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Follow Jen and Jim's many knitting and craft adventures, including expert knitting tips, tutorials and book reviews, with bonus quilting and other crafty content.
Adventures of the Rainbow.
How many times have strangers commented on your socks?
If we weren’t all knitters this would be a very odd question, I know! But bear with me…
I now have a few pairs of long, hand-knitted socks that give me enormous pleasure. They were incredibly fun to knit, and now that they are done, I am getting a huge amount of joy from wearing them. But it’s not only me that gets joy from my hand-knitted socks…
Read moreIt’s been a super-exciting few days as we’ve prepared for the release of batches of Old Maiden Aunt & Fab Funky Fibres hand-dyed yarn in our online shop! Lilith and Elaine both contributed special hand-dyed yarns to Confident Knitting (OMA yarn is featured in this month’s Burnished Mittens and the FFF yarn is to-be-revealed), so we were so excited when the opportunity for a more sustained collaboration presented itself.
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Image © Jesse Wild.
Let me present you with a scenario. You’re planning your perfect autumn sweater. You’ve identified the pattern and yarn you’d like to use, but you’d like to make a small tweak. The pattern’s written for long sleeves, and you prefer three-quarter length. How do you know how much yarn you need?
Read moreWe’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of the latest in Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne’s perennially popular Field Guide series — and now that it’s here, let me say, our impatience has been justified and rewarded. Field Guide No. 15 is called Open and is all about beautiful, modern lace, brought to you by knitting industry legend, Jeanette Sloan.
Read moreThe weather here in Frome is miserable. It’s pouring with rain and grey as anything. I’m hoping against hope that it will clear up next week for the school holidays, or we will go stir-crazy playing endless board games and looking out the window.
I’ve not blogged about what I’ve been knitting for a while, so this is a quick run-down post.
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We have happy smiles because we can finally share our new yarn with you! When we started to plan our books for this year, I had in mind exactly the yarn I wanted for Something New to Learn About Lace (which will be available to pre-order later this month, with copies shipping in June), and the best way to get the yarn I wanted turned out to be having it made especially for us!
Read moreDo you happily knit from the ball, taking the yarn as it comes? Or are you more of a yarn bosser? Do you look at the colours in a ball of gradient yarn, and decide where you want to start, or move things along a bit if you're getting bored of a particular colour? Or are you one of those people who cuts out the dissonant shade in a ball of Noro?
Read moreHow does yarn choice affect helical striping? Read on to find out....
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Jim and I are so happy to finally be able to share what we've been up to... Image © Jesse Wild
Is it Wednesday already? This week has flown by, and it's finally time to share with you the list of designers from all over the world, who have contributed to our new book, A Year of Techniques. To say that we are enjoying working with them all doesn't really cover it. This is a dream line up for me - these are the designers whose work I turn to when I want to cast on something new. We really hope that you will enjoy their creations as much as we do. Jim and I spent many hours on the sofa, chatting about who we wanted to work with, and how we wanted our book to be, and the time has finally come to share all our plans. We can't wait to be knitting along with you from March!
Read moreDuring the commissioning process, we had long discussions about which yarns we wanted the designers to use in their submissions. Our criteria were fairly straightforward: they had to be yarns we absolutely loved, widely available in quantity, and come from brands with a range of options in weight and fibre mix. After some to-ing and fro-ing, we settled on three of our all-time favourite brands: Fyberspates, Jamieson & Smith, and Schoppel Wolle.
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