Tag: Kate Davies

  • The Buachaille song by Felicity Ford

    The Buachaille song by Felicity Ford

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    At the end of last September, I travelled to Shetland for Wool Week. I’d spent several previous months exploring a new-to-me world of yarn development, and the result – Buachaille – was about to be launched with the Seven Skeins Club. At home, so many boxes of yarn had arrived that the bathroom floor had…

  • Winners!

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Well, we won! Tom and I travelled down to London yesterday and last night at the QEII centre in Westminster were awarded the title of Microbusiness of the Year, 2016! Here I am with two Tims receiving my award: on the right is Tim Lazenby, head of FSB insurance (who sponsored the award), and on…

  • the books are here!

    the books are here!

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Yes, that just about sums it up! The books have finally arrived from the printer, and we are very happy! There is so much to consider when creating a book, and this one involved many new decisions. We took some different choices with our paper and cover stock, and settled on some different layouts (as…

  • Whigmaleeries!

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Pattern release day is here again, and today Seven Skeins knitters will find some Whigmaleeries appearing in their inbox. What on earth are whigmaleeries? Well, as the Dictionary of the Scots Language puts it, a whigmaleerie is: “a decorative or fanciful object, a piece of ornamentation …a knick-knack, gew-gaw, bauble, fantastic contrivance, or contraption.” In…

  • behind the scenes . . .

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    A couple of days ago, we announced the Seven Skeins Club – a venture we’ve been planning for many months, and which we hope will allow everyone who wants to to sample our lovely new Scottish wool. (If you are interested, you can read more about what the club involves here.) People have been writing…

  • Seven Scottish Shades

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Its time to tell you about my yarn colours! I’ve created seven new shades for Buachaille, and all have been inspired by different aspects of the landscape in which I live and love to walk: its flora, its fauna, and of course its weather. Here’s what inspired Buchaille’s seven Scottish shades! 1. Highland Coo These…

  • Fantoosh!

    Fantoosh!

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    FANTOOSH! – my new spring shawl – is now available. Fantoosh is a top-down triangular shawl featuring a tesselating allover motif defined by centred double decreases and twisted stitches. Its a lovely rhythmic knit with a pleasing end result! In Scots, fantoosh means “fancy”, or a wee bit “over the top”. When I was at…

  • orange owligan

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Maybe it is the time of year or something – everything in the landscape seems so scoured out and colourless – but I find myself on a massive orange kick. And what better orange could there possibly be than this? The yarn is Bulky lopi in shade 1418 – “carrot tweed”. Such a rich, deep…

  • Owligan

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    One of the most frequent requests I receive by email is to help knitters ‘translate’ my owls pullover design into a cardigan. This is not as straightforward as it sounds. The owls pullover was designed to be a tightly-fitting garment, with negative ease and back shaping (which would sit rather oddly as a cardigan). The…

  • Mel’s knitting

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    I’ve had cause to celebrate Mel’s knitting on more than one occasion here. . . Some of you may recognise Mel as a model from Yokes: Mel has many strings to her supremely talented bow, and I’m lucky enough that she works with me on projects such as Yokes as a sample knitter, design consultant,…

  • jazz hands!

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    We have had quite a bit of weather here recently – mittens are definitely required! So I whipped up a pair. You may recall, in the comments on this post, Trish suggested that a pair of mittens in the Epistrophy pattern would suit the name Jazz Hands. Well, Trish, your wish is my command. Here…

  • Over and out . . . for a while

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Well, I’ve showed you all the designs in the collection, and it is now time for me to enter logistics world. This is a world of franking machines, books, and cardboard boxes and though it is, in its own way, interesting and absorbing, it does not make for particularly fascinating reading. So things may go…

  • Cockatoo Brae

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Yes, you did read that correctly — Cockatoo Brae. This remarkable phrase is, in fact, the name of a lane in Lerwick, Shetland, and it is also the name of the final yoke in my collection. This design emerged from an exciting collaboration with my friend Ella. In Shetland, machine and hand knitting go very…

  • Jökull

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    When I began thinking about putting together this collection, I felt it was important to include a design that might serve as an introduction to circular yoke knitting: something that was speedy and straightforward to knit, with some interesting details and a characteristic construction. That design is Jökull. Jökull is a yoked mantle. Though the…

  • Foxglove

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    Kate Davies Designs
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      Here is another yoke — this one’s name is self-explanatory — Foxglove. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about my first year of rural living has been the wildflowers that grow around my home. Just a few yards from my front door are a wide variety of environments from heathland, bog and lochside…

  • Epistrophy

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    Kate Davies Designs
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    Well, it is time to introduce you to the first yoke from my new collection. Meet Epistrophy. Epistrophy is the title of a Be Bop “standard” composed and popularised by Thelonius Monk in 1942. The tune is characterised by its repetition and modification of a single, imitative phrase (or epistrophe). If you’d like to hear…