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.

Shrug design in February issue of Knitting

I recently designed a shrug with a reversible cable rib pattern which was published in the February issue of Knitting magazine. The magazine only showed the cable pattern on one side, (the simpler cable pattern at that) so I thought I would upload some pictures to show both sides of the shrug.

This is the shrug on my maniquine work with the more complicated cable showing. Photographed from the front it doesn't show the pattern very well but the picture below taken of the back shows the pattern much better.

As you can see from the pictures one side of the shrug has a large diamond cable pattern whereas the other side of the shrug (the side pictured in the magazine) has columns of cables, see below.

The shrug was contsrtucted as a large rectangle with a buttonhole/button band along each of the long edges. The idea behind this was that the shrug could be worn in a number of ways. The most obvious way to wear it is to button the 2 sides to make the rectagle into a tub to wear as shown above. However it can also be worn by buttoning the right and left edges at the front so it is more of a stole or cape as shown below.

The third way of wearing the shrug is to button the left and right edge at the back so the shrug becomes more of a bolero shape. Unfortunately the magazine didn't show these alternative ideas but I hope you like them anyway.

In the original pattern I did also include some information about the casting on and casting off methods I used for the shrug. The rectangle starts and finishes with a knit 1 purl 1 rib so I used the knit 1, purl 1 invisible cast on and the sewn knit 1 purl 1 cast off.

I will try to post instructions for both these techniques in the next day or so but in the meantime I think you can see a demonstration of both the cast on and cast off on www.knit1.tv or I expect there are other demos on YouTube.

Knitted Slippers

I was putting some of my teaching samples away the other day and came across this pair of knitted slippers which I made about 5 or 6 years ago. They were knitted in 2 strands of a Colinette yarn for the main part of the slipper and then I added Silky Chic around the top (fur yarns were in at the time).

I worked out a pattern from the slippers because a friend had asked me if I could work out how to make them as the lady who used to make them for the charity show was no-longer doing so. I worked out a pattern and made this pair but never used them.

With the snow coming and my feet being cold I found the slippers again and have been wearing them every since. Both the yarns I used for the slippers are wool so they do keep my feet pretty warm in this cold weather.

I thought I would make another pair as they are very useful. With the second pair I knitted them using 1 strand of Artisano Hummingbird DK and 1 strand of Lang Soft Shetland Aran. Alpaca is warmer than wool so I thought a combination of alpaca and wool would work well.

This is the new pair of slippers I made. The combination of yarns was a bit thinner than the original pattern so I used a 7mm needle instead of an 8mm and work the largest size from the pattern I wrote. They worked out fine but were not as thick as my original pair so I gave them to my daughter who was only to happy to have them, and started working on another pair.

In this 3rd pair (which I am still knitting) I'm using the Artesano and Lang yarns again but I have added 1 strand of Rico Superba Poems sock wool to give them a bit more body. I'm using 8mm needles and working the medium size pattern this time. Once I've finished knitting this pair and checking the pattern I will post a picture of the finished slippers and the pattern. It is a very simple and quick pattern worked in garter stitch and it is quite easy to make a pair in an evening.

The Knitting and Stitching Show

I ran the Knitting Surgery at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Ally Pally again this year. This year the exhibition organisers decided I should be in the same area at the 'Knit 1 Pass it on' UK Handknitters Assocciation stand so that meant my stand was in the Palm Court rather than in one of the exhibition halls. The stand was to the left hand side of the Palm Court, in front of the Tea Room and by one of the cafes.

My DH came to help me put up the stand which is just as well as the stand area and board was not what I was expecting. It was good to have a white backing to the stand but this did cause some problems as I has expected the grey fabric covered panels but I think we managed to put a a pretty good display.

These are some pictures of putting things together on the Wednesday - the table was very useful!

As you can see my stand was more or less in the cafe area which did make it difficult at times for people to get to the stand.

Despite some of the problems with the position of my stand quite a few people did manage to find me even if it was on their way out and i was able to help quite a few people with their knitting problems.

I will be running the Knitting Surgery at the Stitch and Creative Craft Show, Sandown Park, in January and at Unravel in Farnham in February.

Just Catching up

I suddenly seem to have got very busy again. The autumn is always pretty busy as the weather is not so nice for being in the garden and knitters get back to their knitting.

I have been booked to teach quite a few workshops and give talks on both hand and machine knitting over the next few months. If anyone is interested in where I'm teaching there is a full list on my website. In fact today I'm off to Birmingham to teach a workshop on Patchwork/Domino knitting to the Middland Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers. I'm sure it will be a good day as I always enjoy teaching the Patchwork knitting workshops; everyone's work is so different!

After a 2 month break over the summer we are also back to filming for Knit1.TV. This last week I filmed two demos of knitting Christmas Decorations. I know its only September but I'm teaching a workshop on Christmas Knitting at the InterKnit Cafe in Farnham at the beginning of October so I thought I would film knitting a couple of the samples I've designed for the workshops. When the films are up the patterns for the 2 samples - a knitted bauble and a knitted angel - will be available to download from the Knit1.TV website.

That's it for now as I need to go to Birmingham now!!