Tag: Slip Stitch Knitting

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Getting Things Done

I’ve actually done quite a lot of knitting this week! The sample of Bryn I showed you last week knitted in Weku Yarn Bukom DK is glorious – these colours are Golden Yellow and Royal Purple and this yarn is now available on Weku Yarn‘s website! The purple is a lot more vibrant in real life than it looks here in the photo.

I’ve also tried out a new colour combination for Twisted (which would also work really well for Bryn) which is Lime and Blue in Town Ends Yarns Poldale DK. I had slightly less than 25g of each of these colours and completed the cowl successfully!

In trying to get ahead of myself for Wonderwool I’ve also been putting my kit boxes together. I like the boxes rather than the tins, although they are trickier to open once they’ve been closed!

Those piles of boxes are stacked six high and there are two more piles around the corner!

In more DK knitting I’ve also made progress on my DK version of Into the Vortex. I love how different the slip stitch patterns look in the different yarns.

I’m not yet sure how much more I’ll be able to do as I want to ensure I only use 100g of the Riverknits DK Chimera. I’m also not 100% sure how much purple I used (West Yorkshire Spinners Fleece) as I had a number of part balls in the basket and I’m not sure I picked up the same one each time… I’ll have to weigh it! I’ve realised this is the only shawl I’ve designed with this shape and I think it’s one I want to explore again – maybe swirling the other way next time!

My 4-ply grey sample of What Do Points Make? is also growing. I’m very much enjoying this yarn and I’m looking forward to how the finished item will look once blocked.

Someone kindly messaged me the other day as well to let me know there was a st count error in size 1 at the bottom of the first column on page 4. It should read : “Rep Rows 7-10 twice more, then rep Rows 7-9 once more. 53 (71, 89, 107) sts” (not 55 sts). After the bottom of that column the st count is then correct. It’s been updated on all the digital formats available and I’ve let buyers of the digital pattern know about the update where possible.

Last week I said that my next job was to update the events section of my website and that has been done too – there are lots more yarn shows and workshops showing now! I’m teaching at Ewe Felty Thing on Saturday and, while the two-colour brioche workshop is sold out, there are still some spaces on the stranded knitting one (10.30-12.30, £45 including tea/coffee/cake and of course your workshop handouts). Contact the shop if you’d like to attend!

I’m going to keep today’s post short as there are lots of things I want to get done before my lovely wife gets back from nearly a week away, so Happy Easter to those who celebrate it and I hope you all get to do something that makes you happy this week. K x

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Sugar Sugar

Part of a pink knitted cardigan with a slipped stitch pattern using teal, raspberry and lime green stripes.

This has been an exciting morning – and, as I start today’s blog post, it’s only just gone 9am!

I’ve been printing out copies of Sugar Loaf Cardigan – 20 copies will be going with me to Buxton Wool Gathering this weekend. The pattern will also be going live online tomorrow!

Sugar Loaf Cardigan has been a big piece of work for both me and my amazing tech editor, Deb Bramham. The pattern contains 20 sizes, each of which has 2 length options, so there are 40 different possible size variations. And the pattern fits neatly into 12 pages of A4.

I created this design as a result of customer feedback – so many people were disappointed that Honeybun Cardigan was a design for children and only went up to Age 8, that I promised I would make an adult version. I used the same yarn, Rowan Summerlite 4ply with a new colourway. As with the child’s version, the body is made in one piece and the sleeves are knit flat separately, seamed and joined to the body. The sleeves are a hybrid of inset and raglan design, just like the original Honeybun, with cute shoulder shaping at the top of the sleeve cap.

I also have to give a shout-out to The Button Box, Devon. I got the gorgeous metal buttons for Sugar Loaf Cardigan from them at East Anglia Yarn Festival.

The first inside page of the pattern lists all the sizing details along with the schematics. I will be adding this as a picture to the online info so folk can see if the design will work for them before committing to buying it. Sizing info is important – and we need to know more than just a chest measurement in order to know if a design will fit us.

You may notice the term ‘9-14cm positive ease’ in the first sentence of the image above. That means the garment will be between 9-14cm bigger at the full chest than a person’s body, depending on the size. Negative ease would mean the garment measurement is smaller than the actual body measurement – for a garment that would only work for stretchy fabric designed to fit snuggly! I imagine the only time I’ll be using negative ease in designs is for sock or mitt cuffs or the brims of hats like berets, where stretchiness is an important part of making the item fit or stay on/up.

Last week I was talking about my epic alpaca knitting and I was hoping to have finished the third part and maybe even made a start on the fourth and final part of it by today. Well, I am very pleased to report that I finished the third part on Friday and last night I got to the half way point of part four! So, at this rate, I may even have finished it by next Tuesday!

There are definite advantages to being the passenger in a car when you’re a knitter, and the M25 decides to be VERY slow. That was Friday on the way to Kent (the day after Sue’s AMAZING book launch in Worcester). I also got quite a lot done on the way home on Saturday. For some reason the sat nav took us up the M11 towards Cambridge and then on to the A14, rather than our usual M1 route to the M6, but it was a pleasant and quietly uneventful drive!

We are learning to trust any unusual routing the Apple Maps sat nav suggests after blithely ignoring it on the way to East Anglia last month where we ended up trying to drive down terribly frosty/icy lanes at 6am because the road we had expected to be on was actually shut for repairs. The sat nav knew about the road closure and that was why it was trying to take us a different route from our usual one!

Woolly Wormhead has a book out and I am hoping to get a copy tomorrow from Yarn O’clock. It is called Short Row Colorwork Knitting, the Definitive Stitch by Stitch Guide and is published by Sixth & Spring Books.

Woolly is even going to be coming to the UK for a book tour to celebrate its launch with events at RiverKnits Open Day in Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire, on Sunday 19th May and at For The Love Of Yarn in Glasgow on Sunday 26th May. Sadly, I’m not able to get to either of these events myself, but if you are, I recommend going!

Of course, the reason I can’t get to the RiverKnits Open Day is that it’s the same weekend as Buxton Wool Gathering. If you can’t come Buxton but you’d like to see my designs and kits in person, I’ll also be at the North Wales Wool and Fibre Festival in Bangor, North Wales, on June 1st, Wool@J13 in Staffordshire, June 29th-30th and the Pop-up Wool Show in Port Sunlight, August 17th. I will also have a stand at Yarn Gathering in Mold on September 15th which myself and Anne from Yarn O’clock are organising and is returning for its 3rd year, and there’s one more large yarn show I’ll be exhibiting at this year too…!

Right, that’s enough for today! Have a good week if you can and do some stuff that makes you happy. Take care, K x

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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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What’s in a Name?

This morning I finally got the buttons sewn on to the adult version of Honeybun! I still need to choose a new, but related, name for this pattern. ‘Adult Honeybun’ is way too clunky, but the name does need to be close enough to Honeybun so folk realise it’s the sized up version of the original child’s cardigan pattern that was published back in 2018. My original name for the design had been ‘Joseph’s Jacket’ as I had designed it for a little boy called Joseph as part of my City & Guilds design qualification, but the magazine gave it the name Honeybun. ‘Honeyloaf’ (?), since a loaf is a large version of a bun? That sounds strange. Any thoughts or suggestions will be warmly welcomed and considered!

Why did it take me over a week to get the buttons on since getting home from EAYF? Because I picked up a cold virus (not covid, I did check) and ended up feeling somewhat grotty for a large chunk of the week. However, I’m all better now, and the cardigan is complete (as is the shawl I was working on before I went to Norfolk)!

Positioning buttons for a cardigan can feel like a tricky business, so I thought I’d share the process I use, in case it’s helpful. The buttonholes are already there, worked into the button band as it was made. I line up the two sides of the button band with the buttonholes on top and use locking stitch markers to dip down through the buttonholes into the band below. I do this for all the buttonholes so I can check it’s lined up properly with no stretched or baggy areas.

Once these are all in place you can ease the buttonholes over the stitch markers, leaving the positions to sew the buttons in nice and obvious! I sew the buttons on with sewing thread that closely matches the main colour, even though the stripes I’m sewing into are contrast colours. Apart from anything else it makes it easier for me to see where I’ve sewn!

There are 9 buttonholes, so I bought 10 buttons – I thought it made sense to have a spare just in case. I’ll get some proper photos of the whole garment taken soon to add to the pattern.

By Saturday my cold was improved enough for me to be able to lead Shelby’s Singers, our local community choir, as we sang at Buckley’s Easter Market. It was really well received by all the shoppers, with eight songs ranging from ‘Consider Yourself’ from Oliver!, through Rivers of Babylon by Boney M to This is Me from The Greatest Showman! I’m so proud of how far the choir has come since we started last autumn – and rehearsals continue on, starting some brand new songs tomorrow.

Do you remember I showed you a sneak peek of a new design with cables in it a couple of weeks ago? Well, the design is a cowl called Gnarly Roots and it will be launched next month! There are lots of great features and options in this design. First of all, it’s a DK design that only uses 100g. The cables are reversible, and they’re different on each side. So, knitting one cowl gives you two options for wear!

Sue is modelling the cowl here and it’s knitted in 100g of HeartSpun DK by Woolly Chic, which is a gorgeous soft and silky yarn with 70% Bluefaced Leicester wool and 30% Tercel. The Tencel is what gives the yarn a wonderful sheen and silky feel. You can tell why this colour is called Marmalade!

Now, you know how I love a double sided design and the fact that a moebius construction means you get to see both sides of the fabric at the same time. So, Gnarly Roots also includes a moebius option!

This sample is knitted in 100g of Ewe & Ply’s Shropshire Ply 2018 Double Knitting in the colour Lady’s Mantle. It’s a completely different type of yarn from the HeartSpun DK, being a woollen spun yarn with lots of personality and body, whilst still being soft enough for a cowl. It’s made from 34% Welsh mule, 28% Shropshire, 20% Sherino (Shetland x merino) and 18% Bluefaced Leicester.

So, keep an eye out for Gnarly Roots coming out next month (auto-correct keeps trying to change the pattern name “Gary Roots” which is quite funny, but I think I’ll stick to Gnarly). There will hopefully be HeartSpun kits for it at WonderWool too!

I’m going to keep today’s post a little shorter than usual, partly as it’s already gone 8pm, so I’ll catch up with you next week with more knitting news. Until then, take care and enjoy the warmth of the sunshine when you can! K x

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Scale

One of the things I didn’t expect to need as a knitwear designer was a set of kitchen scales that measure to 0.1g. But it has been so useful on many occasions. Most recently I have been using it to calculate how much of each of the main and contrast colours I’ve used for the sample of the adult version of Honeybun Cardigan. I can tell you now that each 50g ball of Rowan Summerlite 4ply actually tends to contain between 51g and 52.2g. I’m glad I had some full balls of yarn left over, as I hadn’t thought to weigh them before I started. If I’d assumed the balls were exactly 50g and simply weighed what was left I’d have been slightly underestimating my usage. It would only have been by a couple of grams for each of the contrast colours, but that scales up to about 20g when you’re looking at 9 or 10 balls of the main colour – even more so for the largest sizes.

I am pleased to have finished the cardigan. The shoulder shaping has worked a treat. The ends are all woven in and the pattern is now with my tech editor (hi Deb!). The only thing left for me to do with the sample is to choose and sew on 9 buttons. And possibly give it another wash.

Something else I’ve been thinking about regarding scale (and scales) is my Fiery Dragon Skin Cowl! I first designed this in 2019 using Knitting Fever’s Painted Desert 4-ply in the now discontinued colour way Show Stopper (left-hand pic below). Painted Desert is a lovely yarn with gradual colour changes (a bit like the Zauberball Crazy sock yarn).

You may have seen photos of the orange chunky-ish hand-spun version I made for Sue while we were at Wool-in Garden City. I’m currently updating the pattern so it includes options for DK, Aran and Chunky weight yarns as well as the original 4ply. The cowl itself is knit in the round and, to make life easier for folk, I’ve also included a knit-flat stitch pattern so you can swatch easily. This means you can use the pattern with any yarn you want (particularly useful for hand-spun yarns which can vary a lot from the commercial standards of weight/length) by swatching and doing a tiny bit of maths to work out how many stitches to cast on for the size you’d like. Fortunately it’s a 10-stitch pattern repeat, so that part is quite simple!

I love how the texture of the stitch pattern looks and behaves with different weights of yarn – it gives such a varied character to the finished fabric of the cowl.

I’m really excited about East Anglia Yarn Festival (where I’ll be in less than two weeks!), where Caramel Slice will have its debut as a single pattern (having been originally published in The Knitter last August).

It’ll be the first time I’ve exhibited at this particular event and also the first time I’ve sold only patterns at a yarn show (so there will not be any wooden items, kits or project bags etc). My patterns are printed and ready – I’ll be bring 640 with me (of 41 designs), so there should be plenty! This is what 640 printed patterns looks like:

It may not look terribly exciting like this, but wait until it’s all on display! Taking 41 designs with me to EAYF does mean there will be 20+ designs staying at home, but they will still be available online if I don’t have something in particular with me that a knitter is after.

I’ve been working with slipped stitches a lot lately – and I’m doing another design at the moment using slip stitches, but there are other techniques I’m enjoying currently too – particularly brioche and cables! Here’s a sneak peek at some cool cable work:

Isn’t the yarn gorgeous? Now, you probably know I don’t use silk, so what’s making this yarn so shiny? It’s TencelTM which is a fibre made from wood pulp. The yarn is HeartSpun DK from Woolly Chic, a long DK at 250m/100g with 70% Bluefaced Leicester wool and 30% TencelTM in the colourway Marmalade 2022. Helen from Woolly Chic was one of the organisers of Wool-in Garden City and this was where I got the yarn (and the commission to design something lovely with it!)

There are just two and a bit days left if you want to take advantage of the February online pattern discount for members of my Facebook group and subscribers to my monthly newsletter. This month’s discounts are for patterns beginning with C or D. Pictured below are the patterns that applies to: Calon Cariad, Ceridwen, Codetta Shawl, Croeso Baby Blanket, Diamonds in the Breeze and Drifting Leaves.

It’s a 10% discount for Facebook group members or a 20% discount for newsletter subscribers. From Friday 1st March the discount changes to patterns beginning with E or F. Those will be Elinor Hap Shawl, Fiery Dragon Skin Cowl, Forest Ferns Moebius and Furrowed Fields Scarf. Sign up for the newsletter (my “Mailchimp audience”) or join my Facebook group if this appeals to you!

That’s everything from me for today – I’m heading back to my knitting now! Take care of yourselves and each other. K x

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Pancake Day

Is it just me, or does the sleeve look like a fish opening its mouth for dinner, when the picture is sideways?

As you can see, the sleeves of Adult Honeybun are complete, washed and blocked! If you zoom in you can probably see the shoulder shaping in the top few rows of the sleeve cap – it is meant to be a subtle shaping feature.

The sleeves are also now dry as I took this photo three days ago, so later on I shall be seaming them. I wouldn’t usually seam the sleeves before attaching them to the body of a garment, but as the body is all in one piece it actually is easier to make everything fit this way round.

After sewing the underarm seam, I shall attach the sleeves to the body and then I’m ready to calculate and knit the button band. The trickiest thing will be working out the stitch counts for each section of each size and exactly where to position the buttonholes. Getting the button band around the corners will mostly be the same as for the child’s version of Honeybun.

I’m really looking forward to having some pancakes later – with sugar and lemon juice, just like we had them when I was a child, with too much of both, so they are crunchy and sour at the same time! How will you have your pancakes, if you have them?

I’ve got six more workshops planned and tickets are available for them all. They are published on Facebook and Ticketsource, although I do need to add them to my website as well. Here is the flyer that lists them all:

I did a little more crochet last night – behold the first of nine Persian Granny Squares that will help the octagons join together in the Persian Tiles Blanket designed by Janie Crow.

Before I went down to Mum’s last week, she asked me if I wanted to buy any marmalade oranges from her local fruit and veg shop. I wasn’t sure I would have time to make marmalade this year (and had I left it too late in any case?), but I checked how much we had left. We have lots and lots of jams and jellies, but marmalade? 4 jars. That was all. No way that would last us a year, so I did pick up some seville oranges and on Saturday I made 8 more jars. Next year I’ll try and plan ahead a little better!

I’m getting excited about the upcoming East Anglia Yarn Festival, and as well as planning which designs and samples to take with me, I’m planning which designs will go in the shiny new pop-up display stand. It has five levels and the big benefit of this stand over the table top ones is that you can see the picture on the front of each pattern at a glance. And then it folds down into a bag to make it easy to transport. Genius design!

I’ve done so much more knitting this week and I can’t show you any of it yet, so instead I shall leave you will a pic of the rather splendid amaryllis that we got for Christmas. The first flower spike had been making a bid for freedom whilst the bulb was still in the box and grew horizontal. This one, however, is much more upright! There’s some two-colour brioche inspiration potential in the patterning on the petals too!

Until next week, take care and enjoy your pancakes if you have them. K x

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Launch

There have been some lovely comments about Petulia on social media that was launched with RiverKnits at Yarndale last weekend. I wasn’t there, but I know Becci was wearing the shawl at Yarndale on the Saturday, and she said it was super cosy.

This photograph of Petulia was taken by Anne from Yarn O’clock when she visited Yarndale on Sunday:

Hopefully some knitters now have the means to make their own version of Petulia! I’m itching to knit the smaller version of the shawl myself – and that thought led me to choose some lovely skeins of RiverKnits Chimera and Nene 4Ply this afternoon (at Yarn O’clock)! These skeins are Pumpkin (Chimera) and Zwergpflaume (Nene 4ply) – photographed in evening artificial light so they’re showing up a bit darker than they really are.

The release date for Part One of Barragán shawl (4th October) is drawing closer and there is still just about time to order a yarn kit from McIntosh if you’d like one to arrive by then.

It’s been really interesting seeing people’s reactions to the shawl and the kit on social media – MY Joy and MY Serenity are high contrast colours, with MY Serenity being a vibrant pink/plum colour. Lots of people love it, (even if they don’t usually like pink!) which is wonderful. Sometimes it can be hard to imagine a design in a different colour-way from what is shown, but one of the great things about knitting is that we can take a knitting pattern and make it our own through our colour choices. Someone suggested using two tones of the same shade and I think that could be really beautiful too.

If you love the McIntosh BFL in the colours I used for Barragán, there are a couple of ways you can get a yarn kit:

You can subscribe to The Knitter magazine and select the yarn kit as a free gift (How awesome is that as a free gift!?). There are limited quantities available for this offer so don’t wait around if this appeals to you. You would also need to buy the magazine on October 4th to get Part One as the subscription would start on Nov 1st.

You can order the yarn kit directly from McIntosh (there are four options here; you can also add pattern/needles/both to the yarn/tote bag). (Note – this is an affiliate link; I get a small commission if you order the yarn via this link).

If you don’t love the colours, or already have 150g/600m in each of two colours of 4ply yarn that you’d love to use for Barragán, just buy the magazine each month for the next four months! The first part is in Issue 194 out on October 4th.

I can’t wait to see what combinations people choose to knit this shawl in. Share progress on social media using the hashtag #BarraganKAL

Before Barragán gets going, there’s another pattern being launched! Designs are a bit like buses sometimes…

Bodelwyddan is my new sock design for Treasure Chest YGC – a charity that aims to support and raise funds for patients who have had or are having surgery or treatment for breast cancer in Glan Clywd Hospital, Denbighshire.

Bodelwyddan is a top-down textured design in five sizes with a heel flap and gusset, worked on 2.25mm needles.

I’m donating 50% of the pattern price (that’s £2.50) of every copy sold throughout October to the charity..

I finally have photographs of all five sizes – the largest two sizes are modelled – and the pattern is ready to go live on October 1st. It will be available via my website, Payhip, Lovecrafts and Ravelry.

Bodelwyddan is the village in Denbighshire where Ysbyty Glan Clwyd (Glan Clwyd Hospital) is based and this is the reason for the pattern name.

I’ve now taught three workshops at Shaz’s Shabby Chic now and I’m really enjoying them. This is what my two students last week achieved in just two hours! Three swatches each – impressive!

Tomorrow is Knitting in the Round and there are a few places left. Three more workshops are booked in at Shaz’s Shabby Chic next month, including another Absolute Beginners’ Knitting Workshop. So, if you were thinking about coming to learn to knit and missed out last time, now’s your chance! All workshops are detailed on the “Where I’ll Be” page.

I’m delighted to announce that I’m teaching at The Knit-Tea Retreat again this year. The Retreat takes place at Insole Court in Cardiff on October 28-29 with a social evening in the pub on the Friday night (27th). Booking is open now!

It was great fun last year. There are lots of workshops to choose from – felted landscapes, ‘fun with fibre’ and drop spindling as well as three knitting workshops from me: intarsia, slipped stitches and ‘not basic lace’. There’s a wonderful atmosphere at the retreat, lots of cake, a fab social evening on Saturday and a mini market on Sunday afternoon. I highly recommend it!

In other news, I’ve finally returned to knitting the sleeves of my Umbriel sweater! I hope to have some photos to share with you next week. It will be finished before the end of the year.

Until next week then, take care and I hope you get a chance to do some stuff that makes you happy this week. K x

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Harvest Time

The past week has been so busy, and my intention of picking raspberries every couple of days has gone slightly sideways. The high winds today have done some other harvesting for us and there are quite a few windfalls on the grass waiting to be picked up tomorrow. The last two tomatoes are ripening on the kitchen window sill – they are tigerella tomatoes and their stripes are emerging nicely as they change colour.

Various projects I have been working on have also come to fruition and are ready to harvest this week! Partly as a result of these I have been updating my homepage of the website and I have to say I’m pleased with how it’s looking.

You may have seen on my newsletter or social media posts that I have something very exciting happening with The Knitter. Barragán Shawl is The Knitter’s Autumn 2023 knit-along, designed by me in McIntosh’s BFL (Bluefaced Leicester) yarn. It’s a gorgeous British wool and the colours I chose, MY Serenity and MY Joy, are stunning.

The shawl is called Barragán, named after the Mexican architect, Louis Barragán (1902 – 1988) who is quoted as saying, “A garden must combine the poetic and the mysterious with a feeling of serenity and joy”. With serenity and joy being the names of the colourways I chose it seemed absolute serendipity when I came across this quote and I had to name the shawl after him.

You can pre-order a yarn kit direct from McIntosh. (By using this link, if you decide to buy a kit, I get a little commission!). Part One of the KAL is out in Issue 194 of The Knitter on October 4th, so in order to receive your yarn kit in time, pre-order by September 29th.

Another piece of exciting design release news relates to my Petulia shawl which I designed for RiverKnits. It is going to be launched at Yarndale, this coming weekend (September 23rd and 24th)!

There are still some tickets available for timed entry to Yarndale on the Sunday if you haven’t got one yet. The pattern is a big one; there are two shawl shapes within the one pattern. Both versions use the same two-colour brioche leaf motif as a structural building block. The smaller version of Petulia is symmetrical and uses 2 x 50g skeins of Chimera and 1 x 100g skein of Nene 4ply, the other is larger, asymmetrical and flamboyant and uses 3 x 50g skeins of Chimera and 2 x 100g skeins of Nene 4ply. If you’re going to Yarndale look out for my large Petulia shawl on the RiverKnits stand – they’re on stand F1!

Just as with Tiffany and Agnes, Petulia will be available exclusively from RiverKnits for the first six months, after which I will be selling the pattern as well.

I finished sewing the zipped project bags on Thursday and was really pleased with how they turned out. I even discovered that my sewing machine has a thread cutter on the side, which I had no idea about, despite having had my sewing machine for over 6 years – doh!

Sewing the tabs on the side was the trickiest part – 12 layers of fabric, 2 layers of fusible fleece and a zip to keep lined up! I’ll be adding them to the website later this week.

Yarn Gathering on Sunday was fantastic. We had a dozen wonderful vendors and over 160 visitors. I really loved seeing all the people in The Daniel Owen Centre having a good time, chatting about yarn, weaving, crochet, knitting and dyeing.

Some of the best moments of the day for me were when knitters came to show me their finished projects, either on a photo or in real life – I wish I’d thought to take some pics of them, but it only occurred to me afterwards…

There have been some great posts on social media, with folk showing off their purchases. The day ran smoothly, after the slightly scary moment when we opened the fire doors to the car park and the alarm went off! Fortunately one of the lovely people from the venue arrived a few minutes later, turned it off and all was quiet again!

My workshops at Shaz’s Shabby Chic are going well and I’ve booked some more dates in for October – more details to follow very soon. Working with Colour – Slip Stitch Knitting is tomorrow (you can still book a place!) and I’ve had fun digging out samples of my designs that use slip stitches to create colour patterns.

If you want to expand (or begin) your knitting skills why not sign up for a workshop? The October workshops will be available to book by the end of week.

Yet again, the day is running away from me and I need to get this posted. I will tell you all about how tomorrow’s workshop goes next week and hopefully I’ll have some news about how Petulia was received at Yarndale.

Until then, take care one and all, K x