I’m glad the wind outside has dropped since yesterday. For 24 hours we had winds over 40 miles an hour and we’ve been very lucky that nothing has been broken, just a small tree in a pot on the patio that got blown over into the border.
It was a day to settle down into the knitting. I’m working on a new design with baby alpaca laceweight yarn and I’ve very nearly finished the first section now. The photo just below the title (which you may not see if you receive this blog by email) shows a full ball of alpaca on the left for comparison and what was a full ball on Friday morning on the right. There’s 12g (of 50g) of that ball remaining currently (along with four full ones).
I was hoping to start it while I was at Mum’s last week, but I didn’t have anything appropriate for a provisional cast-on with me. When you do a provisional cast-on (i.e. one that will later be undone so the live stitches that remain can be picked up) you need a yarn that won’t felt or stick to your main yarn. One that isn’t fluffy, or too thick – for something that is referred to as ‘waste yarn’ it is funny how important it is to have the right characteristics. Once I got home I had the pick of my 4ply leftovers and a merino superwash 4ply that I knew to be quite slippy was the perfect choice.
Because I couldn’t get started on that project at Mum’s, I worked on the other project I’d taken with me (I don’t make the mistake of only taking one project away with me anymore), so there has been quite a bit of progress on my Persian Tiles blanket, designed by Janie Crow. I’m following the original colourway more or less, using West Yorkshire Spinners ColourLab DK – do follow the Persian Tiles link to check out some of the other colourways!
I know they look like flowers now, but they will ultimately become octagons.
I blocked my final sample before Wonderwool over the weekend. Petulia came out in September with RiverKnits. It’s really two patterns in one as the different sizes of the shawl are also different shapes. RiverKnits have kits for sale for both sizes on their website. I recently finished knitting the smaller, symmetrical version of the pattern and I’m really pleased with it. Both versions of the shawl use the same lacy brioche leaf motif, in different arrangements.
Photos were taken yesterday and added to the pattern, so the front cover looks a little different than it did seven months ago, but it is the same pattern inside (with a couple of previous typos also now corrected). Now you get to see both versions on the front cover!
Copies have been printed and I will have them with me at WonderWool – and, if you want to use the same yarns I did (Chimera and Nene 4ply from RiverKnits), you’ll be able to buy those directly from RiverKnits who will also be at the show!
Petulia is the third of my Discworld named shawls that I designed for RiverKnits. The first two were published in September 2022; Agnes and Tiffany. These two designs ‘bookend’ the designs on my Shawl & Scarf Patterns page, being the first and last alphabetically.
Preparations are nearly complete for WonderWool (I think). I’ve got to the point where I’ve updated my packing list and started drawing possible stand layouts on squared paper – the stand is 10 x 14 feet – that’s nearly as big as our lounge! As I think I mentioned previously, I’m trying to get ahead of myself as I don’t know if I’ll need to do any extra trips down to Mum’s before the show. If Sugar Loaf (the adult version of Honeybun Cardigan) is back from the tech editor in time to print I’ll bring that with me too. I may bring the sample with me anyway even if the pattern isn’t printed and ready to sell, so folk can see how the design works on a ‘grown-up’ scale. The photos below were all taken at the same time and the colour has come out differently in each one. I would say the reality is nearest to the top left image.
I spent quite a bit of time on Friday working on my website, setting up a WooCommerce store, and getting the first few products uploaded. I then realised that every time I pressed ‘publish’ for one it was sent out as a social media post! That would have been fine, except neither the basket or checkout pages would load on mobile devices, so it wasn’t really working. I turned the product pages into drafts and tried to find out what the problem was, but it seemed to make a few other things go wonky instead. And then I couldn’t check whether the basket worked without pressing publish again – and getting another social media post going out (to four different platforms, no less)…
Anyway, by Saturday lunchtime I still couldn’t fix it and it seemed weird to have a ‘basket’ option on the main menu of the website when you couldn’t add anything to said basket. Also, in the process of all this, the Payhip pop-up window plug-in stopped working as it was incompatible with something ‘Woo’. You can possibly imagine my joy frustration.
So! I have deactivated the WooCommerce store again for now. The price buttons on my pattern pages take you directly to the relevant product in my Payhip store now, rather than giving you a pop-up Payhip checkout window, and you can add patterns from my whole store to a basket and check it all out at the same time, which is useful if you did want more than one pattern.
I will investigate the WooCommerce option again at some point, but possibly when my head is clearer and things aren’t so busy.
Excellent news this week is that my lovely wife, Sue Finch, has had her second full collection of poetry published. Welcome to the Museum of a Life is available from her Payhip store, Amazon and all good book stores – your local bookshop can order it for you if you give them the title and author.
That’s all from me for today. I hope you all have as good a week as you can and that you get a chance to do some stuff that makes you happy. Take care, K x