Author Archives: Heather

La Rochelle

Today we gave our brains a rest and our wallets a workout with a trip to La Rochelle.

Unfortunately one of the yarn shops we visited last year has since shut down, but we did visit the other two, along with a chocolate shop, and an ice-cream shop.

The weather has been hot and sunny, and when we got back several of us did a few laps of the pool. It is a great size, big enough to actually swim properly, but not unmanageable.

This evening was Show and Tell. We saw lots of lovely things! Myra has finished her mug hug.

And here is the inside to see the finished steek.

Last night we had a lovely walk up the road from Le Vieux Monastere, here is the view back. Totally beautiful. It is a very restful and peaceful place.

Stranded Knitting

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Today has been a whole day of knitting in the workshop. We have been doing stranded knitting with a yarn in each hand, and steeking, and some people have been continuing with their lace from yesterday.

These are two variations of the coffee pot cover Fiona has designed. It is the same pattern but one uses the multicolour yarn for the background and the other for the foreground.

For those who preferred to start on something a little smaller, Fiona also designed some mug hugs for people to try.

And a beret pattern, for those who wanted to make something with shaping in, but without the steeks. These three berets are from the same pattern, but with different yarns. The first two have been blocked over plates, but the third left to dry to its unstretched shape, for if you prefer a more casual look.

Sandra as completed our first finished project of the week with her mug hug!

Swiftly followed by Elisabeth with hers.

I am making progress with my rather fluorescent coffee pot cover:

And I have done a bit more of my lace.

Everybody has been doing really well, and learning lots.

Lace and Cognac

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Today we got down to some serious knitting! This morning was lace.

Here is my whole goody bag for the week, the bright multicolour is 4ply weight, and we are using this to make a lace shawl. You can make a reasonable sized shawl from only one ball.

This is Fiona’s sample showing the finished shawl:

And another of her samples showing a variation using slightly different lace patterns and also adding beads:

This is my progress so far!

Everyone is progressing really well, especially considering that for some this is their first experience of lace or charts.

In the afternoon we gave our brains a little rest and went for a trip to Cognac, and had a really interesting tour of the Baron Otard distillery. They are in a building in which Francis I was born, and which has connections to Richard the Lionheart.

And also happened to have some fantastic doorways.

It was probably best that the Cognac testing came after the lace knitting!

Arriving in France

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Today we flew out to La Rochelle for the start of this years French Treats knitting holiday. As with last year I am being Fiona’s little helper.

In very apt fashion the airplane had a City and Guilds logo on the side (did they know that several of us are studying City and Guilds knitting with Fiona?!)

As you can see it also had an energy certificate on the side which made it look a little like a fridge or a washing machine!

We arrived in time to enjoy our slightly squashed sandwiches for lunch. Then helped to organise the goody bags of yarn for everyone this afternoon.

The weather is a little breezy but still sunny, and this evening we have been sitting outside and knitting. This is the life!

Tomorrow we knuckle down to the hard work of serious knitting! Then a trip to Cognac in the afternoon.

Escadaria socks

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The Great Sort Out is still coming along. I am definitely making inroads, but there is a long way to go still. I am looking forward to getting to the City and Guilds work currently buried on the dining table and making another good stab at that, it has been on pause for too long.

In amongst the sorting I have managed a little bit of slow knitting, a couple of rows here and there. It is surprising what can be accomplished with a few sessions of waiting for appointments, the odd 20 bars rest at band, and a bit of skyping to my sister in New York – ah the delights of hands-free phoning – and with the web-cam I can bore her rigid with my knitting too 🙂 Their weather sounds even more horrid than ours, the hats I knitted for my niece and nephew for Christmas are getting a good work-out 🙂

Anyway, I have actually finished some socks (shock horror!). I am finding socks to be a conveniently achievable size of project at the moment, and have the added bonus of being very portable, hence I do actually work on them.

The pattern is called Escadaria (I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce it), and came from Sockupied, Spring 2011, one of the eMags from Interweave. I made the middle size (9in circumference), used 2.25mm needles and the yarn is some 75% superwash merino, 25% seacell fibre dyed by Fluff n Stuff and spun into a 3ply by me. Conveniently I used almost exactly the whole skein – only a couple of metres were left at the end.

The pale flashes are bits of the seacell which I didn’t manage to distribute evenly when I was spinning.

The yarn has come out rather hard and somewhat inelastic, although it is mostly wool it feels and looks like a mercerized cotton. This is something I am keen to work on with my spinning in the coming months. I would like to be able to spin a more elastic, squashier yarn. I am looking forward to some practising!

Hopefully in this case the fact that the yarn is quite strong should be a help rather than a hinderance, and will hopefully make the socks wear better. Also the very smooth solid nature of the yarn shows up the lace pattern well. I enjoyed knitting these, although I wasn’t that keen on the little pretend-cable pattern on the leg, and I didn’t really like the way the heel was done – the joins seemed a bit messy. It is fun trying out some different patterns, and different ways of working heels and toes. I am getting a feel for which I like to work, and how well different shapes fit my feet.

Back to the sorting I think. This week hopefully should see me finish cataloguing the rest of my knitting books.

First finished projects of 2013

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Happy New Year! I hope that 2013 has got off to a good start for everyone. I have been plodding along with the Great Sort Out. The pile of magazines and books on my arm of the settee is still large but is decreasing by the day. It is now less likely to spontaneously avalanche and bury one (or both) of us alive.

I have been knitting away in the background. More socks from my handspun. I seem to be having a purple phase at the moment.

These are my first toe-up socks, and it was great fun! The pattern is called Having Hope by Diane Mulholland.

I used 2.5mm needles and 96g / 272m of handspun Southdown wool, and made the medium size.

Southdown is one of the softest of the down breeds of sheep, but it isn’t nearly as soft as merino or blue-faced leicester. It is very springy though, which should hopefully make good socks, and which shows the pattern up well. Hopefully it should wear well too. I like the way the colours have come out, a bit of variation for interest, but not so much that it obscures the pattern, and not too pink 🙂

The next pair used a pattern called Nemesis by Susan Dittrich (named for the Agatha Christie book).

Again I used 2.5mm needles, and made the larger size. As you can see I ran out of yarn on the toe of the second sock. I used a total of 125g / 280m. Most of the yarn is a handspun blend of merino wool in purples and greens from Wingham. I used a bit of the purple Southdown for the second toe. The socks will be in my shoes most of the time so I am going to call the different coloured toe an interesting design feature 🙂

I am looking forward to wearing both of these pairs of socks. I suspect the merino pair will wear less well over time, but I am enjoying experimenting with spinning for socks and seeing how the results come out. I am also getting a better feel for how much yarn I need for a pair of socks for me, which is handy for the future.

Christmas knitting

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In a moment of over-optimism at the end of November about the speed of my knitting I decided that I would knit a little something for both my parents for their Christmas presents. I had had the yarn for both for absolutely ages, and had been meaning to knit them for a while so this seemed the ideal moment!

For Mummy I made the Eleanor cowl from Knitty, in Posh Yarn Marguerite, which is a 4ply weight, 50% cashmere, 50% silk. The colour is called celery.

I orginally bought the yarn thinking I would make socks, but the mixture of cashmere and silk is completely inelastic and would have made not terribly good socks. However I think it does make lovely lace.

For Daddy I made Ann’s Go-To Socks from the Simply Socks eMag from Interweave Press. They are a fairly standard sock pattern. I had to create an extra size two sizes larger than the largest one written because Daddy (like me) has rather wide feet. I used some Schoppel-wolle sock yarn for these.

The picture was a rather rushed affair because I finished knitting these on the day before they left after their pre-Christmas visit, while they were out visiting my Nanny. The picture was taken in the 5 minutes between casting off and wrapping them up 🙂

Luckily both presents fit (whew!).

Progress in my friendship with my sewing machine

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I wouldn’t say we are Best Friends Forever just yet, but we have now got to the point where our conversations are less stressful, and more meaningful than awkward discussions of the weather.

At the end of November we went up to stay with my parents for a few days. While we were there Mummy and I had a fun day out at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate (where I helped Mummy to choose a very shiny new sewing machine which weighs a third of what the previous one did). We also went to a workshop on making a toiletries bag with Beryl at Knot in Guisborough.

Although I have been to loads of knitting workshops this was the first sewing one I had been to, so I was a little nervous, particularly since I am pretty much a total beginner. Luckily Beryl was very nice, and she put up with my slowness and long list of stupid questions. Everyone else made lovely patchwork bags, but that is a bit beyond my level. Also although I love pattern, I think I love it best one pattern at a time, so I am not really a fan of the effect you get with patchwork when you have multiple different patterns all together. Anyway, my bag may be a bit wobbly but it is just what I wanted and I am very pleased:

And the totally genious part is that it is lined with a shower curtain so the inside is wipeable.

My sewing machine was playing up a bit when we got back home, making grinding noises and doing uneven stitches. Luckily after a trip to a local shop for a service it has been behaving much better and I finished the bag off a couple of days ago. I am looking forward to using it for the first time soon and checking it is the right shape and size for all my stuff (I still haven’t mastered the art of travelling light).

Knitting interesting shapes with Alison Ellen

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A couple of weeks ago I spent a lovely day at a workshop with Alison Ellen organised by the New Ashgate Gallery in Farnham.

Our topic was knitting interesting shapes, and it was wonderful to spend a whole day playing around with increasing, decreasing and short rows to see what would happen.

This shape was the first one I tried, and uses short rows to create a circle out of simple wedge shapes:

Then I tried another shape, using the same principles but adding casting on and decreases, Alison called this shape a star, mine has come out looking rather like a mutant starfish:

And lastly I had a go at creating a 3d shape using increasing and decreasing, and joining the sections as I went along:

This one reminds me of Snake’s Head Fritillary flowers (although my terrible photograph makes this a little hard to see).

A really enjoyable day, and I am looking forward to experimenting more with the techniques we were practising.

A Christmas stocking for my nephew Aaron

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This year will be my nephew Aaron’s first Christmas, so I thought I had better make him a Christmas stocking, similar to the one I made for his big sister Jenny a couple of years ago: