Tag: Singing

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Mixing It Up

This has been a very varied week, despite spending quite a lot of time on my own. I even made biscuits, though there are none left and no photographic evidence was taken.

Knitting wise, I have been working on four designs! One, Elinor Hap Shawl, has now been updated with an improved layout and a correction of stitch counts. There will be a further update later in the year once the new sample is ready for photographs.

Another design, Menai, will be launched as an individual pattern next week on April 4th, having been originally published last October in The Knitter magazine. We took advantage of yesterday’s sunshine to take some new photos and I am pleased with how they have come out. It’s a brioche cowl that almost behaves like a mini-poncho and there are some fun decreases to create the leaves and leaf-bud shapes.

I have kept the layout and language consistent with my other brioche designs, so you will see rows labelled as “Row 1 LC (RS):”, followed by “Row 1 DC (RS):” where LC stands for light colour yarn and DC for dark colour yarn, rather than “Row 1 (RS): Using yarn A…” followed by “Row 1 (RS): Using yarn B…” which was the magazine’s house style for brioche.

It’s knitted flat, partly because the alpaca yarn I was using started to make the fabric twist when I tried knitting it in the round, and partly because it’s easier to block properly! The method I use for drawing a blocking schematic varies wildly: sometimes I draw it in a computer programme, and at other times, such as here, I take a very different approach: I print out a photograph of the work while its pinned and blocking, tape it to the window with a plain piece of paper over the top and use that as a free lightbox to trace the outline! To this I can add measurements!

There will be a time limited subscriber discount when Menai is launched for digital copies of the pattern, so if that appeals to you, make sure you sign up to my newsletter before the end of March!

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I will have Menai (both the sample and printed copies of the pattern) with me at the Trunk Show at Yarn O’clock on April 12th. The shop is open 10-4 and I will be there all day with lots of my printed patterns and samples and Anne who runs the shop will be able to show you all the fabulous yarn she has that would be appropriate for the different patterns.

The two other designs I have been working on are new designs that will be published later this year, both single colour items, but very different in yarn weight, technique and finished item! I can’t wait to share them with you.

As well as doing lots of knitting and pattern writing/tweaking, I have been doing quite a bit of singing this week. It was the Spring Market in our town on Saturday and the community choir I lead, Shelby’s Singers, sang for a full hour with songs from Pink, Steps, Les Miserable and Joseph to name just four! The church choir I sing in also had a great rehearsal in the week as we are preparing for performances of Fauré’s Requiem and Allegri’s Miserere just before Easter.

And, surprise surprise, I spent a couple of hours at the garage during the past week (knitting of course) while they checked out my un-opening door. And yes, they did agree after that investigation that it does have wrong with it what I said it did when I booked it in, and they will be ordering the part. I had been foolish enough to think that, having told them the problem had also occurred on a different door nearly 18 months ago and what had been needed, that the part would already have been there and the fault fixed that day, but I was wrong. They needed to check it out for themselves first. Which I suppose is fair enough, but it does mean another wait for it to be fixed.

Then this afternoon, I spent a lovely couple of hours in the company of some ex-colleagues working through a cryptic crossword as we had used to do in the staff room. To be fair I wasn’t a regular member of crossword corner then as I couldn’t often get out of the department during day, but I had always enjoyed the times I did and today was wonderful. Laughter, sharing news, a little reminiscing, but not a lot, and a lot of brain work wrangling our way through the cryptic clues. I will definitely be meeting with them again.

I am looking forward to seeing more of the camellia flowers opening up on the bushes in the back garden – I am hoping they will look quite good by next week and intend to take some photos to share with you. I still need to finish some of the winter cutting back, but I have at least finished the fruit bushes.

I am also looking forward to cooking dinner for my lovely wife this evening, so I had better stop now!

What will you do this week that makes you smile? K x

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It’s raining again…

The North Wales Wool & Fibre Festival is this coming Saturday, June 1st. It’s being held in the Deiniol Shopping Centre in Bangor, with some vendors being in empty shop units and some being in the shopping mall itself. I’m going to be in what was the BrightHouse store, along with a wide variety of other woolly artists and creatives. Entry to the event is free, so if you’re in the North Wales area on Saturday between 10am and 4pm, come and say hello! Considering the current weather, it’s also a bonus that the whole event is under cover!

I’ve been swatching for a new brioche cowl design, specifically for knitters who might not have done two colour brioche knitting before. It will be simple, attractive and include some increases and decreases to build the knitter’s skills. Interestingly, the more I simplified the idea, the more I liked it!

Although it’s a cowl, it does not have to be knit in the round. I will include knitting in the round instructions, but I will actually be recommending folk knit it flat and seam it as this will help them learn the rhythm of the different stitches and colours when working each side of two-colour brioche. This decision comes after demonstrating brioche knitting to folk at yarn shows and seeing them have lightbulb moments in understanding, often having tried brioche in the round previously and found it confusing. It will also stand someone in good stead for when they come to knit something larger, such a shawl, that will be knitted flat.

Following on from some conversations I’ve had at the past couple of yarn shows we’ve been at, I’m also going to be running an Introduction to Brioche Knitting workshop on Zoom in the next couple of months! There will be a couple of date and time options and numbers will be limited to maintain a true workshop feel.

If a brioche knitting workshop via Zoom sounds like something you’d be interested in, make sure you sign up for my monthly newsletter and keep an eye out on the website.

I usually send out one email per month at the start of the month so your inbox won’t be bombarded! You can sign up from my homepage (scroll to the bottom).

If you happen to see the latest copy of Knit Now (issue 168) in your local newsagent, there’s a design from me inside! A set of lacy circular coasters and placemats knit from the centre outwards using a Pi shawl construction (albeit on a much smaller scale). I knit them using mercerised cotton for the magazine, although you could definitely use wool. Pleasingly, the design is included in the little inset pics on the cover around the main cover image. I named the set Prynhawn Da, which means ‘Good afternoon’ in Welsh, and relates to the brief of Afternoon Tea that was sent out to designers when the magazine asked for submissions last year.

Sue’s socks are coming on well. I’ve completed the leg, heel flap and gusset on the first one and now I’m heading down the foot towards the toe.

It’s amazing how quickly projects seem to grow after you’ve been working on a really big design for a long time.

Last autumn I began singing again after a break of several years. Singing was always ‘my thing’, and my main instrument when I did my music degree and while teaching music. I was quite rusty to start with, but I feel like I’ve got my voice ‘back’ now along with regaining a greater level of confidence. That may be linked with how I’ve really gone for it with the yarn shows this year: I think the grand total is something like 9 or 10!

I’m singing in a church choir who do concerts as well as services with some really uplifting music, and I’m also leading our local community choir who sing a range of songs from pop, show songs and children’s classics. Last week for example included Nellie the Elephant, This is Me from The Greatest Showman, Zadok the Priest by Handel and Rutter’s For the Beauty of the Earth! Quite an eclectic mix! Also, if you’ve never heard ‘Insanae et vanae curae’ by Haydn, do yourself a favour and have a listen. It’s bonkers and highly invigorating! I first sang it years ago, but I still don’t know what the words mean. I must look it up one day!

Right, that’s all from me today. I’ll let you know how Saturday goes next week and I may have a complete sock to show you! Take care one and all, and remember to do something that brings you joy this week if you can. 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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Getting Organised

Yesterday I woke up with a light bulb idea. My study (smallest bedroom) has been more and more difficult to keep tidy, partly because some of the boxes I need fairly regular access to were awkwardly positioned and so was some of the shelving.

I thought that if I swapped one of the wooden bookcases with one of the sets of metal shelving many of these issues would be solved. And they were, but getting to that point took a lot of shifting of ‘stuff’; moving everything off one set of shelves and then moving the shelves (all to elsewhere in our bungalow). Then taking everything off the bookcase I was moving (including unplugging and relocating the wifi hub), moving that bookcase, cleaning and hoovering all the spaces revealed in the process and finally, putting everything back together in its new positions.

I’ve only permanently moved one thing elsewhere and disposed of two other smaller items, but it feels much better and I can actually get to my swatches box and all my yarn boxes without having to shift a ton of other stuff first!

It’s not my most ‘instagrammable’ photo, but it’s organised and will really help me keep the rest of the room tidier. The metal shelving on the left was where the wooden bookcase on the right now is.

I was also very grateful that my lovely wife refrained from reminding me she had suggested this set-up when I first bought the second set of metal shelving, until after all the moving, cleaning and reloading of shelves was finished.

We’re halfway through November now, and I took a look at my ‘want to do’ list for the month this morning. It seems that nothing has been checked off! Two of the things are ongoing daily ones (stay hydrated and walk 3km per day), so they won’t be ticked until the end of the month, but I was surprised that nothing else has been either. But then I remembered that I started the month with a terrible cold that lingered to the end of the first week, and I also checked my other list of ‘need to do’ things and saw that the majority of those have been achieved.

I have had to add an item to the ‘need to do’ list as well – get the front passenger car door fixed. Last Friday it decided to stop opening, even though the car was not locked. And, of course, it was raining. Sue is now having to travel in the back until next week when I have an appointment to see if the clever car people can fix it. Perhaps I should start practising ‘taxi’ style conversations?

On the knitting side I have nearly completed the magazine piece I am working on – it will be published in May next year (so I can’t show it to you, but it’s very pretty and in three colours of cotton).

Part 2 of Barragán Shawl – the knitalong shawl being published by The Knitter – will be finished tomorrow. Part 3 will be out in the next issue on November 29th. The stitches on the bottom left are live stitches on a silicon stitch holder cord – Part 3 will be worked off both sides of the shawl, just as Part 2 has been.

I am knitting another pair of Bodelwyddan socks. These are a Zauberball yarn, but have a much longer colour repeat than others I’ve used. I rather like it! I’m hoping I’ll be able to work it so the second sock matches the first more or less in colour, starting with grey to teal and ending with pink on the foot.

…and Sue’s socks have seen a little progress too – these are on my ‘want to do’ list. The trouble is “Knit Sue’s socks” is rather vague. I should have carried on with the SMART targets and specified something like ‘Complete one sock’.

I haven’t done any more on my adult version of Honeybun in the past week or so, but I’ll return to that tomorrow.

For the past several months my embroidery of Mum’s photo has been on my list of things to do, but it has lain untouched. I’m trying to work out why. I know I will be pleased with it when it is finally done – I just need to work out what is stopping me and how to get past it. I’ve put so much time into the embroidery that I don’t want to just abandon it, but it is incredibly tiny and I think I used too many colours when I converted the photo into a chart, so it’s quite hard to follow. I might ask Sue to practice her coaching skills on me for this one!

On Sunday I sang in a service for the first time in years. I really enjoyed it and everyone was really friendly and welcoming – and we all coped well with the semi darkness as there was a total power cut of half the street just before the service! I’ll be singing in their advent carol service as well on Sunday 3rd December. It’s at 6.30pm at St Mary Without-the-Walls, Handbridge, Chester, if anyone fancies coming. The ‘Without-the-Walls’ part of the name doesn’t mean the church has no walls, just that it’s outside (without as opposed to within) the city walls.

There are still a couple of spaces available in the Twisted workshop at Yarn O’clock. Part One is this Thursday (16th) and Part Two is November 30th. Full details can be found here. You can see all three versions of the cowl layered up on Dolly the dress form in the picture of the ‘great reorganisation’.

That’s all from me today. Stay warm and dry and out of the wind if you can, and I hope you can do some stuff that makes you happy. Kx