I've been learning nålbinding. (Other spellings are available.) Not familiar with the technique? You're not alone. It's what people did at 'Stitch-And-Bitch' nights thousands of years ago, before they got round to inventing knitting and crochet. (And it's still practiced today in some regions, in addition to enjoying a revival amongst historical re-enactment folk.) But I'll save the history and possibilities of nålbinding for another post. It's been a while since I learned a new Continue Reading
Yarn Shop Day
Writing funny blog posts is tricky when things go well. It's easier when your day turns belly-up and you leave your dignity somewhere up a tree in the supermarket car park, but there's nothing hilarious about things working out as intended. That's why I'm finding it hard to write this post about Saturday's Yarn Shop Day event. I can just about work a World War Two air raid shelter and a Victorian actress's underwear into the story without stretching the truth, but beyond that, I got Continue Reading
Springy
As seasons go - and man, do they go fast for those of us on the less popular side of 40 - spring has a lot to recommend it. The very best thing is that nature stops hiding its colourful light under a damp, grey, bushel, and comes out to frolic. Look at these beautiful snakeshead fritillaries! It's trickier than usual to be miserable when there's so much new life around, such as the bottle-fed lambs in the twinnage's friend's garden. Meet Alfie. Alfie is trouble. But Alfie Continue Reading
To The Mill, Again.
Twice a year, the Stylecraft Blogstars meet at Stylecraft's beautiful old mill in West Yorkshire for a weekend of yarn, chatter, food, wine, friendship, scenery, and news. Yeah, the experience really is exactly as gruelling as it sounds. Our scheduled meetup in February was postponed due to snow. (PLEASE STOP LAUGHING, Canadian/Scandinavian readers - our eccentric little country is ill-equipped to cope with frozen water.) Instead, we met in March. I took my camera so that you could come Continue Reading
Nuts And Bolts
Hello! Do come and sit here beside the fire. I have much yarnery to share with you. (But the latest Stylecraft Blogstars weekend shenanigans should probably wait until next post.) Meanwhile in response to a dozen or so requests, I promised a post about how I went about designing this thing:- So here goes. I've written before (five years ago! Oh, for the youthful naivety of being 41!) about designing stranded motifs. But this 123 500 - stitch behemoth made its own rules. Just as I write Continue Reading
Millionaire
That title is misleading. I'm not really a millionaire, although I did just find a bar of chocolate that I'd forgotten about so I am feeling pretty fortunate. (I sometimes hide chocolate away from the Twinnage, and the advantage/disadvantage of having a rubbish memory is that I then promptly forget it ever existed.) But the title of this post is because recently, my blog visit stats passed the million mark. Those visits can't all have been by my mum, surely? A million! That's quite a big number. Continue Reading
A Thing
I've finished knitting a thing. It's a big thing. 110cm (43") square, to be precise. You're looking at 123 500 stitches which, it's fair to say, took a good while to complete. It's made of Jamieson's of Shetland Spindrift, and it weighs in at 500 grams. That's a kilometre of yarn. It was knitted in the round with a steek, which I then cut. (Steeks aren't as scary as folk think, I promise. Here's a quick how-to.) I used 3mm needles for the stranded work, then 2.5mm needles for the Continue Reading
Winter Colours
There is knitting in this post I promise, but there's also lots of winter colour because if you're anything like me, you find the natural world and the landscape endlessly fascinating and inspiring. (And if you're not anything like me, then congratulations on being such a well-adjusted member of society.) Those eleventy hundred bulbs I planted in the autumn are beginning to reveal themselves and I can't resist showing you a few:- Judging by the green fronds poking up all over the Continue Reading
Frogging The Frog
The other morning, I picked up my knitting (nothing unusual in that), muttered some words that aren't repeatable here (not as rare as it should be), and frogged FOURTEEN THOUSAND stitches of stranded colourwork. (Youch.) I even frogged this little diving frog. (But forgot to photograph it first, so this is the reknitted version.) I tried to film the experience in a speeded-up, time-lapsy, sort of way, but technology was against me. So then I went off to do my tax return Continue Reading
Winter. With Yarn.
Hello, dear knitters and crocheters, and runners, and my mum, and people who inexplicably landed here whilst searching for a blog about oxyacetylene welding. Come and sit with me beside the fire, because it's way too cold out there. Walking to school to collect the twinnage this afternoon, it looked as though somebody had combed the sky. I hope you've brought your yarn. (No, please don't start oxyacetylene welding in my sitting room. The blog you're looking for is that way. --> Continue Reading