We've reached that post-summer pre-autumn jitter that can't decide whether to roast us, freeze us, soak us, drop spheres of ice on our heads, or blow us over - so it swings wildly between all of these things. Permacultural food-grower Liz Zorab refers to this sub-season as The Pause, which describes it admirably, in my arrogant opinion. (Actually we've moved past that stage into proper-autumn if I'm honest, but it takes me so long to finish drafting a blog post that I'll probably be scraping ice Continue Reading
Designing For Knitters
I love designing. Sometimes (rarely) it goes spookily well from the start (like here), but more often, a succession of try-outs staggers back-and-forth like a drunk person with only the haziest sense of direction, heading ever-so slowly in the direction of a decent outcome, but occasionally just belching loudly before falling off a cliff. I love the combination of creativity and problem-solving and maths that's involved in making some new knitted or crocheted item. I love the transition from Continue Reading
So That Was 2015
Oh all right then, I submit. Every other blogger in the world has produced lovely collages of their stuff for an end-of-2015 post, so I suppose I should follow suit. Here are six images of 2015-y goodness from TheTwistedYarn. I hope you enjoy them. (And for those of you kind enough to have followed this blog a'while, I hope you don't expire through boredom from the repetition of these pictures.) So let's begin with some of the things that I designed from scratch in 2015. As you'll see, there's Continue Reading
The Skirt Post
Ah, the skirt. (And thank you to the kind people in the comments threads who've been asking about it.) This post could probably be retitled 'How not to design a skirt, you fool!' but it will at least give you a laugh or two, I hope. Allow me to elaborate. I decided on a whim to design a knitted stranded skirt and a crocheted bag, ahead of judging the Stylecraft competition. It seemed like a good idea. And whilst the bag was done in plenty of time, I ended up restarting the skirt at the Continue Reading