French Treats Day 2

I've been very busy since getting back from France so have only now got time to upload the rest of the pictures taken during then French Treats Knitting Holiday in June. On day 2, in the morning we visited the Abbey Fonduce again. It was interesting to see if things had changed much since last year and I took some photos from the same view points so I could compare them at a later date.

I took another picture of this wrought iron window with even more Virginia creeper growing over it but this year we were also able to get into the room behind the window so I took a photo from the other side as well.

There weren't a lot of flowers out when we visited as the weather had been very dry, no rain since February, but that all changed when we arrived for the Knitting week!!

I noticed some more carved stones this year as well. The picture below was taken in the garden area but there where lots more broken pieces like this in the room behind the wrought iron window and also around the back of the Abbey.

The cloisters where the same but without a choir this year.

There was another art exhibition inside the Abbey again this year with some interesting pieces including some paintings with hand made frames. The picture below shows a detail of the frame around one of these paintings.

In the afternoon I taught a workshop on cables covering basic cables, travelling and twisted stitch patterns. Below are pictures of some of the samples made during the first 2 days.

French Treats Knitting Holiday Year 2

I'm back in France for a second year teaching on the French Treats Knitting holiday. We all arrived at various times yesterday. It is a smaller group this year but as usuual a very nice group of ladies.

It was a bit grey this morning first thing but the weather has been very dry out here in France since February. It brightened up a bit later.

After breakfast everyone got settled in in the workroom to start the week. After introductions Sasha and I covered knitting Intarsia with the weaving in techniques i.e. carrying the background colour across the back of the motif. We also spent a bit of the morning rewinding the skeins of John Arbon Knitting by Numbers yarn that was sent out to use during the week.

It is a very nice yarn to knit with but comes in 100gm skeins so they needed to be re-wound into a number of small balls for everyone to have as wide a choice of colours as possible.

After lunch and a few spots of rain the knitters went for a walk to look for wild flowers, grasses etc to work from for the design workshop this afternoon.

As you can see from this last photo the fields around 'Le Vieux' are very dry but everyone found something to work with and take back for the afternoon workshop. I've left them busy drawing motifs with Sasha. I'm off to have a bit of a break and do some knitting by the pool while they all work!!



Developing ideas for the French Treats holiday, Part 3

I am teaching at Le Vieux Monastere again this year in June and September. On the June holiday I will be teaching alongside Sasha Kegan and this year we are working on 'Designing from Nature'. I am specifically covering Cables and Embellishments as well as helping in the general design workshop. The design work I have shown has been developed with this year's holiday in mind.

In this last group of pictures from my sketchbook I was working from photos of the pillars and ceiling in the cloisters at the Abbey with the idea of developing these into cable type patterns.

One of the ladies on the holiday kindly sent me this and another photo as I didn't take any photos of the pillars myself.

PhotoShop can be a very useful tools when developing design work. I used a filter on the photo shown on the previous page to just show the edges giving an image that looks very like a pencil drawing. I'm not that good at drawing so I then traced over this printed image to produce the image below it on the other page. Doing this tracing gave me a better understanding of how the arches fit together.

I then isolated and traced some lines which I used to produce the drawings on these 2 pages.

I did some more work with tracing the arches along similar lines to the picture opposite (a line edge print of another photo in the cloisters) I am now playing around with how to translate these arches into knitted cables - more samples to come.

I did also take photos of an old tree at the Abbey and this is a close up image of the tree bark which I thought might work well as a knit and purl pattern.

so there is plenty of work for me to be getting on with!!

Developing ideas for the French Treats holiday, Part 2

This second group of design work is based on some of the flowers at the 'Abbey' we visited on the Sunday. I took some close up shots of flowers in a pot. I'm not a gardener so I don't know what they are called but I liked the colours. Each flower is fairly simple to draw as the petals are quite open and each flower has 5 petals.

On this page from my sketchbook I am showing a cropped picture of the flowers, a watercolour drawing and a couple of coloured pencil drawings of groups of flowers. I will trace some of these images onto stitch related graph paper so I can knit or Swiss darn the flowers. When I have made some samples I will upload the images.

As well as drawing from the photo of the flowers I also used it as a colour source for yarn wrappings as shown in the picture below.

The yarn wrapping at the top left has been worked using a mix of yarns from my stash. The yarn wrapping at top right has been worked using the Knitting By Numbers yarn. In the second wrapping I added more green to the wrapping as there is quite a lot of green in the picture. The wrapping at the bottom is still using the same KBN yarn colours but rather than working the stripes based on the colour proportions in the picture I have wrapped stripes based on a random stripes generator.

The yarn wrappings on this 3rd page are also based on the random stripes generator but using the same range of yarn colours from KBN. The random stripes generator I used is from the website http://www.biscuitsandjam.com/index.php or you can try googling random stripes generator. You can select as many colours as you want from their grid of colours and also select the widths of various stripes e.g. using the Fibonacci sequence and then press the go button. If you don't like the combination offered you can press the refresh button to get a new selection. It is very addictive and you can spend hours playing with the colour sequences!!

As I said I'll post some samples once they have been knitted.

Developing ideas for the French Treats holiday, Part 1

Last June I was invited to teach on the French Treats Knitting Holiday at Le Vieux Monastere. While there I took quite a few photographs, but I have only just recently got around to doing some drawing from these photos. I've looked at several different aspects so I will post each group of pictures together in several posts.

The property is in the middle of fields so when we were waiting to get into the buses for an excursion on one of the days I took some photos of the poppies and wild flowers at the edge of the field. Below is a closeup print of one of the photos with a colour pencil drawing opposite it.

 I made several drawings using similar pictures.

On this next page I used watercolours rather than pencils and I also made a yarn wrapping trying to match the colours in the photo. The yarns used for the yarn wrapping are 'Knitting By Numbers' 100% merino wool DK from Fibre Harvest. It is a very nice yarn to work with and each colour comes in a range of tones from light to dark. Although I haven't included the wild flowers on the right of the photo in my watercolour drawing I have included their colour in the yarn wrapping.

While making these drawings I realised that I was particularly interested in the plant stems and seed heads of the poppies and how they cross over each other.

On this last page I have concentrated on drawing the poppy seed heads and stems rather than the flowers. I can see these drawings being worked in a raised twisted knit stitch on a purl background and the seed heads as a cluster stitch.

When I have knitted up some samples I will post the images of the knitted samples.

Knitted Slippers Pattern

I posted in December about some slippers I made which are great for wearing around the house particularly in the cold weather we've had this winter. At the time I said I would post the pattern when it was properly typed up. I know it is a bit late for this winter but here is the pattern anyway - you could always add them to your knitted Christmas gifts list of items for next Christmas!!

To fit foot length - child 16.5cm; small 18cm; medium 20.5cm; large 23cm

Materials - 1 x 100gm skein Colinette Skye and 1 x 100gm skein Colinette Graffiti (large size may need a second skein) or a combination of 2 Aran yarns or an Aran and a Chunky. 8mm needles

Tension gauge - 11sts and 11 ridges to 10cm in garter stitch using 8mm needles. (I ridge = 2 rows).

Knitting Notes - The slippers are knitted in a garter slip stitch pattern; the slip stitch is used to define the edges of the slipper sole.

Chain Selvedge - a chain selvedge is used throughout as follows; Beginning of every row: k1 through back of loop (k1tbl). End of every row: knit to last stitch, yarn forward, slip stitch purlwise.

Knit pick up - put the tip of the right needle through the knitting just below the outside loop of the chain selvedge stitch and make a loop around the needle as if to knit. Pull the loop through to makea new stitch.

Cast off very loosely - if you have a problem casting off loosely use a needle 2 sizes larger to knit the cast off row.

Abbreviations; k2tog - knit 2 together; skpo - slip 1 knit 1 pass slip stitch over; s1 - slip 1 purlwise; k1tbl - knit 1 through back loop; yf - yarn forward between the needles; yb - yarn back between the needles.

Slipper Using one strand of each yarn and 8mm needles cast on 15[19 21 23]sts. Increase for heel - k1tbl, k6[8 9 10], in the next stitch for child and small (k1, p1, k1, p1) and for medium and large (k1, p1, k1, p1, k1), k6[8 9 10] yf, s1 - 18[22 25 28]sts

Row 1: (WS) k1tbl, k4[6 7 8] yf, s1, yb, k6[6 7 8], yf, s1, yb, k4[6 7 8] yf, s1. Row 2: (RS) k1tbl, k to last stitch yf, s1. Repeat Rows 1 and 2 until 16[18 20 23] ridges are completed finishing after a WS row.

Shape Toe - Row 1: k1tbl, k2[4 5 6], k2tog, k1, k6[6 7 8] k1, k2tog, k2[4 5 6] yf, s1 - 16[20 23 26]sts. Row 2: k1tbl, k1[3 4 5] k2tog, yf, s1, yb, skpo, k2[2 3 4] k2tog, yf, s1, yb, skpo, k1[3 4 5] yf, s1 - 12[16 19 22]sts. Row 3 for child size: k1tbl, k2tog, k1, skpo, k2tog, k1, skpo, k1 pull yarn edn through these 8sts, pull up toe and fasten off tightly. Row 3: k1tbl, k[3 3 4], k2tog, k1 k[4 5 6] k1, skpo, k[2 3 4] yf, s1 - [14 17 20]sts. Row 4:k1tbl, k[1 2 3] k2tog, yf, s1, yb skpo, k[0 1 2] k2tog, yf, s1, yb, skpo, k[1 2 3] yf, s1 - [10 13 16]sts. Small pull yarn end through 10sts, pull up toe and fasten off tightly. Row 5 medium: k1tbl, k2tog, k1, k3, k1, skpo, k2, pull yarn end through 11sts, pull up toe and fasten off tightly. Row 5 large: k1tbl, k2, k2tog, k1, skpo, k2tog, k1, skpo, k3, pull yarn edn through 12sts, pull up toe and fasten off tightly.

To join the centre seam - with RS together and starting at the toe, sew the centre seam by over sewing the selvedge edge half chains together (the other half of the selvedge chain should be left as a raised detail on the RS). Sew the centre seam approx. half the length of the slipper.

Trim - using both yarns (or 3 strands of a furn yarn) and 8mm needles, knit pick up 1 stitch for every selvedge chain, knitting through the outside half of the chain only, and pick up 1 stitch at the centre seam. Knit 2 rows. Cast off loosely.

To sew up the heel - with RS together oversew the cast on edge from the heel increase to the top of the slipper.

Unravel Show at Farnham

Unravel at Farnham Maltings is running this weekend. Yesterday was a good day at the show. There seemed to be a lot of people but not so many that you couldn't move or get tot eh various stalls. There was a steady flow of people to my stand and I spent a lot of the day helping knitters with their knitting problems at the knitting surgery

These are some pictures of my stand at the beginning of the day. I knitted a second version of the Anna Shawl pattern in in a Lace weight alpaca, the plain coloured shawl to the left which shows off the leaf lace pattern much better than the original shawl knitted in a sock yarn.

The newest pattern is for the patchwork waistcoat on the mannequin. My original waistcoat was knitted in my handspun so I re-worked the pattern in Lang Mille Colori which is the version I've used for the pattern.

Lets hope the show is as popular today as it was yesterday.