Your Knitting Or Crochet Hero :: 3KCBWDAY3 ::

Your Knitting Or Crochet Hero
Blog about someone in the fibre crafts who truly inspires you. There are not too many guidelines for this, it's really about introducing your readers to someone who they might not know who is an inspiration to you. It might be a family member or friend, a specific designer or writer, indie dyer or another blogger. If you are writing about a knitting designer and you have knitted some of their designs, don't forget to show them off. Remember to get permission from the owner if you wish to use another person's pictures.

In truth I’m inspired and influenced by many talented people, but I think the mother of them all, cliched as it may be, has to be Elizabeth Zimmerman.

I come from a very DIY-inspired family. My Dad was a marine engineer and was DIY personified. Although his talents didn’t stretch to actually building our house, a huge proportion of the things in our family home had his mark upon them. He installed and varnished our hardwood flooring and skirting boards, turned our attic into a usable space with plumbing, refit our bathrooms, built our garden sheds… The list is endless. My 16th birthday present from my parents was a complete bedroom refit, and my Dad did every bit of it himself, from the flooring, to the fitted wardrobe, to the walls. B&Q was his second home (or perhaps that was the golf course), and I always felt like his handiness had no bounds. If he didn’t know how to fix or build something, he’d sit down, plan it out, and figure things out until he could.

Similarly my Mum has a totally resourceful, “can do” approach to everything. The number of times I experienced utter exasperation as a child whenever I expressed a longing for something, only to be told “that’s very easy to make, we can do it ourselves!” As exasperated as those words made me as a child, they’ve stood me in good stead, and to this day I’m always keen to have a go at doing things myself. Well, almost, sometimes it’s nice to take a shortcut.

But I think it’s also why Elizabeth Zimmerman’s writing appeals to me so much. She has a very no nonsense, “can do” approach to knitting. It’s empowering. She advocates “unventing”, experimenting, having a go, experimenting some more, and not being afraid of your knitting. If it doesn’t work, rip it back, but don’t be afraid to try. I think out of all crafts, knitting (and crochet) have the most flexibility in terms of experimentation. Most yarns can stand being reknit dozens of times if things don’t quite go to plan. Some yarns can even be re-joined once the ends have been broken, but the same can’t be said of fabric once it’s been cut for sewing, or paper once folded for origami. Other crafts have their perks, but there is a finality about them that is absent from knitting and crochet.

So I look up to Elizabeth Zimmerman for opening my eyes to the woolly possibilities,

but it seems that I also have my parents to thank for giving me an outlook that embraces craftiness so well.

Pin It

Photography Challenge Day :: 3KCBWDAY2 ::

Photography Challenge Day!
Today challenges you to be creative with your photography, and get yourself in with the chance to win the photography prize. Taking interesting photographs in this instance isn't about flashy cameras or a great deal of technical know-how, it's about setting up a story or scene in a photograph and capturing something imaginative. Your photograph(s) should feature something related to your craft, so that might be either a knitted or crocheted item, yarn, or one of your craft tools. One example of setting a scene would be to photograph a girl in a knitted red cape walking through the woodlands with a basket of goodies, as in the Red Riding Hood tale, or you might photograph a knitted gnome hiding among the flowers in your garden. Photo editing is permitted for competition photos. Here are a few examples of my own photographs to illustrate an imaginative use of photography, but you can do much better than these...

Oh how I struggled with this topic! I racked my brains all day yesterday, but by the time I got the vaguest semblance of an idea there wasn’t enough light to take any photographs. The light today hasn’t been much better (thanks, rain!) but I did manage a few snaps so I’m putting this up today and hoping that no rules are being broken or bent. Judging by the quality of the entries I’ve seen, this is certainly no prize contender, but I thought a little yarn-evolution picture could be fun. So here it is, from fluff to yarn to ball to needles.

I couldn’t resist another picture, because hand wound balls of handspun yarn are just the prettiest things!

Pin It

Colour Lovers ::3KCBWDAY1::

So it’s here at last! Knitting & Crochet Blog Week, Year 3. I love the concept of this event, and every year I start with the best intentions to plan out my posts in advance and schedule everything so that it all pops up on time, and it’s never once happened. Surprise surprise, it still hasn’t happened this year, but let’s see if I do any better than my previous efforts!

Colour Lovers
Colour is one of our greatest expressions of ourselves when we choose to knit or crochet, so how do you choose what colours you buy and crochet or knit with. Have a look through your stash and see if there is a predominance of one colour. Do the same with your finished projects - do they match? Do you love a rainbow of bright hues, or more subdued tones. How much attention do you pay to the original colour that a garment is knit in when you see a pattern? Tell readers about your love or confusion over colour.

I love colour. I love creating it, playing with it, exploring it. The rich, vivid hues of freshly dyed mawata silk hankies drying on the line make my heart sing.

And out of all colours, I’ve always had a weakness for blue.

I just can’t resist those deep, jewel tones and bright, fresh hues, and a glance at my stash definitely reveals my bias towards this end of the colour spectrum.

But as much as I love intense, vivid colours, a lot of the time I seem to gravitate towards neutrals for my knitting. Greys, browns and creams have such a natural, classic beauty to them.

They are simple and timeless. And of course, they go with everything! Which is a great thing when I’m bleary eyed in the morning, and running out of the door with the first scarf that I had to hand…

And out of all the neutrals, grey is my firm favourite.

But a pop of colour is always welcome.

 

I just wanted to give a little shout out before I go. I haven’t been online much for the past week or two because I broke my glasses and the lens coating on my other pair is all scuffed, and going through life with one perma-blurry eye is not fun! I’ve been getting some wicked headaches and eye strain so I’ve been trying not to stare at screens too much, but this week seems as good as any to jump back into things.

During my absence I’ve been lucky enough to have been awarded the Versatile Blogger award again, not once but twice! The first was from Michelle over at Will Knit for Food, whose blog is one that I discovered only recently but is already a firm favourite. She has the most beautiful photographs and her blog is filled with wonderful sewing and knitting projects. I am in so much awe of her sewing skills! The second was from Laura of Sudden Expressions, whose blog I’ve been following for a while. She’s so sweet and friendly, has such a fantastic variety of knitting projects, and she dyes absolutely beautiful yarn! Check out these lovelies! So a huge thank you to those ladies, I’m very flattered and grateful. As I already did a Versatile Blogger post last month I won’t bore you all with another one, but feel free to check it out if you want to.

And also check out all the other Colour Lover blog posts by searching 3KCBWDAY1. Enjoy!

Pin It

Skill + 1UP :: 2KCBWDAY2 ::

Look back over your last year of projects and compare where you are in terms of skill and knowledge of your craft to this time last year. Have you learned any new skills or forms of knitting/crochet (can you crochet cable stitches now where you didn’t even know such things existed last year? Have you recently put a foot in the tiled world of entrelac? Had you even picked up a pair of needles or crochet hook this time last year?

I generally choose my knits based wholly on how much I want the finished item. I tend to not give much thought to what skills or techniques are involved in a project, deciding instead whether I have the patience or time to dedicate to something, so I’m really not sure what skills I’ve picked up over the past year. Looking at my Ravelry project page, the last year seems to have seen quite a few pairs of socks, including my first finished pair of toe up socks…

so I can rate that as one new skill learnt!

In fact, now that I think about it, there was also my super stretchy sock cuff revelation

 

which turned out to be more a revisiting of a standard long tail cast on, but with a cunningly different name. This has now been usurped by the twisted German (also known as the Old Norwegian) cast on, a long tail variant which has even more stretch and (I think) a neater edge. Love! Even this has been improved fairly recently by the realisation that instead of having to guesstimate how much tail to leave, only to have to rip out the cast on and grudgingly start again when the tail is inevitably infuriatingly long or a few stitches too short, I can cast on with two separate ends. What a lightbulb moment! It’s amazingly satisfying to use the centre pull end and the free outer end and cast on, smug in the knowledge that I will always have just the right amount of yarn for my cast on. It’s even worth the extra ends to weave in, and considering how much I hate finishing, that’s some achievement!

My project page also reminds me of my first hand-felted project, the French Press Slippers.

I’ve hand made little felt balls before, but I had no idea that hand-felting an entire project would be such hard work! Even though I loved the end result, it’s going to be a long time before I decide to felt anything other than little balls for a while!

And lastly, there is the still lingering double knit hat.

This was my first venture into double knitting, and although the process had me a little bamboozled at first once I got stuck in it was pretty straight forward. I’m quite ashamed to say that it’s still on the needles, and three months on it hasn’t really progressed much from this photo!

Well, that’s a lot more skills than I thought. Who knows what new tricks I’ll unwittingly learn this year!

Pin It

Dyed & Plied, A Tale of Two Yarns :: 2KCBWDAY1 ::

Part of any fibre enthusiast’s hobby is an appreciation of yarn. Choose two yarns that you have either used, are in your stash or which you yearn after and capture what it is you love or loathe about them.

What better way to break my blogging abstinence (holiday, followed by new job means that I haven’t quite managed to fit much knitting and blogging into my new routine!) than Knitting and Crochet Blog Week.

My tale begins with the dyed:

This hank of 4-ply Bluefaced Leicester is destined to be a birthday Ishbel for the Boy’s sister. I’ve had it in mind to knit her a shawl for a while now, but after gifting Holden to their mum for her birthday she proclaimed how much she would love one for her birthday. Whilst I’m a little sad that it’s not going to be a surprise any more, at least I know that it’s something she wants!

Anyway, back to the yarn. The Boy tactfully managed to find out that she’d love a shawl that was a dirty lilac colour but definitely not too purple, and proudly relayed his good work back to me. I was a little perplexed as to what exactly a dirty lilac was, but luckily my Google-fu was on form that day, although I still wasn’t sure how to stop it from being too purple. In the end I just decided to dive right in and see what happened.

It’s been a while since I did any dyeing, and this is the first time I’ve dyed to order. My usual dyeing “technique” is to have a vague idea of an end colour and then throw colours in the pot until I’m happy, so it was a little stressful to try and dye to something quite specific but it was still a lot of fun. I added things a little ad hoc, a bit of this and a little of that, and just played around with it. I wish I’d kept a few notes on what colours I’d used, because I think this is a lovely colour and I’d love to try reproducing it for myself some day. Perhaps it’s a little too purple for L, but I did try to grey it out slightly and I think the result is wonderfully fresh colour which reminds me of Parma Violets, perfect for spring.

It’s come out as a subtle semi-solid, which is my favourite kind of yarn. I’m not too big on variegated yarns, and solids can sometimes be a little too plain, but there can be so much depth in a semi-solid. I can’t wait to see how this knits up!

Onto the next yarn, and a bit of a cheat since it not strictly plied!

I’ve obsessing over spinning some silk for the past couple of months when I remembered that I had some silk noil lurking in my stash.

I carded some vanilla noil with some turquoise, added a dash of petrol blue and a generous helping of waste silk strands.

I’m still very much a novice at fibre preparation so I’ve no idea whether I was doing it properly, but I ended up with some pretty rolags. I love how the brilliant white of the silk waste contrasts against the pillowy cloud soft noil. It has such a dreamy quality to it.

 

I did start spinning this up, but I think I’ve spoilt it (plus the photos are terrible because they were taken at night!). 

I’ve spun it pretty thin, and although it’s still kind of pretty and still soft, nowhere near as wiry as it looks… it still looks wiry. I knew when I carded the fibre that it was going to be a textured neppy yarn, which is something I usually shy away from in favour of smoother yarns, but I can’t help feeling that I’ve made an incredible mess of this. I know that silk can take a lot of twist, but I think that I’ve overdone it slightly so I’m hoping that a lot of this comes out when I ply.

To be honest I wish I’d spun this a lot thicker with a little twist to preserve all that poufy loftiness that I loved so much in the unspun fibre. Or even just drafted it to a thin pencil roving and knit it up like that. But that’s what happens when I rush headlong into a project without thinking things through, and these are lessons learned for next time. And it’s still a pretty yarn, even if it’s not as pretty as I’d planned.

Pin It