The latest addition to our ever-expanding collection of crockery

But it looks like there’s something missing in this knitter’s household. One, where are the biscuits? And two, what about a Tea Cosy?

Tea pot with the obligatory tea cosy and biscuit tins

The stitch pattern is a classic honeycomb stitch, which, despite appearances, is a very easy slip stitch pattern. In other words, you only knit one colour at a time. However, I did use a genius technique to avoid the jog in the stripes on crown of the cozy. TECHknitter explains all on her blog – I used her so-called travelling jogless stripes variation. Can you see where I changed colour?

Invisible change of colour on the crown of the cozy.

When I had finished the cosy, it looked a bit bare. In my mind a tea cosy needs a whimsical flourish on top. Enter i-cord. I made a long cord using all available colours, and added it to the crown of the cosy.

I-cord crown in all its glory

I knitted this tea cosy using left-overs from a number of Fair Isle swatches, using Foula wool. Magnus and Justyna from Foula Wool have asked me to write a knitting pattern for a men’s cardigan, so I’ve been swatching like crazy. Those of you who follow me on Twitter and Instragram will have seen some swatches already.

Foula Swatch Number 1

Foula Swatch Number 2

Foula Swatch Number 3

Knitting the swatches and the tea cozy has allowed me to get to know the yarn. It has a great handle and is full of character. And of course, I love the seven natural colours it comes in. As it’s a DK weight, it knits up quickly. As somebody asked me this on twitter: the swatches are knitted in the round, with additional steek stitches. These are knitted with both colours together. I only casted off the fabric, not the steek stitches, as these were all dropped down all the way. Then I cut all the loose strands and knotted them in pairs using a reef knot. For swatch two I made a calculation error, so I ended up with only three steek stitches, so I used a crochet reinforcement instead.

I have now selected the stitch patterns I want to use. If you want to know how the cardigan will turn out, you will have to be patient, as I will reveal the cardigan and knitting pattern during Wovember 2013. But don’t be surprised if I post some teaser pictures in the meantime.

The Tea Cosy is Ravelled here.

Aleatoric Fair Isle: my first swatch, Da Rulez notebook, dice and chart

Today, I would like to share some of my own thoughts on my personal experience so far; and, of course, reveal a swatch!

But first let me briefly recap the concept of Aleatoric Fair Isle. Both Felicity and myself find inspiration from a variety of, sometimes, unlikely sources. So when we were exitedly chatting about both having been invited to Shetland Wool Week, John Cage popped up on our conversation. John Cage was a 20th Century composer who was inspired by everyday sounds and questioned what it means to make music. He frequently employed what are now commonly known as aleatoric processes, whereby its course is determined in general, but depends on chance in detail***.

Aleatoric Fair Isle Chart, with the all-important dice

Both Felicity and I find John Cage’s ideas very inspiring and we were sure that these can be applied outside the realm of modern music. Of course, we’re not the first to be inspired by music, or using chance to create charts. We both love the Fair Isle knitting tradition, with its myriad choice of patterns and colours. And therein lies the rub. Neither of us have grown up within this tradition, and for us to design a Fair Isle pattern means thinking really hard about these elements.

A typical KNITSONIK/tomofholland Aleatoric Fair Isle out-of-focus teaser picture

So what happens if you let go of choice and deliberation, and roll the dice instead? At the start of this exciting journey Felicity and I spent hours discussing The Rules. How to determine what patterns to choose, whether they are placed horizontally or vertically, which colours to use, and how to place the colour sequences – all these things we have tried to capture in rules. We’ve made a number of grids, we have a palette of beautiful colours to choose from (kindly supplied by Jamieson and Smith,) and we have dice. For some rules we use the number as rolled, for others we look at whether it’s odd or even.

It will come as no surprise that each swatch and each chart so far (I’ve knitted four swatches now,) has led to new iterations of our rules. One surprising outcome for me was that although usually I find colour selection and placement the most difficult part in Fair Isle design, it was the pattern selection processes that has been most difficult to pin down.

Many Fair Isle knitting books tell you that most patterns can be placed vertically as well as the somewhat more usual horizontal way, however, I seem to have a real issue with this. Each time the dice tell me I have to place the patterns vertically, I feel a reluctance to do so and I’m sorely tempted to keep rolling until I get to place them horizontally – so far I have managed to overcome my aversion, although when I finally got a horizontal placement again for swatch 5, I was almost disappointed! Clearly, not only am I learning about my own preferences, I’m also changing them through the aleatoric processes.

Here is my Aleatoric Fair Isle Swatch Number 1. I hope you will enjoy following us in our journey, so keep an eye out for more teasers and the occasional unveiling of a swatch on both Felicity’s blog and mine.

———

*) Follow us on twitter: @KNITSONIK and @tomofholland; #AleatoricFairIsle

**) and yes, also on instagram: (@felixbadanimal and @tomofholland; #AleatoricFairIsle)

***) A quote from Meyer-Eppler, read some more about Aleatoric processes and chance operations here.

Followers of thedomesticsoundscape and tomofholland will know that we like mixing our knitting with sounds, literature, wool-appreciation and archival or collecting practices! We first met at a launch in Prick Your Finger where I was exhibiting “The Reading Gloves”, a collection of hand-knitted gloves portraying literary figures like Lady Chatterley and Dorian Gray. In our second meeting, (also at Prick Your Finger) Felicity was making “KNITSONIK 01″ – a podcast about the sonic world of knitters. Considering our mutual interest in the auditory, the literary, all things woollen, and making our own archives and libraries, it should come as little surprise that we have invented a new project for Shetland Wool Week that combines all these elements!

This project is “Aleatoric Fair Isle” and anyone who follows us on instagram will already have seen some tasty glimpses of the outcomes.

But wait a second: what is this “Aleatoric” when it’s at home? In musical terms, aleatoric music is “music in which some element of the composition is left to chance”.

There are several examples of knitters appropriating aleatoric processes in order that some knitted compositions leave an element to chance – an aleatoric pattern generator; a child’s sweater in which the cables are all determined by die rolls; and I bet some of you have found similar projects!

However what we have become specifically interested in for “Aleatoric Fair Isle” is finding ways of using dice to liberate us in our explorations of Fair Isle knitting and remove some of our anxiety over colour choices, pattern placement etc. which we have found can impede the pleasure of experimenting. Although this may not be true in Shetland, in the prim South of England where we are based, many knitters – including us – seem mildly afraid of designing stranded colourwork! Informal chats with knitbuddies reveal fears of choosing colours that don’t work well together, of making something ugly or un-wearable, and ultimately, of wasting time or yarn on making things that are unpleasing. In our own experiments, we have found we veer towards using the same safe and familiar palettes and patterns, rather than venturing forth with boldness! This seems a shame when the Jamieson & Smith shade card offers such an infinite variety of daring possibilities to the adventurous knitter, and when examples from the Shetland Textile Museum convey such a wealth of incredible possibilities.

To combat our fear of failure, to challenge our own ingrained tendencies, and to find a way of approaching the inspiring world of Fair Isle knitting, we have devised a system for remixing Fair Isle patterns based on both observing some principles of colour theory, and leaving many of our decisions to the roll of a dice.

Our experiment is loosely based on one aleatoric musical composition by John Cage – “Apartment House 1776″ – Apartment House 1776 was composed to coincide with the bicentennial celebrations of American Independence, and is meant to evoke the sense of sticking your head out of the window of an apartment in 1776, and hearing drifts of music from the instruments and composers of that time appearing in snatches and snippets on the wind. Charlton Lee comments in a review,” one can still recognize that the music comes from the language of the 18th century, but often the harmonic function is destroyed, morphing the result into a bright and fresh new gesture. When a cadence has been lost, two separate phrases seem to blend into one longer thread”.

As in Cage’s composition, we like the idea that you could stick your hand into our eventual pile of samples and have a similar sense to Cage’s audiences; that of finding something recognisably “Fair Isle” but also reworked into something new, and fresh. We are using Mary McGregor’s amazing book “Fair Isle Knitting Patterns: Reproducing the Known Work of Robert Williamson” as our source text. This book details the knitting patterns noted by Robert Williamson, 1885 – 1954, spotted in Shetland, which we are reworking in 21 shades of Jamieson & Smith yarn.

Our creative experiment, “Aleatoric Fair Isle”, will result in the creation of a great number of Fair Isle swatches derived from dice rolls to determine patterns used, and yarn-shades chosen at random.

In homage to Cage (who was a great appreciator of everyday sounds) the sounds we hear whilst knitting each of the swatches will be carefully documented. Our respective discoveries and process will be shared on our different blogs (Felicity’s blog can be found here), twitter (@knitsonik, @tomofholland), facebook, and instagram (@felixbadanimal, @tomofholland), and where all relevant photos will be hash-tagged #AleatoricFairIsle, but the full experiment and its workings will only be completely unleashed in its full glory at Shetland Wool Week! So far we have knit a couple of swatches and it has been extremely fun to put our ideas into practice. We have ended up using colours which we would never have thought to combine, in patterns which we may not otherwise have chosen, which is exactly the point of our experiment!

All the images used in this post first appeared in the instagram feeds of @tomofholland or @felixbadanimal!

Sanquhar vs Fair Isle mash-up swatch in Foula wool

Let me start off by saying that I’m very excited that I have been invited by Shetland Wool Week this year to work on a project together with my friend and purveyor of finest quotidian sound artefacts, Dr Felicity Ford. We will be joined by talented knitwear designed Di Gilpin., who was awarded The Balvenie Master of Craft award for the Textiles Category for 2012. I, for one, cannot wait to go to the Isles that have such rich knitting traditions and see them firsthand.

Shetland Wool Week, image © Dave Wheeler and used with kind permission

Secondly, those of you who are familiar with Susan Crawford’s work probably know she is working on a Vintage Shetland book. I’m pleased to say she has asked me again to knit a sample garment for her. It will be a very special Fair Isle jumper, and that’s all I’m allowed to say for now.

Lastly, my obsession with Sanquhar gloves knows no bounds, and I will be doing some research on them over the summer. A good excuse to 1) knit some more Sanquhar gloves; and 2) plan a visit to the Knitting Reference Library.

In preparation for all these stranded colourwork projects, I thought I’d investigate something that’s intrigued me for a while now. It’s colour dominance in stranded colourwork.

The top and bottom bands shows the Midge and Fly pattern from Sanquhar. The middle bands show typical Fair Isle patterns: a classic OXO border pattern and a peerie pattern to separate the two.

Although Sanquhar knitting typically only uses two colours, and Fair Isle usually a greater number of colours, for both you will only ever knit with two colours in one given row of knitting. This can be achieved in a number of ways. In all cases, you will strand the colour not in use along the back of the fabric, hence the name “stranded colourwork.”

The back of my swatch, showing the strands of the yarn not in use

For a long time, I used to knit with one colour in each hand: the one in my left hand to be knitted continental style, and the one in my right hand to be knitted English style. But I was never quite happy with my tension as the stitches made continental style were much looser than the one made English style. This was exacerbated by the nature of stranded colourwork: one yarn will always appear more dominant than the other. If you peer over the needles whilst you’re doing stranded colourwork, you will see that one yarn will always come from underneath the other. Usually, this is the dominant yarn.

In order to even out my tension problems between left and right hand, I first tried holding both yarns in my right hand. That didn’t work for me at all and not soon after I started knitting with both yarns in my left hand. My tension between dominant and non-dominant yarn is much more even now. I was curious to find out how big the difference is, in order to make an informed decision for my next stranded colourwork project. I decided to use both Sanquhar and Fair Isle patterns, as the effect might be different. The bottom half was knitted such that for each row, the light colour was on the right of my index finger, and the dark colour on the left. The peerie pattern (the small band separating the two bands of OXO patterns,) is where I switched over and the top half was knitted with the light colour always on the left and the dark on the right.

Bottom half: lighter yarn always on the right on my index finger, and darker yarn always on the left

Looking at the Sanquhar Midge and Fly pattern in the bottom half,the white stitches appear to be larger than the black ones, and the flies appear almost more like vertical stripes rather than small crosses, especially in close-up. As you can see from the picture of the back of the swatch, the floats of white yarn almost hide the black yarn floats.

Top half: lighter yarn always on the left of my index finger, darker yarn always on the right

Now for the top half: again, looking at the Midge and Fly pattern, I think that the black and white stitches are much more even in size, yet somehow the flies seem to be a bit less pronounced in the top half. In addition, I find the results of switching dominant yarns less obvious in the OXO border patterns.

Before knitting this swatch, I was convinced I would be able to clearly show which way looks better, and make up my mind about which side (left or right,) I ought to use as the dominant yarn. However, now I’m not so sure. For each of the Sanqhuhar and the Fair Isle, which one do you think looks better, top or bottom half of the swatch?

Hope & Elvis studio, darning examples and reference books on display

By 10am everybody had turned up, and after an introduction to my Visible Mending Programme, I used some of my darned garments to discuss a variety of techniques. I explained why I had chosen them, and what the advantages and disadvantages of each technique was. Then, whilst having a cuppa and a biccie, each student showed what they had brought to repair and we discussed ideas together.

Repair in progress at Hope & Elvis

Throughout the day I demonstrated stocking darning, Swiss darning, Scotch darning* and giving hints and tips on what materials to use, make people think about whether their darns would be practical or an embellishment. Needless to say, I also showed my Speedweve, and I was so pleased to see that Louise not only had one herself, but that she also had a Star darning machine!

A darn in contrasting thread

Louise’s studio is crammed from floor to ceiling with vintage haberdashery, blankets, fabrics, needlework gadgets, threads, yarns, old and new books, and it was fantastic to have all of this to our disposal. Although we had a break for lunch, most people were keen to continue stitching, and I think that when you see the following pictures you’ll agree that everybody made something amazing on Saturday. With apologies in advance: I haven’t remembered everybody’s name – I must be getting on a bit…

Marks made on a blanket

Pattern darning sampler

Buttonhole filling stitch by Mister Finch

Sock stitch sampler

Sturdy sock embellished with damask darning

Delicate darning by Dawn

Patched up ripped underarm seam by Sarah

Meta-darning of a tear in a paisley scarf

It feels good to know that there are a few cardigans, tops and scarves back in the wardrobe, rather than lurking in the mending basket!

I hope my next darning class will be just as successful. It’s coming Friday, 10 May, and there are still a few places left if you’d like to sign up.

*) On Scotch darning: for months now I have been trying to find a copy of a particular edition of Weldon’s Encyclopaedia of Needlework, which explains the Scotch darning technique. I have discussed variations on it in this post, but Saturday was my lucky day. Louise had two copies of said edition, so she gifted one to me! Here is The Page:

Scotch darning explained

Ten shades of Appleton’s crewel wool, and a boring jumper

It was time to say Bye Bye Boring Jumper, and Hello Amazing Jumper:

Bye Bye Boring Jumper, Hello Amazing Jumper!

In a way this is a darning sampler gone slightly out of hand. The bottom half consists of blocks of crewel wool woven in and out of the stitches of the knit fabric:

Damask darning on knitted fabric

As you can see, there’s plenty of different patterns to make, and yet I think I’ll run out of jumper before running out of ideas! In some patterns I pick up a single “leg” of a knit stitch, in others I pick up a whole stitch, or even more. Some of these patterns are based on existing patterns from other sources. There are quite a number of herringbone variations, a Prince of Wales Sanquhar tweed pattern, and a simple houndstooth, too.

The pattern in the middle is based on the Prince of Wales Sanquhar pattern

Unsurprisingly, weaving in and out of the fabric mutes the colours of the crewel wool when seen from a distance. And these colours do deserve to be seen in all their glory:

Appleton Bros. Ltd. London, 100% Wool, made in England Crewel Wool

So I have just started adding a row of what I have called “Finnish” darning in the past, by want of a better word. This really shows off the colours:

As an aside, when I was browsing through a stumpwork book, it turns out that in this needle lace tradition it is called Corded Single Brussels Stitch, but, as a few people have pointed out, it also appears to be a variation of nålbinding. Whichever name you use for this stitch, I just love the way it looks.

It might take a little while yet to finish the Hello Amazing Jumper, but I will be taking it to my one-day darning workshop to share these techniques at Hope & Elvis on Saturday, 4 May (please note, this is now fully booked.) I will also run the same workshop in Glasgow, on Saturday, 18 May at The Stitchery Studio - for which there are still a few places available.

Last but not least, I’ll be running my usual darning class at Super+Super HQ on Friday evening, 10 May.

A selection of hand-spun yarns, all from rare British breeds

As you will find out, I have learnt a lot whilst spinning up these yarns, not least, that I really enjoy spinning and preparing my own fibres. So, let me take you through my latest skeins:

First up, a selection of Herwick yarns. Herwick is a very hardy sheep breed, and is native to the Lake District. They have a very distinctive face, and their woolly coat is perfect for the rainy and windy conditions of their natural home. It contains a lot of kemp (white brittle fibres) and hair (dark smooth fibres) as well as wool fibres. The large amount of kemp and hair means rain runs off their coats very easily. It also means, that resulting yarns can be very scratchy and are usually used for hardwearing carpets. This fibre was generously gifted to me by Vicky from Eden Cottage Yarns and she got the fleece from a Herdwick shepherd in the Lake District.

Herdwick in all its glory! From left to right: woollen 2ply, felted woollen single, worsted 2ply

However, if you first comb the fibres, it is quite easy to separate most of the wool from the kemp and hair. The combing waste can then be carded. This means you can create some very different yarns, all from the same sheep. It’s amazing! You can see this in the picture above: on the right, a yarn made from the combed top, worsted spun, then plied. As I had a lot of combing waste, I could try out some different things. The skeins on the left and in the middle were both spun from carded fibre, and I made my first attempt at longdraw drafting, to create a woollen yarn. Admittedly, this is easier done on a spinning wheel, but it can be done with a spindle, and I kept the beginners technique of “park-and-draft” in mind for this, which is one way of achieving this. For the longdraw, I built up a lot of twist in the leader, then parked the spindle between my feet and slowly let the twist escape between my drafting fingers and run up into the rolag. Granted, this is not something to do for a long period of time, as it’s not a very ergonomical method. Then I finished the woollen singles in different ways. The skein on the left is a standard 2ply, the skein in the middle was felted by agitating the skein in hot soapy water and shocking it in a cold bath, followed by some wacking against the rim of our bath tub.

Mixing breeds: top-to-bottom shows Herdwick 2ply, Herdwick plied with Lincoln, Lincoln 2ply

Another thing I tried was plying a fat woollen Herdwick single, with another classic British sheep breed: Lincoln. Lincoln is a typical longwool sheep, with lots of lustre. Longwools often don’t have any hair or kemp mixed in at all. Such a contrast to the Herdwick! I found the Lincoln quite a challenge to spin, as its staple length is quite fenomenal!

Lincoln fibres lashed onto my wool combs

Not only does it show some resistance to being twisted, the staple length was very long, and my spindle didn’t allow me a lot of time to draft, before I had to set it in motion again. Also, the plying was a challenge, and the end result in the skein above is an unintentional bouclé. A second skein turned out better, and it shows off the lustrous quality of the Lincoln fibres:

Shiny Lincoln yarn

But this is not the only longwool I played with. I also still had rather a lot of Wensleydale!

Wensleydale longwool in natural colours.

I tried out quite a few things here, and this time, I struggled with the commercial preparation, as it is very slippy, and again, my spindle worked against me. This didn’t stop me from trying an intentional bouclé, made by plying up a S-spun and a Z-spun single. You can see it in the white skein, and in the grey skein on the left. I’m not so keen on how it came out, but I think there is still lots to be learnt about the amount of twist I put in both singles and the plied yarn. To be revisited in the future. The grey skein on the right, however, I really love. It’s a cabled 4ply. My singles were Z-spun, then I created two 2ply yarns with an S-twist, and these got plied together with another Z-twist. Again, there is still lots of improvements to be made on the amount of twist at the various stages.

After struggling with all the longwool and its slippery nature, I had to put aside the dark-brown Wensleydale as I wasn’t quite sure on how to improve. And I’m glad I did, as a few weeks ago Cecilia Hewitt, her husband Graham, Felix, Prick Your Finger‘s Rachael and yours truly all met up and we had a great time spinning and chatting and drinking tea.

Cecilia explained a lot of things to me about spinning, and when working through my Wensleydale, I learnt about pre-drafting compacted fibres, checking the amount of twist you’re putting in, and last but not least, how a spindle that spins longer could help me deal with those long, slippery Wensleydale fibres! I’m very grateful for the bottom whorl spindle she gifted to me, as I really enjoyed spinning with it.

Wensleydale lace-weight yarns. Left: plied from a centre-pull ball, right: plied from two separate balls

As you can see, I managed to get some really nice lace-weight yarns. I tried two different methods of managing the two singles for plying up. I tried using a centre-pull ball, neatly wound up on a nostepinne. I didn’t enjoy the process of plying from this and you can see that in the left skein: it’s a bit hard and wiry. In fact I got so frustrated I just had to stop and wind the two ends of the centre-pull ball into two separate balls. Lo’ and behold, the skein on the right looks much more relaxed and happy and you can feel that difference, too.

Meanwhile I have combed the left-overs from the Lincoln, and carded some Shetland fleece, so I will soon have more spinning to share.

Drop-in darning at Wool House. Photograph © Campaign for Wool and used with their kind permission

As you can see, it was really rather busy – and it was like that all weekend long. In the background you can see two felted wallhangings by Claudy Jongstra. I’d love to see some of her large site-specific installations. Some people knew I was going to be at Wool House, so they brought along holey jumpers and socks, but I also provided swatches to practise on.

Concentration at Wool House. Photograph © Howard Sullivan, Your Studio and used with his kind permission

I also ran a darning master class. As this was more in-depth, I had to restrict this to six people only, but many people watched over our shoulders. For many, darning seems to be connected to memories of grandmothers or mothers regularly taking up darning mushroom and needle. These stories got shared with other visitors and me – somehow this simple act of repairing, either by doing or by observing, is very emotive.

Master class in darning. Photograph © Sue Craig and used with her kind permission

We learnt how to do Swiss darning, or duplicate stitching: a good way to reinforce threadbare fabric which hasn’t developed into a hole yet.

Swiss darning in action. Photograph © Sue Craig and used with her kind permission

And of course, we also wielded darning mushroom and needle. The darning mushroom in particular opened up conversations about mending, as many people have their nan’s or mum’s one, or remember somebody in their family using one frequently. Whilst darning, people start to reflect on repairing garments, what certain items of clothing mean to them, their motivation for repair, and how they get completely absorbed in the act and find it meditative and relaxing. I think this is probably in great contrast to the times when people had the necessity to darn and repair their clothes and it was viewed as a chore.

Stocking darning, the finer points. Photograph © Sue Craig and used with her kind permission

Of course, I was very happy that darning was so popular, although it did mean I didn’t get a chance to look around as much as I would’ve liked to, or chat to other people showing their skills. Luckily some of my friends took pictures that they have let me use with their kind permission. As the beautifully curated rooms have been discussed at length in other places, I have picked here a very small selection of all the things I would’ve wanted to have learnt more about:

Savile Row tailoring: as I have tried to do some more sewing lately, I’m utterly in awe of all the work that goes into making a suit or a couture gown.

Pattern blocks. Photograph © Howard Sullivan, Your Studio and used with his kind permission

I may have mentioned before that I have taken up spinning as well. One of the things I want to do soon, is use my handspun yarn for weaving. After all, darning is weaving on a really teeny-tiny scale! I’ll start with a simple home-made frame loom; it’ll be a while yet before I will be able to make something as beautiful as Jason Collingwood can, using a huge loom.

Jason Collingwood weaving. Photograph © Howard Sullivan, Your Studio and used with his kind permission.

As somebody who really likes hand-stitching buttonholes – yes, really! – I could not finish this post with a perfect example of the art.

A buttonhole, perfectly stitched by hand. Photograph © Howard Sullivan, Your Studio and used with his kind permission.

With many thanks to Campaign for Wool,  Howard Sullivan of Your Studio and Sue Craig, who runs Knitting the Map, for letting me use their pictures.

One final post-script: you can still sign up for my sock-knitting three-week course; taking place 14, 21 and 28 April. More details here.

I’m happy to announce that in April, I will start my first sock-knitting short course!

This sock knitting course is aimed at the intermediate knitter, who already knows how to cast on, knit, purl, increase, decrease, and cast off. You may have knitted a sweater, but haven’t tried knitting in the round yet. I will teach you how to knit basic, well-fitting socks on double-pointed needles from the cuff down.

During the first session (Sunday, 14 April, 11am-1pm), you will learn how to knit in the round on double-pointed needles (also known as DPNs); a suitable cast-on technique for socks; and taking the right measurements. Then, when you get home, you can be confident to cast on the right number of stitches to knit the cuff and the leg.

During the second session (Sunday, 21 April, 11am-1pm), you will learn how to turn the heel. Although I’ve knitted many socks, I still find turning the heel a small miracle. I will also show you how to decrease for the toe. Again, I’d expect you to do some home work, and knit all the way to the toe.

During the third session (Sunday, 28 April, 11am-1pm), you will learn how to graft the toe closed. This technique is sometimes known as Kitchener stitch. We’ll discuss some common sock knitting pitfalls and you’ll leave with the confidence and knowledge to knit sock number two, three, four, and more!

Sock wool and a set of double-pointed needles are included in the price, as is a handy cheat sheet to refer back to techniques and to help record all the necessary numbers to continue your sock knitting adventures. All this for a mere £65! the classes are held at Super+Super HQ, Brighton.

You can sign up by following this link.

Socks with a Sanquhar-inspired design.

First of all, a few announcements on upcoming classes and workshops:

Sock Knitting

Whenever I run a darning class I show my hand-knitted socks that I have darned. For all of you who have asked if I will teach sock knitting, I can now say: yes I do!

My first sock knitting class is in April, run over three consecutive Sundays (14, 21, 28 April). I will expect participants to do some “homework,” but as this involves knitting, I think it could be worse. You can book here and find more details. This class is aimed at the confident beginner, who already knows how to cast on, cast off, increase and decrease. Learn to knit in the round, turn heels and graft toes.

Darning

Darning is really taking off, and I will be doing quite a few events in the next few months, spreading my love for darning and mending.

First of all, I will be at Wool House at Somerset House, London, for some drop-in darning this weekend (16, 17 March) and a darning class on Friday, 22 March. All for free! Wool House showcases some different uses for wool, and promises to be spectacular.  Check all Wool House events here, including my darning activities.

Secondly, I will be doing my regular Super+Super HQ darning class on Friday, 10 May.

You can book for this event here. And for those of you who wonder: although these techniques are used for knitwear repair, no previous knitting experience is necessary.

Still there is more! Third and fourth mention go to two one-day darning workshops. These run from 10am-4pm and are a more informal affair. I will introduce the concept of Visible Mending, show examples of various techniques, and then we’ll discuss everybody’s repair needs. Then we will all just pick up needle and thread and start mending!

I will be at Hope & Elvis, in Worksop, Nottinghamshire on Saturday, 4 May. This event is now sold out.

I will be at The Stitchery Studio, Glasgow on Saturday, 18 May. Find details here to sign up.

And more…

Yes, there is still more to share! I will just give you some glimpses of what has kept me so busy in the last four weeks or so. I will expand on all of this in my next few blog posts:

The Curiosity Cabinet of Knitting Stitches was exhibited at Prick Your Finger, London:

Crafty Magazine interviewed me about The Curiosity Cabinet of Knitting Stitches. It’s a new magazine and it will also feature male crafters, because we do exist!

I have been bitten by the spinning bug. I went to the spinners meet-up at The Green Centre last Friday, where Sue Craig is leading the Knitting The Map project. The aim is to prepare, spin, dye and knit a 1792 map of Brighton; known as Brighthelmstone at the time. I spun up some Lincoln longwool, which I combed myself:

When I went to Prick Your Finger last weekend to collect my Curiosity Cabinet, we had a right spin-off, as Cecilia Hewett was visiting, and so was Felicity Ford. You may have read her three-part spinning story over on the Wovember blog. She gave me some invaluable advice on how to spin Wensleydale wool into a lace weight yarn:

I have also been knitting a jumper, mixing some amazing deepest, darkest Romney from Prick Your Finger with some of my first handspun:

And I haven’t even started taking pictures of my machine knitted swatches. My friend Amy Twigger Holroyd, who runs the fashion label Keep & Share, and who is working on amazing PhD research, invited me round to her studio for an introduction to machine knitting. Despite my initial prejudices, I really enjoyed it! I hope to do more in the near future.

And more darning. Yes indeed! If all this wasn’t enough, I went to the first Brighton Repair Café a few weeks ago. The Repair Café Foundation was originally founded in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, but has gained huge momentum and has gone global now. I first heard about it at the MendRS Symposium and I was so glad to see that we now have one in Brighton, too.

I think I’m done sharing for now. I hope to see you at one of my sock knitting or darning classes or at Wool House. I hope you have all been creatively occupied, too, with exciting new projects!