Tag: Sock Knitting

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And Then There Were Two

As if by magic – a second sock appeared! Well, not magic obviously, by spending some time knitting. It’s funny that many people experience what is known as ‘second sock syndrome’, where they they will happily zip through making the first sock of a pair, but stall on the second. I seem to have the opposite. Once one sock is made, the other wants to get done and make the socks ready for use. It’s also helpful that this past week we have been taking things a little more gently due to a nasty throat/chest virus thing that got me first and then moved on to my lovely wife. I’m much better and she is just starting to come out of it. It has meant that we’ve spent a bit more time watching Grantchester (we’re almost up to the end of Series 3) and I’ve been knitting.

I’ve also started another DK version of Into the Vortex. I know I knitted one of these a while ago, but I wasn’t in love with the colours, so it’s still sitting there waiting to be blocked. However, I decided that this time I would keep it more in line with the original. RiverKnits now have a DK version of their Chimera yarn – and it was the 4ply version of this that we used in the original design along with their Nene 4ply, both of which are British Bluefaced Leicester yarns. I’m using the Chimera DK in the colourway ‘The Fifth Element’.

I’m going to pair it with a deep purple skein of West Yorkshire Spinners Fleece, which is another Bluefaced Leicester yarn. Bluefaced Leicester (BFL) is a breed of sheep, so this means the yarn is made solely from the fleeces of that breed of sheep.

Yesterday saw me doing more maths than I have done in over 30 years! I needed to calculate how deep the front neck drop of a new design can be. You might think the depth of the front neck drop (where the fabric at the front stops for the neck) is just a matter of choice and in many designs it is, but this design has an unusual shape and this measurement will dictate whether the top falls off the shoulders or not (and I would prefer not!).

I knew the length of one side of the triangle and all three angles (courtesy of this very fancy protractor that I bought on Saturday), but I had to google how to calculate the other lengths as I couldn’t remember! I knew it was likely to be something to do with sin/cos/tan, but it’s been a very long time since I last used those things. Hurrah for BBC bitesize and other maths support websites. It was time for the calculator and the tan function! Weirdly, I also found a TAN function in Excel, but it didn’t give me anywhere near the same result (and I know the calculator version is correct as I knew the side length I was trying to work out was going to be close in length to the one I knew, and the results I was getting from my attempts using TAN in Excel were nowhere near close). So, there are obviously some hidden extras that I need to learn before I can use Excel to work those things out for me.

On Sunday I got to take some pics of Lorelai Wrap, as Jo, a friend from my church choir, had kindly agreed to model it for me. Even the weather co-operated by stopping raining for a while. I got some great shots and this is the one that is going to be the main pic on the front cover of the pattern:

Lorelai Wrap will be available in printed form at the North West Winter Wool Festival in Blackpool this coming weekend and online within the week. It was first published in The Knitter magazine six months ago. It’s knitted in one piece using 4.5mm needles (you can use straight needles) and Jamieson’s of Shetland Ultra Lace, which is a beautiful yarn with a mix of 50% Shetland wool and 50% Lambswool. I used the colourway ‘Strawberry Crush’ – there are 39 other colours in this yarn to choose from if that’s not the colour for you!

That’s everything from me today. If you’re coming to Blackpool at the weekend do stop by and say hello – our stand is right near the door (stand B9) so you can’t miss us! If you’re not coming to Blackpool for the North West Winter Wool Festival, don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about it next week. Until then, take care, K x

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Reaching the End

So, I did it. I finally finished the first sock last night. Well, almost. I still need to graft the remaining 12 stitches at the toe. This sock has a graft that is at 90 degrees to the usual one. Instead of joining the remaining stitches top and bottom along the top of the toes, this one decreases more (which is why I only have 12 stitches left rather than 24) then joins the left and right stitches together down the centre of the toes. I can’t remember where I first came across this toe shape for socks, but it works really well.

The reason it’s taken me so long to get back to this sock is that I’ve knitted the front neck of the jumper design I’ve been working on three times. I mistrusted my first calculations thinking the neck would be too low, so I ripped that out, made the neckline higher and knitted it again. It seemed fine. Joined one shoulder seam, knitted the neckband. Again it seemed ok (this is with me draping it around Sue to check fit). Joined the other shoulder seam and all of a sudden the neck looked really small. It was indeed not easy to get over the head. So! I undid one shoulder seam, ripped out the neckband, undid the other shoulder seam, ripped back the front neck to 2cm lower than the too-small one. I re-knitted it all – holding my breath and also making the neckband shorter with a looser cast-off. This time, once I’d seamed one shoulder and knitted the neckband, I joined the other shoulder seam with lockable stitch markers to check it would actually go over the head. Phew! At least there were no sleeves to worry about, so I just had armhole ribbing to knit and side seams to sew before it was finished. And I can’t even show you any pics because it’s for a design submission.

I realised today that we are already in February and I haven’t yet sent out a single newsletter. If you are a newsletter subscriber and are wondering where your newsletters have gone, don’t worry – there will be one this week!

I mentioned a while ago that I’m scaling back / rethinking my kits. I’m also looking at changing the packaging from tins to cardboard boxes. There are several reasons for this – not least of which is cost, but also the fact that the empty cardboard boxes come flat and so take up far less room in our little bungalow! I think I’ve found the right size – it’s almost the same size as the larger tins were and now I’m choosing between natural brown and white.

I’m leaning towards the brown as I think that will show off the white sticker with the kit details far better and the white looks like it could get grubby quite quickly. I had considered black cardboard boxes to match the black cloths and metal cubes I use at yarn shows, but looking at them closely the black dye seems to rub off where the box is folded and I was then worried about it rubbing off on customers hands etc!

This week my local yarn shop, Yarn O’clock, announced that, after 10 years of trading, the shop will be closing in April. This is very sad for me. Anne, who owns the shop, hired me to teach my first knitting workshops, commissioned seven mystery knit-alongs from me and has sold me the yarn for nearly all of my kits! And of course, Anne and I have brought Yarn Gathering to Mold for four years. And when things were difficult for me personally a number of years ago, Anne’s shop was just about the only place I was able to leave the house to go to – it was my safe space. Things won’t be the same without her there, but as she put in her social media announcement, all good things must come to an end. I wish her so much joy for her new adventures, but will really miss being able to pop in, even though I haven’t been there as much as I would have liked over the past year or so. If you have a chance to visit Yarn O’clock before it closes in April I highly recommend it! Natural fibres with a focus on British yarn and a lovely range of needles, patterns and other items too.

It’s not long now until my first show of the year – the North West Winter Wool Show. If you have bought an advance ticket you will have a code to download the Seaside Winter Cosy pattern for free!

I will also have printed copies of the pattern with me at the show for sale for those people who buy a show ticket on the day – or in case anyone who already has their own copy of the pattern wants to buy one as a gift for someone else. If you do have an advance show ticket you have until March 15th (one month after the end of the show) to download your free copy of the pattern.

Until next week, take care of yourselves and each other and do something that makes you happy. K x

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One Step At A Time

I went to my local yarn shop’s (Yarn O’clock) social evening last week and, as I’d hoped, made some good progress on the sock. The gusset decreases are now completed and I’m on the main part of the foot. In theory it shouldn’t take long now to finish this sock, but that only works if you actually pick it up and I haven’t done any more on it since last Wednesday!

Why not? Well, I’ve been working on my new design which should also have been nearing completion. Except I did a stitch count when I was partway through the armhole decreases only to find I was one stitch over what I should have had. One stitch?! That’s not a lot! No, but this is the sample for the design so it needs to be correct (and front and back need to match) and it turns out I’d missed the decrease from the ribbing to the main body. So back it went! Frogging with the emotional support of a cup of tea and some bourbons. I’m about two-thirds of the way back to the arm-holes now.

As a change from the historical fiction and Terry Pratchett novels I tend to listen to, I have recently been listening to a book called Tiny Habits by B J Fogg (that link takes you to the Tiny Habits website). It’s a fascinating approach to getting yourself to do things you want to do, but haven’t yet managed, by breaking your goal right down to the tiniest first step and then just doing that. There’s a lot more to it than that obviously, including a lot of celebrating yourself each time you do the thing (however tiny) you’re setting out to do, and I think I may need to listen to the book a second time in order to get the full approach clear in my head. But it’s an appealing idea – you don’t have to do ‘the thing’ (whatever it is) all at once – break it down, do the first bit until that seems easy, then add the next step.

Mum recently gave us an amaryllis plant to look after. She was given it at Christmas time and, without a window sill in her room, she was worried that it wouldn’t get enough sunlight to really grow. It’s been on our kitchen window sill and growing like mad and I’ve been photographing its progress and sharing it with Mum.

Yesterday the flower bud finally began to open!

If you’re anything like me, you might have been reading the news and social media over the past few weeks and despairing. It’s hard to know what to do or say that doesn’t seem trite or performative, but if you are in the US, please make your feelings known to your representatives. If you are in the UK, please use your votes wisely in the coming months and years to ensure we don’t end up with a similar situation. Many knitters and crafters I am in contact with online have been told to ‘stick to their knitting’ when mentioning what is going on in the outside world, but knitting has always been political.

Knitting was a way of sharing intelligence during the Second World War (for example, through code knitted into fabric by women who sat by railway lines and watched who and what was moving where, or knitters who listened in to conversations and then added useful coded intelligence into their knitting) and as a way of protesting. A number of years ago we saw a knitted sampler in a Guernsey war museum that had a ‘pretty’ textured border around the edge. It had been knitted by a prisoner of war. The textured pattern was morse code for something along the lines of “Hitler is a ****” – I don’t remember the exact phrase, but you get the idea! I think the accompanying information said that the officers in the camp had claimed the sampler to display in their offices, which was ironic, considering the hidden message!

If you are a crafter you may have seen a rising number of patterns available with protest slogans included on them or patterns that are symbolic, such as the red Norwegian knitted caps that are getting a lot of attention currently. These were a visible symbol of resistance during World War II and wearing them became banned in 1942 as the Nazi’s were intimidated by the unity and resistance they represented and they are being knitted again as a form of protest against what is happening in the US, specifically with ICE. Some folk are embracing the idea – especially where proceeds from the pattern or sales/donations of the hats are going to help those in need, others think it is pointless or that individuals are ‘trying to monetise’ the situation. Am I going to knit one? Probably not; I am not in the US and it would cost too much to post one to someone there. But as John Stuart Mill, said in 1867 (not Edmund Burke): “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”

Knitters and designers on social media are often expected to respond to causes and events with grand statements or high profile sales with money going to the relevant cause. Equally they can get told to keep politics off their posts and ‘stick to their knitting’. There’s not a lot I personally can do in practical terms – I still need to promote my designs on social media rather than posting about current events every day. But do know that although I am not continuously shouting from the rooftops about the world turning upside down, I am very aware of it. My Dad went up Sword Beach in Normandy three days after D-Day to help rid the world of fascism. I can’t imagine what he would say about seeing what is happening in the world now.

On a related note, today is Holocaust Memorial Day.

Look after one another and do something that makes you happy. Until next week, take care, K x

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Community

Progress has been made on the sock this week with the majority of the gusset decreases completed. This is less progress than you might expect in a week, but that is partly because I am just over halfway through knitting (and writing the pattern for) the design I mentioned in last week’s post.

My spreadsheet for that design is large, but the pattern is (I think) nicely concise, without including any of those phrases that annoy me so much and are often used when a publication needs to save space, such as “Work as for Left side, reversing shaping”. I know this is a common phrase, but it relies on a certain level of knowledge and skill from the knitter to be able to do that, which a less experienced knitter might not have, and therefore can potentially exclude people from making the design. It is important to me that my patterns include the full instructions required and don’t make you guess what you need to do. Inclusivity in pattern writing is about more than the size range!

Some exciting news is that my brioche workshop at the North West Winter Wool Festival in Blackpool next month (Saturday 14th Feb) has sold out! There are still 8 spaces on the moebius knitting workshop on Sunday 15th Feb, so if you are going to that event and would like to learn how to knit what looks like a totally impossible shape, you can!

Also, a reminder that if you are going to that show, please do get an advance ticket as you will then get a code to download the Seaside Winter Cosy pattern for FREE!

The floorplan for the North West Winter Wool Festival has just been released too – which makes everything seem much more real! We will be on B9 which is just by the door, so you can’t miss us! If I’m not on the stand in the afternoon it’ll be because I’m teaching, but my lovely wife Sue will be there to help you.

After two weeks of lots of extra work, complete with the novelty of having colleagues again (with the invigilation for mocks), next week will feel a little quiet I think. I do enjoy working at home, by and for myself, but there is really something to be said for that 10 minute chat in the staff room before everyone cracks on with the next part of the day. Even if it’s just about something very ordinary. Actually, during the past week or so, I have been able to enjoy that moment of time much more than when I was teaching full time as, in this role, I have no last minute planning/marking/photocopying/furniture rearrangement etc to do, and I even have an allotted starting time, which never existed in my previous school role.

Tomorrow I am going to the social evening at Yarn O’clock, which I haven’t been able to do for quite some time as it has usually clashed with other commitments. I’m really looking forward to it and am planning to take the sock, with the intention of getting onto the foot during the evening. So, hopefully there will be more progress to see next week – maybe even a completed sock, who knows?!

By the way, no one commented on last week’s post for the opportunity to win some free tickets to the new TexStyle show in Manchester, so I am extending the opportunity into this week as well with the draw now scheduled for Friday 30th January. Don’t be shy if you’d like to go and you’d like a pair of free tickets (so you can take a friend too)!

TexStyle is a fibre AND textile event with a massive range of crafts represented. Just see this list below which is taken from the TexStyle website to give you some idea:

  • Basketry
  • Crochet and hooking
  • Cross stitch
  • Demonstrations
  • Dyeing
  • Felting
  • Finished items
  • Gallery display
  • Home decor
  • Knitting
  • Lace, embroidery and blackwork
  • Macrame
  • Quilting
  • Sewing
  • Spinning
  • Stationery
  • Tufting
  • Upholstery
  • Weaving

There seems to be a bit of a community theme in what I have been thinking and writing about today – whether that is of the knitting/crafting community or a community of colleagues engaged in the same work. I hope you have a week with some positive connections in one or more of your communities, and that you get a chance to do something that makes you happy. Take care, K x

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A Windy Day

The first Yarnies at the Flaxmill on Saturday was a great success. The organisers (Clare of Wild Field Fibre and Chantelle of Bijoux Events) did a splendid job and we had a really good day. We had the prime spot just inside the entrance and it was a great opportunity to give my new roller banner its first outing. Fortunately, once it was in a large space such as the Dye House at Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings, the banner didn’t seem quite so enormous as it had done at home!

It was a surprisingly windy day on Saturday – it was the first day that the weather began to change and we were glad to have our flasks of tea with us. Not just to drink, but to weigh the legs of the roller banner down and stop it blowing over backwards! See if you can spot them in this video I took just before we opened:

Each of the samples has a new label with a little more information and positioned in a way that makes it easier for folk to access. You would not believe how long it took to do those! Each one was hand stamped with my logo and allowed to dry overnight (I made 2 batches of 50 as I ran out partway through) and then each label was handwritten. But I think it was worth it! Of course, I only did new labels for the samples I took with me on Saturday, so there are still lots more to do!

There were some fabulous vendors at the show, some of whom I see regularly at events and others who I only see occasionally. Our lovely stand neighbour on Saturday was Allium Threads who dyes yarn, fibre and embroidery threads with natural dyes. I’ve seen them at the Pop-Up Wool Show in Port

A wonderful surprise in the morning came from Deb of Dyelution who brought her finished Heart in my Hands Hat to show me. She had knitted it in some of her own hand-dyed yarns, and had it on display with the yarns during the day so visitors could see how the yarns look knitted up. It looks gorgeous!

Another lovely surprise came at the end of the day from Marianne of Penny Stitch Craft who brought over a couple of mini skeins of her 4ply Tencel yarn for me to play and experiment with. What a gift!

I’ve started developing some ideas for a design using her Tencel DK, and I can’t wait to get my current sweater design finished so I can concentrate on it properly!

Speaking of the sweater – both the sleeves now have a full complement of increases! I now ‘just’ have to:

  • knit both sleeves straight to the full length
  • cast off for the saddle shoulder
  • knit the saddle for each sleeve (remembering they are not the same, as half the saddle on each sleeve completes the back neck)
  • block all the pieces
  • seam the pieces together at the shoulders
  • knit the neckband
  • seam the body and sleeves
  • finish the written pattern
  • double check the pattern and the charts
  • and then send it off!

I’m so glad I started this in plenty of time. If anyone ever knits you a sweater, be in no doubt that they love you!

I didn’t actually do any work on the sweater yesterday as I was busy updating my samples and workshop notes for the two workshops I’m teaching tomorrow in Cheadle: Introduction to Sock Knitting and Introduction to Lace Knitting. I knitted one of my mini socks with each section in a different colour to help with understanding the anatomy of a sock, and it was surprising to see that (at this size) the largest section was the gusset (in blue)! By contrast, the heel turn (in green), which creates a lot of the magic of a top-down/heel flap sock, is really tiny!

I quite like the look of the rainbow sock – I might even knit up a full size pair!

Since the weather changed at the weekend, we’ve had lots of much-needed rain. It actually hasn’t stopped today, so I’m hoping that our water butt will be getting replenished a bit. The seedlings in trays have been moved from the garage to the patio and are loving this weather – as are the broad bean seedlings that I sowed directly into the veg patch – I’m just hoping the slugs don’t find them too soon now they are finally growing! Hopefully I will be able to take some pics of the seedlings during the week and show you next Tuesday how they are getting on.

It’s strange to think after three yarn shows in quick succession (Wonderwool, Buxton Wool Gathering and Yarnies at the Flaxmill) that our next one isn’t until August! That will be the North East Wool Show at Newcastle Racecourse. I’m teaching a brioche workshop there and ticket sales for that are made directly through me, so if you’d like to learn how to knit two-colour brioche and will be in the Newcastle area on August 10th, do get in touch!

That’s all for today. I hope you have a good week and manage to do some stuff that makes you smile. Take care, K x

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500 Miles

The East Anglia Yarn Festival was fabulous and I think I enjoyed it even more than last year. I think it’s so nice when you can do an event more than once, as things are more familiar the second time round. I had forgotten quite how far away Norwich is from North Wales – the journey was 250 miles each way, but it was absolutely worth it.

Laura, who organises the show, and her team make the event run really smoothly and the layout makes it easy to find everything you need. It even felt quicker setting up despite doing it on my own. My lovely wife was in a different part of the country on Friday, but made it to Norfolk on Friday evening, ready to help. I even had extra help on hand from an old uni friend who came to the show to support what we’re doing, and quickly said yes to the tentative email of “Would you be able/willing to man the stand during my workshop and be my booth bade if Sue doesn’t make it here by then?”. It was definitely the prospect of being a booth babe that got his attention – he said as much! We had a great chat catching up when I wasn’t teaching, and he and Sue had a little competition while I was teaching over who could be the most successful pattern seller – I think they drew.

It was so lovely to see some of my designs in the wild during the show. Our first customer of the weekend was wearing her Into The Vortex which she had bought the pattern and yarn for at the show last year – and she bought two more patterns on Saturday! I also saw a Tiffany being worn. It’s so lovely when people come back after knitting a design and say, “I loved it and it was easy to follow.” And it’s also really nice when they follow it up with “and now I’m going to buy another/more of your designs”! It makes me feel trusted.

The workshop itself was super. The meeting rooms of the main event space are well lit and really warm. I even had to turn one of the heaters off! I had four students in the class, none of whom had tried two-colour brioche knitting before and they all did really well. This is what they created in two hours – as well as learning lots of new concepts, terminology and tricks to help them get it right!

We had hoped to be wearing our spangly new badges at EAYF, but they didn’t arrive in time. Boo. But they arrived today – hurrah! – so they will get their first outing next month at Wonderwool Wales on April 26-27th. I may even wear mine at the trunk show at Yarn O’clock on Saturday April 12th! Please note that one of the badges does indeed have the job description of ‘Booth Babe’.

One of my plans for March was to finish knitting the border of Elinor Hap Shawl – and I have! I’ve even started the edging and I have done nearly half of one side.

There are a lot of repeats of the edging (208 in total I think), but it is only a 10-row pattern repeat, so it’s quite easy to chalk up half a dozen in an evening. I don’t think I’ll finish the edging this month though, as there was an exciting delivery just before we left for EAYF and there’s another parcel attempting to make it’s way to me as well (which, if it’s what I think it is, is something scrummy from Shetland!) and should be at the local post office for me to collect on Thursday.

It occurred to me that it would be a good idea to remind folk that I also give individual online knitting tuition as well as group workshops. This can be useful if there’s a technique you want to learn and you don’t want to wait until a workshop is advertised or if you think you would fare better in a one-to-one setting than a group one. Individual tuition is currently £25 per hour and can be booked by simply emailing me. I haven’t got as far as setting up an online calendar where you can choose a time slot yet, but it’s on the way.

The Imperial Cowl had a good reception at the weekend. People liked the fact that you could knit it flat or in the round and that there are video links included the pattern too. We sold six copies of the pattern at the show and one online (using the exclusive subscriber discount – did you know I do those for newsletter subscribers?), which may not sound like a lot, but as the pattern had already been downloaded by 127 people from the North West Winter Wool Festival, I think that’s pretty good! That’s over 130 copies of the pattern out in the world and hopefully being used!

This afternoon I had my annual dentist check-up. This involves driving into Chester, which I don’t do nearly as much as I used to when I was teaching full time. All was well and as I walked back to the car park I went past a shop that had a window painted with three words I couldn’t ignore: We Sell Yarn. Despite having been surrounded by yarn all weekend I had to go in, didn’t I? I had a lovely chat to the owner, who explained that it had been a plant shop, hence the name The Green Rooms, and she had recently shifted to selling yarn. They also host lots of workshops, particularly for crochet. I bought a ball of self-striping sock yarn that contains 50% wool and 25% bamboo as well as the 25% nylon that will make the socks hardwearing. The bamboo makes the yarn feel quite silky and I’ll be interested to see how it knits up.

It was a long drive home yesterday – over five and a half hours – and I’ve deliberately taken today at a slightly slower pace. Later this week I will hopefully be getting my rear passenger door fixed so it opens again. I have been able to rejig the way I pack the car for shows to allow for this irritation, but it will be so much easier when all doors function as intended once more! On Saturday Shelby’s Singers will be singing at the Buckley Spring Market in the shopping precinct in town at 1pm, for about an hour. We have our final rehearsal for that tomorrow! I’ll tell you all about that next week. Until then, take care. K x

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The Siren Song of Spring

This week has involved lots of scrubbing and hauling. Scrubbing of walls, floors and other surfaces and hauling around of furniture. We had decided that it would be more sensible to have a sofa bed in the spare room rather than a full double bed that is used once in a blue moon and takes up most of the space.

So, we visited all the shops in our area (in the same retail park, fortunately!) to look at the sofa beds on offer and chose the one most suited for our needs (and space) which was, of course, the one we saw first. We have removed the old bed and cleaned the room thoroughly, including moving the wardrobes with heavy sliding mirrored doors which hadn’t been moved since we built them over a decade ago! We moved the Clavinova (full sized electric piano) into the hallway to be squeezed around until it can go back in and we even hired one of those Rug Doctor machines and cleaned the carpet!

The room is now refreshed and awaiting the delivery of the sofa-bed tomorrow. Not only will this free up more space in the spare room, it will also turn it into a room we can make more use of, either for playing music or even giving music lessons, or for my lovely wife’s coaching sessions, or just for somewhere else to ‘be’ in the house. We even took the opportunity to go through the contents of our wardrobes thoroughly and be honest about what we were or weren’t going to wear again, since everything had to come out of them anyway before we could even try to move them.

So, unsurprisingly, I’ve been aching a bit since the weekend when most of this took place! This may also be due to having spent an hour or so in the garden on Friday – the first gardening I’ve done in months. I pruned the apple tree, cut back the autumn fruiting raspberries, pruned the blackcurrant, one of the gooseberry bushes and one of the roses and made a start on pruning the redcurrant.

Spring must be well and truly on her way and we are hearing her siren call!

I finished my Haori Cardigan last Tuesday, spent a couple of days weaving in the ends and then wore it the very next day – without even blocking/washing it (shocking!). To be fair, the main thing that blocking this will do is possibly to straighten out the neckband for a short time before it heeds its own siren call of stocking stitch and rolls inward again. I’m really pleased with it and I know I will be wearing it a lot.

Finishing this (and awaiting the arrival of yarn for a couple of commissions) means I’ve returned to knitting my new sample of Elinor Hap Shawl.

This new sample is in a superfine lace weight (1200m per 100g) but the shawl can still be knitted in ‘standard’ laceweight yarn (800m per 100g). My old sample had become a bit bobbly and had lost some of its stitch definition as it’s something I wear often – it certainly isn’t fit for being a display sample, which this new shawl will be!

Do you remember I showed you the beautiful Tencel yarn from Penny Stitch Craft that she kindly gave me to design with at the North West Winter Wool Festival? I’ve knitted up a basic stocking stitch swatch on 4mm needles to see how it behaves and it has a lovely drape and sheen.

The next task is to experiment with a lace swatch, probably on slightly larger needles and see how it holds the stitches after blocking. It should work well, judging from the stocking stitch swatch. I wonder what final design these skeins will become?!

As we have now left February I have been able to count up the number of Bodelwyddan copies sold during the month, both online and at the North West Winter Wool Festival, and I am delighted to say that you bought 12 copies which has enabled me to make a donation of £36 to Treasure Chest YGC. Thank you if you were one of the people who bought a copy. YGC stands for Ysbyty Glan Clwyd which is Welsh for Glan Clwyd Hospital and the Treasure Chest charity raises money to support those having breast cancer treatment there. I originally wrote the Bodelwyddan sock pattern as part of a fundraiser for this charity so it made sense to me to use it again for the same charity during the month I had my first mammogram! (It all went smoothly and I’m just waiting for the results now).

On Sunday night we went to a concert in Manchester at Aviva Studios. We were going to hear Mary Chapin Carpenter singing with two other people of whom I’d not previously heard. It was fantastic! We were far nearer the front than “Row L” suggested (2nd row!) and all the musicians were phenomenal.

I was particularly entranced by the multi-tasking of the percussionist (he did way more than calling him a ‘drummer’ might suggest). This photo was taken before the concert began, from my seat! If you get a chance to hear Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis or Karine Polwart at all (they were the other two singers – both Scottish folk musicians), then do! The three of them and their band have a new album called “Looking For The Thread” which is simply beautiful.

Today is also Pancake Day (or Shrove Tuesday, if you prefer), so I am hoping to make pancakes later. This is a slightly more complex task when they’re vegan pancakes, but I know I have a good recipe somewhere! I just hope we’ve got all the ingredients we need. I’ll let you know next week! Until then, take care and I hope you get the chance to do some things you really enjoy and maybe listen to the siren song of spring. K x

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Blue like my Hair

Several times during the past month, I have been stopped by strangers asking me about my hair colour. Sometimes they just want to tell me they think it’s fab. On one occasion (outside the Co-Op in Kidderminster) a lady called across the car park to ask which came first – my shoulder bag or my hair? They are basically the same colour! She was quite tickled when I said my hair came first.

As my hair has been blue/teal for nearly six and a half years, I sometimes forget that it’s not a ‘standard’ colour and get surprised when folk comment on it. But it is quite different from the ‘norm’ for hair colour and also from what it would look like if it was left ‘au naturel’, when it would be brown at the back and mostly white at the front! I did start to see more of the white resurfacing last month when I simply didn’t have time amongst everything else to keep the colour topped up, and I have to admit I felt much more ‘me’ once I’d been able to dye it again.

Something I noticed years ago at Knit Camp in Stirling in, I think, 2013, was that a large group of knitters was likely to have more people with unusually coloured hair than among the general population. At Knit Camp there was a lot of purple in evidence, although mine was still undyed at that time. I’m not sure if the general trend among creative types is towards brightly coloured hair still though – I will have to pay attention this coming weekend at the North West Winter Wool Festival (at the Imperial Hotel in Blackpool).

Personally, I love having blue hair and it has become quite a trademark – when checking in to set up at a Buxton Wool Gathering a couple of years ago (the first time I had attended), the organisers knew who I was without my even having to give my name! As they said, there weren’t a lot of folk trading with them who had blue hair.

We used to have coloured wine glasses – each with the bottom of the glass a different colour and Sue would always give me the one that was “Blue like my hair”, so it became a phrase. Blue has been my favourite colour since I was a small child and had a peddled blue plastic car – at some point I will locate and share a photo of toddler me ‘driving’ that car! Looking around the house I see now there are lots of blue things – and walls! Whenever given the option it seems I will plump for a particular type of blue!

Do you have a favourite colour? One that you are drawn to over and over again? What is it? Do you know why you love it so much? I’d love to hear about it!

Later this afternoon I will once again be topping up the blueness of my hair in readiness for the North West Winter Wool Festival at the weekend. I’m really looking forward to this show. Shirley has worked really hard getting everything organised for us, and it’s going to be fun to stay at the same venue as the event as well! No long drives after setting up to try to find the accommodation, or worrying about navigating the traffic on a Saturday morning! Blackpool isn’t as far away as I’d thought either – apple maps was giving me a drive time of an hour and a half the other day when I looked up the journey which is very reasonable. I will allow extra time though, because with the M6 you never know. If you are coming to the show, please do say hello – and if you’ve got an Imperial Cowl with you, please do show me!

Thank you to everyone who has bought a copy of Bodelwyddan already this month – I’ve sold 6 copies of this pattern so far this month (and we’re not even halfway through February yet!) so at minimum there will be a donation of £18 to Treasure Chest YGC, a charity that raises money for those having treatment for breast cancer at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd (hence the ‘YGC’ – it’s Glan Clwyd Hospital). I’m hoping there will be some more sales before the end of the month to increase the donation I’ll be making. Both digital and paper sales of Bodelwyddan will be included.

If you can’t make it to Blackpool at the weekend, don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about it next week. Until then, take care, and do something with your favourite colour! K x

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Coming up for Air

The top edge of a knitted shawl in golden yellow, green and pink, pinned out to dry with a wooden rule to keep the edge straight.

This week I finally feel like I’m starting to get back to stuff that makes me “me”!

I finished the shawl I showed you a sneak peek of last week and on Monday morning I blocked it. I’m really pleased with how it’s come out and I’ll be showing you the whole thing very soon! The blocking is a gentle one, just easing the edges into straight lines and pinning them in place to dry, rather than stretching the lace out to its limit. I happen to have a wooden metre rule (actually as the measurements are in inches, it might be a yard rule) that came with my blocking kit and this was the perfect tool to ensure I was maintaining a straight line as I pinned. The pattern will be available exclusively in kit form from James McIntosh in the spring. Remember you can already get gorgeous kits for County Shawl and Barragán from McIntosh (and, if you already have the ideal yarn for it in your stash, you can buy the pattern on its own for Barragán from me). Some folk do check in with me about kit sales to

I’ve also sent off a submission swatch/sketch for a design that could be published later in the year and had two others accepted recently.

And last Wednesday was spent mostly making 18 jars of Seville orange marmalade. This was made in two batches which is why it took most of the day, as there was no way my jam pan would have coped with 2.5kg fruit, 5kg sugar and 9 pints of water! It tastes delicious.

Last week’s Zoom brioche class went really well and my student completed her entire swatch during the session. I was very impressed and was pleased she said that I could share a pic of her work with you. Isn’t it great?!:

I will be teaching my Introduction to Two-Colour Brioche workshop (pictured above is ‘Next Steps’) at a couple of yarn shows this year and I’m keeping my eyes peeled for when they open their bookings for these so I can let you know.

Last week I mentioned the North West Winter Wool Festival taking place in Blackpool on February 15th and 16th. The opening hours are 10am-4pm for advance ticket holders, and 11am-4pm for tickets bought on the door. This is important as if you don’t have a ticket pre-booked you won’t get in at 10am. So if you want to be sure of a whole day of woolly fun, get yourself an advance ticket now!

I’m really looking forward to this show, although I won’t have my lovely wife acting as my ‘booth babe’ on this occasion, so I shall be flying solo. It’s a pattern only show for me, so I won’t have any kits with me, but there will be lots of wonderful yarn on offer from other vendors that you will be able to pair with any patterns you purchase!

Vendors will be split across two rooms, the Lancastrian Suite and the Louis room, both of which are on the same floor of the hotel and very close to each other. Do make sure to visit both spaces so you don’t miss out on anything.

To date, 73 ticket holders have downloaded their free copy of The Imperial Cowl, which is wonderful. I’m hoping to see lots of them being worn at the show! If you have bought an advance ticket and not downloaded your pattern, please do! The free version of the pattern is only available as a pdf download, and I won’t have any printed copies available until Wonderwool in April!

Writing this reminds me that one more task to add to my list of things to do before I head to Blackpool is to seam the shocking pink version that I knitted on the way to Kent before Christmas. See, I’m still coming up for air! (I also need to block the DK version of Into the Vortex that I knitted much earlier in the year – I think I finished it mid-October…)

The next few days will see my computer and printer working overtime (thank goodness they don’t only work 8 hour shifts!) as I update my inventory and get printing! I’ve double checked that I have spare ink cartridges lined up as well. The ones I buy are really good – expensive, but each colour does 2500 pages and the black does 5000 pages! (and I’ve got two of those on hand, so no fears of running short just yet!).

On a somewhat different note, I have my very first mammogram next week. I’m a little apprehensive about it to be honest, but I will be going as I know that these screening tests save lives. Early detection can just mean that you need to have something removed and then be closely monitored for a few years. If you get invited for a mammogram (or any other type of health screening check) please go. It could save your life.

Bodelwyddan was designed as part of a fund-raiser for Ysbyty Glan Clwyd (that’s Glan Clwyd Hospital to anyone who doesn’t speak Welsh) which is based in the village of Bodelwyddan (pronounced Bod-el-with-an). In October 2023 I donated 50% of sales from this sock pattern to Treasure Chest YGC, a charity whose aim is to support and raise funds for patients who have had or are having surgery or treatment for breast cancer in Glan Clwyd Hospital. I’m going to do the same for all sales of Bodelwyddan during February – so what are you waiting for? Crack open the sock yarn!

That’s all from me for today. Take care, stay safe and, if you get even the smallest chance, do something that makes you happy. K x

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This Moment

Ronnie, a stuffed toy rhino, flying in the air with blue sky and fluffy white clouds behind him and the tops of trees below him.

Last night we saw about 6 meteors from the Perseid meteor shower over the course of about 30 minutes. It was so lovely to be able to sit in the back garden on our wooden chairs gazing at the sky, randomly pointing and exclaiming, “There’s one!”. There may be more tonight, but as it’s started to rain (and get cooler!) we may not be as lucky seeing them.

It’s been important to grab moments of calm and quiet enjoyment lately as it’s been so busy. We were at the wedding of one of our nephews at the weekend – a beautiful occasion – and I was able to ask Jess, the bride, if she and James had managed to take a few moments during the day to soak it all up. Like we had, she was finding her wedding day was happening more quickly than expected, and I was pleased to hear they had had some time before the buffet to take stock of all the wonderful moments that were making their wedding day an occasion to remember.

We captured moments of the day (and the whole weekend away) in photographs, and some of them are hilarious. These are some of the shots from the wedding – even Ronnie (our rhino) got involved!

It’s also good to put your full focus into experiencing the moment as we did during the ceremony where no photos were taken apart from by the official photographer, and as we did last night looking at the sky and hoping for meteors. Incidentally, This Moment, the title of today’s post, is a beautiful song by Melissa Etheridge, and it just happens to be the song that my lovely wife and I walked out to when we got married. (The chorus begins: “I want to stay here in this moment…”).

Capturing moments sometimes does have to be done by photo or video, especially if you want or need to be able to share it with other people later on. Today I took delivery of a new tool that will help me with making videos and also in my Zoom workshops. It’s the Olivia 2 – a stand to hold your phone horizontally above a surface (and at lots of other angles too), with an adjustable built in light, and it comes with a remote control as well, so you don’t have to make the phone wobble every time you press record, then wait for the shaking of the image to subside before you can actually begin! I had the original version of this phone stand, but I sometimes found it difficult to keep the base out of shot when recording knitting techniques. This updated version has redesigned the construction so the base faces away from you and there is nothing to get in the way of what you are recording, no matter how close up. It’s currently charging up and I’m looking forward to trying it out very soon. I also like how it collapses down into a really compact ‘block’ when you’re not using it. Please excuse the rather busy desk these pics reveal!

So, keep an eye out for more videos going up on my new YouTube channel! And do sign up for my Zoom workshops too:

There are a maximum of 10 spaces on each workshop, to keep it as similar as possible to an in-person workshop, where participants are actively involved and able to ask for help when they need it.

I’ve finished the central square of my new same of Elinor Hap Shawl and am part-way through picking up the stitches for the border – with such fine yarn I had to recount/redo the first side this morning with proper light. I am determined to get all the stitches picked up and on the needles today so that when I am sitting at the garage (again) tomorrow while they fix the car’s judder and lack of ability to accelerate properly (it wasn’t just the spark plugs, apparently the car needs a new ‘coil pack’) I will be able to work on the border.

With this pattern, the central square doesn’t have slip stitch edges and stitches are picked up from the very edge of the garter stitch border. It’s quite a tricky process, added to which there are regular points where you ‘pick up and kfb’, so knitting into the edge twice in the same place to create extra stitches. I might use my new gadget to help record this process this evening!

Because my car was not in the best of health last weekend I got to be a passenger on the way to the wedding and socks happened! Well, one and a half socks, which is still pretty good for a weekend with lots of other things in it! DK yarn and 3mm needles make them grow nice and quickly. The finished sock just needs to be grafted at the toe, but I forgot to take a darning/tapestry needle with me on the trip. The second sock on the right is partway through the gusset. The pattern is Bob (Friend of Dave) by Rachel Coopey and the yarn is Socks Yeah DK from CoopKnits (also Rachel Coopey). I’ve made this pattern quite a few times now, and this time I included my usual reinforced slip stitch pattern on the heel flap.

The final thing I want to tell you about today is very exciting. I have finally got my Barragán wrap pattern online (on ravelry, Payhip and my website – and Lovecrafts once it’s gone through all the approvals there) and I’ve printed out 20 copies ready for the Pop Up Wool Show on Saturday – hurray! So, if you can’t get to the Pop Up Wool Show, you can get yourself a copy online.