalk up half a dozen in an evening. I don’t think I’ll finish the edging this month though, as there was an exciting delivery just before we left for EAYF and there’s another parcel attempting to make it’s way to me as well (which, if it’s what I think it is, is something scrummy from Shetland!) and should be at the local post office for me to collect on Thursday.

It occurred to me that it would be a good idea to remind folk that I also give individual online knitting tuition as well as group workshops. This can be useful if there’s a technique you want to learn and you don’t want to wait until a workshop is advertised or if you think you would fare better in a one-to-one setting than a group one. Individual tuition is currently £25 per hour and can be booked by simply emailing me. I haven’t got as far as setting up an online calendar where you can choose a time slot yet, but it’s on the way.

The Imperial Cowl had a good reception at the weekend. People liked the fact that you could knit it flat or in the round and that there are video links included the pattern too. We sold six copies of the pattern at the show and one online (using the exclusive subscriber discount – did you know I do those for newsletter subscribers?), which may not sound like a lot, but as the pattern had already been downloaded by 127 people from the North West Winter Wool Festival, I think that’s pretty good! That’s over 130 copies of the pattern out in the world and hopefully being used!

This afternoon I had my annual dentist check-up. This involves driving into Chester, which I don’t do nearly as much as I used to when I was teaching full time. All was well and as I walked back to the car park I went past a shop that had a window painted with three words I couldn’t ignore: We Sell Yarn. Despite having been surrounded by yarn all weekend I had to go in, didn’t I? I had a lovely chat to the owner, who explained that it had been a plant shop, hence the name The Green Rooms, and she had recently shifted to selling yarn. They also host lots of workshops, particularly for crochet. I bought a ball of self-striping sock yarn that contains 50% wool and 25% bamboo as well as the 25% nylon that will make the socks hardwearing. The bamboo makes the yarn feel quite silky and I’ll be interested to see how it knits up.

It was a long drive home yesterday – over five and a half hours – and I’ve deliberately taken today at a slightly slower pace. Later this week I will hopefully be getting my rear passenger door fixed so it opens again. I have been able to rejig the way I pack the car for shows to allow for this irritation, but it will be so much easier when all doors function as intended once more! On Saturday Shelby’s Singers will be singing at the Buckley Spring Market in the shopping precinct in town at 1pm, for about an hour. We have our final rehearsal for that tomorrow! I’ll tell you all about that next week. Until then, take care. K x

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All in a Spin

The pastries shown in the pic at the top were from Jusrol from the supermarket that I ‘made’ this afternoon. You just unroll the pastry, spread the cinnamon stuff on, roll up again, slice, bake and drizzle with the icing. Very easy and ideal when you want a pastry and don’t have time to make from scratch or get to a bakers that sell vegan ones. These also happen to be vegan friendly! Perfect for what I needed – you can see I didn’t wait long…

Yarndale preparations are nearly complete, after lots and lots of printing and putting kits together and I have one more delivery arriving today that will be very exciting to reveal at the weekend!

Yesterday’s delivery was more mundane, but very important for my stand set-up: two mops. No, I don’t intend to mop out my pen before setting up my stand; the removable handles will be the supports for my business banner! There is a loop at the top of each handle perfect for a cable tie and I will be able to attach the handles to the rails of the pen with either more cable ties or string (or both). There won’t be a mop head in sight (or even present – as the whole thing comes apart into five pieces, so the mop heads will be staying at home)! I’ll photograph it on Friday as we set up in case you aren’t going to Yarndale and can’t quite picture how it will work.

I did consider broom handles, and also did extensive googling for lengths of wood with pre-drilled holes as I didn’t fancy grappling with Dad’s old Black & Decker drill just before a show, but when I discovered that mop handles tend to have hanging loops at the top (presumably so the mop heads can hang and dry out in between uses) that seemed the way to go. It’s amazing the rabbit holes you can end up going down on the internet when you need to find something very specific that hasn’t been invented for the purpose you need. Funnily enough, the company I bought the banner from don’t sell portable things to suspend said banners from. You might have thought that a search of ‘banner stands’ or ‘frames to hang banners from’ would have produced the solution to my needs, but no! The process of working out what might work and what wouldn’t was quite head spinning and I’m very grateful to all the members of the Yarn Show Vendors group on Facebook who answered my cry for help on how on earth I was going to display my banner. Wonderwool was easy as it could just be hung from hooks over the high temporary walls to the stands and at other events I’ve been able to attach it to the marquee frame (Wool @ J13) or string it between my clothes rails (Pop Up Wool Show), but with the layout I would have at Yarndale that wasn’t going to be an option.

Aside from printing lots of patterns and getting my kits and workshop materials in order, I’ve been doing quite a lot of knitting and some crochet this week. And this time it’s stuff I can show you!

The new sample of Elinor is coming along. I’ve got 20 more rows of the border to do before the edging and I will soon break into the second skein.

These skeins are 1200m, so it’s very very fine laceweight yarn – most laceweight is 800m per skein. I’m wondering whether it will pass the wedding ring test once complete. Very fine lace shawls were said to be able to pass through a wedding ring. however, it will be a big shawl (approx 2m across when complete and my current stitch count is nearing 900 stitches per row), so even with such fine yarn that may not work.

As the rows of Elinor are long and it’s very fine yarn, it’s also been useful to have some knitting on the go that’s easier on the eyeballs. My long loved Manu cardigan, twice mended, has gone under the arms again (despite thorough darning in the past) and I’ve started making a new one. I found some DK yarn in the deep stash which is a bit plumper than the yarn I used previously and I’ve gone up a needle size to keep the fabric supple. I’m not entirely sure the colours are working though. The palest colour (it’s like a lime green in real life) stands out far more than the other shades do. And with the yarn being thicker (and a bit shorter) I’m not sure there’ll be enough for the cardigan at the rate I’m getting through it, even if I leave off the pockets. So, here it is, sitting in temporary time-out while I consider its future.

I will use the yarn, even if not for this cardigan. Maybe I’ll do a Lichfield in colour blocks with the stitch pattern sections in the contrasting colours!?

I’ve woven in the ends of my Mystical Lanterns blanket (apart from the ends of the joining yarn) and it looks very respectable on the back as well as the front now. The left hand pic (with the clear white wavy lines from joining the strips of motifs) is the back.

Last Thursday I was at Yarn O’clock, talking with Anne about patterns that would work well with the new DK Chimera she was expecting from RiverKnits – it’s arrived and you can see it on her social media pages. I remembered that Into the Vortex had originally been written for 50g of the 4ply Chimera and 50g of Nene 4ply (another RiverKnits yarn) and we wondered how the pattern might work knitted in DK on larger needles.

I’ve started an experiment, knitting the first couple of sections of Into the Vortex in John Arbon Knit By Numbers and West Yorkshire Spinners Croft, both of which are DK yarns. I’ve done Parts 1 and 2 on 5.5mm needles (the original 4ply was on 4.5mm) and Part 1 on 5mm needles for comparison. This is because I started on 5.5mm, but the lace section in yellow felt much floppier than the first slipped stitch section in teal, so I’m trying again with 5mm to see if that works better.

It’s probably also due to the character of the two yarns being very different, but I want to see which needle size works best. Once I’ve worked that out and confirmed that the small version of the pattern can be made using 100g of each colour of DK yarn, I’ll add that as an option to the pattern. I’d love to knit one in the DK versions of the original RiverKnits yarns too! I’d forgotten how much fun the vortex shape is to knit as well.

Whilst I was at Yarn O’clock I treated myself to a new book.

Now, Tunisian Crochet is not a technique I’ve tried at all, but it looks really interesting. I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to have a play with it soon. I mean, it’s not like I’m busy or anything, is it…?

That’s all from me for today. If you come to Yarndale at the weekend, please come and say hello! We’re on stand L14. If you can’t make it there, I’ll try to remember to take lots of photos and tell you all about it next week.

Take care one and all, K x

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Piece by Piece

Since spending four or five days at Mum’s last week going through ‘the fabric’ and many many other things in the middle of a heatwave, then the next four days photographing and listing many (but not yet all) of the things we brought back onto eBay and Vinted, I feel a little boggled.

One box contained just silk. Now, you probably know that I’m plant-based and I don’t use silk in my knitting, so I’m not going to be using silk fabric to sew with. And there was a lot. If you get the ‘featured photo’ at the top of the post (I know some people don’t see it if they receive the blog by email), that set of three pics is just some of it! There were some factory offcuts from Beckford Silk, lots of post-project offcuts, some whole pieces, one of which was 3m long! I’ve separated them out by size of pieces, bagged them up and listed most of them on eBay. There are some bargains to be had if you like using silk, especially if you like using small pieces!

Did you know you can search by seller on eBay? On the left-hand panel the categories and search filters are listed. If you scroll to the bottom, there’s a ‘More filters’ option. When you click on that a pop-up box appears and one of the selections is ‘Seller’. Select ‘include’ and type in the seller’s username. I’m “knitting33”.

You’ll find a host of other things too, including 7 or 8 Wentworth jigsaws and some Prinknash pottery!

I did go through the three large boxes of patchwork fabric and wadding and managed to organise the fabric by colour. This was partly so it would be easier to work out what I would like to keep or not, and partly so I could find three pieces of fabric to take to a Beginners’ Patchwork class on Saturday! As Mum said last week, “If you’re going to take all that fabric and keep some of it, you’d better learn how to do patchwork!” and she paid for me to go to a Jo Paloma Makes workshop at Amanda’s Fabrics in Mold. Last summer I quilted some placemats that Mum had already made the tops for, but apart from sewing some little hexagons together by hand over paper templates, I’ve not done the actual patchwork before.

Well, Jo is an amazing teacher. I learnt how to make pouch bags at one of her workshops. And she was very thorough, clear and encouraging throughout the four-hour workshop, which quite honestly flew by. We learnt all about the equipment needed and how to use it, whether we were left- or right-handed. I was really pleased that in a class with four students we were equally split between the lefties and righties! I’m usually the only one!

We made a nine patch, photographed it and then cut it up to make a disappearing nine patch. The idea of cutting up the piece that we’d just so carefully measured, sewn together and pressed made me feel for the students of my steeking workshops. That’s where we knit something, reinforce the area we are going to cut, and then take our scissors to our knitting! I had a little of the “But I’ve just made that” feeling that they get! It was worth it though, because the final piece is very pleasing and so different from the basic nine patch!

I can now understand why quite a few of the ‘fat quarters’ in Mum’s stash only had a small corner taken out – it was for the single square in the middle!

One of my friends said to me on the phone yesterday, “How do you have time for patchwork?”, and he may well have a point, what with the day job of designing and knitting, the crochet, spinning, embroidery and lace-making (the last few of which to be fair, I haven’t done much of this year), let alone the occasional baking and trying to keep on top of the garden, but we’ll see.

However, I have done some more on my new sample of Elinor Hap Shawl, and I’m just over two thirds of the way through the centre square! On current progress I should be on the border by next week, if all goes well. I do seem to be having a green phase…

I am starting to get everything ready for the Pop Up Wool Show in Port Sunlight on August 17th, 10-4pm. It’s a lovely show and if you’re anywhere near the north west I thoroughly encourage you to come. Tickets are £4 and are available on the door. The image lower right is my stand at last year’s show.

I will have my Barragán shawl pattern with me for the first time, the whole Bargello Aurora Collection, and copies of most of my other designs! As I currently have 60+ designs in my portfolio I can’t bring all of them, but if you are coming to the show and there’s a particular pattern you would like to see, let me know and I’ll make sure to bring it with me.

And then, only four weeks after the Pop Up Wool Show, is our own Yarn Gathering! I can’t stress enough how exciting it is to be bringing this little yarn event to Mold again for its third year. Anne from Yarn O’clock and I were so pleased when we had a flurry of ‘new-to-Yarn-Gathering’ folk asking if they could apply to exhibit with us, all of whom were near to Mold and some folk who we recently discovered and invited, and that is why we expanded into an extra room. Do make the effort to come upstairs if you can – I’ll be one of the exhibitors up there!

16 vendors is still small in the grand scheme of things (the Pop Up Wool Show has 28 this year, Buxton Wool Gathering was about 50, Yarndale will be 201 – yes, I counted them!), but Yarn Gathering is steadily building and it’s great that people want to come back year on year.

All our vendors will be travelling approximately an hour or less to get to Yarn Gathering in Mold (in some cases, only a few minutes!), so we really are showcasing local talent! And, it’s free entry!

There are no refreshments available at the event, but as the Mold Food & Drink Festival is happening during the same weekend, we don’t think you’ll go hungry or thirsty!

There’s lots happening during the rest of this week and I’ll tell you all about it next Tuesday. Until then, do some stuff that makes you happy, and stay safe. K x