Skip North Part 1: The Workshops

3 Replies

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.

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.

Magknits

6 Replies

I have a pattern in the March 07 Magknits!


I am terribly proud, and have already texted my Mum, and bored everyone at work silly. Welcome to anyone who has found the blog through Magknits, and if you do knit up the bracelet I’d love to see a picture.

This week has been a week of washing, yet another load is in the machine as I type. We spent last weekend in Glastonbury for Majma (a weekend of Middle Eastern and North African dance), great fun but exhausting. I am now frantically packing for Skip North (a knitting weekend in Bradford), for which I will be setting off obscenely early in the morning in an effort to miss some of the worst of the traffic on the M25 (London orbital ring road for anyone lucky enough not to have encountered it).

The difficult decision of the packing is of course what knitting to bring and what knitted garments to wear 🙂 My knitting for this weekend will be socks since then I can still chat and don’t have to keep consulting a pattern. Also they are nice and small and easy to take on our coach trips. The Socks that Rock yarn is just delicious to knit with and I love the colours.

Comments

Kat, Posh Yarn don’t do an exact DK equivalent of the merino and cashmere 4ply yarn I used. They do have several other DK weights though, you can see their yarns at their yarn info page, and they can dye any of the yarns up in any of their colours (I can’t seem to find the colours page at the moment). They also have a sale of one off special dyed yarn every sunday.

Fiona, I am going with your idea of a fairly plain sock for the multicoloured Socks that Rock yarn, a ribbed leg and stocking stitch foot. The yarn is knitting up very nicely.

Thanks Dawn for the info on the Forest Path Stole, yours is looking great so far and nice to hear that the lace weight from Colour Mart is as nice as the fingering weight. I love your Persian Poppies too.

Mokihana your Fire on the Mountain socks look great! They are making different patterns to mine since I am doing a 3 x 1 rib on the legs, I haven’t got to the stocking stitch foot yet. I’ll hopefully get some pictures up next week.

Hope I haven’t forgotten anyone in the comments, better go and check on the washing now. See you again next week.

Cashmere Socks

3 Replies

Just a quick post with some more finished socks.

I’m afraid another rather dark picture, taken indoors in the depths of winter. These were made from fingering weight 100% cashmere from Colour Mart . I’m afraid I can’t remember what the colour was called, but it is 3 strands, one of dark red, one dark green and one navy twisted together. It makes a very nice mottled kind of effect when knitted up. The knitted fabric is beautifully soft although it does have a tendancy to stretch and then not spring back – a feature with cashmere. I think this yarn would make a fantastic drapey shawl, its just a question of deciding on the pattern …

More Christmas socks

1 Reply

Well, it is the middle of February and I am still catching up with blogging about Christmas knitting!


These are the other pair of socks that I knitted for my Mum for Christmas. The yarn is Lucia , 30% cashmere, 70% merino, 4ply weight from the lovely Dee at Posh Yarn. The colour is Feather .

The pattern is my basic sock pattern again, with a 3 by 2 rib at the cuff, narrowing to a 3 by 1 rib for the leg, short row heel with gussets in the leg and foot, and a stocking stitch foot. I know a lot of people don’t like colours in hand painted yarn to pool, but I actually rather like the effect on these socks. I love the way the stripes of colours are different in the different sections of sock, and the way the different colours look depending on the number of stitches there are in the round, and so which colours end up next to each other.

I found this yarn more suitable for socks than the 100% cashmere 4ply yarn I used before . The merino gives the yarn greater elasticity although the cashmere is still luxurious. The big difficulty with using inelastic yarn for socks is the shape of a foot means that the sock has to stretch to get over the heel when you put them on, but you don’t want them to go baggy and fall down. Although I’m not sure about doing any more socks in 100% cashmere I do think this yarn would make a great shawl or scarf where the drape of the yarn would really benefit the pattern.

Comments

I think the coloured Denise needles are a relatively new thing. The pink cables were a breast cancer awareness special edition, and the rainbow needles are dyed specially by Knitting Help.

Goodies!

3 Replies

Last week I treated myself to some little goodies, and they are so beautiful I have to show you. Apologies for the dark photos, it was rather gloomy here yesterday when I took them.

First up rainbow coloured Denise needles from Knitting Help . Fiona (sadly blogless) from the Ash knitting group brought her set to the January meeting and it was love at first sight! They are just beautiful, a really interesting marbled colour, and useful too. Now I will be able to easily see which size needles I have picked up, and also to see whether I have got matching points or have accidentally picked up one of each size. They also of course will fit with the set I already have giving me two circulars in each size, always handy. I have started knitting with them already and the tips and cables fit together well and are very comfy to knit with.


Secondly a little parcel from Blue Moon Fiber Arts . This is three skeins of their lightweight Socks that Rock. The colours, are from the top: Chapman Springs, Sunstone, and Fire on the Mountain. I’m afraid my photography doesn’t do justice to how beautiful the yarn is. I am really looking forward to knitting this, although I haven’t yet decided whether to go for a fairly plain sock or something with a bit of pattern. I think I will go for a bit of pattern with the Sunstone, because that is a semi solid and the colour doesn’t vary very much, I am still undecided about the other two. Any ideas? recommendations?

Comments

Thanks Sandie for the needle recommendation. I have some of the Knit Picks needles, my sister brough them back from a business trip, but I haven’t used them very much yet. So far I really like them though.

We usually have snow about twice a year here but it rarely ever settles and if it does it is usually only an inch or so and is gone in about a day or less. Something to do with being on the edge of London probably.

Thanks for the nice comment on the avatar! The photo was taken by my husband on our honeymoon in the Loire region of France. We were looking round a maze in the grounds of one of the chateux and he thought it greatly amusing that although he could easily see over the tops of all the hedges, due to my height (or lack thereof!) all he could see of me was the top of my hat.

Alpaca left-over socks

1 Reply

As you may have noticed I have bitten the bullet and finally gone over to the new version of Blogger. I’m not sure if this will make much difference to you as you read. If there are any problems, let me know and I’ll work out how to fix them.

The snow has nearly all melted today and we are having a rather gray day. A perfect day for some nice indoor sock knitting! In the best Blue Peter tradition, here are some I made earlier:

These are made from the same yarn as the bullet proof socks, alpaca blend sock yarn (60% alpaca, 20% merino, 20% nylon) from Alpaca Plus , and using the same two stage cable pattern.
I knitted the brown sock first and then discovered that it weighed 65g which didn’t bode well for getting two socks out of a 100g skein, which explains the choice of a green foot for the second sock. This is very robust yarn and I actually snapped the tips off two of my Brittany birch sock needles while performing the cables!

Talking of birch sock needles, I have been having a think about sock needles generally and was wondering which were your favourites? I like to knit on 2.5mm needles and because I have wide feet and so quite a lot of stitches on the needles I prefer the 20cm long needles rather than the little short glove-type needles. I think my current favourites are Susanne’s ebony needles bought from Scottish Fibres (I notice this size is out of stock at the moment), with the Susanne’s rosewood needles a close second. I have a set of Brittany birch needles which really I am not that keen on, even though lots of people seem to like them. I have a pair of straight Brittanys in about a 6 or 6.5mm and I quite like them, they just don’t really seem suited to my way of knitting socks. I recently bought the Susan Bates pretty coloured set of small metal needles, and while I love them, they don’t come in a 2.5mm so they are not favourites. Also lurking somewhere I have a set of Inox bamboo sock needles but it has been so long since I used them I can’t remember whether I like them or not! So what do you like? I am a total sucker for needles of different sorts and would love to have recommendations for different ones to try.

Snow!

Leave a Reply

This is the view from my computer this morning before I went to work:
Its quite exciting because we don’t get snow often. I think we had about an inch or two, which is about as much as we have seen since we moved here 6 1/2 years ago.

I’ve just popped home at lunchtime and it has nearly all gone now, it was snowing when I left home this morning, and it is now gently drizzling (a lot less interesting), and there is slush everywhere.

It would be a great day to be inside knitting but alas the day-job calls. Speaking of which, I had better go back.

Bullet-proof socks

3 Replies

While having a bit of a tidy up on my camera I discovered these pictures, and realised that although I finished these socks before Christmas I hadn’t actually blogged about them.

The yarn is alpaca sock blend (60% alpaca, 20% merino, 20% nylon) from Alpaca Plus in Canada.

I ordered 3 skeins (100g each), one in dark green, one navy and one brown. Unfortunately I discovered after making one sock in the brown that one skein would not be sufficient for two socks, so decided to make a pair with green legs and blue feet, and another pair using the left overs from the first pair, and the brown.
The pattern on the leg is a kind of cable, over three stitches and 4 rows. On row one you cable the right most stitch over the centre stitch. Rows 2 and 4 are plain, then on row 3 you cable the centre stitch over the left most stitch. A cable in two stages. It doesn’t pull in as much as cabling two stitches over two would, and I like the look.

This yarn is very robust and a lot more rustic than I had really been expecting, and the socks have come out practically bullet-proof. They are very good for cold days though and I am wearing this pair today.

Whew! and Weird things

Leave a Reply

Well it has been a busy few months! A little over a week ago I finished editing the patterns for Issue 2 of Yarn Forward Magazine , and now I am also up to date with the other job that I do from home. The job I do in the office is also a bit less manic now so I am starting to calm down and get back to some serious knitting!

As you can imagine not a lot of knitting has been done over the last couple of months, although I do have a bit to show you, I’ll get the pictures sorted out in the next day or so. First of all Annie , I haven’t forgotten that absolutely ages ago you tagged me for the weird things meme, so here we go:

Six weird things about me:

THE RULES:Each player of this game starts with the ‘6 weird things about you.’ People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.”

Of course I think I am perfectly normal and that it is the rest of the world that is weird, but I enjoy playing along anyway 🙂

So 6 weird things:

  1. I am a total creature of habit, and always get up and ready to go out in the morning in the same order. As I am not a morning person at all I have found that this is the quickest way of getting out of the house without having forgotten anything essential, like trousers.
  2. I hate it when it is so dark that you can’t tell whether your eyes are open or not. I would rather sleep in broad daylight with the lights on than sleep in pitch blackness. Luckily where we live there is a streetlamp right outside our bedroom window so it is never very dark.
  3. I have more qualifications in computing than my other half, although his job is as a programmer, and mine doesn’t really involve much technical computing at all. He knows a lot more than I do but just didn’t get round to doing the exams.
  4. Following on from 3, I am a total education junky. Give me a course and I’ll go on it. I absolutely love learning new things and actually don’t mind exams (although my degree came close to putting me off my love of exams!). While I was at school I took about 30 Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music exams altogether I think. I have also just started a City and Guilds in Hand Knitting with Fiona Morris – great fun, more on that in another post.
  5. With some circular knitting patterns, despite being circular and so you could just stop and start anywhere, I find I always like to leave my knitting at the end of the day at the same point in the round. I think this is so that I will have more of a chance of remembering what I was up to when I come back to it. My other half finds it a little weird that even though I am knitting in the round I still have the “after I finish this row” problem.
  6. I have weirdly very wide feet. My other half jokes that they are as wide as they are long. When trying to buy shoes as a child the shoe shop assistants, after measuring my feet, would often check that I had only 5 toes on each foot, and would often suggest that if I chopped a toe off I would stand a better chance of getting shoes to fit (not entirely sure whether they were kidding or not. Since we used to shop at the same shoe shop each year for school shoes the assistants got to know us, and after a few years of the same routine in which they would measure my feet then find that actually they didn’t sell anything that fitted me, they would all make a bee-line for the back of the shop as soon as they saw us coming).

I tag anyone who would like to be tagged (is there anyone who hasn’t done this already?). If you do then drop me a comment to let me know to come and read.

So there you have it, as you all suspected I am completely normal (no sniggering there please).

More pictures of knitting soon, I am off to see if my camera batteries have finished charging.

Happy christmas!

3 Replies

Well it has certainly been a busy December so far, and I am definitely looking forward to a nice rest over Christmas.

My Christmas knitting present plans turned out to be a little ambitious. I did manage to finish a pair of cashmere socks for my mum:

The orange-ness of our dining table makes them look a slightly odd colour. I’ll try and get her to take a photo of them when she is wearing them.

And a hat for my dad:

This was a bit of an experiment after having read the article on Brioche stitch in the round by Meg Swansen in the latest Vogue Knitting. Once I got into the swing of it it was good fun, and a nice quick knit since the yarn is chunky.

Hope you all have a great Christmas, and I will see you in the New Year. I’m off to wind a skein of cashmere sock yarn into a ball to start on my Mum’s next pair of socks. Maybe if I start next year’s christmas knitting now …