Tag: Sourdough

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And, breathe…

Last week I finished by promising to tell you about the spinning and baking I’ve been doing, as well as how the workshops went and all about next month’s knit-a-long!

Let’s start with the workshops. It was probably the longest amount of time I had (a) been on my feet and (b) spoken for, in over three and a half years. In other words, since I left the classroom!

Five hours of workshops went SO fast. Not just for me, but also for the lovely knitters who were there. In both the morning and afternoon sessions phrases such as “It’s not that time already, is it?!”, “I’ve never known two and a half hours go so quickly” and “Really? Only 10 minutes left? No!” could be heard. (Of course, because we were all so focused I completely missed the opportunity to take any photographs of their progress. Must do better next time!).

Lots was learnt, including the magic that is mattress stitch as part of the Finishing Techniques workshop. I love seeing the faces of knitters during this process. Most don’t believe they won’t be able to see the lime green yarn they are seaming their grey squares with, and when it proves to be true, it’s just a delight. Also we unpicked why different types of decrease are used and the importance of mirrored decreases to make your project look balanced.

The Introduction to Sock Knitting in the afternoon went even faster than I had anticipated, and everyone turned a heel successfully. I had an email yesterday from one of the attendees that made me so happy and I’m going to share part of it with you (with her permission):

“Thanks a million for all your guidance on Saturday. Just learning to knit on 4 needles was great, but to become a wool engineer apprentice and turn a heel was brilliant!”

Yvonne

We didn’t manage to get the graft done at the toe, however, so I promised to record a video showing how this is done and I have now uploaded this to my social media platforms. I wanted to get this up as soon as I could for my workshop attendees, but now I also need to add closed captions to the video.

This is the third little techniques video I have recorded and put on Facebook etc and this morning it occurred to me that they should really be on my website too. So, the Knitting Tuition page now has a new section: Free Video Tutorials! I’ll get the captions done on the toe graft video before uploading that one, but there are two others you can have a look at already. It will give you a little flavour of my Craftucation courses as well (though none of the videos are duplicated from there).

A still shot from a short knitting techniques video. My hands are holding needles and yarn with a multicoloured shawl in progress underneath them. The knitting is resting on a wooden desk with a coaster partly in view to the left.

Another addition to the website today is a section for next month’s Knit-A-Long! We are knitting Calon Cariad together, a lovely shawl whose name means ‘The Heart of Love’. We begin on February 11th with a Cast-On Party on Zoom at 7pm!! We’ll run the KAL over five weeks and there will be prizes 🎁. If you want to join in, the click ‘going’ on the KAL event and/or the KAL Cast-on Party event on my Facebook page, or just send me a message! All the details are here.

There are even kits available – I’m especially fond of the Erika Knight Wool Local which knits up beautifully in this pattern.

In other news, I have finished the scarf sample for Small Acts and that just needs blocking and photographing properly. I’m aiming to get the pattern out by the weekend. If you’re a subscriber look out for an extra (short) email with a discount code!

A large mid-indigo blue scarf lies in a heap on an oatmeal coloured carpet. There are two large mirrored cables running up the centre, flanked by two small mirrored cables at the sides. In between the cables are columns of moss stitch and the scarf has a narrow garter stitch edging.

Spinning is fun at the moment and I have starting on my second batch of Colours of Cambria fibre (this colour way is ‘Coast’). I wanted to create fairly regular repeats of the colours but I am not confident at judging the quantity when dividing the fibre into sections, so I came up with another approach. I set a timer on my phone for 15 minutes. I spin one colour from the sequence during that time and when the timer goes off, I stop and break that colour, ready to start with the next one when I spin again. Not only is this hopefully going to give me some good stripes/blocks of colour in the yarn, it also encourages me to spin more on a daily basis, even when I am busy, as 15 minutes can usually be slotted in somewhere!

An overhead shot of a bobbin on the spinning wheel. There is some soft green fibre at the bottom of the image waiting to be spun next. On the bobbin can be seen two shades of blue, a golden yellow and a little of the green. The yarn is spun quite finely.

I made the sourdough bagels that I have been wanting to try for a while. They weren’t as hard as I had anticipated, but I do think I over-baked them a little. It was a good taste, and nicely chewy, but a little too crunchy/firm on the outside. Next time, check five minutes sooner!

Eight uncooked bagels sit on a dark grey baking sheet waiting to be boiled before baking.
Cooked bagels on a cooling rack with the bamboo kitchen worktop visible behind. Four bagels are fully visible, with two partially shown on the left and one on the right. They are dark golden brown in colour with lighter centres.

We even managed to squeeze in a visit to the Little Orme where we saw the largest group of Seals I’ve ever seen there. They looked so happy and relaxed on the beach and were chatting away to each other quite a lot! It made us relax too, and even though there were quite a few people up there on Sunday (some even had telephoto lenses and tripods for their cameras, so the word about the seals must have got about), it was really peaceful. We sat on a bench and ate a little homemade picnic, all wrapped up against the wind and it was lovely. The perfect balance to the ‘business’ of the day before.

A pebble beach covered with 30-40 seals as well as some larger stones and big rocks. Seen from the cliff edge above with a bit of the sea-glass coloured sea visible on the right and the cliff wall on the far side of beach showing at the top of the picture.

Take care, stay warm and do more of what makes you happy, K x

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Good with my Hands

Somehow, despite being away from home for three days during the past week, I have managed to do quite a lot of knitting! I’ve finished two projects, started another and worked on yet three more (two of which I can’t show you). As part of the Fasten Off Yarn-a-Long I’ve bought four patterns (supporting other designers and because these patterns are awesome!) and matched them all up with yarn from the stash (yay!).

The main image for today’s post is one of my project bags from The Knitting Goddess. Yes, it’s a bit cheeky; yes, I like it!

Treble clef baubles:

Woodstock:

Sock! (Heel flap completed, heel turn is next):

Gridlock Mitts by Karen Butler (one of my pattern purchases as part of Fasten Off Yarn-a-Long):

As I got to the end of the cuff on these I realised that I had reversed the Main Colour and Contrast Colour stitches. I ‘fixed’ it by fiddling the set up round before the main colourwork chart began by moving the start of the thumb gusset to the first two sts of the round instead of the last two, as I could see from the photos that the edging of the thumb gusset was supposed to grow organically from one column of ribbing in the same colour. If I hadn’t worked those extra two stitches, the thumb gusset would have been sitting awkwardly on top of a column of differently coloured stitches.

Do you remember that last week I told you all about the Fasten Off Yarn-a-Long and that there would be games? One of these is bingo and I’ve just been filling in my bingo card – it’s looking good! A column completed already and two rows nearly done!

Yesterday we had BT Openreach here to upgrade our broadband. I hadn’t quite appreciated that it would involve the engineer scaling the nearest telephone pole and actually putting new cable from there to our house, but it did. He drilled holes where he had to and persevered through phone calls and lots of trial and error when the broadband didn’t seem to want to work at all after all that effort. Three hours of work and we now have super speedy fibre broadband and a… digital phone…?!?! That last bit threw me a little – I didn’t realise that our old phone simply wouldn’t work any more as the old copper wires were gone and the new ‘wires’ are made of glass. The new phone is nice, though I’m not sure about the Alexa feature – and I’ve chosen not to enable that yet.

I’ve listened to a lot of audiobooks this week as well – Terry Pratchett’s Snuff accompanied me on my long car drive and over the past couple of days I’ve been listening to The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. I wasn’t sure about this one to start with, but the more I listened the more I got into it and I was very pleased with the ending. I do like an ending that brings things together and feels satisfying.

Audrey2 has been been behaving very well recently and you can see how well she’s doing in the photo below (the jar behind the loaf). I started a loaf yesterday that was baked at midday today and looks gorgeous:

And now I’m going to go and make some sourdough banana bread. This will have two benefits – we have a couple of elderly bananas in the kitchen somehow, and Sue and I both fancied cake yesterday and there wasn’t any. There will be soon.

Stay safe, keep knitting and do what makes you happy! K x

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Slow Down

I managed to log myself out of my own website about half an hour ago and have only just managed to get back in. First world problems, I know, but it was frustrating – and there are exciting things I want to tell you about!

(You know when you end up swearing at the computer and have five tabs open that all purport to help you change your password, but just seem to send you round in circles, that you probably need to take five minutes to breathe!)

Anyway…

As you can see from the main pic, the sourdough is going well – lunch was delayed until this one was cool enough to cut! But on to the knitting stuff…

The Fasten Off YAL logo, a black globe/ball of thread with one crochet hook and one knitting needle poking through it at angles. At the bottom right a black curved line with a frayed edge like an end of yarn moves away from the ball.

Have you heard about Fasten Off Yarn-a-long 2021? It’s a month-long community event for both knitters and crocheters that takes place completely off Ravelry (which as we know has many accessibility issues on its website and many people struggle to use it since its redesign). You can get involved on Instagram, Twitter and Discord and there will be games and prizes up for grabs.

There are over 80 independent designers participating, of whom I am one, and the first part of the YAL involves a great big pattern sale!! Designers decide which of their paid patterns to include in the event and they get a 25% discount during the period of the sale which runs from 30th November to 6th December.

I’ve decided to include ALL of my paid patterns that I have the rights to (even the collections); so that’s everything except Nevern Throw, Of Night and Light (I get the rights back in January for these two) and Soft Syncopated Brioche Scarf (which is free anyway). All my patterns are on Payhip, Lovecrafts and Ravelry.

As Fasten Off Yarn-a-long is intended to be inclusive and accessible, only patterns that are available somewhere other than Ravelry will be included. Unfortunately, Lovecrafts doesn’t offer designers the option of adding a discount code, so the code (which I’ll post next week) will be valid only in my Payhip store, but it’s a great opportunity to bag a fab discount!

What else has been going on? Well, I’ve finished the pattern for next week’s deadline. Hurrah! I’ll probably only check it over another five times before I convince myself it’s ready to email. It looks great and I’m really excited about it and I can’t believe I have to wait until June to show you!! Why is the deadline so far ahead of publication? This company (in the US) does their own sample knitting as well as the tech editing and photography, so they need to allow time for their test knitters to make the items as well as all the other steps in the process. Being in the US I am truly grateful they have this system as I would be very nervous of posting a finished sample all the way over the Atlantic. All I need to send them is the pattern and other associated files.

My other secret project is growing too – this one WILL be posted off, but it’s staying in the UK and the deadline isn’t until April. It’s nearly a quarter complete though and I am very happy with how the stitch patterns are behaving in this yarn.

A hat in progress lies on a light gold coloured carpet. The hat is a sideways knit beret in shades of pink, purple and white like raspberry ripple.

My hat (above) also grew by another panel over the weekend, as we had a big adventure in Manchester. My lovely wife has a poem out in a new book called ‘Queer Writing for a Brave New World’, published by Out On The Page and there was an event for contributors at The Modernist, followed by drinks at No.1 Canal Street. All of which was very good and also very good knitting time for me 😊🧶! It was strange being in a big city again – something we haven’t done since before Covid and I was glad we worked out a route from the car park to the shop via the roads parallel to the main streets, so we avoided as much of the crowds as we could. By the way, if you like poetry, photography and other writing, there’s a launch on Zoom tomorrow evening!.

And with this gorgeous photo I shall finish for today.

Stay warm, stay safe and keep knitting. K x

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Raspberry Beret

Much knitting progress has happened this week and I can actually share some of it with you today!

I am really enjoying my Get Garter Beret from Woolly Wormhead and I am now two thirds complete on it, having worked four of the six panels. It’s a sideways knit beret that’s also on the bias and the crown shaping is achieved with short row shaping. When I had done two panels I was convinced it was never going to be big enough, but with four completed I am a lot more confident. The yarn, Neps and Tatties from Ewe & Ply in ‘Raisin Girl’ is fantastic and I really like the little ‘neps’ in cream and brown that randomly poke out of the surface of the knitting.

Sue has been asking for a Woodstock (Snoopy’s pal) from the kit that came with Knit Now Issue 133. Last night I knitted all the pieces, which took just over half an hour. I think it’s going to take longer than that to assemble! It doesn’t look much like Woodstock at the moment, just seven small, scrappy bits of knitting… Hopefully by next week I’ll have something more bird shaped to show you.

The baking is continuing and my loaves are getting quite consistent now which is very encouraging! I think the problem previously was a combination of too much water and over-proving the dough. I’ve even managed to use up most of the jar of discard I accumulated while getting Audrey2 up to full strength; this week we’ve had vegan sourdough banana bread and seeded sourdough crackers, both of which have been lovely. I haven’t taken any photos of them though.

On the ‘secret knitting’ front, I have finished the first item!! Half of it has been blocked and the other half is currently taking up residence on the lounge floor. It took me an hour and a quarter to pin out this morning. The trickiest part was in working out what measurements to pin it to. I know the final measurements I want, but I also knew that this particular project would ‘relax’ after being unpinned, so I needed to block it larger than I wanted it to end up. Adding 10% to the width seems to have done the trick.

On Sunday I cast on for the second secret project. I’d done two rows when it occurred to me that as I’d not used this yarn before (and the ball band says it whitens and fluffs up after washing and blocking) it would be a good idea to do a couple of swatches to make sure the needle size I’d originally intended to use would work with this yarn. I tried the intended size and a couple of sizes larger in case any ‘fluffiness’ obscured the design. Both actually looked good, although the original needle size gave the main fabric more stability, so I’ve stuck with it and now I’ve done a couple of inches of the main project. It’s going to be gorgeous though I say it myself.

Do you remember I said that this yarn had been spun ‘in the grease’ and smelt wonderfully sheepy? Having lanolin still in the fibres has already had a good effect on my hands and some of the splits are healing – hurray! I’m looking forward to getting really stuck into this project and also hoping to try out some more of their yarns in the future. I’m also looking forward to being able to show you what I’ve been doing – but it will be another seven months before I can do that!

At least five of the roses are still in flower and the fuchsias are looking very blousy! It’s weird how warm it still is a lot of the time (sometimes it seems warmer outside than in!), and the birds are really enjoying themselves in the bushes, pecking little creatures from the stems. Various parts of the garden still need tidying up before the winter, like doing the last mow and cutting down the crocosmia, and I’m hoping the weather continues to hold until after I’ve met my first deadline which is just under two weeks away.

That’s all from me today. Stay safe and do more of what makes you happy. K x

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What a difference a ply makes!

I’m not sure I will ever get over the thrill of seeing fluffy fibre turn into actual, knit-able yarn. Or the fact that I seem to be able to achieve this magic trick myself now.

This afternoon I balled up the yarn I finished spinning last week, using my ball winder and swift (wonderful time- and wrist-saving inventions!). This was not because I intend to use it imminently, but because I wanted to get a better idea of the colour changes, especially in the larger skein. That’s the fractal spun one.

Two skeins of handspun yarn lie on a wooden desk. The one in the upper part of the image is much larger than the other. They are spun from the same fibre and are a mix of yellow, green, maroon and purple/blue. The upper skein is 2-ply and mostly has different colours in each strand. The lower skein is 3-ply and mostly has the same colour in all strands.

How does fractal spinning work? Well, you take a braid of fibre and split it lengthways, keeping the two pieces as equal as possible. One of those lengths will be spun as it is, with no further splitting. But then you take the other piece and split that in half, and then take one of those pieces and split that in half as well! All these splits take place lengthways down the fibre, so each division gives you a narrower piece of fibre, but they are all the same length and hopefully all have all of the colour changes. This gives you one piece that is 1/2 the width, one that is 1/4 and two that are 1/8.

On one bobbin you spin the widest piece, the half. One the other bobbin you spin the other pieces; I did both smallest pieces first followed by the 1/4 width one. After spinning these as singles they are ready to be plied together. Because there is less fibre of each colour at a time (thinner, remember?) on the 1/4 and 1/8 width bobbin the colours here will change more rapidly. This means that when you ply them together you get the colour changes happening on both strands of yarn, but at different rates, giving a very dramatic result! Shown below is the bobbin with rapid colour changes which I spun first, with the remaining fibre draped around the flyer. The Southdown fibre (that’s the sheep breed) was hand-dyed by Katie Weston of Hilltop Cloud and was a delight to work with.

A bobbin with singles on it shown horizontally and still on the wheel surrounded by the remaining unspun fibre. The yarn and fibre is in blocks of maroon, yellow, purple, rust and mossy green.

Of course, my initial split of my fibre wasn’t exact and I ended up with quite a bit of the single ply yarn with the longer colour changes left over. I decided to try chain plying this to create a 3-ply yarn (thicker than the 2-ply fractal) that changed colour very gradually. To chain ply you make a big loop and pull a strand of yarn through it, creating a new loop through which you pull a strand of yarn – it’s a bit like a giant crochet chain, which is being twisted as it goes onto the spinning wheel. Because it’s all coming off the same bobbin there are some places where one strand of the three is a slightly different colour (that would be the strand pulled through the loop) and it gives a fabulous graduated effect. Also, a really nice plump yarn! Next time I do some chain plying I will make a little video as I think that would make my explanation clearer.

I didn’t initially sit down to write a whole post about spinning today, but it seems I have. There has also been lots of knitting on one of my ‘secret’ projects this week, which of course I can’t show you or tell you much about, other than that I have started the final piece of it and completed the numbers for the pattern. I promise to have also knitted something else by next week that I *can* show you!

The yarn arrived for my other commission piece (aka secret project 2) last week as well. It’s been spun in the grease and smells wonderfully sheepy! I’m really looking forward to getting started with that, but again it will something that I can’t share with you until next June and that feels like a very long way away at the moment!

Audrey2 is behaving well and I got a beautiful loaf on Friday – I’m hoping for a repeat performance later on today.

A malted sourdough boule sits on greaseproof paper. In the background is an earthenware salt pot.

And I even spent an hour in the garden this morning, clearing the vegetable patch of weeds and spent plants!

That’s all from me for today. Stay safe and I hope you are able to do some things that make you happy this week. K x

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The Hills are Alive

My plan to weave in a section of yarn ends on my advent sweater (Serenity by Joji Locatelli) each day worked a treat. I seriously underestimated how many there were; I’d forgotten that as I had worked each colour from the top over the back and each side of the front, several colours had six ends not two. It turned out that there were over 80 in total! However, I did a sleeve’s worth and so on and the ends were soon completed. It is such a gorgeous sweater to wear and the yarn is so very soft.

We took this picture on Sunday, during what we call our ‘country walk’. We are so lucky that we can get onto lanes like this within a kilometre or so of our front door. The main pic of today’s post is the view of Moel Famau, to the left of where we were standing.

A woman wearing a hand-knit sweater and a linen dress stands with her back to the camera and her hands in her pockets in a country lane. It is a sunny day and the jewel colours of the sweater almost glow.

Last week I asked you to keep your fingers crossed for me regarding a submission I’d sent, that I was due to hear back about by Friday. Well, it worked! I had an acceptance email on Wednesday morning!! Since then, I’ve been grading the pattern (10 sizes for this one) and starting to write it up and I am now waiting eagerly for the yarn to arrive in the post.

Can you believe that my flowers from last week are still going strong? The yellow roses have opened up and become all frilly on the edges and the deep red carnations are a lovely contrast.

My Fiery Dragon Skin Cowl is done and very cosy in my hand-spun yarn. I still have to pinch myself a bit that I only started learning to spin this time last year and I am making yarn I can use when knitting up my own designs. That disbelief is going to get to a whole new level once I have finished a project with yarn from Doris, isn’t it?!

A hand-knit cowl in hand-spun shades of blue, green and greeny-gold wool is on a mannequin covered with black fabric. A cream wall is reflected in the mirrored door behind.

In the meantime, here is my current spinning, some Southdown fibre, from Hilltop Cloud. The two bobbins are intended to have stripes of different sizes as I am attempted fractal spinning; you split the fibre lengthways, then one half lengthways again and then one of those lengthways again. The horizontal finished bobbin contains the singles spun from the fibre that was split more often and the bobbin still on the wheel is being spun with the other half of the fibre, so there are much longer stretches of colour.

A close-up of a bobbin in progress on the spinning wheel, with the other bobbin balanced horizontally above it to show the contrast. The wheel treadles and rest of the background are out of focus.

As I’m waiting for yarn to arrive for two commissions at the moment, I decided to cast on something small in the mean time. I posted about this sock on social media the other day and I’m pleased with how it’s coming along. It did take me a while to adapt to using the KnitPro single 25cm long circular needle, especially trying to work out which hand the shorter needle tip felt best in, but it’s feeling more natural now. That’s a 2mm needle in the pic with 80 stitches per round. I did once have 2mm bamboo needles, but they did not last very long. Sue likes her socks knit to a tight gauge – it makes them last better – and bamboo just snapped in my hands. The stripy yarn is fabulous isn’t it? This is Zandra’s Rainbow, one of the Zandra Rhodes colourways on their Signature 4-ply yarn for West Yorkshire Spinners.

A brightly coloured stripy sock in progress sits on a wooden desk in front of its ball of yarn. The yarn is pink, yellow, dark blue, maroon, scarlet and olive green.

I have spent several hours on the embroidery so far. You can see progress from last week, but no sense of the image yet. But this is only working from the central page of nine…

A close-up image of a very small scale embroidery in progress. The fabric is a cream coloured linen with black, dark brown, grey and green threads. Bright red threads mark the central lines of the design.

There has been slightly less baking than I would have liked recently, but Audrey2 is waking up again after a short time in the fridge. Hopefully I will be making another loaf in the next couple of days. I was feeling more than a bit off-colour yesterday, so there was definitely no baking, or much activity at all!

That’s all from me for today. I hope you all stay safe, stay well and do what makes you happy. K x

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Yellow Roses

Do you like my roses and carnations? They were a gift from my lovely wife to celebrate the launch of “Of Night and Light” in Knit Now last week. After all the excitement of the magazine release last Thursday, I have been getting on with some new projects and returning to some not so new ones.

My advent sweater is dry so now I have the ends to weave in – approximately 50 of them! I might take a similar approach to the one I used to use for writing school reports; decide when I want it finished by, work out how many I need to do each day and get that day’s ‘portion’ done in the morning while the light is good in the front room. If I take next Wednesday as my deadline, then if I do about 7 each day it will be ready – that doesn’t sound half so intimidating as 50!

When I finished spinning my Merino d’Arles, dyed by Anne Murray, back in March, I knew what pattern I wanted to use it for. My Fiery Dragon Skin Cowl seemed ideal for the colours of the yarn and the fact it is very textural meant that irregularities in the yarn wouldn’t matter so much. It’s coming along really well and I am so pleased with the effect. It’s slightly thicker than the yarn I designed the pattern for originally (Painted Desert by Knitting Fever), but that’s ok. It’ll be a little warmer. This is the first time I’ve used my hand-spun yarn for a knitting project, as opposed to a swatch and it’s so satisfying.

A textural knitted cowl in progress lies on a wooden desk against a closed laptop. It is in shades of blue, green and grey-gold with a tucked slip stitch pattern. The yarn is hand-spun.

Another new project is the embroidery of Mum’s photo – I’ve actually started it! It doesn’t look like much yet and it will take a good while before the picture takes shape, but it has at least begun. The embroidery hoop is helping enormously as is the re-printed chart. The first one had 70 x 100 squares per page (4 pages) and it was just too small to keep track of with 40+ different symbols. Now the chart has 50 x 75 squares per page (9 pages) and I can actually see the symbols without them swimming about. Thumb for scale!

Cream linen fabric with red running stitches to mark the centre lines is held in a wooden embroidery hoop. There is a sprinkling of tiny dark green, brown and grey stitches on the fabric. A thumb is placed on the fabric to highlight how small the stitches are in comparison.

There are a LOT of colours involved too. I love the fact that I can use this box mum finished making recently (after starting it well over 10 years ago) to store them in:

An open dark blue fabric covered box is shown from above with a lot of skeins of embroidery thread propped inside. They are in shades of green, brown, grey and neutrals. The box is octagonal in shape and is leaning against a laptop.

The sweater design I’ve been working on for a while now has completed Back and Front sections, all written up. The sleeves have been charted with all the shaping and I’ve started writing them up. I redid the front of the round neckline with my coloured pens and graph paper and now I’m really happy with how the nine different sizes relate to each other as well as all having a pleasing curve. The really tricky part was working out the most logical way to write it out – that was yesterday’s task and fortunately was a success!

Glancing out of the window I see it is raining. Again. I’m so glad I had a walk before lunch, but it does put me off doing much in the veg patch today. Maybe it’ll be dry again later in the week. One of our tomatoes has ripened – I can see it from here! So, it was worth tying them up to get some sunlight. I think I should probably get them in soon and finish ripening them on the window sill.

Audrey2 (my sourdough starter) is getting all grown up now. I’ve made three good loaves with her (after one dodgy one and some flat-as-pancake rolls) and she’s doubling in size and then some when fed. Not wishing to be caught out with fruit flies again like I was with Audrey I have dried some starter and the shards are now safely in a jam jar should they ever be needed. When I read about drying out sourdough starter and seeing that it would take 2-3 days I thought it must be a typo since any starter left on a spoon or spatula goes rock solid so quickly, but no. It really took 3 days. Hurrah for a silicone rolling mat and pop up food cover that could be moved around as necessary.

Do you remember I said I was going to plan a new workshop last week? Well, it’s done! Great project, loads of skills and if I can complete it in one hour (taking my time and not rushing), then knitters taking the workshop will be able to complete it in two and a half. More details coming soon. It’s also given me a really rather fab idea for a kit to launch next year…!

That’s all from me for today. Stay safe and do what makes you happy, Kx

P.S. Keep your fingers crossed for me on Friday – that’s when I find out about the latest design I submitted!

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Going Out

We did it. For the first time in over 18 months we went away for the night to meet up with friends (as opposed to family) and WE ATE OUT! At a restaurant. It felt very odd to start with being out in a big room with lots of other people, but the staff all wore masks and so did we for the two metres we had to travel from the door to our table. And when we visited the loos. The food was lovely, with a good vegan menu as well as ‘regular’ ones.

One thing I had completely forgotten about eating out is how loud it is. There was music playing (quite loudly) and although we were nearest to the door and not directly near a speaker it was difficult at times to hear and be heard. So what happens? You talk louder and move nearer, both things that you’re not meant to do really in terms of minimising spread, but everyone in our little group had had negative tests recently, and fingers crossed we’re all ok still so far!

This meet up had been postponed from last summer and we hadn’t seen these friends for two years, but the lovely thing about really good friends is the ability to pick up as though that gap of time had never been.

And where did this momentous occasion take place? In Lichfield. None of us had ever been there, but it is more or less halfway from both our homes. It is a lovely little town (city). We looked around the cathedral and it is stunning. The main image on this post is part of the frontage, chronological sculptures of the kings and queens of England, each holding something that represents their reign. For example, King John (not in shot) is holding a green (copper) quill and scroll to represent the Magna Carta. Here’s most of the frontage:

The frontage of Lichfield Cathedral with a cloudy grey sky behind. The building is covered in sculptures of kings, queens, angles and saints with lots of geometric details.

While inside I failed to photograph the historically important things such as the shrine to St Chad or the Angel of Lichfield (a carving from the EIGHTH century!). Instead, I photographed things that took my eye as potential knitting inspiration. My old City & Guilds tutor would be proud of me (she was – I already put these pics on Twitter!). So, I give you the *back* of the high altar (inlaid and carved marble) and two rather beautiful floor grates which have a definite theme of diamonds and circles:

Four colours of mosaic marble form diamond hatching. In the centre of each diamond is a flower carved in relief within a circle. Each line of the diamond hatching has a different mosaic pattern and each flower is different as well.
A close up of a cast iron floor grating. Each piece is two circles wide and three high with diamonds running through the circles and decorative points like the tops of church windows all through the design.
A square cast iron floor grating with a large circle surrounded with a border of diamonds. The circle has 'spokes' spreading from the centre, with the detail near the edge of the circle taking the form almost of fleurs de lyes, similar to the tops of church windows.

Quite when I will turn these into knitting ideas I’m not sure, but there are a few possibilities kicking around in my head already.

Remember the terrible frisbee I made that was supposed to be a loaf? I tried some of the helpful suggestions from the sourdough Facebook group, reducing the water, reducing the proving time and the time in between pulls and folds and my next loaf was very much better! It tasted fabulous too.

A seeded sourdough loaf with a cross scored across the floured top sits on a metal cooling rack.

The drive to and from Lichfield enabled some further progress on the Brioche + Mystery shawl. Please note – I was the passenger!

A close up of part of a brioche knitted shawl in four colours. There are two colour brioche stripes surrounded on two sides by textural stripes, then triangle shapes in two-colour brioche, followed by garter stitch stripes in three colours with bobbles in the centre stripe.

I’m now about to start the next lot of bobbles. Knitting backwards to avoid turning your work every five stitches is an optional technique during the bobbles and I *can* do it, but my tension isn’t quite as consistent as turning it round and purling, so I’m undecided about which approach to take this time around. Thinking about it, when I’m teaching I tell other people that the only way they can improve a skill is to practise it, so I’d best take my own advice and do some knitting backwards. I’ll take some pics while I’m doing it so you can see!

There are only two more parts of Into the Vortex to be revealed and I’ll share some more of people’s progress with you next week 😊

Harvesting continues in the garden and everything seemed to grow massively over the weekend while we were away – the courgette plants that had looked so puny only a little while back gave us these beauties this morning. For reference, the shortest green courgette is nine and a half inches long.

Three large green courgettes lie on a green tablecloth with three round yellow courgettes of various sizes. In the top left corner is a woven placemat with the base of a silver candlestick just showing.

I haven’t mentioned my Craftucation courses lately, have I? I had been hoping to finish ‘An Introduction to Lace Knitting’ a few months ago, but my hands have been too dry and cracked to record anything – no-one wants to see lengthy close-ups these paws at the moment. It’s not fallen off my radar, though, and I am making great efforts to get my hands fit to be seen. Hopefully I’ll be able to return to recording in September, when it should also be cool enough to wear the same clothes as when I started recording the course! Watch this space!

I hope your week has gone well. Stay safe, do what makes you happy. K x

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What you got cooking?

How is this the last blog post of July already? Time really has been flying past. This morning saw some much needed rain along with a fanfare from the thunder. The rain has also brought with it some cooler temperatures which I have been taking full advantage of.

Yesterday morning was harvesting: the rest of the gooseberries got turned into the crumble shown in the post picture. It was gorgeous and there’s some left for tonight. It goes really well with vanilla soya yoghurt.

All of the blackcurrants which were washed, picked over and frozen in two bags (I didn’t remember to photograph these) and the redcurrants… Those redcurrants have been worrying me if you remember. The wood pigeons have been eating as many as they could get their beaks on and attempting to sit on the stems of the bush despite the fact that the stems were breaking under them. I was beginning to think there wouldn’t be any left for us.

However! Once I got down into the ‘underskirts’ of the redcurrant bush there was lots of fruit still there waiting to be picked. So I picked them all.

Once all the fruit was washed and picked over, the crumble made and the blackcurrants frozen I realised there wasn’t really any space in the freezer for the redcurrants. So, I stripped them all off their little ‘strings’ and got ready to make jelly.

A jam pan half filled with very ripe redcurrants.

This is a two day process as I like to leave the bag overnight. The tea-towels and clothes pegs are to keep out any curious insects!

This morning I was stiff as a board when I got up (that’s what an hour and a half in the garden mostly bent double will do for you when you’re me), but I was keen to see how much juice there was. With this recipe you don’t know how much sugar you’ll need until this stage (and so, of course, I had bought far too much), as it’s proportional to the juice volume.

The juice and sugar boiled up nicely and the jars were washed once again in the dishwasher and then sterilised in the oven. 12 jars. I realised this was too many, but needed to put the dishwasher on before I’d measured the juice.

I got 3 1/2 jars. Not a lot, but considering I had wondered whether we would get any at all, this is good. And it’s such a beautiful colour – and smells and tastes AMAZING! I’m so glad we have homemade redcurrant jelly in the house again.

3 1/2 jars of redcurrant jelly cooling on the breadboard in front of the jam pan.

But then I had 8 sterilised jars unused and the cooking apples from mum were just starting to look past their best. What to do? Naturally, I made the chutney.

Apples, onions and malt vinegar cooking in the jam pan as the chutney begins.

Following Mum’s additional notes (she adds onion which I’d forgotten about until the apples had been simmering for 30 minutes) I cooked it and stirred and jumped out of the way when it spat at me. Thank goodness my lovely wife suggested I wear my ‘hair-dyeing top’ today. I only got a few boiling hot specks on my arms (and toe). It did indeed take ‘a while’ to become the ‘required consistency’ – well over an hour once all the ingredients were finally in, but we now have 5 jars of homemade apple chutney with onion, garlic, brown sugar, sultanas, ground ginger, mixed spice, cayenne pepper and chilli flakes. It smelt glorious (and tasted good when I tried a bit that had dropped on the side).

The deep irony of the redcurrants is that we spent six hours sorting out the garage on Saturday and I discovered that I actually have some fruit netting. All of those redcurrants could have been ours!

Not all of my kitchen endeavours have been successful this week. At the weekend I made the worst loaf of my life…

A very flat sourdough loaf cooling on the rack.

The sourdough group I’m in on Facebook gave me lots of very helpful tips to avoid this happening in the future, so I’m not giving up!

And what of the knitting news I promised you?

I have been having lots of fun with the Brioche + Mystery shawl by Suzanne Sommer and will start the bobbles this evening. I do love a clear well-written pattern and this one is a delight. I’ve always been fussy about patterns, and I’m not sure whether this has increased since I started writing my own!

Into the Vortex continues apace – we are past the half-way point now with four parts being out in the world and there are three parts left to be released. Here is what Parts One-Three look like:

Parts One-Three of Into the Vortex MKAL in dark blue Nene 4-ply and pale multicoloured Chimera both by Riverknits lying on a light gold carpet.

When I showed you the very beginnings of the two I had cast on to knit in ‘real-time’ with the MKAL I didn’t tell you about the third. I’m experimenting with something with this one, using 100g of John Arbon Knit by Numbers 4-ply in one colour and 5 (or maybe 6) mini-skeins in all the shades of another. The experiment part is that this MKAL was initially designed for only 50g of each of two 4-ply yarns. I’m trying to see if I can successfully build off the MKAL to create a bigger version, using twice as much yarn. If it works out, this bigger version will be added to the pattern, so if you’ve joined the MKAL you’ll get this version as well (it might just take a little while, so don’t expect it the week after Part Seven is released!). I’m not going to show you any pics of this one yet – you’ll have to wait!

The other piece of knitting news is to do with pattern pricing. Always a fun topic. Into the Vortex and Angel of the North have both been priced at £5. My other patterns are currently £4, with a few at £3.60. My July Newsletter let my subscribers know that my whole pattern portfolio will be going up in price at the end of August. Those currently at £4 will become £5. Those at £3.60 will become £4.20. Subscribers will get an ongoing discount code to use along with a multi-purchase code. If you have your eye on any of my patterns at the moment and you’re not already a subscriber you could buy them before the end of August, or sign up to my newsletter and get the code. Or both! Why not sign up anyway?

That’s all from me for today, have a good week and keep knitting! K x

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It’s All About Ewe

Well, the weather this week doesn’t seem to know quite what it wants to be doing! Hot and sunny one minute, then grey and drizzly. We didn’t get any of the thunderstorms the weather forecasts kept promising us – just the muggy, headache inducing feeling that usually comes beforehand.

Currently though, it’s beautiful, and I am lucky enough to be looking out of the window at rose bushes (albeit a bit bedraggled), geraniums and foxgloves. I’m also watching the birds doing a very good job of keeping the aphids at bay. Oddly enough they still haven’t found the jar of ‘bird peanut butter’ complete with insects, even though it’s been there for quite a while now. I shall have to try a different position for the feeder.

My lovely sheep fleece is still in need of cleaning and I want a stretch of reliably warm and dry weather ideally to do that as I intend to use the patio.

The main excitement for this week is of course the launch of Into the Vortex – our Mystery Knit-along with Yarn O’clock. I was asked to design something that would use all of the available yarn (2 x 200m) and I do believe I have! This is what I had left at the end:

3m of the blue and 16m of the multi-coloured yarn. And with the best will in the world, people will knit to very slightly different tensions, which will have quite an impact with such small margins (3m being only 1.5% of the 200m length). So! For added excitement, the seventh and final part of Into the Vortex is going to be in a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ style, depending on how much yarn you have left. It will be really exciting to see the slightly different end results. There is still time to join in – kits (yarn and weekly pattern instalments) from Yarn O’clock or pattern only from me. All you need to supply are your time, trust and some 4.5mm needles.

Last week I promised you some pictures of the latest socks in progress. The first sock is now complete and I’m about halfway down the leg of the second sock. These photos were taken as I was completing the gusset of the first sock. I love this yarn – Nene from Riverknits in the colour way “Starry Night”. This is the same yarn base as the solid coloured yarn in the MKAL.

It’s good tv knitting at the moment as it’s just knit every round; though I do need to be careful not to drop any stitches with the needles being so thin – 2mm!!

I also experimented with something new in the week – gift labels, particularly ones for knitted gifts. I was really pleased with the results, but have since discovered that the shinier surface of the white card means that the ink will still smudge and smear even days later, which is no good and such a shame as the colours showed up so well on the white. The buff and black cards are both great though.

Last night I made the dough for a 50% wholewheat and 50% white sourdough loaf. I did wonder if it was over-proofed when I took its shower cap off this morning and it was attached to the dough. I gave it 5 hours in the fridge in its banneton after that, but I wasn’t confident in its ability to ‘rise to the occasion’. Sure enough, it’s come out more like a flying saucer than a loaf, but hopefully the loaf will still taste great. Back to doing the bulk proof in the afternoon/evening and into the fridge overnight I think…

What have ‘ewe’ been experimenting with lately? Stay safe and keep knitting, K x