Tag: Yarn O'clock

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Everything Happens at Once

It’s been a productive week and one that got busier as it went along! It seems as though my work is building momentum currently and that’s really quite exciting. This wouldn’t have been possible while I was a full-time school teacher as I just wasn’t able to put the time in to yarn-based stuff to get things happening.

The socks are finished as I intended and, as you can see, they fit me really well. I can’t wear them ‘properly’ yet as I want to use them as a teaching aid at my sock workshops at Yarn O’clock on Thursday and there wouldn’t be time to wash and dry them between now and Thursday evening. The yarn is from RiverKnits – it’s the cormo wool 4-ply version of their 2022 Open Day Special yarn, dyed with Lola from Third Vault Yarns, and the colourway is called ‘Ankh Morpork’. The pattern is the basic sock pattern I always use for me; 2.25mm needles, 80 stitches to cast on, rib for a while, stocking stitch for a while, heel flap, heel turn, gusset decreases to 68 or 72 sts (68 in this case), work foot straight for a bit, toe decreases, graft. What some people call a ‘vanilla’ sock.

Yesterday’s beginner knitting class went well. It was still just the one lady attending and she got on really well. I forgot to take a photo of her bunting triangle, so instead, here’s a pic of the one I made. She did some extra eyelet rows in hers too! I rather like the extra eyelets – it keeps it interesting and add extra practice of yarn overs too! Our next class will be in two weeks, with the focus on using knit and purl stitches to create texture. I’ll be adding it as an event to Facebook to see if that helps encourage folk to book a place.

I chose my next fibre and started spinning it. I’ve got 200g of this lovely Bluefaced Leicester wool. It’s dyed by FibreHut and the colourway is called ‘Faded Blooms’ which I think suits it well. As I’ve got more fibre to play with, I decided to spin this one a little thicker. The singles are (mostly) coming out around a DK weight and I’m hoping the plied yarn will be somewhere between an aran and a chunky weight. I do need to concentrate to avoid drifting back to spinning finely though. It’s certainly eating up the fibre more quickly spinning this way!

The final section of our mystery knit-along, Am Byth, was published on Friday and I’ve done two videos to help folk with certain technical aspects. One was for the 5 stitches to 1 stitch decrease and I’ve been absolutely astounded at how many views it has had on Twitter – at the time of writing, over 1700! I will add this one to the website as well. The other video I recorded was for one of the cast-off options. it’s a sewn cast-off that gives a fabulous finish to a ribbed fabric, but it’s not one that everyone knows.

Also, now the larger cables are complete, can you see why I called it ‘Am Byth’? Am byth is Welsh for ‘forever’, and these closed cables look like the eternity symbol (when you hold the knitting on its side!).

I’ve also started getting ready for Buxton Wool Gathering – which is now less than four weeks away!! These are the filing cases I transport and store my printed patterns in and I’ve been going through my patterns spreadsheet, deciding which patterns I need more copies of, and I started printing more out today. The next thing to do is to go through the kits and see what I’ve got and what I could do with replenishing. Although, at a pretty big yarn show (there will be 54 vendors) it’s not as if folk won’t be able to get some gorgeous yarns from the other stalls to knit my designs with.

Part Two of Branwen is in the new issue of The Knitter that is in the shops from Thursday. It’s a knit-along shawl (but not a mystery) using West Yorkshire Spinners Fleece. It’s a lovely DK yarn made with Bluefaced Leicester wool. There are three more parts to the pattern after this one, and I will of course be publishing the whole pattern once I receive the rights back. This also means that if you want to read the interview with me in Issue 185 you have one day left to visit WHSmith and buy a copy!

Yesterday I had two more design submissions accepted which is lovely and very exciting, and one of the reasons for added busying! I set up the Excel spreadsheet for the first one that’s due and started working on that this afternoon. I bet you didn’t know designing knitting patterns was so glamorous, eh?! Seriously though, it’s amazing how much easier the process is with a few formulae up my sleeve – it helps turns one set of numbers into ten far more quickly than I could ever do on my own. Afterwards, I go through it all and make sure it’s still elegant and all the sizes represent the design concept ‘authentically’. Wow, that sounds a bit pretentious, but it basically means if you have a sweater with a design where, for example, a cable hits the shoulder just by the neckline in one size, it needs to be positioned so that it hits the shoulder in the same place in all the sizes. The geek in me loves playing with the numbers to make it all work.

There have been one or two less fabulous things that have happened this week too – but that’s the way of the world, isn’t it? One of the things was that I broke ANOTHER tooth this morning whilst eating my breakfast. At least I already have a dentist appointment in two weeks… I think I need to go back to porridge oats stirred through plant-based yoghurt, it’s far less hazardous than a bowl of cereal!

Anyway, take care one and all and don’t go clicking any links in your notifications until you’re absolutely certain you know who it’s from! And do something that makes you happy this week. K x

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Ta-da!

The most exciting news for me this week has to be the publication of The Knitter, issue 185 last Thursday. See that shawl on the cover? That’s Branwen, my design, and it’s a five part knit-along that is begin run during this and the next four issues! Part One is in this month’s magazine. It’s the top centre section of the shawl (in green). It’s a DK weight shawl, using West Yorkshire Spinners Fleece (2 skeins of cream and 3 skeins of green) and it’s sooo soft and cosy! Once I’d bought my copy of the mag in WHSmith’s I wanted to go round the town showing it to everyone and saying – look! I made that!

But not only that, this video shows you a glimpse of the (three page!) interview with lots of pics of my designs and lots about me, my designing, inspiration etc. If you ever wanted to know where it all began, this article will tell you!

Speaking of knit-alongs, this is the completed Part One of Am Byth MKAL. Also, a DK weight project, this one only uses one skein. You can see the design taking shape now, but can you work out what the project is going to be yet? All will be revealed on Friday, when Part Two is released.

I’ve had a burst of activity with my spinning in the past week. I finished spinning the braid into singles on Sunday, and today I chain plied the whole lot! The thing about chain plying is that as you are making a big loop in one hand to catch and pull the strand of yarn from the bobbin through (to form the next big loop – it’s like really fast giant finger knitting), you’re using the other hand to control the twist and your feet are working the treadles. I tend to find that the singles yarn tries to turn and twist back on itself when I’m getting going, until I get a regular rhythm going, at which point I don’t want to stop and have it all tangle up again!. This is partly because the singles are spun (twisted) in one direction and this makes the yarn unbalanced. Plying twists the yarn in the opposite direction which balances the twist and gives you a yarn that doesn’t want to turn into nightmare corkscrews.

I’m pleased with how the chain plied yarn has come out. The clear shift from one colour to the next has been maintained which I wanted, with a subtle blending of colours in places. It’s a little thicker than I was hoping for, but considering it is a 3-ply structure it’s pretty good. About a sock weight I think, but I’ll check it later once it’s been washed. I absolutely love the colours – the fibre was dyed by Sealy MacWheely.

Finally, there is some progress on mum’s picture embroidery that you can actually see! I’ve done (nearly) all of the column on the right hand side which was half a page wide (20 stitches) and three and a bit pages long (190 stitches) and I’ve made a start on the next full page width to the left. The sections where there are more colours, such as the bottom right corner, are much more interesting, but take so much more concentration – and there are about 40 different colours in that section, so it’s quite hard to keep track of as well.

I baked my first sourdough loaf of the year today as well. Audrey 2 (my starter), was living up to her name after going into semi-hibernation over Christmas, and it took a lot of feeding to get her active again! It’s a good loaf, although I dived into it for lunch before I took any pics (don’t worry, it isn’t all gone!). I shall have to remember to photograph the next one before slicing it.

There are still spaces available on my Knitting for Beginners workshops!

These are due to start on Feb 6th 1-3pm at Caffi Isa in Mynydd Isa, near Mold, Flintshire. If you or anyone you know fancies learning to knit in a small group, in a relaxed setting with access to tea/coffee and cake, contact me to book a space!

This is what we’ll be making (these are Knitting for Beginners workshops 1, 2 & 3 on my Group Workshops Tuition page):

There are also some spaces on the workshops I am giving at Yarn O’clock, but they are booking up fast! In brief they are:

  • Introduction to Socking Knitting, 16th February, 6.30-9pm
  • Stranded Colourwork, 7th March, 6.30-9pm
  • Finishing Techniques, 18th April, 6.30-9pm
  • Moebius Knitting, 18th May, 6.30-9pm

Full details are on my “Where I’ll Be” page and also on Yarn O’clock‘s website. Contact Anne to book a space on one of these.

Just before I sign off I want to tell you that I am sitting here typing this in the dark, running the laptop from the battery. There’s no problem; we’ve signed up to take part in the energy reduction trials that are happening. There was one from 5-6pm yesterday, today is 4.30-6pm. It’s amazing how many things are on or on standby all the time even when we only use them for a small part of the day. Or rather, I should say how many things were on or on standby. They’re not now – I’ve been going round unplugging stuff or switching it off at the wall! (Just like my dad – but then he used to unplug the tv aerial every night as well) The multi-sockets that each have their own switch are proving handy too. It’s also striking how much quieter the house is, which is interesting as I never really considered ‘things plugged in’ to have a noise, but I suppose they must!

Anyway, take care, stay warm. Dw i eisiau un deg un paned! (I want eleven cups of tea). Tell me what you’ve been making lately. K x

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I Can Sing a Rainbow

A close-up shot of the back of a piece of knitting using a muted rainbow of colours moving from left on the red to purple on the right

These past few days I have been SO grateful to work from home. No hot and sticky commute and I can move between rooms as the sun moves round the house. (Yes, I know, technically, the sun stays put, but it’s an easier way to think of it, okay?) It has still been very hot, and doing the ironing yesterday morning just because that’s what I do on a Monday perhaps wasn’t my best choice, but I have been able to cope with it fairly well.

Today has mostly been overcast, warm and rather humid with occasional bits of rain, but definitely more comfortable. The sun is now making its first appearance of the day (at 5.30pm) and I’m writing this a little later than usual because I had a visitor! Yes, a real-life friend came to the house for a cuppa and a natter (hi Liz – thanks for the cosmos!) and before we knew it three hours had flown by.

Since the weekend I’ve been knitting like mad with the RiverKnits rainbow yarn, as my tech editor has a window next week when she can edit the pattern. I’m now on the final section, working with colour no.12 and about to bring back colours 1, 2 & 3 for a last hurrah.

Aren’t these colours just gorgeous? The knitting is deliberately scrumpled up and inside out as I’m not showing you the full design until nearer publication, but I wanted to be able to show you all the colours together.

The pattern is all written up in my bullet journal, which isn’t a lot of help to Deb, so I also need to type it up, but at least I have written it out properly and not just made a few vague notes or used some kind of shorthand that I then can’t translate. A bit of typing I can do.

Since bringing home those embroidery threads from Mum’s, I have been slightly obsessing over storage solutions. As a result of some googling I am now getting emails from Pinterest with suggestions of things I might like. They’re right – many of these cabinets are stunning.

The boxes and tins Mum’s threads were in were not big enough for both her threads and my existing ones, so I did need a coherent solution. There are two brands, DMC and Anchor. The DMC ones now have a rather splendid home:

This is the top drawer of an old small chest (also from Mum) that had been used to keep a random collection of bits and bobs. Now it’s highly organised thread storage! You see those dividers? I made those from an Aldi bran flakes box. That white line on the pic below is where the bottom flaps of the box were glued together.

When I’ve finished the next box of cereal, I’ll do another set of dividers for the next drawer and fill that with the Anchor threads!

My newsletter subscribers have had access to a special sale during the past week that finished yesterday. It gave them 25% off all patterns by using an exclusive-to-them code. I’m really pleased that some took advantage of it. One Australian knitter is clearly planning ahead as they bought SIX patterns at once! Surprise sales like this don’t happen all the time, but they are one of the benefits of being a newsletter subscriber. Other benefits include introductory discounts off new self-published patterns in their first week. If that sounds like something you’d like, why not sign up? You only get one newsletter a month (unless there’s something really exciting I need to tell you that is time sensitive), so I promise not to clog up your inbox.

With it being properly hot and likely to remain so for a little while, you’ll probably want lightweight knitting to do (if you are a knitter). Laceweight yarn is perfect for this season – and good value financially as well. And just because it is really thin does NOT mean it needs tiny thin knitting needles.

What Do Points Make? (the 2020 MKAL with Yarn O’clock) uses laceweight yarn and 4.5mm needles. Only the largest size of four needs more than 100g of yarn, so it’s cost-effective to make and light as a feather to wear. In fact, I’m wearing this one (in size three) as I type.

That’s all for today – I’m going to go and drink my fourth pint of water. Stay hydrated folks and do what makes you happy. K x