Heather Knits

On Saturday the 4th of October I had the pleasure of helping Jill Brownjohn and Rosie Sykes run a workshop on the Patchwork Knitting of Horst Schulz.

We had 11 participants, a mixture of beginners and those who had been to the workshop Rosie led last year, and the ones Horst taught a few years ago. It was a really nice number, and having three of us doing the teaching meant that we could be running several different things at the same time, giving people a choice of what they would like to try.

Here are some of the early arrivals before we got started (as with all the other pictures, click to see a bigger version).

I’m afraid a lot of my photos are a bit on the blurry side, the weather was rather dark and grey outside - a great day for being inside and doing lots of knitting. So here is Rosie talking at the start of the day.

We covered a variety of the modular shapes used by Horst Schulz, and also various of his joining techniques. Jill also talked about combining machine knitting with modular knitting, and I talked about shaping within modules, using the techniques I used in my Patchwork Sweater (I really must come up with a better name for it).

Here is Jill, showing her bag made by machine knitting strips and then joining them using one of Horst’s techniques.

And here Jill is again, talking about a waistcoat she is part way through working.

As well as showing the modular knitting we had been working on, we were fortunate enough to be able to show to everyone some pieces made by the other workshop participants - some of whom are very prolific! This is from Patricia Werner’s Dazzling Knits.

It was wonderful to see the different directions everyone had taken using the same basic ideas. One of the things I love about going to knitting groups and workshops is to see the creativity of all the participants, and to see the fantastic range of things produced when everyone is starting from the same basic starting point. Everyone has different tastes and interests and sees things slightly differently, and it is such a delight to see so many different approaches and what everyone brings to the process.

Here everyone is winding down at the end of the day and just finishing things off in time to pack up.

I had a really great time, and hope that all of the other participants had as much fun as I did. It was wonderful to spend a day with so many enthusiastic and talented knitters. I had such a fantastic time that I was totally exhausted when I got home and slept for 13 hours that night! I am looking forward to the next meet-up and to see what everyone has been making.

On a completely unrelated note, I have become completely addicted to Fantastic Contraption over the weekend. Marvelous for all you armchair engineers

I am very excited to announce that I will be helping Rosie Sykes and Jill Brownjohn to run a workshop on Horst Schulz’s Patchwork Knitting Techniques in October. So the salient details:

When?

Saturday 4th October 2008, 9.30 - 5.00

Where?

Liston Hall, Marlow, Buckinghamshire, UK.

How much does it cost?

£35

What will I learn?

Rosie and Jill will cover the basics of mitred squares and joining them together, knitting strips and different joining methods, chevrons, shells, and combining these techniques with machine knitting. I will cover shaping within mitred squares, the methods I used when making my Patchwork Sweater. We we also all be talking about design ideas for what you can do with all these techniques.

How do I find out more / book my place?

Contact Jill Brownjohn for more information and a booking form at telephone 01628 471397. Unfortunately Jill’s email isn’t working at the moment, but you can email me for the booking form at heather@heatherknits.com.

Hope to see you there!

On 8th July Mummy and I went down to Basingstoke for a workshop on rainbow acid dyeing on wool with Jan Blight (unfortunately I don’t think she has a website). It was a lot of fun and I am really looking forward to doing more at home now I have an idea what I am up to.

There were four of us students at the workshop which was a nice number. Enough that we could gain a lot by seeing a great variety of different combinations of the same colours, and how different people approach dyeing in different ways. Yet few enough that there was comfortably enough space for everyone and we could all chat together. We all brought along our own yarns and Jan supplied Kemtex acid dyes and ammonium sulphate fixative. The yarn we took was aran weight, 100% blue faced leicester, from H W Hammand. A lovely yarn, it took the dye well and was a pleasure to knit with. We bought 1kg between us and dyed 100g each at the workshop so there is still 800g left. Mummy has earmarked some of it for a capelet from Nicky Epstein’s Knitting on the Edge: The Essential Collection of Decorative Borders. At the same time as buying the aran weight we also bought 1kg each of the same yarn in DK weight which I am really looking forward to experimenting with.

Jan had mixed up a selection of stock solutions of different colours of dye before our arrival, and after soaking our yarn well, we laid it out on cling film and set to with the colour mixing and painting. I got very carried away mixing different kinds of greens

Once we had finished dyeing, we wrapped up our little cling film parcels and let them sit for half an hour. Then unwrapped the parcels, sprinkled fixative over the yarn, and re-wrapped them to go in the steamer for half an hour. Once the parcels were cool enough we could rinse out the yarn in cool water and hang them up to dry.

For me part of the delight of going along to a workshop rather than just reading things from books is that you can see what a wonderful variety of different yarns everyone produces, starting with the same basic ingredients, and using broadly the same methods. The different combinations that people used, combined with different proportions of colour made all the yarns dyed look completely different. A real feast.

We all brought along pictures for our inspiration, but I’m afraid mine are really only very loosely inspired by them. After the first couple of skeins I just got carried away playing with all the lovely colours The others were a lot more dedicated and it was lovely to see the beautiful and sometimes unexpected colours you can produce when inspired by a picture.

Jan also provided some fine yarn which she had put into very long circumference skeins, like you would do for socks, and some roving for us to play with too. I found the roving quite different to dyeing yarn, the dye didn’t seem to want to absorb as easily and I seemed to have more trouble controlling the colours.

When we got home we were so impatient to be knitting with the yarns that we had to put them in the airing cupboard over night to gee them along a bit.

Probably better than knitting with wet yarn though

When it came to the knitting I was interested to experiment with how the colours would look knitted up in different textures. To give a basic idea I knitted a section of garter stitch, a section of moss stitch (seed stitch to those over the pond) and a section of stocking stitch. Some of our skeins were slightly longer than others so I had enough yarn to knit a little ribbing as well. As you can see I was a bit obsessed with the green.

The palest sample (middle of the top row) shows the effect created when the steamer goes off the boil and you don’t notice until you come to rinse the yarn and all the dye rinses out, by which time it is a bit late. I like the effect of subtle shades of the same colour though and will be having an attempt at replicating this in a more controlled fashion.

On the right is the long skein, with a bit of ribbing at the top, then stocking stitch and then moss stitch, using the same number of stitches that I usually use for socks. I would like to try this again although the big skein was a bit unwieldy. The fibre was supposed to be shades of purple, rather than frighteningly pink. I think I am going to make some felted beads out of it, and make them into a necklace, possibly with a few other bits and pieces to tone it down a bit. That is the plan for now at any rate.

There are loads more photos of the workshop and the yarns here.

The homework is done, I have made the important decision of which knitting to take (the sock in progress, plus yarn for another two pairs on the off-chance that I should run out!), and I have nearly finished the packing. We are flying out to Baltimore for Stitches East tomorrow and I am ridiculously excited! Have a great week all, I know I will. All those going to Ally Pally, have a great time and stroke some yarn for me

On 2nd of June I went to a finishing workshop with Debbie Abrahams at Stash Yarns in Putney. Debbie used a sweater for a teddy as a demonstration which was a really good idea, since it enabled us to try out a wide variety of techniques in a relatively short time. For our homework we knitted up the separate pieces of the sweater, and then assembled them and worked the neckline in the class.

It was a fun class and very useful, and I had a great time meeting Debbie and the other class participants. I have come away with some nifty ideas for picking up stitches around necklines without getting lumps and holes - although I think I do need to do a bit more practice! I think I am still with Lucy Neatby though on mattress stitch (she likes to go under one bar each time rather than two, although I think it depends a lot on the thickness and texture of yarn you are working with).

I managed to get the neckline and one of the side seams done in the class but it then took me absolutely ages to get round to sewing the other side seam. Then it rained lots and I failed to get round to taking any pictures. Finally here it is finished! The yarn is Jaeger matchmaker merino.

I am disappointed to hear that Jaeger is being discontinued, but there are some very nice Debbie Bliss yarns around at the moment. This is my Rialto swatch:

And this is the colour I am going to make my cardigan in:

The yarn is DK weight 100% merino and is lovely to knit with and wonderfully soft. I am looking forward to getting started.

We are having a surprisingly rain-free day, so I have been catching up on photographing my knitting.

Way back on the 13th of May I went to a workshop on Horst Schulz style patchwork knitting taught by Rosie and hosted by Jill (who I think doesn’t have a website yet). It was a nice intimate workshop with people working on various different techniques depending on their level of experience and what interested them. Rosie handled the differing projects very well, making sure everyone had as much help and guidance as they needed, while allowing time for people to experiment with the techniques. I had a lovely day, and it was a great opportunity to see many different directions the same basic methods could be taken in.

I had a go at some short-row work. This is the most recent design idea that Horst has been working on.

And also some shells.

Apologies for the horrid choice of colours This was what I had in my knitting bag at the time.

Better go and get ready for bed. I am going to the Knitting and Crochet Guild AGM tomorrow which unfortunately means getting up appallingly early in the morning. Say hi if you see me, I will try to be awake, and not too traumatised from the drive! Someone drove into the back of Paul on his way home from work last Friday while he was driving the shiny new car (it wasn’t even two months old - boo hoo) and we collected the hire car this afternoon to replace our car while it is being fixed. The hire car is an automatic (we used to have an automatic but that was several years ago) and is a Toyota Corolla. It is quite different to our car which is a Nissan Note, and the Corolla is going to take some getting used to! At least I should have a good long time to get the hang of it on the way to Cheltenham and back.

Well it has now been nearly a month since Skip North and I have finally unloaded the photos from the camera and am getting round to blogging about it. I’m afraid I don’t have any (decent) photos of the participants as I am the worlds worst photographer combined with forgetting to take my camera out and about with us (the excitement of all the yarn went to my head). I had a great time and met loads of lovely people, and now my Bloglines is up to 124 feeds. I’m afraid I wont be attempting the herculean task of doing links to all the people I met as I would be bound to miss someone out.

Photos of all the shopping will come later when I can get to it. Currently the new yarn is barricaded into the spare room by our old mattress which the council are taking away on Thursday. I am looking forward to rediscovering all the fun things I bought! and am actually considering starting a spreadsheet with all the yarn I have an information on it, a rather daunting prospect.

Anyway, on to the first part of my update on Skip North. This was the first time I had been (there was one last year which I only found out about at the last minute and unfortunately couldn’t go), and also the first time I had been to Haworth. A lovely area of the country and I enjoyed the great views as you drove across the top of the moorland from Bradford.

As part of the weekend we had the option of doing three out of four possible workshops. These were due to all happen on Friday afternoon, but due to the London train containing at least one of the workshop leaders being delayed we had two workshops on Friday and the remaining one on Saturday evening.

The first workshop I signed up for was cold water procion dyeing of plant fibres with Liz . I had never dyed yarn before, and the most dyeing I had ever done was tie-dye T-shirts while at school, and dyeing jeans in the washing machine. This workshop was marvelous fun and I am really looking forward to trying acid dyeing too soon. Liz brought all the dyes with her, in a wide range of colours and all we had to do was bring our yarn and a tray in which to dye. My yarn was Patons 4ply cotton which has a nice sheen without being too hard.

Here are some of the yarns dyeing:

This one is mine. I think this is a photograph of it after adding the soda which explains the amount of liquid. I was really worried that I had added too much dye and that everything was going to turn out a shade of mucky greenish brown but luckily it came out all right.

This one was Rosie’s . I love the colours she has chosen and the way they blend together.

And this is my finished yarn. I absolutely love it and am ridiculously proud I have knitted it into a little triangular shawl / scarf which is currently blocking on the dining table, pictures to follow when it is dry.

The second workshop I went to was making beaded stitch markers with Alex . Apologies for the very dark photo.

On Saturday night I did the bullion crochet workshop with Nic . It was good fun although I was rather tired at that point, and I’m not sure why I decided that black yarn would be a good idea to learn something new at 9pm in a badly lit room.

Comments

Thank you all for the lovely comments on the bracelet pattern .

Miss Knotty asked whether I preferred the slip stitch method of knitting with beads, where the bead sits on a thread in front of a slipped stitch, or the garter stitch method where the bead sits between the stitches. I think it depends a lot on what sort of pattern you are creating and the effect you are going for. The big advantage with the slip stitch method is that the beads appear as a surface decoration on only one side of the fabric and it doesn’t affect your tension much. So a surface beaded pattern can be relatively easily incorporated into a section of stocking stitch, although it has some limitations, for instance that you can’t place beads in front of adjacent stitches. At some point I will get round to blogging about a knitted beaded dress I am making using this method. It has been languishing in a bag in the computer room for about 7 years unfortunately due to it being large swathes of stocking stitch in 4ply yarn and so it gets a little boring. I am determined to have another go soon though.

The big advantage with the garter stitch beading method is that it does affect the width of the fabric, and so you can easily create a shaped fabric just by adding or subtracting beads, without you having to have greater or fewer stitches. All in all, I like them both but for different things.

There is even a comment on the bracelet pattern in (I think) spanish! Although I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea what it says, and Google language tools didn’t really help. If anyone would like to translate, I’d love to know what was said.

I’m glad you liked the cabled socks Janey. They are holding up well and in fact I am wearing the brown and green pair today!

Thanks for the lovely comment on the circular cardigan Padraigan. I love the colour and have worn it a lot this winter. I am also hoping not to actually need bullet proof socks! Although I did go to school with a boy who accidentally shot his dad in the welly (Wellington boot, I’m not sure what the American name would be, rubber boot maybe?) with an air rifle, his dad was not best pleased.

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Ansley has knitted up a beaded bracelet in the most beautiful colours (scroll down to see). She has also worked out that you need to string about 6 feet (1.8 metres) of beads onto your thread in order to make this pattern. Thank you very much for working out the length of beads! It just hadn’t occurred to me, partially I wonder because although I gather in the US (and possibly other countries too) beads are often sold by length in a string, they are rarely sold this way in the UK, and I have always bought beads over here by weight.