Heather Knits

Saturday found me in Marlow, teaching a patchwork knitting workshop with Rosie and Jill. This was the first try-out of a new venue, Marlow Bottom Village Hall, and it was lovely. This lady greeted us on our arrival.

It was a really nice bright space, enough room to move but without being cavernous and intimidating.

We covered a variety of different module shapes and joining techniques. Rosie has recently been working on strips made up of hourglass shapes. Here is the shape attendees were working on in class, with a mixture of stocking stitch and garter stitch:

And here is Rosie’s scarf she had made all in garter stitch. I love the sequin yarn used just on the joining sections.

Apart from the teaching, one of the other things I love about these days is the opportunity to see what everyone has been working on. Very inspiring!

This is a blanket by Marion, using a variety of different shapes, and one subtle multicolour yarn:

A blanket in two yarns, one solid and one with flecks, by Jill:

And an example that shows you can create very interesting texture effects using mitred squares in just one colour. I think this one was by Helen, but please correct me if I have got it wrong:

All in all a lovely day. We are hoping to hold another at a similar time of year next year, I am looking forward to it already!

Places are still available on the Patchwork knitting workshop I will be teaching on Saturday with Rosie and Jill.

We will be covering a wide variety of different modular knitting techniques, including:

• Mitred squares, a great and very versatile introduction to modular knitting. These are the basic shapes I used in my Patchwork Jumper.
• Rosie will be teaching how to make a reversible hour-glass shape she has recently been working on.
• I will be teaching how to make reversible ribbed leaves

This is the shape I am using to make my Handspun Leaves Waistcoat.

• We will demonstrate various different joining techniques to attach your modules together, and how to make garments (I will also cover how to increase and decrease within your mitred squares to create shaping, as used in my Patchwork Jumper).
• Jill will talk about patchwork knitting and machine knitting, and how to use these techniques to combine hand and machine knitting.
• There will be an inspiration and show and tell session where we all get to talk about what we have made and what we are currently planning (I get some excellent ideas from this session!)

I look forward to seeing you there!

For more info and to book a place email Jill at jill@craftyevents.com or telephone Jill on 01628 471397.

PS. I have a shiny new washing machine (arrived this morning)! Woohoo!

Rosie Sykes, Heather Murray and Jill Brownjohn will be holding a patchwork knitting workshop using Horst Schulz’s techniques.

Times: Saturday 21 August 09.30 – 4.30

Cost: £40.00

Venue: Marlow Bottom, Marlow, Buckinghamshire, UK

This 7th annual Workshop will be small so participants gain maximum practical benefit.

Skills needed: cast on, knit, purl, decrease.

Details from jill@craftyevents.com or telephone Jill to reserve a place 01628 471397.

Things have been a bit quiet on the blog because I have been knitting like a maniac to get my Autumn in Anatolia jumper finished. I made it! and handed it in to Fiona to mark on Sunday. I shall now be catching up on everything I haven’t done over the last week or so, when it has been definitely knitting every minute that I could find to finish on time. I managed a row in the hairdresser, and a row at my Uncle and Auntie’s house when we went to see them last week. I am definitely getting better at time management though, because this time I had packed my bag and finished everything at 8pm the night before, rather than still printing charts at 5am like I was with my Keble Cardigan.

Anyway, back to the important stuff: here is the jumper:

And the back:

And another one of the front:

And lying flat:

As you can see the sleeves are looking a bit long because I had a moment of stupidity with the blocking. I laid it out on a towel and kept adjusting the shoulders to make sure they were even, not realising that I was stretching everything vertically. By the time I realised what I had done it had dried and there wasn’t enough time to wet and reblock. I will be doing that when it is back from marking.

Apart from that little hiccup I am very pleased and proud of it. I love the way the colours and patterns have come out and I think it is going to be very wearable. Although in typical fashion we are now having a week of warmish weather

The day before I headed off for Skip North I finally got to the point where I joined in the sleeves for Autumn in Anatolia. (feel free to imagine the dance of great achievement I am now doing)

I also ended up having a bit of a late night despite the next day’s early start because I wanted to knit at least 4 rows and make sure I hadn’t accidentally twisted one of the sleeves or anything similarly awful.

The sleeves are set-in style but I am knitting them in the round in one piece with the body (there was much calculating that went into that one!). After a week and a half of manic knitting I have now finished the decreases on the body for the bottom of the armhole, and am now back to only two pages of charts rather than the previous three, which was rather unwiedly. Although it does mean that I am now doing four decreases per round rather than the previous eight, so progress is slowing up a bit.

I put the underarm stitches for both the body and the sleeves onto holders initially, but was getting a bit worried that with all the taking it in and out of my knitting bag that the stitches were getting stretched. So on Sunday I had a big session and sewed in a lot of the loose ends from when I had changed colour, and also grafted the underarms. IN FAIRISLE! I can’t sufficiently convey how pleased I am that this has come out well. I am very proud. There was much jumping round the living room with glee.

I even showed it to Mummy on skype, but I think it is hard to appreciate the marvelousness with only a grainy webcam picture.

The graft is the final row of the stripes. I am hoping it will look a bit more even after I have blocked the whole jumper.

I think Dawn is a bad influence. No sooner have I read about her casting on a multitude of portable projects, that I find myself following her lead.

The latest project is Haruni, a little shawl.

I am using 3.5mm needles, and my first attempts at spinning laceweight. As you can see I haven’t got very far yet

On 30th October I went down to Devon for a fantastic fibre-filled weekend organised by Terri.

Friday got off to a slightly inauspicious start, I was 15 mins late to pick up Joanne because I had lost my knitting. I am never exactly at my best in the mornings, and spent 15 mins running round the house trying to find my knitting before I packed everything into the car. In the end I decided to pack the car first, and then search for the knitting afterwards, and went out to the car, to discover my knitting sitting on the passenger seat! I had thrown it out of my bag the previous evening when searching for my purse to pay for petrol and had obviously just left it there over night. At least that mystery was solved!

Luckily we made up time on the way and arrived in Exeter in time to have a cup of tea before picking Rosie up from the station. Then we were all on our way to Sheldon for a weekend full of fibre fun.

Sheldon itself was beautiful. It is a collection of converted buildings that can be hired out, run by a religious community. The ladies running the place were kind and helpful, and the long barn where we were staying was clean and comfortable and had a lovely big sitting space downstairs and beautiful views.

Friday afternoon was workshop time. I taught my emerald beaded bracelet. Joanne and Trudy my victims both made lovely choices of colours of beads and thread, and I am kicking myself that I didn’t photograph their work. I made a bracelet with some interesting matt red beads and ecru thread, something of a colour departure for me, but I like the effect.

I used DMC coton perlé size 8 in colour 739, and about 15g of size 11 seed beads.

After a delicious dinner of homemade soup (3 different kinds!) we sat and knitted and got to know each other. There were 12 of us altogether, 8 of whom stayed over. A really nice number and a lovely group of people.

Saturday dawned with rather atmospheric weather. I wasn’t as quick off the mark as some people so the mist had almost totally dissipated by the time I got my camera out, but you can still see a little bit.

Then it was onto the minibus for a hectic day of enjoying ourselves!

First stop was the David and Charles bookshop where I picked up these goodies:

The sock book is one of those ones where the pages are cut horizontally so you can mix and match your cuffs with your heels and create lots of different socks.

Then it was back in the bus and off to Coldharbour Mill. We had an excellent tour of all the interesting machines in the basement that turn the raw fibre into yarn, given by the man himself, John Arbon. This is the area that the public normally don’t have access to, although they are hoping to be able to create a gantry (is that the right word?) at some point in the future so that you will be able to look down on all the machines and see them in action. The machinery was all fascinating, since starting spinning I have been learning a bit more about how fibre is processed into yarn, and with a lot of the machines you can easily see how they are a vastly scaled up version of how a hand spinner processes their fibre.

The big machine with the person-height drum behind the screens behind John is their carder. You can’t imagine clamping that to the dining table!

John very kindly put each of the machines on briefly for us so we could see what they did, even though they weren’t actually processing any fibre at the time we were there. They tend to do their processing in batches, part of the difficulty is that the machines use an awful lot of power. There are a surprising number of stages that the fibre passes through before becoming yarn. I found the whole experience fascinating to see how it is done on an industrial scale (I do like a nice bit of machinery, coming from a family of engineers ).

After our special tour we had a wander round the rest of the museum to see the machinery which is powered by the water wheel. Unfortunately they don’t run the wheel on a saturday but luckily I had actually seen it working when we stopped in on our way on holiday last year.

We had a bit of an opportunity for stash enhancement. I got three lovely skeins of brown 70% alpaca, 30% bluefaced leicester 2-3ply, 100g and 670 yrds per skein.

One skein of a gorgeous green 4ply merino, spun on the water wheel (100g, 370 yrds).

And a yummy wool fat soap which is currently in use in the bathroom.

We had our lunch in the cafe at Coldharbour Mill, and then piled back on the bus to go to Westcott Farm, home of Devon Fine Fibres. They have England’s only flock of Bowmont sheep (originally bred in Scotland as a mixture of 75% Merino and 25% Shetland), I think Lesley said they had about 50 of them, along with about 200 cashmere goats, and a small number of angora goats (where mohair comes from) and Boer goats, which are a meat goat.

Here are some of the Bowmont sheep out in the field:

And here are some of the Boer goats (the brown and white ones), and the Angora goats (the curly ones):

You can tell just from this picture how intelligent and inquisitive the goats were!

Here are some of the cashmere goats in the field:

And here are a particularly handsome pair of gentlemen (the goat at the back is a cashmere, the one at the front an angora).

I also took a lot of pictures of the goats and sheep who were inside, but they are all rather dark, so I shall spare you from thousands of dark pictures of goats.

It was really interesting to hear about life on the farm, and to talk to someone so passionate about what she does. It sounds like incredibly hard work, and a real labour of love. It is a very delicate balance with the flock of Bowmonts to increase the flock size, while maintaining as high a fleece standard as possible, but also avoiding inbreeding. This last point is especially a concern when the flock size is relatively small, and there are no other flocks available for interbreeding.

Lesley had some gorgeous fibre and yarn, some of which inevitably has come home with me.

First, two 50g bags of washed and carded, undyed Bowmont fibre.

And 25g of Devon cashmere fibre, washed and carded, undyed.

I also bought 2 skeins of gorgeous DK weight green cashmere (I am obviously having a green phase). 50g, and about 100m in each skein. You really need squishy-vision to appreciate this yarn, it is so soft that it is hard to put down.

And 2 skeins of DK weight undyed Bowmont. 50g, and about 150m per skein. I am thinking about dyeing one, or maybe both of these skeins and making some kind of colourwork hat. This is a lovely bouncy yarn.

After tea, biscuits and a very interesting discussion we hopped back on the bus and were driven back to Sheldon in time to stroke all our goodies again before we piled into three cars and drove down to the Nobody Inn for dinner. Here we all are, doing a spot of knitting and chatting before our food arrived.

The food was delicious, and needless to say, the company excellent. We rolled into bed very full and happy.

Sunday morning was a little breezy as you can see from this picture of Rachel, Bex, Donna, and Rosie outside our building.

The ladies at Sheldon very kindly opened their shop up specially for us. I was delighted to be able to buy a couple of balls of DK weight Castlemilk Moorit in natural brown from a local farm (50g per ball, no idea how many metres).

They also had some Aran and DK weight Manx Loaghtan spun from wool from Sheldon’s own sheep, but my wallet was feeling rather pummelled by then so I didn’t get any.

We spent the rest of the morning doing a bit of knitting and spinning, before having a delicious roast lunch.

As you can see Donna has a beautiful purple Suzie pro, and Joanne (at the back right, spinning on Terri’s Lendrum) was a total natural at spinning, her first yarn was much better than mine.

Then time for a clean up and pack everything into the car, then time to go home (which always comes much too soon).

I had a wonderful weekend, the food, outings and company were all excellent. Terri put together a great program of things to do and the food was fantastic. It was great to meet so many lovely fibrey people and spend a weekend together. I am going to have a lot of fun knitting up my purchases too

Friday 11th and Saturday 12th September were the dates for this years IKnit show in London. This is the first time it has been spread across two days, and I went on both.

On Friday morning I went to the Twined Knitting class held by the Dutch Knitters, Carla and Hilly. They were fabulous and I had a great time. Here we all are working hard:

They also very kindly brought lots of samples of several different examples of twined knitting, here are just a few of them:

A really interesting technique and one I am looking forward to exploring more.

During the workshop we were working on a pattern for a little pouch, which cleverly incorporated the major techniques of twined knitting. I finished mine on the train on Saturday morning so was able to show them how it had come out.

My cast on was a bit tight, but I think I have got the idea now. This is just the right size for my iPod too, which is very convenient

On Saturday lunch time I went to a talk by the always excellent Joyce Meader on military knitting from the Crimea to the present day. She was hilarious and informative as always, and brought an incredible amount of stuff with her for us to look at. The only thing which I thought was a shame with this talk was that as the timing clashed with both the morning workshops and the afternoon ones so there weren’t that many people who came to hear it.

As seems to be inevitable with these events I didn’t escape without a few purchases. First, a lovely skein of Fyberspates Sheila’s sock in colour Jewels, 100% superwash merino, 100g, 365m.

Next some laceweight in the brightest green you have ever met. This is Tosh Lace from Madeline Tosh, colour Seaglass, 868m per skein (I bought 2), 100% superwash merino.

Then two balls of Crystal Palace Mini Mochi, 80% merino, 20% nylon, in colour 108 from Gill at the Woolly Workshop. This is very soft.

And the last yarn I bought was a ball of crazy zauberball by Schoppel Wolle in Tropical Fish (I do think the German frische Fische sounds better) from Bev at Knitting4Fun.

I did buy some fibre too from John Arbon. This bag contains, 400g of 100% white fine alpaca, 22 – 26 micron, 400g of 100% champagne fine alpaca, 22 – 26 micron, 400g of a blend of 70% champagne alpaca, and 30% white merino, 22 – 26 micron, and finally a little paper bag with 100g of undyed tussah silk top.

And lastly I bought a fun card from Tilly Flop. I’m not going to put a picture up because I am thinking of giving it to Mummy for her next birthday and she does read the blog from time to time.

There were a good range of stands, and nice wide aisles between them. From a customer perspective it was very nice that it wasn’t as busy as some of the bigger shows, since it meant you could easily get in and see all the lovely things to buy, without having to elbow a couple of dozen people out of the way first. There seemed to be better seating than last year so I could actually sit down to eat my lunch this time which was nice.

Although all the stuff is of course very nice, the best bit of the two days was the people. It was lovely to meet up with so many knitting people, both those I already knew and people who were new to me. I had a wonderful time and am looking forward to next year! I had better get knitting with some of the stuff!

Well, it has been a busy September round here! In a calm between the storms I am finally going to sort out my photos from the last few weeks. Due to the wonders of the scheduling function on wordpress you will be pleased to know I’m not going to drown you with everything that has happened all at once, but instead try to spread it out so you can be enjoying the delights every few days, while I am dashing round like a headless chicken again. I am going to catch up in chronological order, because otherwise my brain hurts.

On Saturday 22nd August I had a lovely time in Marlow, Bucks, helping Rosie and Jill teach a workshop on the patchwork knitting of Horst Schulz. We were joined by twelve delightful and enthusiastic knitters, who I have managed to photograph in the most unflattering and blurry way possible. I am getting a bit better at photographing knitting, but my photographs of people leave a lot to be desired. Here is the least awful picture.

This year as well as talking about basic mitred squares, and variations on them, including increasing and decreasing, I did some samples of different edgings. With these patchwork knitting workshops we are aiming to give people the skills to be able to design and create their own items and hopefully these edgings will be another something to add to the design toolkit. One of the parts of the day I enjoy the most every year is when everybody shows their patchwork knitting projects they have been working on (both finished and in progress). There are always such a lot of wonderful and creative projects to see, and so many different directions in which different people have taken the same basic building blocks. I’m afraid I was enjoying myself again so much that my photos are dreadful. Luckily though, one of my few reasonable photos is of Rosie’s beautiful short row cushion.

I found all of the projects very inspiring, and am looking forward to incorporating some of the ideas in my own knitting. I hope that the other participants had as much fun as I did, and I look forward to seeing everyone again next year!

You may have spotted a new link on the sidebar a few weeks ago. I am very excited that I am going to Terri‘s Samhain / Hallowe’en Fibre Retreat from 30th Oct – 1st Nov 2009 in Devon. I am also thrilled that I will be teaching one of the workshops on Friday afternoon. My workshop is on making an Emerald Beaded Bracelet. I am planning to stock up on the knitting needles, a variety of colours of beads and thread, and the other bits and bobs needed so that for a small cost people can make themselves a little kit with the thread and beads they would like, and we can have a nice afternoon knitting with beads

Terri still has some spots available for the weekend, so it would be lovely to see you there! I think it should be a fun weekend, good outings, and what sounds like very yummy food, as well as a nice variety of workshops (I may be just a little biased here) and of course the company of other knitters.