The penguin with the pointy sticks

Making Monday: visualising my crafting

For various reasons I've found myself thinking about photo montages to show off my craft interests. It has been interesting looking at all the images I have and trying to define myself through them. I thought I'd share a first attempt.

 

FO: On a walk in the park

I was so pleased with my leafy scarf design inspired by an interesting skein of Ripples Crafts yarn that I took the finished object for a walk in the park in this lovely sunny weather.

Keep that stash tidy

Well that's certainly what I have to do if I'm to keep up with my "smug" stashmistress image in the latest Let's Get Crafting magazine (out 9 March 2012) where I pop up extolling the virtues of Ravelry as a stash control tool.

 

 

 

Inspirational colour

My 2012 yarn diet has reached March - although I think I may crack before too long. But it doesn't stop me recieving yarn gifts and recently the lovely Juliet Barnard of The Knitter gave me a stunning skein of sock yarn from Ripples Crafts.

The colour way is Assynt Ancient Tartan, a mix of deep brown, rich tan and a subtle leafy green. I fell in love with it right away and the skein has been resting on the end of the sofa from where I've picked it up dozens of times to contemplate. I was wondering what to use it for but in reality it was obvious. Every time I looked at it I thought of beech trees in autumn and the leaves we used to rake up in our garden when I was a child. 

So I started flicking through some lace source books and have started work on a long slim scarf that could be wtrapped into the neck of a coat or draped over a plain dress or sweater. I'm using the two leaf patterns below if it works to my satisfaction I'll reveal the full effect here soon.

 

 

 

 

Knitting with hard sums

This week I've been learning about tech editing - the art of checking, editing and grading (sizing) knitting patterns - from the highly regarded tech editor and excellent teacher Jen Arnall-Culliford, who has worked on The Knitter magazine and books such as A Stitch in Time Vol 2.

Tech editing is about making sure knitting patterns work, ie you can understand them, that they tell you the right number of stitches at all times, that they will fit, that you have the right amount of yarn, etc. 

It is about a lot more that just liking knitting, although that helps. It requires an understanding of garment construction, attention to detail, technical understanding of knitting stitches and instructions and sums - and not just the easy adding up ones.

Pythagoras and square roots feature significantly which for me was great - I love sums - but may not be for everyone.

We did have to think and there was lots to learn but we also laughed a lot. I would recommend Jen as a teacher.

For me this was an inspiring course that showed me that I could bring together my organisational, knitting and publishing skills together in a new and satisfying way.

So now I'm fired up to use my new skills and am setting off to promote this new string to my freelance bow.

 

 

Win, win

Look at this lovely selection yarns which I was lucky enough to win in the p/hop Christmas competition.

They were donated by Loop and are Dye for Yarn tussah silk lace (blue), Heaven's Hand Silke (green) and Viola merino lace.

Even better on the day my prize reached me, I also heard that I'd won some stitch markers in the Subway Knits queue clearance KAL draw. This is an effort to actually knit pattern that have been languishing in our Ravelry queues. 

Now some plotting and planning is required.

 

11 shawls in 2011 - or 13 in 11 months

It is done - in January I took up the challenge of knitting 11 lace shawls and stoles during 2011. I followed the rules set by a group on Ravelry that:

"The minimum requirement of meterage is 250 meter (ca 273 yards) whereas 2 must use at least 500 meters (ca 546 yards) of yarn. There are no upper limits to meterage if you want to knit 10 big shawls :) Any shapes will do - but no sleeves and cowls.

The minimum width requirement on scarves, is 10 inches, or 25 centimeters."

In addition, I decided that all mine would feature lace - from complex to v simple - and would be knitted from yarn in my stash on 1 Jan 2011.

So how did I do?

I started on 22 January and finished on 2 December, so that's 11 in 11 months.

I used a range of yarns, mainly wool or wool blends but also silk, cashmere, bamboo and even possum. And a range of shapes rectangle, triangle, hexagon and semicircle.

The yarn weights were cobweb (only the once), laceweight and 2 in 4ply. And I definitely met the meterage requirements: the least yarn used was 360m in the final shawl pictured above and the greatest, just under a kilometer each for the red cobweb stole and the fuchsia pink large semicircle. Only three came in under 500m.

About half have already been given away as gifts so I can't photograph the collection as one but I can at least present a gallery. 

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But why 13? Well I also test knitted two shawls for designers this year.

Was it worth it? Yes, I've learnt a lot about lace, improved my skills and created some beautiful items.

And a new challenge? There are still shawls I want to knit, including a Victorian item that uses 2km+ of yarn. Plus I want to design my own. 

Watch this space.

 

DIY souvenirs

It seems that my memories of my first trip to Sicily will be in the form of things that do not yet exist in their final form. 

There will obviously be the online photo album and the new silver charm for my "travellers tale" bracelet just requires a jump ring but this is merely the tip of the iceberg. 

In Cefalu, where we were staying, two things caught my eye; the number of shops featuring beaded and wire jewellery and a little outlet for a traditional weaving and textile business featuring shawls, crocheted items and what from a distance appeared to be skeins of yarn.

So one evening I arranged to meet my very craft tolerant other half in an establishment that purveyed beer and set off for a browse/shop/inspiration-seeking wander. Several jewellery shops later, having being intrigued in particular by what you can create with half a zip (watch this space), I stumbled across one featuring exactly the types of wires and bead/semi-precious stone jewellery I've been learning about. Even better it had a large basket of these:

 

Elasticated bracelets length loops strung with beads and stones which you could just wear as a bangle - or like me have mentally reworked into necklaces and earings by the time you reach the till.

And then I popped into the interesting textile outlet and made a fascinating discovery - in Sicilian terms all we knitters and crocheters have been wasting our time. If you want a scarf, all you do is takes a skein of yarn like so...

 

... tie a couple of strategic knots or add a piece of ribbon and lo, you have a scarf.

Me being me, I'm already unravelling the knots and winding the yarn so I can turn it into a different type of scarf.

Happy memories.

 Meanwhile check out more of this week's Making Monday posts

 

Shawls tested and revealed

I recently blogged about some test knitting I'd been doing - now I can reveal what they were.

First is the Frosty Diamonds Shawl from Anniken Allis's easy lace collection. 

And the other is South Kensington from One Hand Knits aka Anna Richardson. Both required a single skein of sock yarn.

 

 

The Knit Nation Experience

This year my Knit Nation didn't start in South Kensington but in just off Hatton Garden more usually associated for me with jewellery school days.

The area is also home to Médecins Sans Frontières and the p/hop fundraising project. As my employer allows me two volunteering days each year, I was using one to help p/hop co-ordinator Clare Storry (aka GingerKnits) get ready for two days running a stand at Knit Nation.

P/hop is all about persuading folks to donate to MSF in exchange for knitting patterns donated by some very talent designers. So preparing for an event means checking display samples, and lots of counting, stapling and printing patterns, before packing it all up to transport to the show. For me it also provided to an opportunity to see the MSF office in action and hear the reports coming in from those tackling malnutrition in Somalia.

Then it was off to Imperial College to deliver the p/hop goods, as well as a yarn stand for the Yarn Yard stall and in my case a version of the South Kensington shawl (which I recently test knit) to OneHandKnits so she could wear it on the stand with the Bothered Owl.

Having these jobs to do and offering to help out vendors I knew, meant I was inside the market place when it opened, so was able to witness the now traditional Wollmeise stampede and visit some of my favourite yarn dyers. With lovely but quite modest results:

The turquoise is Sweet Clement Besotted, the grey is Yarn Yard Crannog, the champagne is Natural Dye Studio Dazzled Sock and the cone some very interesting linen and steel yarn from Habu.

But mainly it was lovely to chat to a whole bunch of lovely peeps who I usually only speak to online.

On Saturday it was up early to attend a class on Vintage Fit and Finishing from Susan Crawford of A Stitch in Time fame. This proved marvelously educational with tips on adjusting knits to fit, advice on key measurements - we all now know where our waists are - and putting garments together. For me, the most fascinating thing was the realisation that in the past women thought of knitted garments in the same way as dressmaking and learning about the weight-bearing structural importance of seams.

The class was so interesting that it over-ran but I soon had to depart for my next activity - the podcast picnic. Sadly the monsoon conditions forced this into a hallway but it was still lovely to meet up with iMake Guernsey and HoxtonHandmade of Electric Sheep fame.

 A quick chat (some recorded) and a bag of crisps later, it was time to man the p/hop stand which was under siege from lunching knitters. This year p/hop was in the Tea Salon area, just opposite the food queue. A fantastic position, especially on a rainy day, because pretty much anyone needing a snack or a sit down saw our tempting range of patterns. From newby knitters to established designers and magazine editors we had a constant stream of visitors most of whom became fans of the latest addition to the p/hop selection - Ros Clarke's cricket tea cosy which formed the centrepiece of the stall.

Tea time?

But a whole range of patterns were popular and I so enjoyed chatting to knitters and finding the right pattern for them (I hope) and even on occasion answering queries from those who had cast-on there and then.

It was great to meet so many people and talk knitting all day. I hope everyone else had as much fun as me.