The first leaves are starting to turn, there’s a crispness in the air, the kids are heading back to school … all signs point to autumn’s arrival! With the start of a new season, it’s also time to embark on our September Boost Your Knitting project …. the aptly named Flying Leaves Scarf! This beautiful, reversible scarf designed by Carol Feller will not only keep you cosy as temperatures drop, it’ll teach us the finer points of working two-colour brioche!
Read moreMore Patterns for Experimenting with Colour
The Skystone Armwarmers, designed by Felicity (Felix) Ford as August’s featured Boost Your Knitting pattern, are the perfect canvas for practicing this month’s technique, choosing colours for stranded colourwork. The pattern calls for three background and five foreground shades of Jamieson & Smith 2ply Jumperweight, giving you lots of room to capture the subtleties of your inspiration source — be it a bouquet of flowers, a mossy headstone, or a towering mountain! But if you’re casting around for more patterns to bring your newfound confidence in choosing colours too, here are a few ideas!
Read moreAn Abundance of Inspiration ... August's Boost Your Knitting KAL, so far!
This month, we’ve been having a ball over in the Ravelry group with August’s Boost Your Knitting technique, choosing colours for stranded colourwork knitting! Several knitters have already finishing their Skystone Armwarmers, this month’s featured pattern by Felicity (Felix) Ford, and many more have stunning ones in progress! It’s been so fun to see people’s inspiration sources and the ways they interpret them …
Read moreFinding joy in the everyday : An Interview with Felicity (Felix) Ford
Last week, I was lucky enough to catch up with Felicity (Felix) Ford ahead of the release of the Skystone Armwarmers, this month’s Boost Your Knitting pattern! Felix is a knitter and sound artist who translates the joy and beauty of the everyday into amazing stranded colourwork knitting. Her books, the Knitsonik Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook and the Knitsonik Stranded Colourwork Playbook, empower knitters to unlock their own creativity by observing the world around her. We’re so lucky to have her beautiful design and expertise for this month’s knitalong — and I think you’ll agree Felix’s enthusiasm for colourwork really come through in our chat! I hope you enjoy it!
Read moreHow to choose colours for stranded colourwork (a video tutorial)
I don’t know about you, but I look forward to the release of the Boost Your Knitting video tutorials each month. Watching Jen’s kind and calm explanations is the next best thing to having your really talented knitting friend come over and help you work out a tricky bit of your pattern. And in this month’s video tutorial, we get double the fun: two knitting mates to help us build confidence in translating everyday sights and objects into beautiful stranded colourwork motifs.
Read moreChoosing Colours for Stranded Colourwork + the Skystone Armwarmers
Ready for something a little different? August’s Boost Your Knitting technique is here, and I couldn’t be more excited about it! This month, we’ll be developing our skills in choosing colours for stranded colourwork with help from absolute colourwork whiz Felicity (Felix) Ford and knitting her stunning design, the Skystone Armwarmers!
Read moreRunning circles around intarsia
This month, we’ve been tackling intarsia in the round … and the results have been pretty spectacular! It’s always great to see the amount of learning that happens in the monthly knitalongs, but this month in particular, it’s been really inspiring to see knitters take on a technique that was new to virtually almost everyone!
Read moreTechnique Talk with Julia Farwell-Clay
his month’s Boost Your Knitting designer is the supremely talented Julia Farwell-Clay, whose cleverly cute Heartgyle Socks have knitters around the world not only working intarsia, but doing it in the round! She loves a good sweater, but also has designed beautiful accessories — she’s partial to eye-catching designs and interesting techniques! She was kind enough to sit down and answer some questions about her design process and the role that new techniques play in it — and she’s got some good advice for us too!
Read moreChanging plans
The actions of Sockmatician (Nathan) and his husband over the past week have caused BAME (Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority), BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) and marginalised members of the knitting community great hurt and have compromised their safety. This is unacceptable. Racism is unacceptable.
I (Jen) spoke briefly with Nathan at Yarningham on Sunday, and I apologise unreservedly for the hurt and harm that caused. I was mostly offline last week while we completed work on our book, and I was unaware of the full extent of damage that had occurred. Impact is what matters, and I am very sorry. Our stand at Yarningham was in a side room, and I didn’t become aware of his aggression towards Almas until I was on my way home from the show.
We recognise that remaining silent in the face of unacceptable behaviour does nothing to help dismantle the systems of oppression at work in our community.
Jim and I have set out to create a company that empowers knitters and builds confidence in their own abilities with accessible and clear patterns and tutorials. We place great value on learning and recognise that we ourselves always have more to do. Racism and exclusion have no place in the knitting community, and we are continuing to educate ourselves and to work to improve.
The stated aim of our knitalongs is that all feel welcome regardless of race, colour, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, size, ability, financial circumstances, language, or where you are from.
Including Nathan’s pattern in Boost Your Knitting is incompatible with those values. Therefore, we have taken the decision to remove Nathan’s pattern from Boost Your Knitting.
Boost Your Knitting was due to go to the printers today, and inevitably such a last minute change will have some knock-on effects. We are working hard to produce a replacement design, and to get the book finalised as promptly as possible, as well as to update our posts in reflection of this change. We are still aiming to deliver print copies of Boost Your Knitting in September, and we will communicate with our customers if that changes. Digital pattern releases will continue to occur as planned at the start of each calendar month.
Boost Your Knitting was commissioned between September 2017 and March 2018. It first went on sale in early February 2019. We fully recognise the structural racism that prevented us from knowing a wider range of designers when we commissioned the collection, as well as our part within that. Our future publications will reflect our values more fully.
We have set comments on this post to be moderated. This is not intended to stifle discussion, but rather in recognition that we have a responsibility to maintain safe spaces across our platforms. Please take time to consider any response before posting.
Edited at 17:13 on 16th July to say: We have removed our Facebook post as there was no way to close or moderate comments overnight. I am now closing comments on Instagram until tomorrow morning. And I will review blog comments and approve / address them first thing tomorrow. I have a meeting tomorrow so won't be around very much, but I will do my best to be as transparent as possible about what's happening.
Edited at 9.40 on 17th July: Thank you for your comments. I have a number to review, but unfortunately could not get to them before leaving for my meeting. When I am back online, this will be my first priority.
More Intarsia in the Round Patterns to Try!
I’ve been happily knitting away on my Heartgyle Socks, looking forward to getting to the intarsia action! If you’re casting around looking for other projects that use this technique, you might struggle initially – like dip stitches and tuck stitches, “intarsia in the round” isn’t a separate pattern characteristic field on Ravelry. So here’s a small roundup of more patterns from Julia Farwell-Clay that use this technique!
Read more