Tag: shawls

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C’est Magnifique

Unusually today is not only blog day, but also the first of the month, which makes it newsletter day as well, so there will be quite some overlap in content between the two!

Yarndale was amazing, if a little chilly! If you came by the stand to say hello and have a browse, thank you so much. Customers said some lovely things about the samples on display and I heard a ‘C’est manifique’ from a group of French knitters which made me very happy. We also sold lots of patterns, kits and calendars during the weekend.

If you didn’t come to the show yourself, then here are a few pics to show you how the cattle pen (yes, that is what it usually is used for) was transformed over the course of three and a half hours on Friday afternoon:

My lovely wife Sue can be seen in one of the pics above having a very well earned sit-down after transporting most of the contents of our stand the entire length of the auction mart on the trolley (the car park was at the opposite end to where our stand was!) She was amazing and also held the fort for much of Saturday afternoon whilst I went to teach an Introduction to Two Colour Brioche Knitting workshop to ten intrepid knitters.

While I was at the stand later on Saturday looking for a pattern on the table, my badge caught on Tiffany (pinned across the front of the table) and snagged it quite badly. Nothing broke, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to fix it to look as if this had never happened!

I’m going to video the process which will hopefully encourage others to fix their own snagged knits.

We made some new friends as well as catching up with old ones – both other vendors and visitors to the show. I think one of the great things about yarn shows is that it’s a rare chance for most of the vendors see each other, so we make the most of catching up in snatched moments between setting up, or even when queueing for the loo!

I told you last week that I was racking my brains trying to work out how on earth I was going to put my banner up at Yarndale and that I eventually bought two mops with handles that unscrewed and had loops in the top. As you can see – the mop handles worked! Cable ties attached the banner to the metal mop handles and lots of string ties the mop handles to the metal rails of the pen (hidden behind the black sheets and Nevern Throw).

If you came by the stand you will have seen the little display of McIntosh yarns with the two designs that I have created with them. County Shawl was launched on Friday and I’m very excited about it. It uses the wonderful Donegal 4ply yarn in three colours. This semi-circular shawl may look complex but all the stitch patterns are slip stitch, knit and purl with a few little short rows to create the rows of bobbles, so it’s very achievable.

James McIntosh has put together three stunning colour-way choices for you as shown in the picture above. The grey and natural yarn pack also includes a gorgeous dark green which is shyly hiding behind the other two skeins. When you select your colour choices you can also choose to have a set of 3.75mm 150cm circular needles from Addi included in your kit. These needles are really nice to use and are very smooth. 

Every kit includes the pattern and I get paid the full pattern price (£6) for every kit sold, which is rather splendid.

I am out and about with my designs again later this month. Ewe Felty Thing are hosting a ‘Designer Day‘ at their shop in Conwy on Saturday October 26 from 10-5, and I will be one of 5 designers taking part. It’s free to come along, so if you are anywhere near the North Wales coast, it would be lovely to see you! 26th October might seem like a long way off now, but it’s actually less than four weeks away!

I have been enjoying knitting my DK version of Into the Vortex and I have nearly finished Part 5 of the seven parts. That’s really good, as something exciting arrived in the post today and means I should be able to finish at least one project before starting a new piece of deadline knitting!

You know the routine now, I think. I’m not going to be able to tell you what it is or who it’s for, or show you my progress with it, but I did want to show you the yarn as the colours are so lovely and the shine from the Tencel content is gorgeous.

Speaking of deadline and commission knitting; keep an eye out for the new issue of The Knitter that comes out later this week as I believe it will include a new design from me!

That’s all from me for today.

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After the Storm

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

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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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Over The Hill and Far Away

Our weekend trip to Gloucester was very successful and Sue’s reading at the Gloucester Poetry Festival was brilliant – I’m so very proud of her. The picture above is part of Gloucester Cathedral’s tower, and yes, the sky really was that blue on Saturday afternoon, despite the torrential rain the day before. It was lovely to see the Malvern Hills again (through the rain) as we drove down, and to see Moel Famau in sunshine as we neared home! If you have a few spare minutes, do read Sue’s blog post from yesterday – it includes the first poem she read on Saturday. We enjoyed lots of readings from lots of other poets as well during the day and evening on Saturday, and I was quietly knitting on Mum’s bed socks throughout.

I now have a finished pair! The sock blocker gives more of a realistic impression of how they’ll look in use – the change between syncopated rib (leg) and stocking stitch (foot) makes them look quite odd otherwise!

I’m not going to weave in the yarn ends at the toes until Mum has tried them on. They go down to 20 stitches and look quite pointy from the top, and I want them to be comfortable for her.

I continued to knit and document my progress on my Barragán Shawl while we were away (you can still order your own yarn kit or get it free with a subscription from The Knitter). Even though I’m only doing 10 rows per day at the moment it’s growing well. Today’s rows have yet to be done, but this is what 130 rows looks like:

This photograph was taken in the morning light and is pretty true to the colour of the yarn.

Something else exciting that happened while we were away was that I picked up a new-to-me car! I’d test driven it the week before when visiting Mum and it’s perfect. Exactly the make and model I thought I needed and I can’t believe the boot space. And it’s blue. You know me and blue – I do like it. Of course now I want to experiment (play) with putting all my show stuff in it to see the best way of getting everything in. All my stuff in one car – with the passenger seat free for Sue as well. It’s been a pipe-dream.

I wore my Umbriel for the first time yesterday and it’s very cosy. Today I’ve managed to get some pics of it. It’s got generous ease which is exactly what I wanted as I will be wearing it over layers. I do like the picked up, top down sleeve construction in the design. I think this is a construction I will explore in my own designs in future – no sewing the sleeve head into the armhole after knitting it, cos it’s all made in one piece!

While we were taking pics, I also got some of Lichfield. It’s starting to pill (bobble) a bit, but I think that’s because it’s not a high twist yarn, as well as the fact that I’ve been wearing it a lot.

Sales of Bodelwyddan are pottering on – please do spread the word about the October fund-raiser for Treasure Chest YGC. 50% of Bodelwyddan sales during October are going to this charity, which helps to support folk who are going through/have been through treatment for breast cancer in Denbighshire. I was asked to design these socks last year to be part of the fund-raising and so far we’ve sold 9 copies, raising £22.50. I’d love it to be more!

I’m wearing my pair of Bodelwyddan socks today. This is the largest size in the leg, decreasing to the next size down for the foot.

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Next month, which somehow is only a couple of weeks away, I get the rights back for Branwen, the first knit-along shawl I designed for The Knitter. This is one of the gorgeous photos from The Knitter.

Branwen will be going out into the world as a single pattern for the first time. There is likely to be an introductory discount for my newsletter subscribers, so if that sounds appealing, why not sign up for my newsletter?

When I write to you next week, I shall have turned 50! The lead up to this milestone birthday has been very good so far and I’m looking forward to starting my next decade in a much better place than I started the last one. I’m even going to be doing some singing again.

Til then, take care, do stuff that makes you happy and stay safe, K x

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Rounding Up

A large drift of chives with lots of purple flowers taking over one corner of the bed.

Last week I promised a round-up of the Calon Cariad shawls, didn’t I? Well, I’ve had a scour through the images posted in my Facebook group, posted on Instagram with the hashtag or sent to me and this is a good mix! I know for certain that Anne’s (top left) is finished, but I don’t have a picture of it post blocking.

Shawls knitted by: Top, L-R: Anne, Sandra, Patricia; Middle, L-R: me, me, Katrin; Bottom, L-R: Markus, Karen.

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I think you’ll agree they all did a fabulous job! I know there are some other knitters out there who also made a start on their shawl and if you are one of them and have some progress to show, please send me a pic!

Speaking of progress… things are happening in the veg plot! As well as the chives flowering profusely, the broad beans are starting to make their presence felt more and I’ve planted the edamame beans and the squash and courgette plants. The rhubarb is also finally finding its feet after we split the crown and moved it, giving various parts away and the raspberries, red and blackcurrants and apple tree all look like they’re going to be quite productive this year!

It’s not a massive garden, but it’s got a lot in it (including the ground elder which I’ve chosen not to show you)!

I made some ‘same-day’ sourdough rolls yesterday – it’s a quicker process which uses more sourdough starter than the regular recipe (100g instead of 50g) and they came out of the oven a mere 13 hours after feeding Audrey2 (my starter). My lovely wife chose her two favourite ones this morning for her lunch before I’d remembered to photograph them! They are lush.

I have been doing quite a bit of knitting this week, but sadly none of it is stuff I can show you at the moment. I’ve also been doing lots of Excel spreadsheet magic, calculating (and recalculating) the sleeves for the sweater I’m working on. It makes life so much easier when you can make the formulae do the hard work for you (and when you know the ones you need), and then also round the results up/down/to a specific multiple. I’m going to cast on the sleeve for the third time later on and hope that it will be third time lucky. Fortunately, WYS Fleece DK is a very forgiving yarn!

The workshops I mentioned last week are filling up. The Two-Colour Brioche class is full (which is good as that is the first one – next week!), Beginners’ Crochet has one or two spaces left and there are spaces on the Closed Ring Cables workshop.

And on Saturday I get to see some sheep! We are going to the Riverknits Open Day which I’m really looking forward to.

I’ll tell you all about that next week – the blog post will be on Wednesday next week and I’ll tell you about the Brioche workshop then too!

Til then, take care and make time to do some of what makes you happy. K x

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All These Things That I’ve Done

Last week I finished by telling you I had marmalade to make when I got home. And indeed I did. However, the lovely Chris from Hampton Farm Shop had popped in the last few of the Seville oranges in addition to the ones I’d asked for, so rather than 1.4kg (3lb) of oranges, I had 2kg (4.5lb)!!

Marmalade was made on Thursday AND on Friday. It’s rather gorgeous in both colour and taste and I have found a solution to the skin withering tendency of the oranges when squeezing and chopping them – wear gloves! Obvious really, but it’s taken me until now…

This coming Friday sees the launch of our latest KAL – Calon Cariad and I’m really pleased that a number of people will be knitting along with us. The invites to the Cast-on Party on Zoom have started going out and I have got my chosen yarn all balled up; three skeins of CoopKnits Socks Yeah! in Xenon, which is a truly NEON pink.

I’ve also finally done some more embroidery and I *think* I may nearly be done with the black thread.

The spinning is coming on too – the 15 minutes per colour seems to be working well!!

I’m also working on a new pattern that is due for release next month (if you’re in my Facebook group you’ll have seen a sneak peek pic of it!).

I have blocked my Water Dragon Shawl and I love it. I still have the ends to weave in, but apart from that it is done! The top left image is straight after I cast off. The next is whilst blocking and the other two are after blocking.

This month’s pattern (due at the end of the month) is the re-launch of Of Night and Light, the colourwork vest that appeared in Knit Now Issue 134 last October – the rights return to me this month and I will get the pattern formatted into my standard layout and some new photos taken over the next couple of weeks.

But it’s not all been about the new things this week.

Today I have been mending my favourite cardigan (again). It’s three and a half years old and I wear it A LOT. The repairs and re-knits it has had deserve a post all to themselves and that will be what I tell you all about next week.

Have a good one and do stuff that makes you smile. K x

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Keep On Keeping On

I have lots of stuff to tell you about, but it’s been quite a day and it’s late, so I will keep it short and show more than tell.

First up, there’s a new pattern in the world! Small Acts is a pattern for a scarf AND a cowl. I even put lippy on for the pics. Click on the link for all the info, including where the name came from.

Next, I’m getting excited about our Calon Cariad KAL – it starts on Feb 11th, which is actually next week!! If you want to get a kit from me or from Yarn O’clock, there’s still time, but you need to choose your yarn quickly! I have a new pic of the Erika Knight sample of Calon Cariad to share with you:

Spring is starting to make its presence felt in the garden:

And I finished my Water Dragon Shawl by Red and the Wolf Designs!! The lace section took longer than expected, partly because I kept working on other things and partly because there were 1121 stitches per row. I added three extra garter stitch rows at the bottom and then cast off. The cast off was very satisfying. A great re-use of a lot of Colinette Jitterbug that had previously been an unworn cabled vest.

I’ll block it when I get home. Thursday is going to be a busy day too – haircut, kit to post, shawl to block AND… marmalade to make!

See you next week 😊 K x

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Mine!

This has rapidly turned into a week of finishing things.

On Saturday I plied the yarn I’ve been spinning, I skeined it on Sunday and washed it on Monday. Today it is dry and it is glorious! It’s Cambrian Wool which uses fleece from Welsh Mules. These are a cross between Welsh Mountain sheep and Blue Faced Leicester. The back of the packet the fibre came in says; “These sheep produce wool with beautiful sheen and incredible bounce and a long staple length”. The fibre came in five 20g coils, each of a different colour and collectively named ‘Mine’, from Hilltop Cloud. The colours really remind me of a trip to Parys Mountain a few years ago.

I have the skein next to me as I write and I can’t stop looking at it. The long staple means that it’s fairly easy to spin without the fibre vanishing out of your hands and it does have the most incredible sheen and is SO squishy. I think it’s about a DK weight, which is what I was aiming for, so I am a happy spinner here. 😊

Also finished is the Percy Pig jigsaw that I was given for Christmas. It’s the smallest of the jigsaws at 500 pieces, but I think was far harder than any of the 1000 piece ones will prove to be. I was convinced I’d made a mistake in it earlier on as I just couldn’t find one particular piece, but once I had placed all the pieces that were laid out on the table, that gap was still there! Perhaps there was a piece missing? I’d checked the floor already. I even swept my arm (carefully) underneath the green felt cloth the jigsaw was on in case it had become caught on the fabric as I unrolled the jigsaw. But no. And then I found it! It was upside down (of course) and wedged underneath a wooden coaster on the tablecloth. It was very satisfying to put that last piece in. I’ve left the puzzle complete until my lovely wife comes home, partly so she can see it and partly so I can be a little bit proud of my perseverance every time I go into the kitchen.

ALSO finished today… drumroll please…is the second secret project! It needs washing and blocking, but the actual construction is DONE, including a graft. I’m really pleased with it and I hope the magazine will be too. The next step is to block it, measure it, finish typing up the pattern and contact the mag to see if they want it now or if I should hold on to it until nearer the deadline (which is April). Unfortunately I can’t share pics with you yet, but it is lovely, though I say it myself.

Finally, I have finished the squares for the (full) Finishing Techniques workshop. Fourteen of them, two each for the six class members and two for me, all ready to be seamed and have stitches picked up from. They are currently blocking in the lounge. That’s seven hours work there!

There are still a few spaces on the Introduction to Sock Knitting workshop on the afternoon of Jan 22nd if you are near Mold at all that day.

A not-yet-finished thing that has nevertheless been making progress is one of my projects from Fasten Off YAL, the Water Dragon Shawl by Red and the Wolf Designs. I knitted three rows last night. That doesn’t sound like much, does it? But each row is now 1121 stitches long and takes about an hour. There are 14 rows left. I’m hoping to get it finished by the end of this week. Because it is so long I’m photographing it with the needle looped in a coil, showing all 70 stitch markers in use. Some things I knit as gifts (there’s one of those in progress at the moment too), and some things I knit for myself – this one is definitely one of the latter – it’s mine!

The blue of the yarn isn’t showing up quite right today, but that might be the light – it’s very sunny! In fact, I’m now going for a quick walk to make the most of it.

I hope you have a good week, enjoy the sunshine if you get some and keep doing what makes you happy.

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Behind the Screen

The past few days have been somewhat heavy on computer work with understandably less time available for engaging in the fibre side of fibre arts.

I have finished updating the layout of my website! I am so much happier with how it looks now and each pattern and kit has its own page rather than being a major scroll-fest. This means I have created something like 60+ new pages, but they have a clear and consistent appearance (hurrah for WordPress’ reusable blocks) and it means I can add more photos to each pattern so people can see items from different angles etc.

This is what the main pattern page looks like now, with all patterns organised by type:

Once you click on one of the category images you see the individual patterns within:

And clicking on the pattern image gives you the detailed info about it:

The website update also means that when I finally take the plunge and add a shopping cart, it’s set up in a much better manner ready for that. For now, though, the buttons still take you to my Payhip store. Adding a shopping cart is one of those chicken and egg type situations. It costs more and you need to be on a higher level plan, so do you a) wait for your sales to increase to be able to justify the increased cost or b) do it anyway in the hope that people being able to buy directly from the website will in itself increase sales? Decisions, decisions.

Did you see the sneaky way I also showed you my latest pattern release just there? That’s right, Angel of the North is out and about in the world 😊 You can get the pattern from Payhip, Lovecrafts or Ravelry (the usual eye strain/vision difficulty warnings apply to ravelry – and their current homepage image is REALLY bright!) and one lovely knitter has already purchased it.

So, that just leaves the launch of Into the Vortex at the end of next week – a 7 part MKAL to keep you going through the summer. I guarantee it’s not something that you’ll be melting under while you knit if the weather is hot. You can buy the ‘pattern’ now – what you’ll get at this stage is the info about what you’ll need etc and then pattern updates will be released to you each Friday.

I have started spinning some new fibre – some beautiful BFL (Blue-face Leicester – that’s a sheep breed), dyed by Fibrehut in gorgeously subtle shades of blue/lavender. It’s called Purple Rain. Fibrehut is the company I bought my wheel from and, even though they are only a few miles away from my mum’s I haven’t yet been there in person. Because, well, Covid. I hope to go there soon though, on one of my upcoming visits to see Mum.

I have also been working on a sock for Sue – don’t worry, she will get two eventually! I’ll post pics of progress of this next week.

While I’ve been doing all this, the audiobooks that have been keeping me company have been more Terry Pratchett (Making Money, Going Postal) and Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code. The latter author has me cringing with his descriptions of the (rare) female characters in comparison to the male ones, but it was interesting this morning to hear that one of the reasons women had been burnt as witches was for the ‘heretical easing of childbirth pains’. I have no idea if this is accurate or not, but it was an uncanny link to an awful lot of what I have read lately about the current lack of pain relief used for women’s medical procedures.

On that cheery note I shall leave you for today! I have a schematic to draw.

Stay safe, use sunscreen if you’re out and about, and do more of what makes you happy, K x

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Design Submissions

One of my favourite types of email landed in my inbox last night – a call for submissions. These have the effect of creating a serious case of ‘start-itis’, unless I’m up to my eyeballs in an existing project/design. Fortunately, I’ve reached the border on the shawl I’m currently designing for Yarn O’clock and I’m therefore allowing myself to be tempted.

Submission calls vary greatly. Some just have a word or idea, like ‘growth’, and these are the most open, but can also be the hardest to work with. Some come with big mood boards, showing inspirational pictures that are often nothing to do with knitting, but capture the theme or idea of the call. Some show knitted items in the style that would be welcomed, a kind of “this sort of thing, but not exactly this”. They all nearly always tell you what type of items are being looked for, what size range is needed, what type of knitted fabrics are wanted (lace, cables etc) and usually, but not always, what the ‘compensation’ is – how much they’ll pay.

The one I got yesterday is for ‘advanced lace’ shawls and wraps. This is right up my street and I love an excuse to get all complex! So, today I have begun my process towards submission. There’s always a lot to do, but I don’t mind that as if it doesn’t get selected then I’ll have a design ready and raring to go for someone else or for self-publication.

For the first time (influenced by my bullet journalling course) I have put a list down of all the steps I need to complete for the submission. I’ve done the first two, which might not seem much, but it’s an important start. For example, I try not to use silk anymore, so I’ve gone through the list of yarns available for this submission and selected ones that don’t contain silk. I’ve also rejected superwash yarns as I find they don’t keep their shape quite as well after blocking when working fine, open lace patterns. That left me with a choice of two! Using that I’ve gone through my stash (mostly looking at leftovers from previous designs/projects) and chosen some yarns that are a good match in terms of how they’re spun and what they’re made of (shown in pic at top). Now the fun can really begin. I think I will appreciate my list more and more in the next couple of weeks as there’s often something I will forget to do (like measuring the gauge – how many stitches and rows there are per 10cm).

My design submission job-list

I’ll let you know how it goes!

Keep knitting, K x