Tag: Mystery Knit-along

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Cabin Fever

In a rather unexpected twist, I currently have something in common with Prince William (!), in that my wife is self-isolating after being a contact of a positive Covid-19 case. So until next week that means separate rooms for sleeping, no hugs, staying 2m away from each other when we are in the same room and all the windows open – even when it’s teeming with rain outside. I’m rather keeping my fingers crossed that her PCR test comes back negative tomorrow otherwise I will have to isolate as well…

I have to say Sue is coping well with working from home at the moment, especially since the help of the lovely ICT chap linking her up to the school network. It is strange for me though. I’ve been self-employed now for nearly three years, and have been working from home since the pandemic began as all pop-up shops, craft fairs and workshops stopped. I’ve got used to being in the house on my own on weekdays and pottering around to my own (sometimes eccentric) timetable. I’m just not used to someone else being here between 7am and 6pm – even though that someone is my favourite person in the world. Does that make me a bad person? I really hope not.

Because of this spanner in the works to everyday life, I’ve also cancelled my trip this week to visit my mum as I can’t risk even the slightly chance of passing Covid to her. I was supposed to be making my first ever batch of chutney there today – the apples, garlic and onions are waiting patiently at Mum’s for when I can go down, and the vinegar, sugar, jars and other assorted items are sitting here.

One bonus to these changes of plan (apart from seeing my lovely wife for more hours than usual) is that I’ve had more time to get to grips with Excel. What on earth does *that* have to do with knitting design, you may think? Well, the rather excellent course on grading designs that I’m currently taking (have I told you about that?) is teaching me some whizzy Excel tricks. I now know how to use (some!) formulae, lock a particular cell into a formula and I’m gradually getting to grips with CONCATENATE, which is one of the fiddliest things I’ve come across, but which could prove to be one of the most useful. Geeking out over spreadsheets is not something I imagined myself doing as a knitting designer, but it’s so satisfying when it works! See that little line of “TRUE”s along the bottom? That means I’ve got what I was working out right, for each of the ten sizes.

There’s been a really lovely response to the launch of Into the Vortex. Lots of happy knitters, some sharing their progress on social media and some by message. The colour combinations are all beautiful and I’m really looking forward to seeing what they make of Part Two this Friday.

It’s stopped raining, so I think I might venture into the garden now and see how the courgettes are getting on. I’ll report back next week.

Stay safe and keep knitting, K x

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It’s All About Ewe

Well, the weather this week doesn’t seem to know quite what it wants to be doing! Hot and sunny one minute, then grey and drizzly. We didn’t get any of the thunderstorms the weather forecasts kept promising us – just the muggy, headache inducing feeling that usually comes beforehand.

Currently though, it’s beautiful, and I am lucky enough to be looking out of the window at rose bushes (albeit a bit bedraggled), geraniums and foxgloves. I’m also watching the birds doing a very good job of keeping the aphids at bay. Oddly enough they still haven’t found the jar of ‘bird peanut butter’ complete with insects, even though it’s been there for quite a while now. I shall have to try a different position for the feeder.

My lovely sheep fleece is still in need of cleaning and I want a stretch of reliably warm and dry weather ideally to do that as I intend to use the patio.

The main excitement for this week is of course the launch of Into the Vortex – our Mystery Knit-along with Yarn O’clock. I was asked to design something that would use all of the available yarn (2 x 200m) and I do believe I have! This is what I had left at the end:

3m of the blue and 16m of the multi-coloured yarn. And with the best will in the world, people will knit to very slightly different tensions, which will have quite an impact with such small margins (3m being only 1.5% of the 200m length). So! For added excitement, the seventh and final part of Into the Vortex is going to be in a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ style, depending on how much yarn you have left. It will be really exciting to see the slightly different end results. There is still time to join in – kits (yarn and weekly pattern instalments) from Yarn O’clock or pattern only from me. All you need to supply are your time, trust and some 4.5mm needles.

Last week I promised you some pictures of the latest socks in progress. The first sock is now complete and I’m about halfway down the leg of the second sock. These photos were taken as I was completing the gusset of the first sock. I love this yarn – Nene from Riverknits in the colour way “Starry Night”. This is the same yarn base as the solid coloured yarn in the MKAL.

It’s good tv knitting at the moment as it’s just knit every round; though I do need to be careful not to drop any stitches with the needles being so thin – 2mm!!

I also experimented with something new in the week – gift labels, particularly ones for knitted gifts. I was really pleased with the results, but have since discovered that the shinier surface of the white card means that the ink will still smudge and smear even days later, which is no good and such a shame as the colours showed up so well on the white. The buff and black cards are both great though.

Last night I made the dough for a 50% wholewheat and 50% white sourdough loaf. I did wonder if it was over-proofed when I took its shower cap off this morning and it was attached to the dough. I gave it 5 hours in the fridge in its banneton after that, but I wasn’t confident in its ability to ‘rise to the occasion’. Sure enough, it’s come out more like a flying saucer than a loaf, but hopefully the loaf will still taste great. Back to doing the bulk proof in the afternoon/evening and into the fridge overnight I think…

What have ‘ewe’ been experimenting with lately? Stay safe and keep knitting, K x

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Mysterious Girl

Last week I met someone in the main car park of my little town and exchanged two jars of homemade preserves (blackcurrant jam and seville marmalade) for a large and very full black bin liner. It sounds very mysterious, doesn’t it?

The bag has since been sitting in my study as the other parts of my life have taken on some deadlines (more later) and I haven’t yet been able to play with the contents. But it keeps reminding me it’s there and every time I take a peek inside I get excited.

So, what on earth did I swap for jam and marmalade?

A black bin liner has its top rolled open to show it is full of freshly sheared sheep fleece

A fleece. A whole one, from a sheep named Doris. Here are her before and after shots!

She is currently Mandy’s only sheep and, knowing I have taken up spinning, she asked if I would like it. Oh, yes please! It’s completely unprocessed and Mandy and her hubby sheared Doris themselves. Doris is a very clean sheep so there are not too many bits in it. So, I have a new learning curve to go on. Having washed a few locks of fleece is somewhat different to this type of quantity, but I have some notes and I will do some more research. A fine day on the patio seems like a good starting point. I did learn from the tv last night that any remaining less spinable parts of a fleece are excellent for rhubarb – Mandy mentioned this too as being generally good for homegrown fruit etc.

So what kept me away from Doris’ fleece? Well, I have submitted two (yes, two!) designs to a magazine I haven’t worked with before (deadline is next week, but, as you know, I don’t like to get too close to deadlines). Fingers crossed!

Also, I have finished my latest shawl design which I showed you last week and it’s going to be published in the next couple of weeks. It also now has a name – Angel of the North. See if you can tell why:

Finally, the MKAL I have been working on in conjunction with Yarn O’clock begins in 2 weeks!! It is in 7 parts, beginning on July 2nd and each part will be released weekly on Fridays. Because we like to keep you guessing, we’re not even saying what item the mystery knit will become, but you do need to know that for this one we are using Riverknits Chimera and 50g of Nene, both British Bluefaced Leicester 4ply and hand dyed in Northamptonshire (or 50g each of a multicoloured 4ply with a contrasting solid/semisolid one). Yarn kits are available for £25 from Yarn O’clock or you can buy the pattern on its own for £5.00 from me. The needles you will need are 4.5mm (60cm circular or 30cm straight).

An image of a simplified vortex in shades of blue with the Yarn O'clock logo in the bottom left corner and "Into the Vortex, MKAL by Kath Andrews" in the top right. This is the image placeholder for the pattern while the MKAL is running.
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Rainy Days and Mondays

Yesterday was apparently Blue Monday. It’s not something I subscribe to, although two people I spoke to said they’d felt a bit more down than usual. I’m not sure that simply being the third Monday of the year is enough to qualify in this particular decade – there are plenty of other things going on.

It’s raining here in North Wales today. No surprise there, but it’s due to keep on raining for the next couple of days, after which we get a couple of days of sleet! Thank you, Storm Christopher. I am so glad we live up a very big hill – I would rather get snowed in than flooded any day. Despite the rain, or maybe even because of it, it is the perfect time to be knitting hats and cowls.

About a year ago, when I was doing stalls at the local pop-up shop, one of the people browsing said that I should do hats and cowls to match my stranded mitt designs and that is what I am currently working on. It was so lovely to return to charts I knew and ‘play’ with them, trying out different variations and seeing what I liked most. It’s ‘only’ taken me a year to respond to that feedback, but I get there in the end.

The cowl to go with Heart in my Hands Mitts is done. I just need to make sure I’m 100% happy with a couple of design decisions and then it will be published. The hat is not far behind. The cowl will be in one size (or maybe two), the hat in three, and there will be more maths involved in getting the sizing just right for the hat, hence why I did the cowl first! What do you think?

Heart in my Hands Mitts and Cowl

If you have subscribed to my newsletter via the sign-up on the website, you will know that there is a special 15% subscriber-only discount running until the end of January on ALL my products in the payhip shop (everything on the website links to this). This covers not only digital downloads of patterns, but also all the wooden treats and knitting kits too! What a bargain! I know I mentioned last week there would be a discount code in the newsletter, but if you sign up before the end of the month, that discount could be yours as well.

Llanberis Mystery Knit-along is going well. It feels weird that it will be over so soon though – the third and final part is being released on Friday. People are posting their progress on Facebook and Instagram, and saying that they are enjoying the pattern. That’s one of the things I like best about social media – you can see what people make with your designs and get instant feedback.

Even a bit of negative feedback can be useful – certainly more so than radio silence. I had an email a couple of weeks ago from someone who didn’t like the layout of one of my patterns. Initially, I was offended and a bit hurt, but after I’d got over myself (and had a sleep) I looked at it again and thought about what I could do to improve things. This is the Beanstalk Throw I wrote about last week and shows how even negative feedback can help you develop – as long as there isn’t too much of it!

I made the marmalade last Wednesday. It’s gorgeous, though it did take six hours – partly because I had forgotten that though my mum’s fast hob ring is front left, mine is back right, so if I want a fast boil I need to remember whose kitchen I am in! Fortunately I managed to move the preserving pan without burning myself. It’s a therapeutic process in some ways, whilst leaving you totally wiped out in others, albeit with the added bonus of about a year’s worth of marmalade.

13 lbs of Marmalade cooling in their jars

Yesterday I had some fun with my spinning wheel. I haven’t done any of the exercises in Katie Weston’s Spinning with a Purpose course for a while, so I had a go at making slubs and also some consistently thicker yarn than my ‘standard’ instinctive spinning tends to produce. I don’t know whether it’s a tension thing or if I just want to scrape every last bit of value out of the fibre I have, but I have tended towards the finer fingering-weight and lace-weight end of things. This was a challenge. I loved it. I’m also ridiculously pleased with the slubby yarn I made, despite the fact there’s only about two metres of it and I’m unlikely to ever be able to knit with it. I just want to admire it and pet it! WPI stands for ‘wraps per inch’, as in how many times yarn of that thickness can be wrapped around a piece of card or wood an inch wide. The gap at the top of the WPI tool in the photos is an inch wide (and the massive slub almost fills it!). The numbers under the horizontal lines show how wide a strand of yarn would be if it were 4/6/8 etc wraps per inch.

Slubby Yarn hung round spinning wheel
Massive slub on WPI tool
Skein of Bulky yarn on WPI tool
Single strand of Bulky yarn on WPI tool
Skein of DK/Worsted weight yarn on WPI tool
Two strands of DK/Worsted weight yarn on WPI tool

Speaking of challenges and learning new stuff – Craftucation will be going live in less than four weeks!!!! (Yes, I know four exclamation marks are a lot, but I think this warrants it). I will be jumping around and shouting about this more and more as February 15th comes around. If there is a new craft you are interested in learning, that will be the place to go. Not all the course will be up at the very start, but it will grow and there will be some wonderful opportunities to learn new skills.

Keep going – you can do it. And keep knitting. And stay warm. K x

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Let it snow! I’ll add another blanket.

Happy New Year! 2021 has begun here with flurries of snow and some crisp cold weather. Having taken the decorations down today and taken delivery of a new desk chair I have got my breath back and realised it’s quite chilly. 16.2 degrees in the house! Definitely calls for the ‘boost’ button.

The new desk chair is part of my push to look after myself a bit better – it’s a Humanscale chair, which are scarily expensive when new, but Sue got a reconditioned one last year from Corporate Spec and having discovered how supportive and comfortable it is (and that I can spin in it!) I have now got one of these as well. They are a quarter of the price of new – literally – and the ones we have had have been delivered in excellent condition. Yippee!! Hopefully the Voltarol will be able to go back in the cupboard!!

Lockdown is now UK wide, rather than just Wales and Northern Ireland as of last night. I hope it works and that everyone follows it properly. I will continue to send out orders as I get them as the post office is only a walk away, but I may limit trips to just twice a week.

It may just be the time to start a new project or treat yourself or a loved one to a ‘hug token’. They are available waxed or unwaxed (£2.50/£3.50) and can also be personalised (£3.50/£4.50). The one pictured is from old stock; the new blank hearts I have are slightly different; 5cm across and 2mm thick, with a very slightly different shape – a new photo will be uploaded soon!

Heart Shape with Hug Token burnt on

If you follow me on social media you will have seen that I had a happy dance this morning as Knit Picks sent an email promoting their blanket patterns in which both the blankets I had designed for them were featured! This was most exciting!

It’s a year and one day now since Nevern Throw was published and it seems to be doing well from looking at the ‘bestselling’ pages of Knit Picks website. You can even buy it as a kit from them. It’s definitely cold enough to put either that or Beanstalk on the bed this evening!

Don’t forget that Llanberis MKAL starts on Friday this week! There’s still time to buy the pattern and join in; you just need 25g of each of 3 colours of ‘sticky’ DK yarn and 3.25mm and 3.75mm needles (40cm circular and/or DPNS).

Next week I’m going to be introducing my newsletter to you. Subscribers will get regular discounts and special offers not open to everyone else, so it’s worth signing up!

Take care and keep knitting, K x