Category: News

A dog is for Christmas 

Posted on by Alice Neal

….

No. Wait. Life.

A dog is for life.

But since Christmas is nearly upon us, how about she gets to join in with the festivities?

Juno, our  little Jack Russell princess, remember? The one who pokes her nose out of the door as a barometer? Then swivels on her heel (so to speak) and hides behind the sofa if conditions are less than perfect?

Well, in an effort to drag her from her grump and into the great outdoors…

… she has a new Christmas jumper.

If you have a petite pooch of your own, who feels the cold and needs some festive cheer, you can find the pattern on the Loveknitting.com blog over here (and it’s free till 18th December)

Now… back to the Christmas knitting !

(And yes, I gave her the biscuit 😂)

Cozy Toes

Posted on by Alice Neal

And snuggly calves.

And knobbly knees.

It’s all a bit frantic around here just now, with Christmas wool coming out of my ears…

But I took about 120g of Drops Big Delight, a pair of 5.5mm circulars and a few hours out over the last few days and made myself a long yearned for pair of boot socks.

Forgive the knees and marvel at the beautiful self-striping magic…


See you on the Yule flip-side (and may it be merry and bright) 💜

Getting all your cats in a row

Posted on by Alice Neal

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I’ve used Millamia naturally soft merino quite a bit of late, so it seemed the natural choice when I wanted to design a jumper for my youngest, little Teddy. He’s quite a sweaty little beast so I didn’t want anything too chunky, after all.

I have begun to love developing charts for intarsia and fairisle. I consider myself a relative novice, but a very enthusiastic one, and I was especially pleased with the rows of stripy cats.

With raglan sleeves and a rolling edge neck, the ‘Kitty Cat’ pattern is now available over on loveknitting.com AND if you’re quick, the Kitten Mitten pattern is free for the rest of this month.

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Yarndale 2016 – lucky me!!

Posted on by Alice Neal

Yesterday, one of my dreams came true.

And, my life the way it is, it really was a stretch that I might actually make it. But the stars aligned 😉 and the world rolled out the red carpet. I mean, hey! Look at my journey:

road-to-yarndale

To top it all off, I met up with the loveliest friend – a friend for a couple of years now, but geographical distance has made meeting up in person an impossibility until yesterday. Perfection.

Now, keeping that in mind – you know, the meeting-friend-for-first-time-in-real-life – AND bearing in mind the fact that I was quite seriously and completely surrounded by scrumptious squishy wool of pretty much every conceivable blend, variety, hue and weight, you’ll understand that I didn’t get too many pictures. When I wasn’t fondling skeins and oohing at colourways, I was catching up on real, proper conversation with the lovely.

I did manage to get a shot of CoopKnits’ beautiful Socks Yeah! range and managed to meet Rachel in person for the first time.

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I was recently asked to review this very yarn, and her book of sock patterns, which you can find here and which looked like this:

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And I WISH I had jotted down who it was displaying this beautiful miniature clothes line, including mermaid’s tail (if any of you recognise it, please do let me know in the comments) :

And boy, but it flew. A day was not enough. Since returning, I have discovered that there were at least a couple of stalls there that I would have loved to have visited but somehow managed not to see at all (though I did manage to catch up with old friends The Knitting Gift Shop and their new and silkily beautiful yarn range). Mind you, it was heaving. Predominantly ladies, a small number of whom trailed husbands (I’m thinking – possibly stereotyping and horrendously sexist –  probably in the guise of packhorse: you can not go to such a place and return empty-handed), many of whom sported the most beautifully assembled handmade garments of the ‘Ooh-do-you-mind-if-I-just-touch-it’ variety. Where else can you go where someone knows the precise yarn from which you knitted your tunic?

Fairly early on I visited the Midwinter Yarns stall. Well, it would be more accurate to say I was pretty much engrossed in conversation when a basket (I love baskets. Don’t you love baskets? I would HOARD baskets if I had the space) of pure loveliness caught my eye. Pure in every sense. Pure wool. From Greenland. In… *gasp*… greys. Man, I love greys.

“Too rich for my blood. I mean, there isn’t even a price on it. It must be beyond my purse” I sighed, already defeated.
“Do you think?” my lovely companion challenged. “It’s in a basket after all, is there not a price?”
Lo and behold, there was! And these fabulous, gorgeous, hulking great 100g hanks of scratchy grey wool (the very BEST kind) were only a fiver apiece.

Six skeins and a plastic bag later, I had my fix for the rest of the day, every so often caught in the act of burying my face in the bag and inhaling the fabulous, authentic sheepy smell, only to be met with a conspiratorial wink, or a knowing look, from people who knew what it was about. Oh, the joy of being amongst your own kind 😉

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Needless to say, in spite of the million and one WIPs I already need to finish, I had to cast on, just, you know, to see? You know? I know you know.

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It’s beyond beautiful.

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Oh, and it was definitely a day for making friends:

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Now, where did I put my knitting?

 

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Dog jumpers – the story

Posted on by Alice Neal

Would you believe, I have FOUR to choose from now?

I find it hard to resist, not because I think animals look cute in clothing (though, obviously, I do) but because on a far more practical level, it gets pretty  blooming cold up here in the North of England when winter rolls around.

Juno, our little Jack Russell Princess:

juno

Well, she gets a bit chilly out there. She’s teeny, wiry, fierce as a T-Rex… but chilly. Her natural state is curled up in a beam of sunlight. Sometimes, I am led to suspect she believes herself a cat. She pokes her nose outside the door and, if it’s too cold, wet, snowy, a flat refusal usually follows: a swift 180, nose in the air, and a trot back to the sofa.

So, in an attempt to coax her dainty paws into the fresh air, I designed her a little sweater, little knowing how popular it would prove to be. I’ve had so much lovely feedback telling me how much people have loved making it. The Juno Jumper was born (click here for link to pattern):

Juno Jumper.jpg

Hot on the heels of her little sweater, I was thrilled to be asked to design some Christmas sweaters for Simon Cowell’s Yorkies for ITV’s Text Santa (click here for a link to the pattern):

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But… you know? I started to feel a bit guilty. Juno is not, after all, an only dog. She has a much bigger and (to her) unbearably, overwhelmingly cheerful enforced companion, Aphrodite:

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OK, OK, she’s MUCH bigger now, but loooook. Man. Her tag looks like an enormous medallion!

It was time Aphy got a jumper too.  She provided a goodly challenge though. She has the most ridiculously long and gangly legs. There is no way on God’s green earth we’re hooking those babies through leg holes. So…. some woolly engineering was called for. Buttons, and flaps, and ribbing. Oooh, it was fun! And look – here it is! (click here for link to pattern):

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Oh, but THEN…. I thought wouldn’t it be gorgeous to have a mini one of these, perhaps reversing the colours, for Juno…? How unutterably adorable would that be, on our wintry walks? So….

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(click here for link to pattern).

You will not believe what’s coming next… I’m giggling as I type.

Off to clack some needles!

Third time’s the charm…

Posted on by Alice Neal

Valentine's-blanket

Do you remember this?

In Wendy Aran wool.

It started off being called a Valentine’s Blanket, because I was making it for my love for Valentine’s Day.

Valentine’s Day came and went.

So it became the Birthday Blanket.

His birthday is a distant memory.

So, jokingly, I called it his Funeral Blanket (yes, my sense of humour can, on occasion, be a little dark).

Then on Christmas Day he went and had a bloody heart attack!

So, I’m not finishing this one. It feels jinxed.

SO.

I started another, in one of my favourite yarns: Drops Andes. I figured, hey. On big fat circulars, back and forth, this will knit up quickly.

And it did. But it was soooooooooooooooo boring.

So I abandoned it and will use the wool for something else.

Now, I am making this, in Drops Nepal, and Drops Big Delight, with a 5mm crochet hook, and I. Am. Loving. It.

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It’s fast, and it isn’t boring. A lot like my knitted cardigan, in one plain and one colour-changing yarn, I just love the way the colour graduates through it.

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I’m already plotting the next 😉

 

To bare or not to bare…

Posted on by Alice Neal

… *snigger*

I have two patterns for you.

That’s rather the point.

One, I hinted at at the end of my last post and I cannot tell you how thrilled I was with the way it turned out.

Knitted in stunning Louisa Harding Amitola, with its shiny silken sheen and delicately changing colours, and Millamia naturally soft merino which holds a stitch like no yarn I’ve used before, the stripes kept me hooked throughout the working of this piece. I was forever impatient as to how the next colour would look blended into the rest.

Here, you can see what I mean:

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For the body, I used Millamia naturally soft merino in Putty Grey and Louisa Harding Amitola in Dark Rose.

The ribbing on the cuffs, neck and button band are in the same Millamia wool, in the shade Storm.

It is knitted in the round, top down, with a circular yoke and I blooming LOVE it. It’s light enough to grab as you run out of the door, and warm enough for a snuggly extra layer. I used mother of pearl buttons BUT whilst I think they look beautiful, I have already had to replace 3 broken ones. They are terribly fragile 🙁

Anyway, here it is, in all its glory:

If you fancy having a crack at it yourself, you can find the pattern here.

 

The second piece…

…is all together more risqué. But it was equally fun to create.

Knitted and crocheted in Cascade Yarns Ultrapima 100% cotton in sand and taupe, which look to me like a dull gold and silver, it produces a really lovely, airy but sturdy fabric. Perfect for super-hot days / evenings. I would recommend a little dress tape, though – no running after the kids in this one! 😉

So, you’ll need basic knitting and crochet skills for this one and you can find the pattern over here if you fancy giving it a go.

In other news...

This King Cole Galaxy with integral silver sequins became another piece of knitting / crochet fusion which I may well get around to writing up. It’s light and airy and perfect either on its own or as an off-the-shoulder top layer.

 

And, this jumper in Drops Karisma will be written into a pattern soon, too.

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And this cardi, knitted in Drops Karisma and a beautiful hand-dyed yarn all the way from The Flying Kettle in the ol’ U S of A (look her up on Instagram, her stuff is gorgeous!)

Oh, oh, AND, this sweater:

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I have an AWFUL LOT of pattern writing to do 🙂

By the way, do you like my t-shirt?

tee

Right, I’d best get on and start writing, then! TTFN <3

 

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A catch-up in beautiful yarns…

Posted on by Alice Neal

I’ve been playing with some serious beauties recently.

The first two I’m going to show you I have just finished writing up the patterns for, and they’ll be available on the loveknitting.com website, and in my Etsy shop very shortly.

The first I call In the Shade since the fairisle pattern is a row of trees with their shadows beneath them. It is knitted in Drops Karisma, in light and dark grey, on 4.5mm circulars. And I’m wearing it as I type 😉 Click here for the pattern

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The second is Drops Bomull-Lin, a lovely mix of cotton and linen, in brown and beige (the beige being more like pale gold with its lovely linen sheen). This is my Spring Tunic, knitted in the round on 6mm needles, with eyelet lace details. Click here for the pattern

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Also, I got a surprise parcel in the post: a parcel of beauty I would probably not have bought for myself. And I LOVED the challenge of coming up with something to make from it. It is a combination of Millamia 100% merino and Louisa Harding Amitola, which contains silk, shimmers stunningly, and changes colour gradually throughout the piece. Here it is in progress, but on 3mm needles, it’s a slow process – a cardigan in the making (now finished, click here for the pattern):

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And finally 🙂

Fancy making this?

Here’s how (in UK terms)

1. Using Drops Bomull-Lin in beige (pale gold) and a 4.5mm hook, chain 30.

2. Make a double crochet (dc) into the 2nd chain from hook, and into the next 5 chains. Then chain 16, and make a dc into each of the last 6 chains.

3. Turn, chain 1, insert hook into first dc in row and make a dc into this and the next 5 chains. Then chain 16, and make a dc into each of the last 6 chains.

4. Turn, chain 1, insert hook into first dc in row and make a dc into this and the next. To make the button hole chain 2 and skip the next 2 dc. Make a dc into the next 2 dc. Chain 16, and make a dc into each of the last 6 chains.

5. Turn, chain 1, insert hook into first dc in row and make a dc into this and the next 5 chains. Then chain 16, and make a dc into the first 2 of the last 6, 2 dc into the 2-chain gap, and a dc into each of the last w dc.

Repeat step 3. three more times. You will have 8 rows in all. Sew a button onto the opposite cuff part from the button hole and voila!

Hasta la proxima, peeps. <3

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