The Woolly Landscape

My current commute project is lovely Sarah Hatton's equally lovely Edith shawl from her  Vintage Inspired Knits book. I am knitting it in Rowan Kidsilk Haze in my favourite KSH shade - Fern - and the project takes two balls. I am actually thinking it is more likely to take just a smidgen over 1 ball for me but we'll see.

I had planned on knitting it according to pattern but I started knitting it during the Danish leg of Eurovision and .. I unintentionally modified it. Ahem. At least my other modification is intentional: I used kb&f instead of k1,p1 into one stitch when you increase for the border. It just flows a lot better for me.

If you have read the interview which Edinburgh Yarn Festival did with me, you may remember I spoke about a colourwork hat I was knitting. Well, it is done now. It is the first finished sample from the Doggerland collection.  The hat (and pattern) will début at EdinYarnFest with the knitters taking my class which I think is pretty exciting. It uses Faroese yarn from The Island Wool Company, but most DK yarns would be suitable.

I can show you a little tiny glimpse of it! Or, as I like to call this photo, Welcome to the Woolly Landscape. Look at those rolling hills..

There are more gorgeous photos to come. I have a few patterns in next month's Knit Now (which should be with subscribers by early next week) and I cannot wait to show you.

The Glamorous Life of A Quiet Knitter

When people tell me they'd love to work in the knitting industry, I don't think my last fortnight is what they had in mind. I have been crawling around on my knees finding stray balls of yarn underneath boxes, behind furniture, and in strange places. I have been covered in yarn fluff and dust (achoo). My hands have been rubbed raw from handling thousands and thousands of balls of yarn. And then I spent several days tracking down product codes for long-discontinued qualities, noting everything down and triple-checking it against inventory notes before going home for long showers that did not get rid of the yarn fluff stuck inside my ear. Life, she has not been glamorous.

Still, there are good things to report. Firstly, there are new shadecards in front of me together with glossy previews of all the new summer collections. Secondly, two new designs are currently blocking on my living room floor. Thirdly, I have a logo for Karie Bookish Knits (more on which in a future blog post). And fourthly, Edinburgh Yarn Festival have finally announced their workshop list!

I have also finished my third read of the year.

Susan Cain's Quiet has been a real hit with readers this past year. As a reader it is hard not to be enthralled when a book tells you that it's really, really cool that you prefer reading a book to a loud party. That may sound like a cynical take but much of this book reads like a hard sell to the quiet, bookish crowd (i.e. people who buy books). Introverts like me are amazing - we invent things! we empathise! we could have stopped the recession! When Cain forgets to stroke egos or offer self-help solutions, the book becomes far more interesting: her examination of the 20th century as the century of the 'extrovert' is good as is her take on 21st technology enabling social interaction without sensory overload. As a non-American, I didn't quite connect with some of Cain's examples and some of her generalisations about cultural personalities were iffy - but Quiet was a decent read. If you've ever hid out in a bathroom stall to avoid small-talking your way through an evening, this may be a book you'll want to read.

A few random links:

• Culinary tragedy struck Norway recently. A moment of silence for those 27 tonnes of brown goat's cheese that have been lost to humanity.
• SPENT - a game about poverty. Can you make it through the month?
• Ten literary board games. It's from Flavorwire but we cannot have everything.
• I am mildly obsessed with yarn from Danish historic mill, Hjeltholt. Look at that 1-ply! Or how about their Aran weight? Oh gosh.

Hope you are all keeping warm and are knitting away. Me? Well, tomorrow I am donning my oldest clothes and will return to crawling around on dusty floors..

Knitting Assessment

I have the January blues. Well, not so much blues as I am already tired of January. I am tired of the reinventions, the interventions, and the reiterations. Oh, the cries of Find yourself! Get on top of your stash! Tidy up your house! that I hear echoed all over the place. It is not that I don't want to sort out my life, tidy the stash, make my home lovely and all that - but January is only nine days old and I feel guilty/stressed already. Also, I do not believe in quick solutions and clever quips. I once moved my entire life across the North Sea and I used quick solutions and clever quips to sort out my belongings. I still miss things I let go because I had not touched them for six months at the time. I wonder what is behind our modern day reluctance to have a past - belongings that stretch back further than six months, things that hold memories, and items that carry a significance beyond daily use? I subscribe to the famous William Morris maxim - Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful - I just think we sometimes forget the beauty aspect of our lives.

I like beauty. I like thoughtfulness. I like slow living. I like knitting. And that, dear reader, is what I call a clumsy segue.

The Bute cardigan. I love working on this and I am taking my time too. It is a constant joy to knit this - seeing the colours transition, watching the peerie patterns emerge and working with Rowan Felted Tweed (my favourite yarn du jour) and Rowan Colourspun. It is a meditative knit too - the peerie patterns are 4 stitches/5 rows repeats and just as soon as you've started one, you are done and ready to uncover the next colour. Meditative, indeed.

I was never quite sure about the cool pink - Peony - that I chose a contrast colour but I think it blends in well. Would I change the colours? Maybe make the purple - Bilberry - more prominent? I think the colour combination works, actually. It is a radical departure from the original autumnal colourway. It will work beautiful with the greys and purples in my wardrobe. Just two sleeves and a buttonband to go..

I have decided to knit another Felted Tweed fair-isle top after I finish Bute. Fyne is a free pattern from Rowan and there are several gorgeous FOs on Ravelry. Krraver has knitted one using the same colour for the ribbing and the background (I like this idea), onehandknits used a dark background colour (I like this too!) and jediknit has styled it beautifully. I am undecided on the colours - we'll see what remnants I am left with once Bute is finished - but I am definitely leaning towards something green/brownish.

Speaking of browns and greens .. here is a sneak peek at two designs I am working on for the oft-mentioned, still-languishing-in-production Doggerland collection. Sorry about the violet tinge to the photo - that is what you get when you try to take photos on cloudy, foggy January day!

The (ahem) oatmeal yarn is Garthenor Shetland 1ply. It is gorgeous, earthy yarn with a soft handle. The stitch definition is a bit .. rustic .. so it is not a yarn that lends itself well to crisp lace patterns. I would love a whole jumper or cardigan in this yarn - something relatively straightforward which will let the yarn do the talking.

The green shawl had my knitting group giggling. "What? Another one?" they guffawed. Actually I don't really own a green shawl and this one is a sample, anyway. So there. The yarn is Snældan 1-ply in the Turf colourway (also known as "Karie's favourite lace yarn in her fave colour") and I am truly in my happy place when I'm working on this.

Snældan 1-ply comes with quite staggering yardage. When I design I have a rough idea of how many rows I can chart before I run out of yardage and I will work out pattern repeats based upon that (yes, designing is all about number crunching, folks). I thought I'd be about 66% into my yardage at this stage - I've not even hit the 50% mark. In other words, this is going to be a huge shawl. A huge green shawl. Hmm, I might have to nick it off myself.

Confession time. I have been reassessing some WIPs in my vicinity. I think I'll rip out the Acer cardigan. I loved knitting it, but I lost momentum at a crucial point. Some knits you just have to keep plugging away at .. and Acer was one of those for me. Both the pattern and the yarn will be revisited - but not now. I am also tempted to throw out some old FOs - the Dragonfly cardigan, my first February Lady Sweater, and the Sun Ray top. I never wear them, you know.

Good grief, January has gotten hold of me.

A Knock on the Door

I don't think I've ever shared this photo before. I'm wearing all three At Midnight yarn club patterns at once .. I'm rather proud of how well the three pieces work together. I'm currently prepping the patterns for general release. Watch this space.

However, I am running way behind schedule at the moment. I had a medical emergency just before the holidays which disrupted every single plan I had made. Then all of Casa Bookish fell ill with winter flu as we were driving home from our Aberedeenshire family holiday. Horrible, horrible flu -  it took forever to clear and I think it'll be a couple of weeks before I am back to normal levels of well-being. Grrrr.

This means that I'm pushing the release dates of some new patterns as well as the oft-mentioned Doggerland collection. When you are a one-woman operation it doesn't take much for the house of cards to fall, alas.

However: there is a new Scottish knitting event happening this year - the Edinburgh Yarn festival. I'd strongly suggest you keep your eyes peeled for some big announcements being made soon. My lips are sealed!

Happy new year!

2012: My Year in Knitting

I'll start by telling the truth: 2011 was a tough year for me. I ended it feeling I had lost track of who I was and where I was going. And so I began 2012 vowing I needed to spend more time doing things I love doing rather than doing things I thought I ought to be doing.

This is what I wrote at the end of 2011:

• I’m already working on more patterns. I have sketchbook filled with what is essentially 2-and-a-half collections worth of patterns. Hopefully I will be able to devote more time to this in 2012.

Tick.

• I’d really love to knit a few garments in 2012. Quality over quantity.

Not really, but I'll write more about that in a future blog post.

• And I still need more hats.

Moths did their best to destroy my hat collection so I did knit myself a handful of hats. I still need more. Cannot have too many hats.

• Keeping on top of the stash. I cannot promise ‘more yarn out than in’ but at least I won’t do the ‘oh, I fancy a ball of that’ thing because that way madness lies. I am getting far better at curating my stash already. May it continue.

I was much better at resisting temptation in 2012. I still added to the stash but I did so in a thoughtful way. I bought very little yarn (and only yarn I needed for specific projects) and I turned down offers & gifts of yarn.

• More conscious allocation of my knitting time: what is ‘work’ knitting and what is ‘me’ knitting?

Definitely.

2012 has been an interesting year. I did stick to my nebulous plan of "doing things I love doing" and it worked out pretty well.

I can roughly divide my 2012 knitting into two piles:  a bit of knitting for friends..

• One friend had a baby. I knitted Bagl a cardigan.
• Another friend got married. I helped knit her & her husband a blanket.

.. and a lot of knitting for work:

• I self-published Elsinore, Roskilde, Elvan, and Florence.
• My Windsor Hat  was published by Rowan.
• I collaborated with Old Maiden Aunt on a yarn club and published Serpentine Avenue, Baskerville, and Baker Street as a result.
• Kirkja was published by Knit Now magazine (and it made the cover!).
• I worked with Glasgow University on a series of workshops on handknitting & textiles in Scotland and gave a paper on working within the knitting industry.
• I gave an interview to Handmade Living.
• And I also addressed the re-emergence of handknitting on STV News.
• I worked briefly with Kaffe Fassett.
• And I met so many people this year! None mentioned, none forgotten. All incredibly creative people with interesting backgrounds and unique stories to tell.

I feel tired just looking at that. I also felt rather tired of my own voice at one point, but that's something for the 2013 list!

I feel like I didn't do much personal knitting in 2012.  I finished a shrug, frogged a couple of half-done garments and began knitting Acer and Bute. Both are still on the needles. But I cleared my head of all the oughts and that counts for a lot.

A couple of links to patterns and books I coveted this past year. A massive amount of good stuff seems to have come from the British Isles this year!

• The Bunty Mitts by Ella Austin
• By George! by Julia Duren
• Ella Jo by Allison Jane
• Diamonds Are Forever by Susan Crawford (from Coronation Knits)
• Radial by Cookie A
• The Underleaf Hat and Mitts by Kyoko Nakayoshi (from Cloudy Apples)
• Bute by Lisa Richardson (actually most of Rowan 52)
• The Puffin Sweater by Kate Davies (from Colours of Shetland)

And I loved listening to the following podcasts (among so many others):

• Electric Sheep by Hoxton Handmade
• A Playful Day by greentrianglegirl
• Stickpodden (in Swedish) by Elin & Karin.

Also a few fist bumps to the following yarn vendors/pushers:

• Old Maiden Aunt
• Rowan Yarns
• Ripples Crafts
• Yarn Pony
• The Island Wool Company

Phew! I think that was it. What a crazy, marvellous year.

The Kirkja Shawl

June 2012 780

And then I designed a shawl and it appeared in Knit Now. Okay, things are never quite that simple. Earlier this year I was exchanging ideas with Knit Now magazine, a UK knitting magazine focused on accessories and keen on showcasing British design. The editors were doing an issue on "heritage" and when I mentioned I was part Faroese, the end result was the Kirkja shawl.

The sample is knitted in Old Maiden Aunt 100% merino 4ply in the delicious "Buttermint" colourway (it takes just one 400 yrds skein!). I knitted the sample back in late spring, but I must somehow have known I'd need a ray of sunshine in December. Isn't it just a stunning happy colour?

I opted against a traditional Faroese shape as I wanted the shawl to be an accessible knit for intermediate knitters. No shoulder shaping or casting on several hundred stitches. Instead I chose to play with geometric patterns so familiar to Faroese knitters and showcase them in an easy triangular shawl.

It was really good working with others for a change. I tend to Wear All the Hats when I design, but I had the support of the Knit Now team during the whole Kirkja design process. It was fab seeing the finished photos from the professional photo shoot and I really enjoyed the bantering back & forth about stuff that non-designers find dull (i.e. pattern formatting & charting software).

Kirkja can be found in Knit Now issue 16 which is out with subscribers now and will be in UK shops tomorrow (December 13, 2012). Not only did it make the cover, but it also came highly commended by the editors and got a four-page spread inside the magazine.

(I'd pop champagne but I think I need some tea to warm myself up instead! It is freezing outside and our flat is cold. The glamorous life of a knitting designer!)