Happy Holidays!

Hello!!

How are you? I love Christmas and am now in full holiday mode, but I do have a ton of exciting plans for 2017 that I can’t wait to share with you. Until then, I hope your holidays are wonderful and here is just a peek at what is coming up:

This January, Craftsy will have a new class in machine knitting! Stay tuned for announcements and special discount codes!

If you are still looking for a holiday knit, I might have just the thing for you: the Boreal Hat and Cowl patterns are now available for individual purchase!

Happy Holidays to all and to all a good knit!!

Rx

Summertime and the knitting is easy…

Hello!

The sun is shining here (however temporarily) and I have a holiday on the horizon which means I need to sort out my holiday knitting!

I have a few ideas, and perhaps you are making similar plans right now. There are a few requirements for my holiday knitting: portability, large sections of easily memorised pattern or stocking stitch, and I like ’em relatively small and accessory sized.

If you are in need of a little inspiration, here are a few I make earlier:

Lakelet

Veil of Leithen

Desert Blooms

Naloa

Little Wing

Angelus Novus shawl

I would love to hear what you will be be knitting! What makes a good holiday knit for you?

Happy knitting,

Rx

Let’s Twist Again!

Hello!

One of the best bits of being a knitwear designer is seeing your designs through the eyes of other knitters. I released the Brioche Twister scarf pattern as a free pattern for subscribers to the EastLondonKnit newsletter in January and it has been wonderful to see the finished objects and work-in-progress popping up on Ravelry and Instagram.

Bogga, aka Knitting in France, has made a fantastic version of her own hand-dyed yarn.

Maryl has made a beautiful version in West Yorkshire Spinners natural undyed brown Bluefaced Leicester yarn and Artesano Alpaca in the lightest blue, what a wonderful colour combo!

Rachel of a Tangled Yarn worked the pattern up in beautiful Blacker Yarns Swan Falkland Islands DK; Grellow forever!!

If you would like to keep up with the latest ELK news, please do sign up for the newsletter. You will receive the Brioche Twister pattern for free as a thank you!

Happy knitting,

R.

Angelus Novus in Lace

Hello!

I recently updated the Angelus Novus Shawl pattern with a new version in lace-weight yarn:

Linda knit the shawl in her new Kettle Yarn Co. Beyul Lace base, which has turned out beautifully!

I really did try to steal the shawl, but she was having none of it. 

The pattern now comes with added instructions for the lace-weight version and the original worsted/DK weight.

Happy knitting!

R.

New Blacker Yarns: Tamar

Hello!

A new yarn is a fine thing. Especially when it comes from Blacker Yarns.

Tamar is Blacker’s latest offering and it’s a beauty! A woolly yarn with a beautiful lustre and pretty halo, Tamar is made from heritage British sheep. The yarn blends Wensleydale, Teeswater, Cotswold and Black Leicester Longwool into the mix, along with 30% Cornish Mule lambswool, giving the yarn its soft halo.  I don’t know much about the folk history of Britain, but Cornwall is one of those places of legend and lore, and the Blacker Yarns blog relates the the legend of the Tamar River, for which the yarn is named which is well worth read. I am still a sucker for ye Olde England, even after all these years.

I had the chance to play around with the yarn recently and it was a pleasure to knit with. The stitch definition remains strong even with the soft fuzzies. I wet-blocked the swatch below and while the texture stitches at the top of the swatch have a gorgeous pronounced quality, the lace knitting on the bottom half of the swatch would have benefited from a good stretching while blocking.

As the yarn is not a superwash, it will hold the blocking beautifully, and would therefore make an excellent yarn for lace knitting, in spite of how my swatch is looking above.

The yarn comes in DK and 4-ply/fingering, and I was surprised how fine the DK was. I am a fan of Blacker and was lucky enough to use Blacker Swan DK for the Angelus Novus designs in the Klee Collection (Angelus Novus cardigan below), which is also a DK yarn but much closer to an aran weight, whereas Tamar felt closer to a fingering weight, and I am guessing has a good yardage per 100g skein.

As a test of the softness, I stuck my swatch into the front of my shirt and wore it around for a while next to the skin. Yes, I know, this was an extremely scientific process, but really effective! It was very warm and soft, but didn’t prickle at all, making it a great yarn for neck gear and garments.

Tamar officially launches 3 March will be available for fondling at the Edinburgh Yarn Fest this year. I will be there too, fondling away; it would be great to catch up with any of you who will be attending! For those of you further South in the UK, I will also be at Unravel this weekend. Hope to catch up with you at a fibre festival in the near future!

Happy knitting,

R.

Free Pattern: The Brioche Twister

Hello!

Ever since Nancy Marchant published her amazing books on brioche stitch and I realised that I could hand-knit my favourite machine knitting stitch, I have been smitten. I have done several designs with the stitch including a stockinette brioche stitch in the Frost & Flame shawl, and 2-colour brioche rib trim in the Heritage Heart Jumper and Blackberries and Brioche hat.

And now I have another addition to the collection: Brioche Twister.

The pattern is meant to be an educational one, so I’ve included intermediate techniques such as a tubular cast on, brioche increases and decreases and a sewn bind off, each with detailed instructions to guide you through.

And the best bit is that this pattern is available for free if you subscribe to my (new!) newsletter.

(Technical things are not my super skill and I can tell I was tested in setting up the newsletter. It is the type of thing that even an idiot can do, and yet… )

Anywho, I am really pleased to offer this pattern to my subscribers and I am excited to start the newsletter. I hope to be able to collect some fun things together every month for a little bit inbox joy for you!

So please do sign up for the newsletter here!

Happy knitting,

R.

Port Townsend

Hello!

Just a note to start: I am teaching Brioche Basics and Next Steps in Brioche this Saturday at A Yarn Story in Bath. There are still a few places if you want to know everything there is to know about brioche stitch!*

*Well, maybe not everything… but all the good stuff;)

This January is all about organisation. I can’t tell you how much time I spent procuring planners and calendars and post-it notes. It is simultaneously a type of procrastination and a valuable activity. If nothing else, I am now well-informed of all the things I didn’t get to last year. As I was taking stock of the stash, I came across some very special souvenir yarn I bought last year on a trip to Port Townsend and am dying to show off to you.

Port Townsend is a lovely little town in Washington State, about 2 hours from Seattle. Although you could walk the distance of the high street in 15 minutes, it boasts not one but two gorgeous yarn shops.

Diva Yarn & Trim is a small but well-stocked shop tucked in to a building with several other shops. Many of the usual suspects were there, including lots of lovely Malabrigo among other luxurious yarns, but this is the one that caught my attention:

It is a sport-weight, 100% Romney wool in beautifully natural warm grey. The label affectionately informs the reader that this particular skein comes from the wool of Harriet the sheep. How sweet is that? The Small Blessings Farm is a very active small holdings in Enumclaw, WA and I have to admit I am looking for an excuse to visit on my next trip to Seattle. The question about what to do with a single skein of sport-weight yarn remains. It seems like a hat. Or maybe proper gloves. What do you think?

The other prize was Bazaar Girls Yarn Shop and Fiber Emporium.

I loved this shop. It is all the things a local yarn shop should be, with space for regulars to linger and a great array of yarn and fibre from small producers. I was lucky enough to visit while Kerri, the shop’s owner, was in and got a picture of her in situ.

The shop is so well-thought out there is even a lovely porch for weary loved-ones to wait on…

My treasure from this stop was a single skein of worsted-weight indigo-dyed Rambouillet wool. I wasn’t familiar with the Local Color Fiber Studio, but this yarn feels amazing! Another local business, this time from Bainbridge Island.

Again, I am thinking a hat… But really, I am open to suggestions! I would very much like to hear your pattern suggestions and just what you do with your single skeins of souvenir yarn.

The yarn was only one factor in a wonderful trip. Port Townsend is a wonderful place for a weekend away.

There are an abundance of fearless deer, no doubt the bane of local gardeners, but so damn photogenic.

The town traded heavily on its picturesquely decrepit Victorian history, a.k.a. photographer catnip. I took literally hundreds of photos. So much good texture and colour.

If you have single skein pattern recommendations, I would love to hear them and if you fancy learning all about brioche stitch and are near Bath, please come join the class!

Happy knitting,

R.

Into Stash…

Hello!

That ‘sort myself out for the new year’ feeling continues to endure for me, nearly 3 weeks into 2016. That may be because I haven’t quite done all the amazing planning I was going to do. More accurately, I have been planning, but until this week, it was distinctly unsatisfying. After finishing the Klee Collection, I haven’t had a big project to work on and have been drifting. It’s a bad habit, but I need a bit of pressure to get things done. So this week, I have been searching for that pressure, and I think I finally found it.

It began with the Curious Handmade podcast, as it often does lately. This month, Helen has focused on stash appreciation and after my big wardrobe clean out, it seemed like cleaning out the yarn stash was also a good idea.

And it was, in the beginning. Then there was a moment in which I was no longer sure I was in charge of the situation. Then I knew I had lost the upper hand to the yarn itself.

Perhaps this is the natural flow of every project: calm optimism, then grouchy chaos, then organised calm.

After some days of not being able to enter the room (barely) containing all the yarn, it started to resolve itself into order. And then I had an idea. I thought perhaps this was the solution to my lack of motivation.

I have many partial skeins of yarn and single skeins. What if I designed a collection which accommodated these scrapes and bits? In the spirit of using what you have and not letting good things go to waste, each design could incorporate the remnants of previous projects and the reclaimed yarns of less successful knits. It may not be wise to mention this, as I have only just thought of it and it will be months before I have anything to show for the idea, but, well, why not? There is some motivation to be found in public accountability….

I began sketching rough ideas based on the yarns I have and how they could be used.

These are really basic silhouettes which will be filled out in the coming months. With so many small amounts of different colours, colour work seems the way forward, so my next step is to do some research into different techniques and traditions, and do some swatching.

Wish me luck on this next knitting quest!

Anyone going to Unravel in Farnham Maltings? If so I will see you there!

Happy knitting,

R.

 

Introducing: Elkko!

Hello!

Winter Knitty is out and I am in it with a sweater pattern, available for free! Whoop!

Elkko is a top-down sweater with stripes and lace-details in the yoke. It is worked in a gorgeous aran-weight wool from Kettle Yarn Co. and features short rows, compound raglan increases and waist shaping to make this easy-to-wear sweater a great fit.

I mean, just look at how much fun it is to wear this!

If all photo shoots involved swings, I wouldn’t be so reluctant to take part.  There were, in fact, several photo shoots for this sweater, including one featuring tiny ponies.

And then there were some alpacas…

And also some Christmas wrapping selfies…

Please do have a look at the page here and it would be wonderful if you could give the pattern some love by favouriting and commenting on Ravelry!

In other news, the Klee Collection Knit Along is underway. Please join us in the Ravelry group and take part to win some beautiful yarny prizes. Although I have started the KAL in December, at the height of present-knitting season, I think it is really suited to the selfish knitter and so it runs through until February 2016.

Happy knitting,

R.

Pavilions

Hello!

It should be no surprise to me by now, but working at a fibre festival over the weekend inevitably means I am a bit useless for the beginning of the following week. This weekend past I joined Kettle Yarn Co. at Fibre East in Bedford, and though the rain poured and the wind blew, we appreciated the knitting weather and spent a lovely weekend meeting knitters.

It was our first official outing with the Boardwalk collection- and it was really satisfying to see how much people like it. As I blogged about the collection previously, I thought I would just mention a bit about the unusual construction of the design I contributed; the Pavilion.

The Pavilion is constructed from the centre bottom out, beginning with a garter tab cast on and worked like a triangular shawl until the full height is reached, and then worked out to either side. As I worked on the pattern, I began to think of the elements of the wrap in terms of building, and so I wrote the pattern with a step-by-step building construction theme.

The second half of the Pavilion schematic…

I have to say thank you so much to my wonderful tech editor R. Deborah Overath, aka scienceknitster, and the great test knitters who helped me so much with their comments!

stillawake’s Pavilion in Verdigris

mskgb’s Pavilion in Peony

ryn2103’s Pavilion in Purple Reign

mitknit’s Pavilion in Neckinger

The knit along starts 1st of August over on the Kettle Yarn Co. Ravelry group–please do come join us!

Happy knitting,

R.