I am so excited to be exhibiting at Wonderwool Wales once more this year. I will be teaching there as well! I won’t be adding the workshop (or ‘woolschool’ as they are called at Wonderwool) to the website as it is already sold out on both days!
I will be in Hall 3 again where the sheepwalks take place. It’s a great space, with plenty of seating and coffee available too.
I am delighted to be exhibiting once again at the East Anglia Yarn Festival (EAYF), held at the Norfolk Showground Arena. It was a great show last year and I am really looking forward to being there again. There will be 87 exhibitors at this event, plus the Norwich City Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers.
I will be selling patterns only at this event, no kits.
There will also be workshops running once more this year and I will add links to those once they are live.
The show is open Saturday 10am-5pm and Sunday 10am-4pm.
Tickets are £15, with weekend tickets (that are exempt from timed entry) at £25.50. Tickets have timed entry from 10am, 10.30am, 11am, 11.30am and 12 noon each day.
The North West Winter Wool Festival is a back for a second year in Blackpool. This year it’s being held in the Norbreck Castle Hotel on the Queen’s Promenade.
There will be over 40 exhibitors (including myself) and there are workshops you can book to attend as well! I will be teaching too – Two-Colour Brioche on Saturday and Moebius Knitting on Sunday.
I will be selling patterns only at this event – no kits.
Advance tickets are £8 for one day or £10 for the weekend. All advance tickets also give you a copy of the Seaside Winter Cosy pattern, a knitting pattern for a hot water bottle cover designed by me exclusively for the show.
The show is open 10am-4pm both days, with entry from 11am for tickets bought on the door.
I’m really pleased to be exhibiting at this show once more. The Pop Up Wool Show has a lovely atmosphere and is in a beautiful setting.
Entry is only £4, either on the door or online.
A very warm welcome to NORTH EAST WOOL SHOW – an exciting festival of knitting, crochet and woolly fibre crafts.
Please join us at Newcastle Racecourse (NE3 5HP), from 10am to 4pm on 8th and 9th August 2026.
There’ll be 90 amazing stalls, plus a great range of workshops (I’ll be teaching one!), all in a fabulous venue. There’ll also be:
– Two cafes selling a range of hot and cold food and drinks
– Lots of room to sit and chat (inside and out)
– Free demonstrations from local guilds
– A charity magazine stall
– Loads of free parking and marshals to show you where to go
… And a fabulous pub just 2 minutes walk from our event!
So please come to visit. There’s so much to see, do and buy.
Tickets will be on sale from mid-April 2026
Yesterday I was admiring the fuchsia that was still in flower, and today everything is covered in a thick blanket of snow! As I type this, the snow has stopped for now and there are lumps of snow falling off the telephone wires and the thinner tree and bush stems which makes them ‘ping’ back up dramatically. There’s also a blackbird in the garden on the hunt for food and I hope it finds the holly berries and rose hips soon as they start to reappear.
I forget how the snow changes the quality of light in the house – everything is brighter and it seems like a good day to make a short tutorial video or two later on.
On Sunday we were at Stollen & Wolle, held at the RiverKnits studio in Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire. It was a lovely day, being surrounded by the smell of mulled wine, happy creative conversations and, in the afternoon, live music from Becci, Markus and others on the accordion and fiddles! We even had some vegan stollen during the day that was very tasty indeed. I came away with a skein of gorgeous DK yarn from Fruitful Fusion that will be knitted up into one of the samples for a new design coming out early next year. I wound it up before remembering to take a photo of it in the skein.
I also completely forgot to take photos of the other vendors’ stands. There were nine of us visiting vendors in total and I think I got to chat to nearly everyone. As well as us, RiverKnits and Silly Gooze (the printers who share the studio with RiverKnits) there were: Fruit Fusion, Daughter of a Shepherd, Skein Queen, Rauwerk, Telling Yarns, The Wool Library, Allium Threads and ButtonedUp.
It was a beautifully sunny morning at RiverKnits and we were pleased with how many people came – it was a really busy and buzzy atmosphere.
Rain began a little by the later part of the afternoon which led to a wet and dark journey home and there had clearly been some accidents on the road. As I get older I find night driving in the rain more stressful than I used to and many people I’ve spoken to say they feel the same. Do headlights and spray from other vehicles bother you when driving at night?
Today, I will not be travelling anywhere. I have declared a snow day, as have all the local schools. We may go for a walk later (Becci from RiverKnits recommends a snowball fight, which might be a plan if followed up with hot chocolate), but the car is staying on the drive!
That does allow more time for knitting – and video recording as mentioned!
This coming weekend we will be in Welwyn Garden City for Wool-in Garden City – the second time this year as the first one was in January! On Saturday 23rd I will be teaching in the Pop-Up shop in the Howard Centre and on Sunday 24th we will be one of the 19 vendors exhibiting at the wool show at Oaklands College.
Tickets for both brioche workshops are still available at £30 each – you can book a workshop place here (scroll to the bottom of the page, click in the ‘Choose an option’ box, and scroll to the bottom of the list for the two brioche workshops). Entry to the wool show on Sunday is £7 on the door or £6 in advance.
As I’ve been knitting on samples for two new designs, there has only been a little progress with the new cardigan:
That’s all from me for today. If you are coming to Wool-in Garden City on Sunday, please say hello! (I’m hoping the snow will have cleared up by then!)
In the meantime, stay warm and dry as much as you can, and do something that makes you happy. K x
I am so pleased to have been invited to exhibit at the second woolly winter market at RiverKnits in conjunction with RiverKnits’ studio friends Silly Gooze!
There will be a lovely small selection of yarn, art, and artisan craft businesses to exhibit alongside limited edition artworks and printmaking demos. It will be a great opportunity for gift buying while supporting local, creative, and sustainable businesses.
RiverKnits also be serving traditional festive fare, German Christmas market style. Your ticket entitles you to one free drink. There will be alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks available. Please bring a designated driver if you plan on sipping the glühwein!
Allium Threads
ButtonedUp
Daughter of a Shepherd
Fruitful Fusion
Kath Andrews Designs
Skein Queen
Telling Yarns
The Wool Library
Early Bird tickets are now available at £5! A ticket entitles you to one free drink.
Tickets will be available on the door at a cost of £7 per person.
Under-18s may come free of charge, but must be accompanied by a responsible adult at all times.
Unusually today is not only blog day, but also the first of the month, which makes it newsletter day as well, so there will be quite some overlap in content between the two!
Yarndale was amazing, if a little chilly! If you came by the stand to say hello and have a browse, thank you so much. Customers said some lovely things about the samples on display and I heard a ‘C’est manifique’ from a group of French knitters which made me very happy. We also sold lots of patterns, kits and calendars during the weekend.
If you didn’t come to the show yourself, then here are a few pics to show you how the cattle pen (yes, that is what it usually is used for) was transformed over the course of three and a half hours on Friday afternoon:
My lovely wife Sue can be seen in one of the pics above having a very well earned sit-down after transporting most of the contents of our stand the entire length of the auction mart on the trolley (the car park was at the opposite end to where our stand was!) She was amazing and also held the fort for much of Saturday afternoon whilst I went to teach an Introduction to Two Colour Brioche Knitting workshop to ten intrepid knitters.
While I was at the stand later on Saturday looking for a pattern on the table, my badge caught on Tiffany (pinned across the front of the table) and snagged it quite badly. Nothing broke, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to fix it to look as if this had never happened!
I’m going to video the process which will hopefully encourage others to fix their own snagged knits.
We made some new friends as well as catching up with old ones – both other vendors and visitors to the show. I think one of the great things about yarn shows is that it’s a rare chance for most of the vendors see each other, so we make the most of catching up in snatched moments between setting up, or even when queueing for the loo!
I told you last week that I was racking my brains trying to work out how on earth I was going to put my banner up at Yarndale and that I eventually bought two mops with handles that unscrewed and had loops in the top. As you can see – the mop handles worked! Cable ties attached the banner to the metal mop handles and lots of string ties the mop handles to the metal rails of the pen (hidden behind the black sheets and Nevern Throw).
If you came by the stand you will have seen the little display of McIntosh yarns with the two designs that I have created with them. County Shawl was launched on Friday and I’m very excited about it. It uses the wonderful Donegal 4ply yarn in three colours. This semi-circular shawl may look complex but all the stitch patterns are slip stitch, knit and purl with a few little short rows to create the rows of bobbles, so it’s very achievable.
James McIntosh has put together three stunning colour-way choices for you as shown in the picture above. The grey and natural yarn pack also includes a gorgeous dark green which is shyly hiding behind the other two skeins. When you select your colour choices you can also choose to have a set of 3.75mm 150cm circular needles from Addi included in your kit. These needles are really nice to use and are very smooth.
Every kit includes the pattern and I get paid the full pattern price (£6) for every kit sold, which is rather splendid.
I am out and about with my designs again later this month. Ewe Felty Thing are hosting a ‘Designer Day‘ at their shop in Conwy on Saturday October 26 from 10-5, and I will be one of 5 designers taking part. It’s free to come along, so if you are anywhere near the North Wales coast, it would be lovely to see you! 26th October might seem like a long way off now, but it’s actually less than four weeks away!
I have been enjoying knitting my DK version of Into the Vortex and I have nearly finished Part 5 of the seven parts. That’s really good, as something exciting arrived in the post today and means I should be able to finish at least one project before starting a new piece of deadline knitting!
You know the routine now, I think. I’m not going to be able to tell you what it is or who it’s for, or show you my progress with it, but I did want to show you the yarn as the colours are so lovely and the shine from the Tencel content is gorgeous.
Speaking of deadline and commission knitting; keep an eye out for the new issue of The Knitter that comes out later this week as I believe it will include a new design from me!
That’s all from me for today.
I am very pleased to be exhibiting at the Wool-in Garden City Wool Show
Sunday 24th November, 10 – 4 pm
Oaklands College, The Campus, Welwyn Garden City AL8 6AH
I will also be teaching my two Brioche workshops the day before (Nov 23rd) at the Wool-in Garden City Pop-Up Shop in the Howard Centre – more details coming soon!
Well, last week’s post hasn’t yet united Simon with his mitts and hat – but I live in hope that he will indeed have kept my business card and contact me soon now it’s September.
I realised a while ago that I haven’t done much spinning at all this year, and towards the end of last week I set about putting that right. I chose a lovely vibrant braid of Rambouillet fibre in a colourway called “Lucy” dyed by Sealy MacWheely that I’d bought at Wonderwool Wales in 2023. It reminds me of watermelons and summer. Rather than do anything fancy with it like try to split the braid lengthwise, I just started spinning from the end of the length of fibre and kept going. There isn’t much left to do now! Either I have got faster at spinning or I sat spinning for far longer during the two sessions I used to spin up what’s now on the bobbin than I thought I had. I’m very pleased with how it looks at the moment.
It’s got long blocks of colour at present with some gentle blends at the colour changes. When I get to the plying stage that could change completely depending on which plying technique I choose. If I do a 2-ply and start from the two ends working towards the middle, I could get something quite funky. If I do a 3-ply chain-plied technique the colour blocks will be largely maintained. I’m undecided! Maybe I’ll do half as chain ply and half as a 2-ply and compare the end results!
I’ve been knitting up a storm this week and I’ve used up nearly 200g of 4ply yarn (that’s 800m!) but I can’t show you as it’s a commission. I am really pleased with it and I’m looking forward to seeing it finished and blocked.
It’s a very long time since I went to a gym, but today my body feels just like it used to the day after a big workout! We’ve been trimming the top and sides of the hedge – and it’s very tall – with our pole hedge trimmer. It’s incredibly good at the job, but it’s so heavy! And it’s quite awkward when you basically have to stand with your face in the hedge to reach the very top! It’s getting there though, looking more under control, and we are gradually reclaiming some of the space it had taken from the garden.
If you follow me on social media or subscribe to my monthly newsletter, you will have seen that I have something new and very exciting in stock. Desktop calendars! Bear with me. That may not sound exciting in and of itself, but the pictures really are! When my lovely wife and I photograph my shawls she has long been in the habit of lying on the patio and getting me to throw them in the air above her head. She somehow takes lots of shots while the shawl is in the air and they often create the most amazing shapes!
Sue has been carrying Ronnie and Elastic band desktop calendars in her shop for a while, and she kept saying that a calendar of flying shawls would be just the thing for me! Well, we selected 12 of the best shots that we could also give interesting names to and the finished calendars arrived last week. They are available in my shop and I will also have them with me at Yarn Gathering (Mold, 15th September) and Yarndale (Skipton, 28-29th September).
As an introduction to the calendars, here is the front cover (which is also December), titled “Beth March as ‘Sparrowhawk'” and March, titled “Petulia as ‘Swimmer'”. By coincidence, these both happen to be brioche shawls!
I’ve been thinking about how lucky I am to have a really good wool shop (Yarn O’clock) so close to where I live. Mold is a small market town near me, and it has a great variety of independent shops, including Yarn O’clock. I can think of at least three more proper yarn shops not too far away, each in small North Wales towns (Find Me Knitting in Betws-y-Coed, Ewe Felty Thing in Conwy and Wayfarer Wool Shop in Ruthin).
Today I am visiting Liverpool with my lovely wife, sister-in-law and nephew and, although I don’t need any more yarn in my stash, I decided to look up wool shops in Liverpool. Reader, there aren’t any independent wool shops in Liverpool that show up on Google! There’s the haberdashery in John Lewis and Abakhan in Stafford Street which I may well visit, but I can see nothing else that is an independent ‘destination wool shop’ for a visitor to the city to explore. I imagine the city centre rents are far too high.
Do you have a good wool shop near where you live? If not (and if you are a knitter or crocheter), how do you find quality yarn to work with and discover new brands or hand-dyers? Maybe this is a good time to remind you that we will have 16 amazing vendors at Yarn Gathering in Mold on Sunday 15th September (and Anne will be opening Yarn O’clock between 12-1pm as well that day)?! They are all fairly local to Mold, all being based only an hour or so away. And there will be 201 independent dyers, designers, bag makers and other wonderful folk who work with textiles from all over the country at Yarndale in Skipton on 28-29th September.
That’s all for today – I may have some plied yarn to show you next week! K x
