Category Archives: woolfest

woolfest

June 24, 2012 By in Cumbria, design, Kate Davies, knitting, Lake District, woolfest Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 69 Comments


Herdwick lamb


Mel, Felix and I – setting up shop


Wearing our Deco cardigans, and ready for, um, action. . .


Woolfest throng


Periphery


Susan’s stand was utterly delectable. Everything was displayed so beautifully.


Customers admiring Helen’s gorgeous wares.

Natalie’s fab herd-of-sheep stitch markers.


Jen and Nic having a giggle.


Lily France looking fabulous in the Betty Mouat sweater


Bruno the North Ronaldsay ram. What a lovely old boy he is.


Woolsack cushions.


Deconstruction.

There are two rubbish things about my present situation: one is suffering from post-stroke fatigue, and the other is worrying about the grim possibility of whether or not one is going to be suffering from post-stroke fatigue. I can tell you that there was quite a bit of the latter in the lead-up to Woolfest. This was the first time I’d attended any sort of public ‘event’ in my new professional capacity and I was (to put it mildly) concerned about whether or not I was going to be able to manage. Happily, I have three amazing comrades – Tom, Mel and Felix – who shouldered much of the burden, and thanks to them, everything was totally FINE. Things were very hectic, and the weather was insane, but I met many, many lovely people, and it was grand to see folk walking around in sweaters I’d designed, and being generally enthusiastic about what I do. It has been quite a weekend, so I’m going to take a few days off to relax now. In the meantime, I have released the Sheep Carousel and Tír Chonaill patterns as digital downloads, and I will be back in a few days with news about the availability of my kits, if anyone is interested.

new bmc

June 19, 2012 By in color, colour, design, knitting, textiles, woolfest Tags: , , , , , , , , 45 Comments

Just popping in to show you a few photos of the new BMC sample which will be coming with me to Woolfest. I wrote the pattern for two sizes of cowl – small and large. The large one you may have already seen, and this is the small. This size is worked over 7 repeats of the pattern (as opposed to 26) which means that you only have to cast on 147 stitches (as opposed to, ahem, 546).

This sample is worked up in Jamieson & Smith Jumper Weight, and I just love it. The colours in the J&S palette are really complex: one never quite knows, until one starts knitting, just how they are going to appear, or speak to one another. Separate, in the ball, the shades look so distinct, but knitted up together they perform a kind of muted alchemy. The combination in the finished object appears, to me at least, quiet and subtle, like something that has been naturally dyed.

I have never worked with shade FC24 before – that fresh, pale green that forms the cockleshell – but it is rapidly becoming one of my J&S colour favourites.

Anyway, I’ll have a few kits in this colourway with me at Woolfest (each kit contains enough to make a large and a small cowl if you are so inclined). I’ll also have kits for Sheep Heid , Rams and Yowes, Tír Chonaill, and the Sheep Carousel. I’ve been receiving a number of emails and tweets about the availability of the latter: if you are coming to Woolfest, I’m going to do my best to ensure there are enough kits to go round, and I’m also making arrangements for postal and overseas orders. More of this anon.

I’m going to take a proper break now – so I won’t be available to answer any queries until June 26th. See you in a week or so!

Tír Chonaill

June 7, 2012 By in knitting, design, fabric, photography, yarn, patterns, fairisle, interview, Ireland, Kate Davies, wool, woolfest, Kate Davies Designs, Donegal Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 69 Comments

Woolfest is just a fortnight away! I am pleased to say I am mostly prepared (hoping to hear about the whereabouts of the last of my stock today, fingers crossed). I’ve produced two new designs to launch as kits at the event (with yarn and project bags), and sent the patterns off to my printers yesterday. As it really isn’t long till they are published, I thought I’d show you a few photographs in advance. So here’s the first design: it is a Donegal wrap or throw, and I’ve called it Tír Chonaill.

The wrap is knitted in “Soft Donegal” – the same lovely Irish yarn I used for the Bláithín designs. As well as the fresh, Spring-like shades I used for the cardigans, there are a number of deep jewel-like shades in the Donegal Yarns palette that really speak to each other, and which I wanted to bring together. The throw mingles three of these rich shades against a creamy báinín background.

The palette and pattern were inspired by Medieval tapestries. And the name of the design also has historic associations: Tír Chonaill was the name of the last independent Gaelic sovereignty in Ireland: a kingdom which, until the Flight of the Earls in 1607, covered most of what later became County Donegal.

The finished design is about 3 feet square – just right for a wrap or lap blanket – though the tiled repeats mean that it is easily customised for those who would prefer a smaller pram blanket, or a larger throw. It is knit in the round, steeked and finished using similar techniques as those used on the Bláithín cardigans. And the pattern is surprisingly simple to knit — because the yarn is worsted-weight, and the background shades are never carried over long distances, the throw works up quickly, and would be fine for someone reasonably new to colourwork. You can see the steek-sandwich and i-cord edging here:

One of the things I really like about this sort of tiled design is the way that the repeat creates different lines of visual continuity. This only works over a reasonably large area – so this is an ideal design for this particular repeat.

The rich tweedy colours – which really speak to, and blend with, each other – add to this sense of continuity as well.

We took these photographs at St Anthony’s Chapel, just down the road in Holyrood Park. When I’m there, I always think of the ascent of Arthur’s Seat in James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner.

Unfortunately, it was too cloudy for brockenspectres when we took these photographs. But even when there are teenagers and tourist buddies about (it is a popular spot) I always find the atmosphere around the chapel just a wee bit eerie.

. . . an atmosphere which was only added to by a little wind and rain.

There were also several canny rooks knocking about the ruins of the chapel, but none of them wanted to participate in our wuthering photoshoot, unfortunately.

So, if you like this design, I’ll have it available in kit form at Woolfest! The pattern now has its own ravelry page, and printed and digital copies of the pattern will also be available shortly after the launch. I may be able to offer some kits as well, depending on the level of interest.

catching up

June 5, 2012 By in recovery, stroke, woolfest Tags: , , , 42 Comments

I have had a “bad” few days full of headaches and fatigue. Looking at it, I suppose it is inevitable after a weekend full of (for me) strenuous physical activity, followed by a rather grueling set of medical procedures on my return home (all is well, so no worries there). In a way, the more generally well I get, the worse I become at dealing with these awful, crashing lows in which my brain and body just decide to stop working. I just want to get on with things! It made it all the harder that, on Friday, I was supposed to be attending an event in which I was really interested. . . it is so bloody frustrating! Still, even if I should perhaps, as the physios and OTs say, have “paced myself” better while we were away, I would not have missed my Hebridean swimming and cycling for the world. Personally, I would rather push myself to do the exhilarating things I really enjoy – the annoyance of a subsequently ‘lost’ five days is probably better than regret about a lost opportunity. It is important to say this here, 28 months into my recovery, so I can come back and remind myself of it later.

In the meantime, we have not, like much of the rest of the country, been celebrating our constitutional serfdom, but Tom did take part in the Perth kilt run – coming in at an impressive 12th place! If you’d like to see him, he zips by looking very serious at 1 minute 50 seconds into this video of the event.

Also, yesterday, my knitting comrades helped me to begin to put my kits together for Woolfest.

This is very exciting. I’ll be launching two new designs at Woolfest and will be able to tell you more about them very soon.

And the fabulous image at the top of this post is a silk scarf depicting an A to Z of rare sheep breeds. It was designed by US illustrator Caleb Luke Lin – I love his work!

devices and designs

January 30, 2012 By in design, knitting, Shetland, stroke, woolfest Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 161 Comments

Have any of you tried knitting stranded colourwork with these devices? Variously called knitting thimbles, strickfinghuts or yarn guides, they come in several varieties and I’ve recently been experimenting with a couple. Despite being taught to knit the ‘English’ way, I am a much speedier ‘picker’ than I am a ‘thrower’. I currently find myself in an odd kind of limbo: I can perform all knitterly tasks when working the English way, but when working Continental I can currently only knit and decrease – purling seems a total bear, and, never having tried it, I have no idea how I might execute a yarnover. Yet in ways I can’t really define – and certainly since teaching myself to knit again after my stroke – picking the yarn rather than throwing it feels more ‘natural’ to me. And it is certainly much faster. So, in a bid to shift all my yarn-carrying duties to my left hand, I thought I’d give these devices a try.

The spring-shaped one (which one finds variously described as a “Norweigan” knitting thimble, or “Norvege” strickfingerhut), is probably my favourite. While the blue plastic version in the top photo separates the yarns, this “Norweigan” thimble also allows them to be positioned above and below each other. I found that this made the task of dividing and scooping a little easier, and also had a positive effect on the yarn dominance. It is a little large for my finger, but I fixed this by wearing a small elastic band underneath. Having persevered with it for a couple of days, here are my conclusions:

PROS:
1) Once you have got the hang of it, it, the knitting feels smooth and easy.
2) Definitely speedier than two handed knitting – at least for me (my throwing technique is annoyingly – and apparently intractably – cumbersome).

CONS:
1) After two days use, I developed pain in my right wrist (perhaps from the extra effort / tension initially required to divide and scoop the yarns with the right needle)
2) Tension is much looser (though this can, of course, be easily adjusted).
2) Getting the thing set up is a bit fiddly – and once you are, as it were, at one with the machine, it is an onerous task to disentangle oneself. Because of this, I reckon this device is best suited to projects where only two colours are ever in play: if one was working a complex, multicoloured fairisle design, with multiple yarn-changes, I imagine things would get a bit annoying.

Happily, my current project only involves two colours.

Yes, this is a new design which I hope to have finished by the weekend. You’ll hear more about it then, but here’s another peek for now:

I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on 1) your experience of knitting with strickfingerhuts and other such devices 2) your experiences of Continental and English knitting. Which feels most ‘natural’ to you and why? Have any of you switched sides, as it were, after many years of knitting?

In other news

I can confirm that I will be at two very exciting events this year:
1) I’ll be at WOOLFEST as a vendor for the first time in June! Do you want to see the Rams and Yowes blanket? It will be there too!
2) I’ll be in Shetland for the whole of Wool Week and shall be covering all events here for those who can’t be there (though I encourage you all to come! It’s going to be fantastic!) You can expect a flurry of excited blog posts in October!

In rather less exciting, but for me, very important news, I’ve now received an appointment to see a specialist about my seizures. My neurologist initially felt that they were migraine-related one-offs, but then, after several months without any, I had a spate of rather hideous (and very frightening) “events” over the Christmas break. I really need to sort it out as both the seizures, and the threat of them, impact on all sorts of things in my life. Anyway, now I get to have my head examined! Good news!

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 3,966 other followers