Wonder Wool Wales

I went to Wonderwool Wales at the Royal Welsh Showground the other weekend and am only just now getting round to telling you about it. If you've never been, be sure to put it in your diary for next year - if you love artesan yarns & fibres it's really not to be missed.  There is so much to see and do, and of  course buy! I thought I did pretty well on the self restraint front only coming away with this little bundle of hand dyed yarns.

The lovely sunset colours in the bag are Dazzle 4 ply (bluefaced leicester) by the Natural Dye Studio, and the gorgeous golden yellow skein is by Easyknits which has a bit of spangle in it and is appropriately named Twinkle - I have a very good idea what it is going to be when it grows up too..............

Did any of you get to Wonderwool Wales this year? If so what caught your eye, and what temptations did you give in to?

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Knitting Tension (Gauge) for the Terrified: Part 1

So you've spent hours seeking out the pattern of your heart's desire, you've found the perfect yarn to knit it with that you makes your heart sing (and your mouth water!), you've snatched the size needles recommended in the pattern from your stash, you sprint over to your fave knitting seat and just are about to rip that ball band off in joyous frenzy- STOP RIGHT THERE and read on !!!

I know I touched on this subject in my how to substitute yarns of a similar thickness tutorial, but as tension really is the keystone to knitting designs I feel a more in depth forray into this topic is warranted.

A surprising number of knitters skip the vital stage of swatching their tension before embarking on their knitting journey for a number of reasons:

• they are impatient to to start knitting the actual project
• it seems to be a mysterious and unfathomable process
• they are not sure how to go about swatching for and measuring tension - knitted fabric is pretty wriggly isn't it?
• they believe there is a RIGHT or WRONG tension, and feel defeated if theirs doesn't match, so if they don't swatch then they don't have to feel bad about their knitting ability
• it can seem tricky to match the tension exactly and feels like they are fumbling in the dark.
• they are worried about 'wasting' yarn, or running out of yarn if they've used some of it on swatching.

I'm sure you can think of  more reasons why folks avoid the tension swatch - if so, do share by making a comment below.

I can relate to all the above, and confess that in the early days of knitting I never swatched, and sometimes this works out just fine for simple projects, but it often leads to some disappointing results such as:

• it comes out too small or too large
• you can't get your head through the neck opening
• the pieces don't fit very well together when you come to making a garment up
• the resulting knitted fabric 'drops' because it is knit too loose
• the resulting fabric feels stiff because it is knit too tightly
• you run our of yarn before you finish and can't get more in the same dye lot
• the yarn you chose doesn't actually look that good knit up to that pattern afterall.....

After weeks of slaving over a hot pair of needles this can feel disastrous, and all that hard work (and costly yarn) ends up relegated to the back of your wardrobe which is such a shame. For the sake of a couple of extra hours, the outcome could be very different, and a couple of hours seems a small investment of time  to make before committing to all those hours it will take to knit your project.

Now I know that some of you die-hard non-swatchers have heard all this before, but nothing convinces as much as a real example -  seeing really is believing. These two samples were knit with the same yarn and same number of stitches – the only difference was the needle size used – the smaller sample used 2.5mm, and the larger used 4mm. As I hope you can see this has made a huge difference to the dimensions of the finished samples, and should hopefully persuade even the most resistant amongst you to take the time to do that tension swatch.

Next time I'll show you how to measure the tension of your knitted swatch and, more importantly, what to do if yours doesn't match what the pattern is asking for.

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Dyeing Can Be Easy Workshop - 17 May 2014 at Gorseinon with Stitches Coven

If you've always fancied having a go at colouring up your own fabrics but weren't sure where to start,  then this is a great workshop to get you going - click here or hop across to Stitches Coven's blog  for more information.

Unravelling Intarsia, and exciting news from Rowan

I absolutely love colour and am fascinated with different colour combinations and how colours play against each other for different effects, so I was in my element last Saturday with my Intarsia Unravelled Workshop. We had a great time getting to grips with yarn bobbins and the like, and the group were a lovely bunch so there was plenty of fun and banter to be had too.



 


And talking of colour, Rowan have recently launched Pure Wool Worsted, 100% superwash wool which comes in an amazing 50 different shades. To celebrate they are also about to launch their first global Knit Along to make a fabulous mystery Afghan designed by the wonderful Martin Storey - you can see a video about it here. The knit along starts on 21 April and you can find out more about this on Knit and Purl Garden's Blog,  the Rowan website and on Ravelry

Road trip to Torhole Bottom

My friend Jane & I headed out to the wilds of Somerset on Saturday for a textile workshop with the lovely Judy Alexander. Titled Paper, Paint, Cloth & Stitch Judy's workshop involved a number of techniques to transform painted or photographed paper into pieces of textile art showing stitched flowers on layered paper/textiles. 

Artwork by Judy Alexander

These beautiful pieces were created by manipulating painted papers and stitching this with layers of sheers added, then heavily stitched by machine

Detail of one of Judy's artworks

My painting onto paper

First off we were thrown straight out of our comfort zone to quickly paint a picture inspired by flowers - I'm no painter so it was a little eek-worthy! After the initial horror, and Judy's expert guidance, we soon got cracking and found it to be a really enjoyable way to spend a rainy morning.

Once dry we than had fun scrunching up our hard work, and started the fun bit of adding stitch. The day went amazingly fast, and I have plenty more work to do to my piece, but I made a start and hopefully you can see what a difference the processes are starting to make.

I'm looking forward to finishing it before too long, and will definitely add some sheers to the surface - maybe I'll show you the finished item then :-) I enjoyed these techniques and can think of a number of projects I might use them on.....just need a few more hours in the day!