knackeredpsycho

The Yarn Emporium

This week has been strangely productive. I am not used to this. I confess that on Day 1 of being at home on leave I wandered around the house, too afraid to settle down with a hook in case I discovered I was hallucinating. I eventually stopped pacing the house and settled down in my yarn room for a bit of a tidy up, a yarn squidge, and to have a think about some project ideas I had been playing with. Tuesday saw two of my yarn friends dropping by to invade my yarn room. Now, to put this into perspective, my yarn room is my office with a big 4×4 Ikea unit in the corner which contains all my yarn, books, sewing machine (I have a dinky one) and other yarn paraphernalia. But I do have quite a bit yarn stash – about 50% shop bought commercial yarn and 50% hand-dyed loveliness. I was in denial about how much yarn I had because it was all tidied away, but this also meant that I had lost track of what I had.

So my lovely friend, who is now on maternity leave, offered to come and catalogue my stash into my Ravelry account. She has recently done it for her own stash and has slight OCD compulsions and so enjoys this. She also just wanted a chance to squish my yarns and be nosy, but I don’t mind as other people’s stashes are always interesting. Our system was that she typed in the yarn details into my computer and the yarn was then ferried to me (initially by a small child) in another room with good light where I took pictures. After about 6 hours we had managed to get through most of the hand-dyed and all of the commercial cotton yarn, but I still have other yarn to add in. The best bit was when she emptied one of my bins of hand-dyed yarn on the floor and just launched herself, baby belly and all, into the middle of it. I couldn’t get to my camera fast enough, but let’s just say her expression said it all. This was the aftermath.

When you have had your yarn catalogued, there is no getting away from just how much yarn you own. Its even worse when you know it only represents half your stash. I don’t have a stash, I have a yarn emporium. I toyed with the idea of a de-stash, but to be honest now that I knit socks there isn’t a skein of yarn that I can’t think of a project I could use it for. So I have decided that I really, really need to go hard on the yarn ban until I can empty at least one of these bins. I am not sure what a respectable stash size is, but I am pretty sure I am not respectable. I am a yarn harlot.

The best thing about it, however, is that I have a fantastic range of yarns to use when I am designing something. For example, I decided to elevate this example of a Dye Candy OOAK baby camel and silk yarn from a yarn pet (it is sooo soft) to project yarn. This has been a revelation to me – it moves and behaves completely differently to a standard merino sock yarn and its a pleasure to work with. My friends have suggested a new blog feature entitled ‘squish of the week’. I may yet initiate this.

So now I am busy hooking up prototypes for new shawls. I have Shawls 6 and 7 on the hook, and the concept for Shawl 8 is on the sketchbook and is next to be played with. This is so much fun. And I haven’t even got onto the non-shawl projects yet! Time to go squidge some more yarn…

Beating Heart Wrap

crochet, patterns, Shawls, yarn

So the other thing I was working on whilst I was away last week was a quick final test of the Beating Heart Wrap. This is shawl number 4 of shawl club and I designed it a while back using yarn from Unbelievawool and Jo.Knit.Sew that I had in my stash. I am not normally a pink person but I love the way that the pink contrasts with the black and white variegated yarn. The spike stitch reminds me of an EEG trace and so that is how the wrap got its name. The shawl pin is a Knit Pro one which works well with the colours I used. The shape is a bit unconventional but when it is folded over is creates a nice shape around the shoulders.

To make it practical for shawl club, I needed to change the colours to 3 x 50g skeins. Sam sent the new colours to me a while ago, but they arrived during a particularly crazy time. Then time caught up with me and I realised that I needed to get the new colour way version done immediately. So the long drive to the south coast and the first day or so of the holiday was spent hooking up the shawl club version, which also showed off the alternative ending of a button to secure it, rather than a shawl pin. Personally I still feel a shawl pin gives you more flexibility about how to wear this, but the button is often more practical, and is certainly less expensive.

So the shawl club colours give the wrap a very different look – sugar sweet candy colours with a glittery handmade button from the amazing Cross Crafts which matched the yarn perfectly. If you fancy making this yourself, you can find the pattern here.

Hot Beverages and Sandy Balls…

knitting, socks, yarn

So, I have just returned from a week by the seaside with the family. It was a much needed break for all of us – a rest for the head and the heart. As normal, I overpacked yarn, and came home with more than I took because I was able to meet up with Sam from Unbelievawool whilst I was there and she gave me some more to take home with me – one set of yarn for the next shawl, and another set of skeins which are part of a blanket club that I belong to. So much for reducing the stash… But as you can see from the main picture, there was a lot of sitting on beaches or the sofa with a nice cup of tea and a project on the go.

I did manage to get some crocheting done (more of that in my next blog), and once that was done I had a go at the Arwen pattern from the new Truly Hooked sock book, using a merino / mohair mix yarn from Jo.Knit.Sew. Those socks turned out to be the main project for the holiday. I am not a very confident knitter, and although I can do the basics and a bit of intarsia (badly, usually), lace work and mock cables are new to me. I also had to use YouTube to learn how to do long tail cast on, which now I have mastered it I can see will feature a lot in my future projects. The yarn overs between knit and purl stitches are what drove me to despair initially though. I got there in the end but not before ripping the first sock back to the beginning about three times. But once I nailed it I was pleased with the results. I have the socks on the blockers now -I have just finished the second sock in the last half and hour – and so I will try to get a good picture to show you how well they look. I am not sure I would make such pretty sock very often, but I learned a lot from making them, and I am sure someone will appreciate them for a gift.

The price of creativity, however, is pain. I have developed a hole in my right index finger from repeatedly using it to push the tip of the circular needles through the stitches. It doesn’t look like much but trust me its quite deep and very sore. Apparently I am not the only one who has one of these little holes in their finger, which makes me feel a bit better, like I have now earned some sort of badge of knitting honour.

When I got back home my DK socks I had just finished before I left for holiday were ready to come off of the blockers. These socks are special for two reasons: they are for me, and they are made with yarn I dyed myself at the retreat last year. They look amazing and are so soft. And they have blocked so well. These DK socks always looks a bit of a funny shape when they are done but they are so smart when they are blocked.

It is late now so I am going to got to bed, and I will blog again about my crochet exploits in the morning. The knitting needles are being put away for the next two weeks whilst I go into crochet overdrive. It is time to get some of my project ideas out of my head and into reality…

Newborn ‘Scraps’ Hat

baby, crochet, hat, patterns

As promised, I have written up the instructions for making the little newborn hat that I made for my friend’s baby from the scraps left over from the baby blanket I made for her. The yarn I used was Sirdar Snuggly DK in cream and one of the Snuggly ‘Crofter’ colourways. Any super soft baby yarn will do and you only need small amounts. I used a 4mm hook.

UK crochet terms are used throughout.

Row 1. Using the main colour yarn (in this case cream) make an adjustable loop, chain 3 (counts as 1TB here and elsewhere in the pattern) and then 11TB into centre of loop. Slip stitch into top of Ch3. Pull tail to close the loop. (12 stitches)

Row 2. Chain 3, TB, then *TB between the stitch you have just trebled into and the next one along, then TB into that next stitch**. Repeat from * to ** 10 more times so that you have 24 stitches (including the Ch3), and then slip stitch into the top of the Ch3 to close the circle.

Row 3. Chain 3, TB, then TB between the stitch you have just trebled into and the next one along. *2TB, then TB between the last stitch you have just trebled into and the next one along**. Repeat from * to ** to the end of the circle so that you have 36 stitches (including the Ch3), and then slip stitch into the top of the Ch3 to close the circle.

Row 4. Chain 3, 2TB, then TB between the stitch you have just trebled into and the next one along. *3TB, then TB between the last stitch you have just trebled into and the next one along**. Repeat from * to ** to the end of the circle so that you have 48 stitches (including the Ch3), and then slip stitch into the top of the Ch3 to close the circle.

Row 5. Chain 3, 3TB, then TB between the stitch you have just trebled into and the next one along. *4TB, then TB between the last stitch you have just trebled into and the next one along**. Repeat from * to ** to the end of the circle so that you have 60 stitches (including the Ch3), and then slip stitch into the top of the Ch3 to close the circle.

These five rows (rounds) form the top of the hat. We next start to shape the sides.

Row 6. Chain 3, then 59 TB. Slip stitch into the top of the Ch3 to close the circle.

Row 7. Repeat Row 6.

Row 8. Change to contrast colour. Chain 1 and 60DC. Slip stitch into the first DC to close the circle.

Row 9. Change to main colour. Repeat Row 6.

Row 10. Repeat Row 6.

Row 11. Change to contrast colour. Repeat Row 6.

Row 12. Change to main colour. Repeat Row 6.

Row 13. Repeat Row 6.

Now onto the final row, which gives the picot edging.

Row 14. Change to contrast colour. Chain 1. *2 DC, (DC, Ch2, DC) into next stitch**. Repeat from * to ** all the way around. Slip stitch into the first DC to close the circle.

Sew in ends.

To make the hat bigger, carry on increasing the size of the circle by 12 stitches each round, following the pattern indicated by the first five rows. Then when the crown is large enough, carry on with extending the sides to the desired length by TB into each stitch around without increasing, again, following the pattern set above, before finishing with the picot row.

Fibre East 2016

crochet, knitting, socks, yarn

Well Fibre East didn’t disappoint. Last year we had fantastic weather and a brilliant day, and this year was the same. I took a small gang with me – three of my best yarn friends – and we had a great time fondling yarn and chatting to the stall holders. I got to help out very briefly on the Unbelievawool stand, and I was so pleased to chat to Nicola from Fleabubs, Sue Stratford from the Knitting Hut, Lisa from For the Love of Yarn and Phyllis from Rosebuds and Rainbows. I also managed to get some yarn from some new folk, and chatted to Lola from Third Vault Yarns for ages whilst I dithered over 2 skeins of the most beautiful DK merino / silk mix I had seen (I resisted – my stash is out of control as you know – but I will be ordering it online at some point I am pretty sure).

So on my shopping list this year was a new shawl pin, some more ‘manly’ coloured sock yarn (ready for Christmas presents) and some red yarn, as I love deep dark reds but have very few in my stash. As you can see from the picture above, I overachieved this year so I was pretty pleased with my haul. The picture at the top of the blog post shows part of the most amazing Art Blank from Fleabubs – too fabulous to resist.

Verity from Truly Hooked was there but I was a bit too shy to chat to her this time, but her new sock book was on proud display. When I got home my own copy of it, that I had pre-ordered, was waiting for me and it looks fantastic. I have already picked which pair I want to try first, and so I will have to pack it in my holiday bag, along with a nice skein of sock yarn.

Talking of socks, in the car to and from Fibre East (and at the show too, if I am honest) I was knitting another pair of Easy Peezy socks, but this time using up some yarn that I dyed myself at the Devon Sun Yarns retreat I went to last November. I learned how to heather yarn, and the result was this purple and grey mix. So I thought it might look pretty in a pattern like this and sure enough it does. I don’t think any of the yarn dyers are in any danger from me, but I am a little bit proud of them, even though the light in here doesn’t quite show off the colours. What do you think?

Special Days

Blanket, crochet, yarn

I’m starting to get excited for the summer now! I have just submitted the last big piece of work I had to get done before the end of July, and it is just tidying up loose ends at the day job next week. Today has also be special because I have said goodbye to two colleagues – one is going to a new job, and other – the person who taught me how to crochet and therefore is responsible for you reading this – is going off on maternity leave very soon. So we threw a surprise party for both of them today. My yarny friend got a box of baby things, including the cosy blanket you have seen me making on instagram, and a little matching hat of my own creation. I am really pleased with how they both came out, and I even blocked the blanket, which I normally never do. I will pop the hat pattern up here over the weekend for those of you who fancy making it. It is a great little project for using up the left over yarn from a blanket make!

I also wanted to get my friend a special something from me to celebrate our yarny relationship. So I asked Helen from Bare Threads to make up a bespoke yarn box. I told her a bit about my friend and she came up with this – all so beautiful, all handmade, all ethically sourced. I cannot recommend Helen to you highly enough. Her yarns are exceptional and at the moment her yarns tend to sell out before they get onto Etsy, so it is worth contacting her directly if you want to get your hands on her goodies. Oh dear. That sounds a bit wrong doesn’t it. Sorry Helen.

Anyway, the final reason to be cheerful today is that it is ONE SLEEP UNTIL FIBRE EAST. See me doing the happy, happy dance of yarn joy! The yarn ban is temporarily lifted and I get to take three of my best friend to fondle some fine wares. I will get to see some yarn contacts / friends there too, so I am very excited.

So, expect lots of yarn porn shots on my instagram feed this weekend and hopefully at least one, if not two, blog posts as I get overexcited and giddy.

Re-emerging from the abyss

crochet, knitting, Shawls, socks, yarn

So, as you have noticed, things have been very quiet on the blog front. July is, for me, traditionally a month of stress – it is when all the work deadlines for the day job come into conflict, with an added topping this year of trying to get end of year gifts made for the very special women who have helped to look after my little one. In September she starts school, and so this summer is going to be extra emotional. Everything I have made doesn’t seem to be enough, or good enough, to recognise what they have done for us as a family. I said goodbye to the first of my daughter’s current nursery teachers this week. The only thing I could think to give her was the very first Thank You Shawl I ever made, as it was in her favourite colours, and it was huge. I hope that every time she puts it on, she feels hugged.

So this week should be the beginning of the end of the crazy season, assuming I can get all my work done on time. One more week and then it is Fibre East (oh my, I cannot wait), which signals the beginning of the end.

Shawl Club continues a-pace, and one of the things I can finally show you is Shawl Number 3, otherwise known as the ‘Forget Me Never’ Shawl.

Two pictures of it – the first one shows it unblocked – highly textured and cosy. The second shows it blocked (and shows nicely how much blocking can make a project grow. It is called Forget Me Never, because Sam and I agreed on a pretty forget-me-not colour way for the yarn. The pictured shawl shows the very subtle first dye of this. We subsequently decided to ramp up the colour contrasts, so the final yarn colour is a stronger blue, with purple and green accents.

I need to update my archive with this and the previous shawl, but that is a job for the summer months. I also hope to get some designing done too, so I can launch a new collection of items ready for September, when we all start looking around for ideas for Christmas present makes. It may not be a very big collection, but it will be exciting for me. This is all baby steps. I am still only 3 months into this experiment, and so far it has exceeded my expectations. I just need to keep all the plates spinning.

And of course, because I don’t know when enough is enough, I asked Phyllis from Rosebuds and Rainbows if she has a DK sock pattern, to help me with my stash busting. She sent it over – a new pattern for testing – and I used a very special neon yarn by Dye Candy, called ‘Blacklight’, to try it out. As you can see, it makes a very nice (and super quick) winter sock. Merino cashmere mix. A treat for the toes.

The pattern is now up on Ravelry as the ‘Easy Peezy Socks‘. I am already on my second pair, which I hope to finish to give as a gift to my daughter’s key worker, along with this lazy waves shawlette, which I made on retreat last year.

I am not sure if either the socks or the shawlette will hit the mark, but here’s hoping.

The featured yarn at the top of this post illustrates how I feel – a bit of colour is creeping back into the darkness and not before time. The yarn is called (perhaps appropriately enough given how crabby I have been on occasion this month) “Kill the Witch”, and it is by Lollipop Guild Yarns.

Anyway, lots more to follow soon, including some new free patterns, the end of the retro blanket pattern (you thought I had forgotten, didn’t you?), and some more videos as you seemed to enjoy my first foray into video making. I may even speak in the next one, who knows…!

Nothing clashes in nature…

Blanket, crochet, patterns, Shawls, Uncategorized

I am experiencing the rather odd sensation of starting my blog during the early evening rather than at the dead of night. This is because, in a random act of good mummy-ing (not a regular feature of my life, although it is a daily aspiration), I took my daughter to the swimming pool and then to the park. It is a warm day, and so the combination of all these things has resulted in the small one crashing early; what I had assumed would be a nap is now looking like it will be her night sleep too.

So, here I sit, rather disorientated if I am honest. I have been working on a circular blanket as a thank you gift for my daughter’s nursery, but I have run out of yellow yarn and so I have had to put that WIP down for now. I wandered out into my overgrown garden (it is too hot to start weeding) and started taking some pictures for inspiration. That is, sometimes you can get stuck in a colour rut. As much as I love rainbows and ombre colour schemes, they can get tired sometimes, and I also have a tendency to gravitate to the same colours time and again. So, it is nice to go a bit crazy and put some different colours together occasionally. I love the way you can get a mundane colour to pop or to take on a new look by changing the colours they are combined with. Colours I wouldn’t necessarily go for on paper can look amazing when used in the right proportions together.

My garden provides masses of inspiration for this. It is wild this time of year, with lots of self-seeded flowers mixed in with the intentional planting. I can take credit for none of it, as I inherited it from the previous owner of our house. It is far from formal, especially as I don’t get as much time to tidy it up as I would like, but somehow it works for me.

Shawl number 3 from Shawl Club has gone up on Ravelry (blog post reveal to follow), and the yarn is being mailed out by Unbelievawool tomorrow morning. It has also been inspired by one of the flowers that self-seeds itself though my garden, but that I have a real soft spot for. The yarn I used for the Ravelry pictures was an early play with colours which we were not entirely happy with, but the final club yarn is a wowzer, and should look amazing.

Anyway, the colours in my garden have succeeded in giving me some ideas this evening. That is, I have some ideas for new projects that I want to test and develop over the summer whilst I have some downtime from the day job. I was rummaging and re-rummaging though my drawers of yarn earlier and couldn’t decide what to do. But a little wander through my garden has done the trick. Now I just need a little time to play.

Somewhat appropriately for the remembrance activities this week, I also found these stray red poppies growing in the gravel of my path. Lest we forget.

Colour me happy…

crochet, knitting, yarn

So this has been a very odd week. Big events in the real world that have implications for my day job, my colleagues and my friends. A real sense of devastation, and disquiet for what is to come and what has already started to happen. It turns out that I live in a very different country to the one that I thought I did at the beginning of the week.

So here I am, in my yarn room, trying to come up with something to write and resisting the temptation to curl up in my chair with my yarn pets all around me, gently rocking to some suitably maudlin music. On Friday I broke my yarn ban and bought some skeins to raise my spirits. Fibre East – the yarn show that I was planning to refresh my stash at – was too far away. I needed some solace to come this week.

What has been interesting is that I have become more obsessed than before with trying to finish off projects. My latest set of socks are on the blockers, a test shawl for shawl club is blocking on mats on the floor, and I have three blanket projects that I am determined to finish before I start another project. And yet the desire to start something new that will cheer me up is overwhelming.

I dive into the yarn drawers then, to seek inspiration. I find the yarn pictured at the top of this post, the ‘colour me happy’ skein from Pollyorange that is almost too perfect to use. More rummaging, this time to find this skein of Bluefaced Leicester and Silk yarn by Lollipop Guild Yarns.

It is another skein I am keeping to make something very special for myself. For now I just wanted to remind myself of what it looked and felt like. I turned over the tag to see what the name of the yarn was. ‘Premonitions’. How appropriate.

I will stick to the plan – finish those blankets, get shawl 6 nailed, continue to stashbust. I need to focus on what makes me happy, and hang onto the fantasy of one day being able to concentrate on this properly. Who knows, I may need the second career option a bit sooner than I had originally anticipated.

Meeting a Sculptural Crocheter

Uncategorized

This Sunday I went down to the Westbury Arts Centre as part of Bucks Open Studios which is running this month. Its a great chance to nosey around the studios of artists of all kinds and be inspired by what they create. This includes textiles and fibre artists. At Westbury there is an artist called Helen Den Dulk who creates large scale sculptural pieces with crochet and knitting. She creates fantastic wall hangings with crochet which throw shapes and shadows onto the walls which become part of the finished effect. She recycles and hand dyes some of her raw materials. She kindly allowed me to photograph some of her work to show you on this blog.

This one is reminiscent of a sea creature / Dr Who monster and was big enough that my four-year-old could have rested in it! I love the way it pools onto the floor.

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This next one I have a strange affection for because she used Drops yarn, bought from Wool Warehouse, in it. The ‘brickwork’ is knitted in stocking stitch. It’s special to see something so striking made out of something we would all use for our more traditional makes.

In this one Helen crocheted around the flex of some fairy lights to create the spirals, which are then lit up by the lights embedded in the work.

Hanging spiral and circular forms recur in Helen’s work and are strangely hypnotic.

The open studios are open again this weekend coming. Do go along if you live in or near Buckinghamshire – there are so many places you can visit, but at Westbury you can see many artists all in one place. And they do a nice cup of tea too.

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