Tag: Makers gonna make

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Sock it to ‘em

One good thing about being the passenger on a long car journey is that there is plenty of knitting time. And so I have finally finished Sue’s socks that I began while we were at Wonderwool in April. The variegations in the yarn (dyed by Weku Yarn) are very striking and the pooling shifts in unpredictable ways, giving a dynamic effect. It does mean that the texture of the sock pattern gets a little lost unless you are close up, but Sue assures me that they are very comfortable and she loves them. I used my Bodelwyddan sock pattern, making the fourth size of five.

I cut out 7 rounds of the foot before the toe, following my own instructions: “Cont as set, working through Rnds 1-10 of Leg Patt for another 37 (40:42:45:42) rnds, or until sock is 4 (41⁄2:5:51⁄2:6) cm shorter than wearer’s foot from heel to big toe. Check for fit if possible.” The highlighted numbers just show the size I was making.

it really is important to check for fit on the foot length as the size made is chosen by leg circumference (with potential for shifting between sizes on the foot). The length suggested is the ‘standard’ length for each circumference, but who is standard? We’re all different and that’s what makes hand knit socks special – they have the capacity to fit the wearer perfectly.

Last week I was anticipating having a new design out in Issue 204 of The Knitter and I was a bit disappointed when it wasn’t there! However, I have since found out that it’s been held back to Issue 207 for a very lovely reason, so in three month’s time, I shall be able to tell you all about it!

So, my update to Bargello Aurora is ready, and I just need to get photos of the blocked scarf into the pattern before it can be published. Another design of my that is getting an update is Elinor Hap Shawl. This is the ‘sister’ pattern to Marianne Half Hap and I’m enjoying knitting up a new sample for it as well as thinking about ways to improve the layout of the written pattern and charts.

I’m using a particularly fine lace weight for this sample. It’s Ripples Crafts Knockan Laceweight in ‘A Slice of Lime’, a 100% merino wool with 1200m per 100g. Let of the laceweight yarn I’ve used before has been 800m per 100g, so this is superfine, but it does mean I only need 2 skeins for the whole shawl, rather than 3! The pattern will list the length of yarn used as well, so. If you have laceweight yarn that comes in 50g skeins you’ll be able to be as precise as possible when deciding how many are needed for this shawl.

I have finished my Persian Tiles blanket! This photo is not the finished article, but it is the most recent photo I can show you.

There are six rounds of border all the way around the blanket as well now. I do need to weave in all the ends from the seaming and the border and give it a final block (simply hand wash gently and dry it flat). One of the octagons has its red and orange petals facing the wrong way – B2 if you look at it like a map reference – but as many lovely folk have said on social media it gives it character, makes it unique and is a good reminder that nothing is perfect! I really enjoyed making this blanket and if you fancy doing some crochet from a very well written pattern I highly recommend anything by Janie Crow who designed this.


You may have noticed a new tab on my website. “Supporting Small!” is a new initiative from Amanda who owns Moorlands Wool and Crafts, a lovely yarn shop in Leek, Staffordshire, who I met last year. Supporting Small! is a way of supporting other small businesses, indie makers & dyers, celebrating their individuality & craftmanship, to create a vibrant & diverse craft community.
By having a page on our websites we can highlight to our customers other small businesses who are involved who we think are great and who they may not have come across before. So far I just have links and info for Moorlands Wool and Crafts and Yarn Barf, an indie dyer who specialises in really vibrant colours. It’s a reciprocal scheme so you’ll find a link to my website on each of their Supporting Small! pages as well. There will be more added soon as I start to spread the word among my contacts nearer home.

Speaking of things nearer home, did you know it’s less than 9 weeks until Yarn Gathering? We have 16 vendors this year, including 6 vendors who are new to Yarn Gathering this year!

Our confirmed vendors for 2024 are:

Cefn Llan Fibre Flock, Gwennol Designer Handknits, Idris Emporium, Jenny’s Crafts, Kath Andrews Designs, Lottieknits, Penny Stitch Craft, Sheep Floof, SKD Yarns, The Soggy Kookaburra, The Woolly Tangle, The Yarn Artist, Trevor Blackburn, Under an English Sky, Weki Wool, Wild Field Fibre

The date for your diary is 15th September 2024, 10am-4pm at The Daniel Owen Centre in Mold, CH7 1AP. Entry is FREE and no ticket is required.
As Yarn Gathering takes place on a Sunday, parking in town is also free and there is a car park next to the venue with some spaces for Blue Badge holders.

There will be four vendors upstairs. If you cannot access the stairs we will do our best to ensure you can see what is on offer upstairs via video and any items you wish to see will be brought down for your consideration.

The Mold Food & Drink Festival also takes place the same weekend as Yarn Gathering and we encourage you t visit this event too while you are here. It will mean that one of the town car parks is out of use as that is where the Food Festival is based. This can be seen clearly on the map on the Yarn Gathering page.

That’s all from me for today. Have a good week and I hope to show you lots of progress on Elinor next week! K x

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Change

I have enjoyed our walks the past few days and I am so grateful that we can get into country lanes quite quickly from our doorstep. These are some of the lovely sights I’ve seen recently on two separate walks. I love watching the clouds in the late afternoon – the light on them is magical, but fleeting.

There’s activity in one of the fields that may be the beginnings of a new housing estate down this lane, so I’m not sure how much longer we’ll have this peaceful route for, but I’m determined to make the most of it while we can.

There are signs of spring in the garden too which is really encouraging. (Yes, I know, I really need to cut those hellebore leaves back, and I will, soon!) There’s lots of work that needs to be done in the garden and I feel a bit guilty that I haven’t been out there much, but now there are increasing hours of daylight, hopefully I should be able to!

Yarn arrived at the end of last week for two new designs and I’m about to get started with one of them later today. I won’t be able to share the designs with you until publication (July and September respectively), so instead, here is the yarn itself. Isn’t it fabulous?!

I can hardly believe that in three days time I will be in the Norfolk Showground Arena, setting up for the East Anglia Yarn Festival! I printed out a few extra copies of patterns today, and have been planning the layout of our space. It’s 2m x 2m and I want to make the best use of it possible.

When we go to Wonderwool Wales next month it will be a very different set-up. The space we have there is 4m x 3m! I had applied for a 3m x 3m space, but they only had a 4m space left and asked if I would be willing to take that. Yes please, and thank you!

I’ve been working on a shawl design this week and it’s coming on really well, despite having had to rip out approx. 100 rows and rejig things a bit. It’s a semi-circular shape, and I was using a standard half-pi shawl construction but, because the fabric is not lace, it doesn’t stretch out in segments in the same way that, for example, my Tiffany shawl does. This has led me to experiment with the spacing of the increase rows and it’s looking SO much better now than it did. Now there are no funny sections where everything is stretched out and then goes all puffy (and there were…) – so I count that a big success!

One of the things I really need to be better at is trusting my gut when it’s telling me that something isn’t working out quite the way I’d thought it would. I was about 20 rows away from the weird puffy increase row when I thought it wasn’t right, but did I stop then? No. I kept knitting, initially telling myself it would block out. When I was coming up to the next increase row and I could tell the fabric was going to do the same thing, but possibly more-so, I had the brainwave of changing the rate and placement of increases. I tried it out and it worked a lot better, but I still kept going, ignoring that earlier section. Why did I do this? Then one evening I sat down to work on it, saw the part I wasn’t happy with and suddenly realised it would be a good idea to use the same tweak to the increases there as well. So, out 100 rows came! The small balls are all ripped out knitting. The large white ball only has the ripped out yarn wrapped around it.

All of these small balls have now been re-knitted and I have to say, this is a great, sturdy yarn. It hasn’t minded a bit! It’s Donegal Rich Tweed 4ply by McIntosh and it’s behaved perfectly well being knitted, ripped out and re-knitted.

I’m really looking forward to showing you this shawl – I love how the three colours and the different slip stitch patterns work together.

Until next Tuesday – when I shall have lots to tell you about EAYF – take care and do stuff that makes you happy. K x

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Scale

One of the things I didn’t expect to need as a knitwear designer was a set of kitchen scales that measure to 0.1g. But it has been so useful on many occasions. Most recently I have been using it to calculate how much of each of the main and contrast colours I’ve used for the sample of the adult version of Honeybun Cardigan. I can tell you now that each 50g ball of Rowan Summerlite 4ply actually tends to contain between 51g and 52.2g. I’m glad I had some full balls of yarn left over, as I hadn’t thought to weigh them before I started. If I’d assumed the balls were exactly 50g and simply weighed what was left I’d have been slightly underestimating my usage. It would only have been by a couple of grams for each of the contrast colours, but that scales up to about 20g when you’re looking at 9 or 10 balls of the main colour – even more so for the largest sizes.

I am pleased to have finished the cardigan. The shoulder shaping has worked a treat. The ends are all woven in and the pattern is now with my tech editor (hi Deb!). The only thing left for me to do with the sample is to choose and sew on 9 buttons. And possibly give it another wash.

Something else I’ve been thinking about regarding scale (and scales) is my Fiery Dragon Skin Cowl! I first designed this in 2019 using Knitting Fever’s Painted Desert 4-ply in the now discontinued colour way Show Stopper (left-hand pic below). Painted Desert is a lovely yarn with gradual colour changes (a bit like the Zauberball Crazy sock yarn).

You may have seen photos of the orange chunky-ish hand-spun version I made for Sue while we were at Wool-in Garden City. I’m currently updating the pattern so it includes options for DK, Aran and Chunky weight yarns as well as the original 4ply. The cowl itself is knit in the round and, to make life easier for folk, I’ve also included a knit-flat stitch pattern so you can swatch easily. This means you can use the pattern with any yarn you want (particularly useful for hand-spun yarns which can vary a lot from the commercial standards of weight/length) by swatching and doing a tiny bit of maths to work out how many stitches to cast on for the size you’d like. Fortunately it’s a 10-stitch pattern repeat, so that part is quite simple!

I love how the texture of the stitch pattern looks and behaves with different weights of yarn – it gives such a varied character to the finished fabric of the cowl.

I’m really excited about East Anglia Yarn Festival (where I’ll be in less than two weeks!), where Caramel Slice will have its debut as a single pattern (having been originally published in The Knitter last August).

It’ll be the first time I’ve exhibited at this particular event and also the first time I’ve sold only patterns at a yarn show (so there will not be any wooden items, kits or project bags etc). My patterns are printed and ready – I’ll be bring 640 with me (of 41 designs), so there should be plenty! This is what 640 printed patterns looks like:

It may not look terribly exciting like this, but wait until it’s all on display! Taking 41 designs with me to EAYF does mean there will be 20+ designs staying at home, but they will still be available online if I don’t have something in particular with me that a knitter is after.

I’ve been working with slipped stitches a lot lately – and I’m doing another design at the moment using slip stitches, but there are other techniques I’m enjoying currently too – particularly brioche and cables! Here’s a sneak peek at some cool cable work:

Isn’t the yarn gorgeous? Now, you probably know I don’t use silk, so what’s making this yarn so shiny? It’s TencelTM which is a fibre made from wood pulp. The yarn is HeartSpun DK from Woolly Chic, a long DK at 250m/100g with 70% Bluefaced Leicester wool and 30% TencelTM in the colourway Marmalade 2022. Helen from Woolly Chic was one of the organisers of Wool-in Garden City and this was where I got the yarn (and the commission to design something lovely with it!)

There are just two and a bit days left if you want to take advantage of the February online pattern discount for members of my Facebook group and subscribers to my monthly newsletter. This month’s discounts are for patterns beginning with C or D. Pictured below are the patterns that applies to: Calon Cariad, Ceridwen, Codetta Shawl, Croeso Baby Blanket, Diamonds in the Breeze and Drifting Leaves.

It’s a 10% discount for Facebook group members or a 20% discount for newsletter subscribers. From Friday 1st March the discount changes to patterns beginning with E or F. Those will be Elinor Hap Shawl, Fiery Dragon Skin Cowl, Forest Ferns Moebius and Furrowed Fields Scarf. Sign up for the newsletter (my “Mailchimp audience”) or join my Facebook group if this appeals to you!

That’s everything from me for today – I’m heading back to my knitting now! Take care of yourselves and each other. K x

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Pancake Day

Is it just me, or does the sleeve look like a fish opening its mouth for dinner, when the picture is sideways?

As you can see, the sleeves of Adult Honeybun are complete, washed and blocked! If you zoom in you can probably see the shoulder shaping in the top few rows of the sleeve cap – it is meant to be a subtle shaping feature.

The sleeves are also now dry as I took this photo three days ago, so later on I shall be seaming them. I wouldn’t usually seam the sleeves before attaching them to the body of a garment, but as the body is all in one piece it actually is easier to make everything fit this way round.

After sewing the underarm seam, I shall attach the sleeves to the body and then I’m ready to calculate and knit the button band. The trickiest thing will be working out the stitch counts for each section of each size and exactly where to position the buttonholes. Getting the button band around the corners will mostly be the same as for the child’s version of Honeybun.

I’m really looking forward to having some pancakes later – with sugar and lemon juice, just like we had them when I was a child, with too much of both, so they are crunchy and sour at the same time! How will you have your pancakes, if you have them?

I’ve got six more workshops planned and tickets are available for them all. They are published on Facebook and Ticketsource, although I do need to add them to my website as well. Here is the flyer that lists them all:

I did a little more crochet last night – behold the first of nine Persian Granny Squares that will help the octagons join together in the Persian Tiles Blanket designed by Janie Crow.

Before I went down to Mum’s last week, she asked me if I wanted to buy any marmalade oranges from her local fruit and veg shop. I wasn’t sure I would have time to make marmalade this year (and had I left it too late in any case?), but I checked how much we had left. We have lots and lots of jams and jellies, but marmalade? 4 jars. That was all. No way that would last us a year, so I did pick up some seville oranges and on Saturday I made 8 more jars. Next year I’ll try and plan ahead a little better!

I’m getting excited about the upcoming East Anglia Yarn Festival, and as well as planning which designs and samples to take with me, I’m planning which designs will go in the shiny new pop-up display stand. It has five levels and the big benefit of this stand over the table top ones is that you can see the picture on the front of each pattern at a glance. And then it folds down into a bag to make it easy to transport. Genius design!

I’ve done so much more knitting this week and I can’t show you any of it yet, so instead I shall leave you will a pic of the rather splendid amaryllis that we got for Christmas. The first flower spike had been making a bid for freedom whilst the bulb was still in the box and grew horizontal. This one, however, is much more upright! There’s some two-colour brioche inspiration potential in the patterning on the petals too!

Until next week, take care and enjoy your pancakes if you have them. K x

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Housiversary

Part of a crocheted octagon motif from the Persian Tiles blanket by Janie Crow. It is in orange, red, dark blue, teal, yellow, light blue and cream.

Twenty years ago today we moved into our bungalow. Moving from our little flat we thought that we’d never run out of space again. How naive we were!

Regular clear outs and de-clutters have to happen to help us still fit into our home that has become more and more ‘us’ over the years. During the time we’ve been here, pretty much the only things that haven’t been changed are the walls and the bathroom (apart from the basin which had to be replaced). The garden has grown along with us too: the daffodils we planted in the lawn last year are starting to come up, the roses and fruit bushes are ready for pruning and the hellebores and snowdrops look beautiful.

It’s made me think about how things can change over time so that even though technically you’re in the same place, in other ways you’re definitely not.

When we moved in I was 30, teaching music (still part-time then) and singing as a regular alto dep at the cathedral. Now I’m 50, I’ve been out of the classroom for 5 1/2 years, I’m working with yarn full time, designing, teaching knitting, exhibiting at yarn shows and I’m singing again.

Back in the day I had made a couple of (quite simple) crochet jumpers and I loved them. I made a couple of granny square blankets too. Then I didn’t do any crochet for years, apart from the odd edging to a piece of knitting or an amigurumi, such as the unicorn I made for my sister-in-law and the Pikachu I made for Sue.

Then last year I started the Mystical Lanterns blanket designed by Janie Crow and loved it. I’ve not yet finished it, but it’s coming on. And last week I began my most challenging crochet project yet – the Persian Tiles blanket, again designed by Janie Crow. I’ve completed one octagon motif which was very successful and tried a small granny triangle which is a little lopsided at the moment.

Persian Tiles octagon motif

It’s so good to learn new things, especially when you teach – getting yourself into the place of ‘not knowing’ is really valuable to understand what it feels like for your students!

I mentioned exhibiting at yarn shows. I’ve already publicised that I’ll be at East Anglia Yarn Festival (EAYF) in Norwich next month and Buxton Wool Gathering in May.

I can now let you know that I’ll also be at Wonderwool Wales in April! This is held at the Royal Welsh Showground in Builth Wells and has always been my favourite show to visit, so I’m thrilled to be exhibiting there.

I’ll be back at the Pop-Up Wool Show in Port Sunlight too in August. And there may be more shows to tell you about in the coming months as well!!

In terms of designing, I’m juggling a couple of things at the moment. The sleeves for the adult Honeybun are nearly complete – I just need to work out how to add the extra shoulder shaping into the pattern writing.

Then the button band and it’s off to the tech editor! Fingers crossed it will be ready for Wonderwool.

I’m also working on a lovely reversible cowl which I hope will be out quite soon (no pics of that yet).

I bought some fab yarn at Ewe & Ply on Saturday and it’s already being used!

Caramel Slice was first published in The Knitter in August last year and the rights have now returned to me. The pattern is now in my own format and I’ve taken some new photos with Shelby modelling the cardigan. Once these have been fully edited and added to the pattern it will be ready to be published and I will have printed copies of the pattern with me at EAYF!

I’m at my mum’s until tomorrow – Cleo the cat says hello:

And I’ll say goodbye until next week!

Take care all and have a good week, K x

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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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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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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