Category Archives: Inspiration

An outing to Yorkshire

Ally Pally

Mummy and I spent two days at the Knitting and Stitching show at Ally Pally this year. We went on Thursday and Friday, giving us plenty of time to look at everything at our leisure (although we still didn’t have time for a proper look at the exhibitions!) and enough time to be able to chat to everyone without feeling we had to dash on to the next stand.

There seemed to be a lot of knitting stands again this year which is good from my point of view, and all the stand owners we talked to were having a good show, which always bodes well. There were a slightly different collection of stands from last year, I don’t think there were as many indie dyers as there had been last year. I wonder whether they were trying the show out last year, but decided not to come back. I gather that stands for this show are very expensive, and so depending on what you sell, and your target market, some of the dedicated knitting shows like Woolfest, Wonderwool Wales, and Fibrefest might be a better investment of time and money. Get Knitted were another notable absence, but luckily Bev of Knitting 4 Fun had brought a good range of the Knit Pro knitting needles, and were doing a roaring trade.

The Ash knitting group organised a coach up on Thursday although we went independently since the coach pick up points were both a 3/4 hour drive in the wrong direction. It was lovely to see so many people I know as we went round, and to compare notes on good stands to visit, and interesting things to see.

I did find a few nice goodies to come home with me as well. As part of my plan to expand my spinning experience I bought some carded fleece from Jamiesons.

Two lovely shades of green. All the fibre I have tried spinning so far has been combed so I am interested to see how the carded fleece will be different. I have 150g, about half each of each colour. I think I am probably going to make some kind of hat (said she vaguely).

I also bought three shawl patterns from them, two Jamieson’s own patterns, and the Princess Shawl from Sharon Miller.

I have been eyeing the Princess for ages, and thought now would be a good time to buy it. I am saving it up for when I am feeling suitably confident, or barmy, or probably both.

Continuing on the fibre theme, I bought some lovely 70& alpaca, 30% BFL fibre from UK Alpaca.

Two bags of 200g each. Gorgeously soft. I love the colours in this, and am really looking forward to seeing how it will look once it is spun up. It is something I am trying to get the hang of, imagining how a multicoloured fibre will look when it is spun.

And I also got a shade card for their yarns.

Next up a sample pack of 5 colours of shetland combed top from Jamieson and Smith.

I think their sample packs are such a good idea. You can see what the colours are really like and have a play with the fibre before buying huge quantities 🙂

I also bought an up to date version of their shade card, since the one I had was ancient.

I do love shade cards. So much possibility. So many happy hours spent looking at colours and textures.

I found some lovely yarn too. These are all from Art Yarn.

The first is a ball of Admiral Ombré by Schoppel Wolle, colour 1564, 100g, 4ply weight, 75% wool, 25% nylon.

I discovered when I was entering this on Ravelry, that I have obviously had the same idea before that this was a good colour. I thought it looked a bit familiar. Oh well, I shall enjoy it anyway, it is still a nice colour 🙂 I must remember to check my stash before I go on outings so I don’t do this so often.

I have been having the urge recently to knit some textured socks in solid coloured yarns, so I indulged in some Lang Jawoll 4ply weight sock yarn. Each ball is 50g, 75% wool, 18% nylon, 7% acrylic.

A lovely gingery brown, colour 83.0268.

A purple, colour 83.0280.

Bright green, colour 83.0216.

And a dark red, colour 83.0061.

This lot will keep me busy for a while!

One of the things I love about these shows is the variety of things to look at. We had a nice look at all the bead stands and a lot of the other bits and pieces too, and bought some lovely beads from Ilona Biggins.

They are both reformed amber. I love the way the light glints off them. The darker strand on the right is for me, and the paler one is part of Mummy’s Christmas present. Which I have just discovered I have not wrapped and handed over, and I thought I was doing so well. We had our present exchange earlier in the week, and I’m not going to see them again before actual Christmas. I will wrap it up and send it with my sister who is going to see them between Christmas and New Year. I have to hand over some presents to her anyway since a couple of things for her husband are still in the post.

Devon fibre retreat

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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 🙂

IKnit Weekender

Le Tour de Fleece: Day Thirteen

Knitted sculpture

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I saw this over at String or Nothing and had to share. It is a kind of frame knitting, worked using clear plastic capillary tubing. Totally hypnotic.

Fluid Sculpture from Charlie Bucket on Vimeo.

Unravelling

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On the 21st of February Farnham Maltings held their first Unravel, festival of knitting, handspun yarns, talks, workshops and more! It is lovely to have a yarny event so close to home! Since this is the first time they have held this event it was on a fairly small scale, but was such a success that they are going to run it for 2 days next year (next year I think it is going to be the last weekend in February).

The Ash knitting group I go to, and the West Surrey Guild of Spinners, Weavers, and Dyers (which I am also a member of) had a display area and were showing people different knitting, crochet and spinning techniques. I brought along my Trees shawl, Supercook socks, and concertina socks for the display and helped out in the demo area showing people how to work a sock on one long circular needle.

Here is our display with demo area in front.

It was a really fun day. A great chance to meet a lot of other yarny people who are actually local to me! I had a fabulous time and am looking forward to it being even bigger and better next year.

Devon Fine Fibres

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Here is a start to filling in the gaps over the last month! Last month I went to the Yarn Tasting event at Stash Yarns in Putney, to sample the yarns from Devon Fine Fibres. This is a great idea since it lets you have a go with yarns from small producers who you otherwise wouldn’t come across. There is even wine and crisps!

Our little goodie bag contained samples of 4ply weight cashmere, DK weight cashmere, and DK weight Bowmont wool. Enough of each to knit up a sample trying a few different ideas.

I think my top favourite was the 4ply cashmere. Gorgeously soft, and lovely to knit with. It worked well for lace, but was equally beautiful in moss stitch. It reminded me how much I like moss stitch, and that I really should use it more.

Next I tried the DK cashmere. Again it was a pleasure to knit with. Not quite as incredibly soft as the 4ply, but definitely a lovely yarn. As you can see I am quite keen on the moss stitch 🙂

Then lastly I sampled the DK bowmont. As expected the character of this yarn was quite different, since it comes from a different type of animal. A much bouncier yarn, with an almost felted look to it. I went with simple garter stitch with I-cord edging.

I really appreciated the opportunity to try these new-to-me yarns. They were certainly selling well too! I didn’t buy any on the day apart from my samples, since they were all in rather subdued colours. I will definitely bear them in mind for a future dyeing project though.

Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show

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On the 20th and 21st of November Mummy and I went to the Knitting and Stitching Show at the International Halls in Harrogate. As has now become our tradition, we had a day at Texere on my way up North. I am obviously having a tools phase, since I didn’t buy any yarn at all, but did manage to buy some nice small sewing up needles, and an interesting tool which has a crochet hook at one and and a needle-eye at the other. I’m afraid I can’t remember what was the proper name for it, but it looked intriguing, and might be handy for weaving in ends.

The show itself was good fun. Smaller than the version at Alexandra Palace, and with some of the same exhibitors, but I think some different, and those that do do both shows sometimes bring different stuff.

We had a very enjoyable time looking round at everything, seeing what is new in the world of knitting, and chatting to everyone. One of the things I enjoy most about these events is the opportunity to catch up with everyone, and see what people are working on, what they have finished, what they are selling. Also since we went back for a second day we had a proper chance to look at the exhibition. Very interesting and varied. As with all art things, there are some things more to my personal taste than others, but the quality of work was very high, and it was particularly nice that a lot of the artists themselves were there and we could talk to them.

Within minutes of entering the show Knit N Caboodle had cured me of my new-found yarn buying reticence and a few little goodies were stashed in one of their lovely purple bags.

Firstly a nice un-subtle sock yarn, this is Schoppel Wolle Admiral ombré in colour 1564, ply weight, 75% wool, 25% polyamide.

Another Schoppel Wolle Admiral Ombré, slightly more subtle, this is colour 1960.

And this one is for Mummy for Christmas. This is as close as I am getting to Christmas knitting this year. Again Schoppel Wolle Admiral ombré, colour 1563.

This one is also by Schoppel Wolle, and is the same yarn weight and fibre, but it is a singles yarn and dyed with long stretches of colour, and is called Zauberball. I am really looking forward to seeing how this knits up. The colour I have is called Tropical Fish, I rather fancy the one called Fuschia too 🙂

In a departure from all sock yarn all the time, I also bought some lace weight. This is Mamma Ocllo, 100% Baby Alpaca in Deep Purple, and you have to feel it to believe how soft it is. I have enough to make a largeish shawl I think, but haven’t yet worked out what pattern to use.

Although I tried hard to give all my money to Knit N Caboodle within minutes of getting into the show, I did manage to save enough to buy the following Jawoll sock yarn from Art Yarn.

And to finish up I bought some lovely postcards of knitted wire shapes on a theme of evolution by Anita Bruce. We were fortunate enough to be able to chat with Anita while we looked at her pieces, which are very interesting and beautiful. I am definitely inspired to do some wire knitting soon.

All in all a lovely if rather tiring couple of days. I don’t know how the exhibitors manage to do 4 days of it. I was exhausted after only two!

Colour work

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For anyone interested in colour work who hasn’t seen this yet. Knit Lab have some very interesting stranded knitting designs available to buy. I have just bought the Experimental / Ornamental set which combine stranded knitting with increases and decreases to bend the pattern lines. I am looking forward to having a play with these.