Back in October, I took the loooong train ride from Lowestoft to Devon to film an episode of Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas 2021.
Tag: knitting pattern
Socks 5 and 6 of the 52 socks of 2021
I’m quite excited about these, for a number of reasons.
Let me list them for you:
- They are super cosy and snuggly.
- They are bright and cheerful.
- They are, technically, worsted weight and therefore not quite as bulky as my other boot socks
- THEY ARE MACHINE WASHABLE
- They knit up really speedily.
They’re knitted in Novita 7 Veljesta Raita (self-striping) and Lappi (solid colour) on 4mm needles and one ball of self-striping, knitted as I did, does EXACTLY one pair. You’ll only use around 35g (around 70m) of the ball of solid colour.
Let me show you how much of a yarn chicken winner I was with these ones:
I’ve written up the pattern and it is available for a nominal fee of £1 for a while over here.
The Novita Raita self-striping yarn you can find here, and the Lappi solid colour is here.
Do share your pictures with me if you have a crack at them!
Happy knitting <3
Noro Shinryoku Jumper: how I made it.
How to knit my Noro sweater.
Noro Striped Hat and Scarf
Having so much left, I knitted a hat to match which, with hindsight, I would probably have knitted a little longer for a squidge more slouch, but it fits perfectly and is super SUPER warm.
So, without further ado, this is how to knit it:
Dots and Stripes. Dotty Stripes.
No. This post is not about socks.
Although, I have to confess, I could gaze upon the beauty of the beauteous boot socks in perpetuity. I enjoy looking at them almost as much as I enjoy wearing them. And this very frosty northern morning, they are peeping above the tops of my boots and keeping my toes toasty. Over tights, no less. Yes. That’s how I roll.
Oh, and I enjoy wearing them almost as much as I enjoy knitting them.
But I digress.
There is of course a limit as to the number of boot socks you can possess (although as previous posts have explained – teenaged boys + washing machine + wool socks = unmitigated disaster) and I still have quite a lot of scraps of the various yarns I used for creating them.
Added to which, my wardrobe of preloved goodness has expanded this winter, and my colours are all rather autumnal.
I needed a hat to match.
So I made one.
After which, beloved son number 2 requested one (he has a very chilly wait at the bus stop on his way to college in the mornings).
And I really love the colours he chose (and banana cake. And coffee).
After which, I made another one just because I could.
(I also made the lebkuchen because they’re my favourite and the blooming shops have stopped selling them now that Christmas is over. If you love them too, go and check out this recipe. It’s really simple and they’re bloody delicious).
If you have 100g or so of aran weight wool in a few colours and fancy a spotted, dotted, striped hat of your own, you can find the pattern here. And if you do make it, give me a tag? I do love to see it!
Happy Hump Day <3
A Plethora of Inconsequential Nonsense
Good morning my fellow woolly friends (and of course any non-woolly ones who happen to have popped by for a visit).
I’m sitting here with a large bowl of porridge, made with coconut milk, fresh blueberries and just a little wildflower honey and all is well with the world. All children are deposited at their requisite educational establishments and Aphrodite and I have had a good ol’ stomp by the river.
Which leads me neatly to the reason for my post, really.
It’s becoming a year of new and healthy habits. Healthy not just physically, but mentally and fiscally, too. Working from home, and for myself, from a house that is in various states of ongoing repair (it was a bargain – we knew what we were taking on, but with five sons and our own businesses, it’s slow progress!) it is all too easy to prevaricate myself into a stupor. I can quite happily reach the end of the day, having squawked about like a headless chicken, and feel I have achieved almost nothing at all.
So it’s started with the walk. Every morning like clockwork, straight on from the last small person deposited at his primary school. There are so many beautiful walks around our village that there is no need to follow the same route every day, but inevitably mine takes me down to the river, by way of a field I can’t quite resist because of the several times I’ve come nose to nose with deer down there, and all the way along because of the ducklings and the swan who has just about stopped honking her distress at my presence.
No matter the time pressure of orders that need to be packed up, patterns that need writing up or planning, jewellery that needs to be finished and posted, that 60 – 90 minutes is a reset switch for body and mind. No matter how stressful the school-run time, when I’m back from that wander, I’m ZenWoman. It’s my meditation for the day (remember: “If you haven’t got time to meditate for 20 minutes a day, meditate for an hour” 😉 )
The newest resolution, though, is my Nothing New vow. Perhaps somewhat impulsive, but it feels right. I’m starting with a year, but I’m hoping it just sticks. Where I can make, mend or buy ‘preloved’, I vow to buy nothing new. For 365 days. (With the obvious exception of sundries like undies, right, but even socks I can make.)
The reasons for this are two-fold. The first and most important is my ever-growing distress at the excess and waste we are inflicting with alarming nonchalance on our defenceless planet. Trawl a flea market or two and you’ll find not just decent but actually very NICE stuff, which is often far better made than the tat you find new these days, with the added benefits, often, of the charm of a bygone era, and the cash you hand over not going to huge nameless corporations fuelling underpaid, zero hour, child labour somewhere we should know better not to exploit.
And, of course, it’s cheaper. Win win.
This week’s bargains are a pair of leather boots from eBay for a fiver, and a teapot that matches my recently-inherited china for 99p. Again, on eBay. Off to a flying start.
Bringing it all back to the woolly world, though, I also have a stash-mountain that would probably yarn-bomb most of my street. I wish I were kidding. And it’s good stuff. And I don’t want to get rid of it. So a happy side-aspect of this is that I need to get designing and knitting with what I already have.
(I can hear the howls of laughter as you choke on your morning coffee: “No new yarn!?” I hear you hoot. But I do have the caveat that I am allowed to make new things, which may of course eventually require some new yarn… But I’m going to TRY, OK? I’m going to TRY!)
So, coming up next is my newest pattern: a vintage-inspired cardi which can also be made as a wrapped crop. I’ve been prevaricating their writing for days, and I can prevaricate no longer – so keep your eyes peeled.
À toute à l’heure!
Free Pattern and Chunky Revival
I kind of cut my teeth on chunky. As much as I love DK / 4 ply / even sock yarn, I do sometimes lack the patience, and something I’ve started gets put aside in favour of a weekend speed-knit; a garment I can make and wear in a matter of days, sometimes hours.
After a couple of months of super-fine sock work, I found myself drawn once again to the speedy joy of a chunky jumper.
I posted my Super-Boxy Sweater a week or two ago and am happy to say it’s available for free for a short while, over here.
And it’s sparked a bit of a super chunky revival for me.
No sooner than this one was finished, and realising that the chilly spring will (hopefully) turn into a hot summer before we know it, I’ve been keen to keep going while I can, and am happy to introduce my Vintage Chic Sweater. To my mind, the colours are timeless, the stuff of your grandma’s china, or the sitting room curtains, or that frill my grandmother had around the bottom of the bed – no one does that any more, do they?! It was so beautifully frou-frou.
But I’m fast disappearing down a time-travel rabbit-hole of Vosene shampoo, pink bathrooms, Imperial Leather soap and thick white toast dripping with butter and honey. So back I come to introduce you to my beautiful jumper. Yup, all modesty aside, I think it’s a stunner.
It’s a gentle enough fair-isle for a first colourwork project, and it’s a jumper you could probably knit most of during (are you subjected to these on a regular basis, too?) a Lord of the Rings marathon.
The concept behind it, for me, too, is that I can chuck it on over a tee and jeans or skirt rather than reaching for a jacket on a chilly spring morning, but I’m truly looking forward to wearing it ALL next winter.
If you fancy a go at it yourself, you can find it over here.
In other news, I knitted up a speedy bolero which you may have seen on my instagram or elsewhere. I love it, but the pattern needs tweaking, so have some pics of the original draft for now 🙂
And next? I have two projects on the go – the first is my Vintage Chic Sweater in cotton aran, for a little girl, and a full-sized Vintage Pink Cardigan.
The Super Chunky Passion is not dying out any time soon 🙂
Happy knitting, lovelies! <3
Super-Boxy Sweater
I have at long last written up my pattern for my dolphin blue chunky sweater.
It’s a super-speedy knit and, given the fact that we had snow at the beginning of this week here oop north, you might yet get some use out of it before Spring makes its presence more permanently felt!
It’s designed to be roomy, oversized, boxy and a ‘throw on’, and can be worn up on the shoulders, or pulled down for an off-the-shoulder look. And it’s also designed to be worn mid-hip so you can pair it with jeans or a skirt very easily, or with a long tee underneath for a layered effect.
And it’s written in two oversized sizes, in Paintbox Yarns Wool Mix Super-Chunky, in my case in dolphin blue.
You can find the pattern here, or it’s available for instant download along with a growing back catalogue which is also instantly available when you join me as a patron here.
For the intolerant…
… well, for those who struggle to wear wool, to be more precise.
Like my ma.
She loves jumpers and cardis of all descriptions, but wool sends her horribly itchy. Which, as you can imagine, is massively frustrating for her. And for ME! When I want to make her pretty things but so little acts with as much versatility as wool.
However… All is not lost.
Following hot on the heels of my Dolly Socks, designed and knitted with Debbie Bliss Toast in mind (oh, *hello* cashmere!), I was determined to make her a birthday present of similar intricacy and beauty.
So imagine my delight when this bundle of squishiness appeared on my doorstep (and I say appeared because that it precisely what happened. This particular delivery company doesn’t bother knocking. They just try your door and stick it on your doormat if it’s open. Which is both a lovely surprise and somewhat alarming).
The yarn is by Knit One Crochet Too and is called Cozette. It is 62% silk, 30% cotton and 8% polyamide and it just OOZES that luxurious raw silk feel.
If I tell you I started this pair of lacy socks two days before her birthday, I don’t think you’ll need informing that they didn’t get there on time. They should, in fact, be arriving today – 11 days late. But since I also owe her a jumper from her birthday 2 years ago, with this one I’m already winning, right??
You can see how beautifully the texture of the raw silk holds and emphasises the stitches, and makes the lace pattern stand out.
But best of all, the colourway is called ‘Seaglass’, which is most beautifully synchronous since it combines my two most favourite things: knitting, and making jewellery with the seaglass I comb the beaches up here in the North-East for (click the pics below if you are interested in more information).
I think they came out rather beautifully, but we’ll let mum be the judge of that 😉
The Dolly Socks pattern is available by clicking the link above, but it is also one of February’s Patreon subscriber patterns – for more information on instant access to all those patterns, click the link or look at the Patreon pages above).
Happy knitting, fellow yarnies <3
February Finished.
February was wonderfully productive, I’m delighted to say. I feel like 2019 has brought me back my design mojo, which was waning a little at the end of 2018.
Clockwise from top left (click links for patterns, where available):
- My Dolly Socks, in wool and cashmere superwash – the perfect prettiness for Spring.
- My first pair of gloves, knitted exclusively for me. I haven’t bothered with the pattern as they were my first pair, but I’m already looking forward to designing some beauties, now that I have these ones under my belt. Motto? Feel the fear and do it anyway 😉
- Aphrodite’s new jumper: the Juno’s Friend Jumper. And apparently we’re to expect a late blast of snow in a few days’ time, so that will come in handy. My beloved husband tells me I need to make her a pink spotty one next. Watch this space…
- My Lilac and Lime Bobble Socks, in a not-at-all lilac and lime colourway, which I love to bits with my Duckfeet.
- My husband’s woodland jumper, already tried and tested in the woods, and the pattern for which I have yet to write up, but WILL. I promise <3
I’m already excited to see what March will bring.
Happy knitting, lovelies! <3