Apologies if you’ve already seen this on Instagram, but I finished my colourful cowl, and it makes me smile every time I wear it, and right now smiling feels important.

Jim and I sat down yesterday morning to think about where we are, and what we can do. You don’t need me to tell you that things are unusual at the moment, so instead I want to tell you about some of the things we have planned. I’m going to intersperse this with some photos of projects I’ve finished over the last couple of months, but not got around to sharing here! I hope that the mixture of colour and plans in this post will start to create a comfort blanket of knitting that we can all draw on over the coming weeks – both figuratively and perhaps literally…

This was the third Keyford Hat that I knitted! The others are here and here. I had planned to write about selecting colours for this design, as well as comparing the effect of changing positions of those colours, but time has whistled by! The pattern is available in our online shop and on Ravelry, and we also have kits including the yarn, a project bag and printed pattern: Keyford Hat Kit.

I remain utterly convinced of the many benefits of learning new things in your knitting. I always think that learning is good, but particularly at the moment, establishing a sense of achievement on a low-risk knitting project is likely to have a good ripple out effect on wellbeing. Jim and I have been talking about knitting a comfort blanket. We thought we would publish a series of squares using some of the techniques that we already have videos for, to give you an opportunity to try something new. A sense of purpose with regular simple activity will help us, and we hope you too. Look out for more details here on the blog over the coming weeks. I’m not going to set a timescale for this, as we will be juggling the demands of childcare and life, but I hope to post the patterns here on the blog so that they are freely available to anyone who would like to join us.

I completed my first pair of socks for the year (my target is 12 pairs this year – I’m a bit behind on it at the moment…). These are plain vanilla socks using the gorgeous Dusty Dimples Sock yarn I got at Yarndale last year. I really enjoyed knitting them and Jim is the lucky recipient!

I am feeling a little sad that I can’t get out to my usual weekly knit night, so we are now holding it online instead, using a video conferencing platform. We are planning to bring virtual knit nights to more of you, so look out in our Ravelry group and across social media for timings for online knitting sessions. We hope to have a timetable in place shortly. Again, we will be keeping this manageable, but we hope to do a timetable that will work for different parts of the world, and help to bring together some knitting connections.

My Alcedo socks from Boost Your Knitting got finished at the start of this month, just a bit behind schedule! These will be a show sample so they have been tucked away in a drawer for now. We have just heard that Wonderwool Wales has been cancelled, which was due to be our next show. What hard choices businesses are having to make at the moment!

We are already well underway with work on our next book (for 2021 – it’s going to be AMAZING!) and those plans are continuing. We have been in touch with all of the team that we are working with to share the ways in which we can support them. I have always believed strongly in our strength as a community that works together.

I’m continuing to knit on my Ama Sweater (I’ll write more about it later in the week – spoiler alert, I’m loving it!). The cheery pink against the grey was the inspiration for our Spring Into Colour KAL and I’m looking forward to seeing more of your Ama and Hey Now sweaters popping up in the KAL thread in our group. The kits for both of these designs are still available in our online shop, which you will find here: Sweater kits

And finally, we work regularly with two amazing freelancers, and have reassured both of them that we have budget to pay them through the coming months. We have planned work that they can both do remotely, so do look out for blog posts from both Katherine and Tabitha, as well as from me!

We are continuing to ship orders, and the Spring Sale is still up and running. We are here for the long-run and hope that you can find some comfort in your stitches. As always we appreciate all your support. Thank you so much!

Knit on, friends!