Tag: pyrography

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All At Once

Three wooden spoons lie face down on a darker wooden desk. The back of each is decorated with a pyrography design of two comical sheep. A fourth spoon is just visible at the top of the image.

It’s one of those week’s where everything is happening at once and some of them are coming to fruition after quite a while!

I’m on the final flag of my Safe Space cross stitch! Once that is complete I shall do the final bit of cross stitch (the word “Welcome” in the middle), then crack on with the outlining and blackwork.

I do want to get this finished in 2022 and it’s starting to look more feasible, which is very encouraging.

On Thursday I will be teaching my Introduction to Two Colour Brioche Knitting workshop. I’ve re-jigged the course and re-written the notes, and therefore also re-knitted the samples! We’re going to start with straight brioche knitting with a garter stitch border so folk can get comfortable with the brioche stitches before having to deal with the fancy cast-on. We’re also using DK yarn this time, so the stitches will be bigger and it will be easier to see how it all works.

Brioche front
Brioche back

Once the straight sample is done we’ll move on to the Italian two-colour brioche cast-on and add an increase and a decrease into the mix!

Brioche leaf front
Brioche leaf back

On Friday I’m launching Nevern Lap Blanket on my website, Payhip, Ravelry and Lovecrafts. Newsletter subscribers have had their discount codes already! The pattern is already live on KnitPicks and it’s selling well so far. If you’re not a subscriber and you can’t wait until Friday you can buy it there!

Nevern Lap Blanket on sofa
Nevern Lap Blanket on floor

And on Saturday I have a stall at the Christmas Fayre at The Rise in Buckley! It’s open 10am – 4pm, so if you’re in Buckley and you still have any Christmas shopping to do, this will be the place to come. (This pic is from a post on their facebook page in October, so there probably aren’t stalls still available now!)

I will have my knitting patterns, kits and pyrography (wood-burning) decorated coasters, hearts, wooden spoons and spatulas with me. I’m really looking forward to it, and have been adding a couple of items to my products in preparation – sheep- themed wooden spoons!

Among other kits, I will have the Mini Socks Advent Calendar kits with me. You may think this a bit strange as Advent has already begun, but bear with me… If you start now for next year and knit one sock every week or so you will be ready without having to knit lots and lots all at once!

Speaking of Advent and Christmas things, how cool is this post box topper? It’s on the post box outside the Spar in Buckley and was made by a group of knitters who meet regularly in the town. A huge amount of work has gone into it and it looks very impressive. It makes me smile every time I go to the post office (which is in the Spar) – a frequent activity at present!

I do have a very exciting piece of news to share with you. Next March I will be a vendor at the Buxton Wool Gathering! This is held in the Buxton Pavilion Gardens and tickets are only £5 for the day, or £8 for the whole weekend, which is brilliant value. There will be over 50 exhibitors there alongside me, so lots to enjoy as well as the beautiful town of Buxton to explore.

I’ve paid for my table, booked the accommodation, but somehow when the leaflets came through the post that was what made it feel totally real.

As well as all this I’ve been selecting a few more patterns from the #FastenOffYAL pattern sale (which finishes at midnight on 8th December Eastern Standard Time – that’s 5am on the 9th GMT), and this morning I wound the yarn for the next design I’m going to cast on. It’s Confluence Cowl by Mary W Martin and it’s a new technique to me as well as being a pattern from a new-to-me designer. Two yarns are held together and knitted together for the main fabric and then some magic is worked so that there are different cables on each side of the fabric! I’m using two colours of Amble from The Fibre Co. It’s a sport weight rather than fingering weight yarn, but it’s so soft and I think it will work really well.

All in all, the rest of the week is quite a busy one, but in a very good way. The Christmas presents are mostly posted (or wrapped if they’re not going in the post) and the cards are written, so I can tick the most pressing aspects of home Christmas prep off the list, which is a great feeling at this stage. I even remembered to feed the Christmas cake with brandy at the weekend – you should have seen my lovely wife’s face when she walked into the kitchen at 11am to see me putting the brandy bottle back on the shelf…!

That’s all from me today – quite enough, I hear you say – so I will leave you with this: Mae smygu’n ofnadwy, dw i’n hoffi cerddoriaeth a dw i eisiau paned a bisgedi! (Translation: Smoking is terrible, I like music and I want a cup of tea and some biscuits!)

Take care one and all, K x

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Holiday

The past few weeks have been a patchwork of working really hard and relaxing in different places.

Part of my set-up practice for Popup Wool Show shows the different colour yarns I will have with me for Nos Da kits and also the gorgeous colours of laceweight available for my various lace designs, including Drifting Leaves (attached to the left side of the table).

Nos Da and Drifting Leaves with yarn

The floor plan of the show has been published and I’m delighted to see I’m right next to Lottieknits – she has such wonderful colours in her hand dyed yarn.

Popup Wool Show Floor Plan

We were in Pershore recently and I acquired this bag at a cool shop called Follyies. It’s perfect for a large sweater quantity project – and has an internal zipped pocket to keep the bits and bobs safe.

‘My Doris’ bag

We had a little day trip to Chirk last week and bravely walked across the aqueduct which is right next to the viaduct! There’s also a patch on the canal path where you can stand with one foot in Wales and the other in England! Apparently that’s unique on the UK waterways.

Ronnie by Chirk Viaduct (whilst on Chirk Aqueduct!)

When visiting family we often stay in a Premier Inn, but sometimes it’s nice to treat ourselves. This is the view from our room at The Crescent Turner near Whitstable. You can see the sea and this room has its own little terrace to chill on!

View from our room by day

And the sunsets were magnificent! There was one tree that was silhouetted against the sky with the colours shading between blue and orange – it could almost have been an African skyline!! Sadly I didn’t get a photo of that detail.

View from our room at sunset

Ronnie continued his adventures and decided to do his impression of The Lady of Shalott over a clear running patch of river in Canterbury. He’s getting far more adventurous in his old age (he’s been with us for 20 years now!).

Ronnie trying to be The Lady of Shalott

I have even been able to get some knitting done that I can share with you! This sock has made excellent progress and should be finished in a day or so. The trans flag stripe is from a whole skein of Trans Pride Flag yarn from The Knitting Goddess. She sells little ‘stripey stripes’ too which are two sections of yarn containing one full flag each, but I wanted to get a whole skein so I could do more. These socks will be a gift for one of our niblings and they have been gamely trying on the sock in progress so I can ensure a good fit!

Sock for nibling coming on!

One of the drawbacks of writing my blog on my phone seems to be that I can’t include links – but I will add them in as soon as I get access to my laptop again. [eta – links now done!]

I hope you’ve enjoyed the mix of pics today! Take care and keep hydrated, K x

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Snowdrop

The first snowdrop is in flower in the garden! It’s called Gabriel and is one of the earliest, always flowering before Christmas. Seeing these always lifts me – they are so delicate and yet so very resilient. I couldn’t understand how they survived the frost and snow until Mum told me that they contain their very own version of anti-freeze.

Why are booster jabs like buses? You wait for ages for one and then two turn up at once! On Sunday evening I received a text message giving me an appointment date in January for my booster. Then, yesterday evening I got another text offering an opportunity to book one sooner if I wanted to, by clicking on the link. So, my booster jab will be happening this afternoon! Don’t worry, the whole text message thing isn’t dodgy – I’ve had all my notifications from NHSWales this way.

This has made me replan today a little, just in case I feel a bit ropey later on, but that is a benefit of being self-employed; I can organise my time to suit, which makes me very lucky indeed.

The knitted baubles are in the post, as are two wooden coasters that were ordered last night. If you are thinking of ordering a kit or anything else that needs to be posted for Christmas please do so by the end of this week (17th December). The lady at the post office thought I should sell the baubles (I’d need to develop my own base pattern to do that, but that is fine), although I’m not sure people would pay for the time/skill involved. Would you purchase one of these? If so, what would you be willing to pay? Answers in the comments please!

My sock knitting is on schedule as I finished one yesterday and started the second. I should get some more done later while I wait for my jab.

I’ve also made progress with two of my Fasten Off Yarn-a-Long pattern purchases! Gridlock Mitts by Karen Butler is now into the main colourwork (that was during Only Connect last night).

Water Dragon Wrap/Shawl by Red and the Wolf Designs is skipping along. I began with 140 sts and currently have 340 sts on the needle. The increasing will continue for a while yet and that will mean the rows get slower, but it’s great telly knitting!

The first deadline project that was due at the end of November has now had its first tech edit and has come back to me to be checked. This is where I get to see if I can remember how to use ‘track changes’ in Word…

My other secret deadline project (so no pics) is also coming on, though I haven’t touched it for a couple of days while I’ve been knitting other things – I’m still totally in love with the yarn though and plan to knit a lot of it in the next few days!

And… I’ve been swatching for another design and I’m really quite excited by how it’s working out. The submission deadline for this one is early next year and I’m keeping everything crossed that they want it. 🤞

It’s getting a bit scary again out there with Covid-19, so please take care and do the things you know will keep you and your loved ones as safe as possible. K x

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Any Colour You Like

How can a week have gone so quickly? It was wonderful to see my mum again last week (and to achieve the journey). I am very glad to report that she approves of both the marmalade (possibly my best yet!) and the sourdough bread, though the crusts were a little too crusty once toasted. I, of course, came back with some freshly cut asparagus, plants and some other lovely things too.

The yarn Mum chose to keep was the first skein I ever spun on my wheel. I was a bit surprised as it’s not the most evenly spun yarn by any means, but it is soft and colourful.

A multicoloured marled skein of handspun yarn of varying thicknesses lies on a wooden sideboard.

While I was with her I swatched with the yarn so I could write a pattern for her to use it with. I cheated a bit as I didn’t block it, but it’s garter stitch, not anything fancy. I mainly needed to find out what size needles would work best to create a fabric soft enough to go around Mum’s neck, what size the stitches were and therefore how many stitches she would need to cast on. It was one of those moments when mathematics just works. 20 sts measured 13cm. This meant that 1cm is 1.538etc sts. The circumference required is 65cm. 65 x 1.538etc = 100 sts exactly! Tidy, beautiful and satisfying.

I also realised whilst swatching with the yarn that it was the first time *I* had knit with my own handspun yarn. I’ve had a wheel since late September/early October and I’ve spun quite a lot, but not knitted any of it! One skein has been balled up ready to go, but for some reason I haven’t got it on the needles yet. That needs to change.

A very close-up image of a cake of handspun yarn in blues, greens and golds is shown from the top.

Both my time with Mum and the travelling there and back encompassed almost all varieties of weather – sunshine, cloud, rain, hail, thunderstorms. Pretty much everything except snow. It’s amazing to think that in less than four weeks it will be midsummer’s day and I still haven’t put my winter wool dresses away. The rain over the weekend did inspire us to have a rearrange of some of the furniture in our little home, tidying up generally and making things easier to find.

The past couple of days have seen me updating and streamlining my website. So far I’ve done the Wooden Treats and Kits pages. The main pages now look a lot sleeker and should be easier to navigate. Along with the rather lovely redesign of Payhip storefronts, I like how my work is being presented. The Knitting Patterns page comes next and I know that will be a mammoth task as there are something like 43 individual patterns and three collections.

A screenshot of the Wooden Treats page of my website, showing the five different categories of items for sale.

My new rubber stamps arrived yesterday. One of them I will definitely be able to use for wood burning designs – I stamp the design on the wood and then burn over it – and it’s the perfect size for coasters and hanging hearts along with a little message. What do you think? What messages would ‘ewe’ like to see?

A wooden coaster with a cartoon image of two friendly sheep and the words "I love Ewe!" burn into it lies on a wooden table.

That’s all for today – I’m off to knit some more edging on my new shawl design. Take care, stay safe and keep knitting! Kx

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Stepping Out

A close-up of turquoise, purple and blue knitting; part of a sweater in progress

This is the first blog post I have written whilst sitting outside on the patio. We are so lucky to have outdoor space of our own and this year I am determined to make the most of it.

The birds have proved extra greedy this week – I put up a new coconut half yesterday and it’s already half gone! I’m hoping this means the birds need extra energy for flying around and feeding small ones. It’s great to see the blackbird still doesn’t know he’s supposed to be a ground feeder too – though he is a very messy eater when perched on the apple tree. There is so much birdsong around me and it’s wonderful; it almost distracts from the roofing that’s going on a few doors up!

I’ve planted some of the seeds for our veg patch – courgettes, broad beans, mange tout peas and coriander, along with some nasturtiums, which are lovely and peppery in salads. We were given some potatoes by a friend (already chitted) and these have been planted into potato sacks. Recent years have been very disappointing potato-wise when they’ve been in the ground as they’ve been riddled with crawlies when dug up. And we always manage to miss one or two which gets messy later in the year. This method should be more successful, as long as I remember to water them. There are still other seeds to sow, but not for a weeks or so yet – squash (a couple of varieties) and cucamelon which my sister-in-law had great fun with last year.

Things have been quiet sales-wise this month. I’m thinking of expanding the range of images that I burn onto coasters, hanging hearts and stitch marker pots, to include more knitting themes. Think along the “I love ewe” type of route and you won’t be far wrong. I intend to develop some prototypes over the next couple of weeks, so keep your eyes peeled! If you have any suggestions or requests do let me know 😊

My knitting commission, AKA the Secret Project, is coming on apace. There is now a jolly big spreadsheet, lots of drawings to help check calculations of different sizes and I this morning I wrote out the rest of the pattern (in rough – there are some stitch counts to fill in). I am now ready to pick up the pointy sticks and carry on with the sample, which is great.

Forced downtime from knitting the Secret Project hasn’t been all bad though as it got me back to working on the sleeves of Serenity by Joji Locatelli – that jumper I began in January! I’m on Day 22 of the advent calendar yarn, as there were three mini-skeins I chose to put aside for bed-socks, and I’ve found a 50g Triskelion Yarn Elen Sock (now discontinued, but I have a chunk of different colours in my stash) skein which seems to use the same yarn base and the colour flows on perfectly from Day 25 if/when I run out of the yarns from my Bear in Sheep’s Clothing advent calendar.

My Serenity sweater at different stages of construction

I’ve also stepped out into the world and been to the shops early this morning, before it got busy. I got most of what we needed, dropped some bags in to a charity shop that wasn’t full for donations and even saw a friend to talk to briefly! In person!! What with that and our mini trip out to Llandudno (NOT the pier – it was heaving with people, but we found a quiet corner of the West Shore to enjoy for half an hour or so), it almost feels like I’m emerging from hibernation. Must remember to spend more time outside. It’s good and the sun on the back of my head makes me happy.

Take care and, if you can, do more of what makes *you* happy, K x

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Burn, Baby, Burn!

Today I want to tell you a little about the ‘other’ side of my business, the wood burning, non-yarny side.

In May last year I accompanied my wife up Snowdon Mountain Railway with a number of pupils from her school and their families. It was a great adventure, despite the cloud being so dense that we couldn’t see anything from the top. When we got back down to Llanberis we had a wander around and, as there was a triathlon happening on the same day, ended up in a small area with seating and a few shops near the slate museum to have our lunch. One of the shops sold lovely wooden items that had been decorated with pyrography. We bought a train whistle and pin cushion. Sue expressed the belief that she could do that and would like to have a go.

On return home we looked into getting a pyrography machine and some wooden ‘blanks’ to experiment with. We both had a go and I seemed to have the steadier hand and the patience for it. I burned some coasters for the families who travelled up Snowdon with us, celebrating our journey and some other items followed.

This led to some knitting related wooden treats that I sold at the Pop-Up Shop and craft fairs I attended, and, inevitably, some Christmas themed ones too. Christmas is coming once more, whether we are allowed to travel to be with our families or not, and I have added a wider range of Christmas themed gifts to my website and Payhip shop. They are all only £3 each and can all be customised/ personalised/ made completely bespoke for only £1 extra, plus postage.

I burn everything by hand, completely freehand. There are no stencils, prints or lasers involved. This does mean that there is variation in each item and a little irregularity on occasion, but they are truly hand decorated. Some of them are knitting-themed, some are not; the bonus of this is that you can support a small business whether or not you are, or know, a knitter! Go on, have a look. Make a one-woman business do a little happy dance. It is my birthday.