Dear Intarsia

I am so, so sorry. My most heartfelt of humble apologies.

When we first met, I was a beginner knitter, and I had no idea how difficult my chosen project was. I wanted to make Martin Storey's Allotment Bag (that's the Ravelry page, and there's no photo and no projects...), so I bought all 8 shades of the required yarn (RYC Bamboo Soft), and off I headed. I was working my way through projects, and learning something new with each one. Intarsia, you were my first project in more than one colour, and I couldn't have chosen to make it harder for myself - lots of tiny motifs, a completely non-stretchy, and very slippery yarn. I had no experience of stripes, let alone Fair Isle, so jumping straight in to this intarsia project was (I now realise) a TERRIBLE idea. And it has taken me 10 years to understand that it wasn't your fault. I took grave offence at how impossible it was to make my knitting of that bag look anything approaching tidy. It was one massive uneven mess of yarn, and nothing I did made it better. With my (now well-informed eyes) I can see that even the very-experienced sample knitter struggled to make that bag look reasonable. How was I, with only 4 or 5 knitting projects under my belt, ever going to succeed? I wasn't. But I now realise that wasn't the fault of you, my dear intarsia, and for that I hope you will forgive me. I was young and inexperienced.

So why did things change?

Well, we have this wonderful friend in common, you and I do. She's called Bristol Ivy, and she is something of a knitting designer genius. She created a hap that I NEEDED to make. From the moment I saw the first swatch showing us her idea, I was besotted. I couldn't stop thinking about this clever, and beautiful concept - to use stripes, and a chevron pattern, with a smattering of intarsia to liven things up. I'll admit that when I saw your name, dear intarsia, my heart sank. I feared that my dream of making Bristol's hap would end in tears of frustration and the pieces of my broken heart, as I struggled to create something adequate, let alone as magnificent as Bristol's knitting.

Then everything changed.

I read the pattern, and realised that the work of the intarsia was relatively simple. A few stitches (always the same ones) worked in different colours, with the chevron pattern taking the strain of making interesting shapes. Added to that, my greater understanding of yarn, and I made choices that would help the stitches to behave - wool! It's stretchy, and forgiving! Who knew?? And I took a very deep breath.

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Harewood Hap by Bristol Ivy, knitted by me.

Dearest intarsia, you are much-maligned, and I humbly apologise for my part in that. I now understand, that in the right design, and with the right yarn, you can spread the greatest pleasure! You may be slightly less portable than simple stripes or Fair Isle, but you are absolutely totally and utterly worth that small inconvenience. And who doesn't need a project that sits at home, to be enjoyed in front of the TV, or while chatting with friends?

See those stitches on my Harewood Hap? They, are even! And flat! And not a hint of tangling nightmare. Not so much as a rude word was uttered, even once, during the knitting of this beauty. In fact, I didn't want it to end. There's something I NEVER thought I would say. If you are faint of heart, you may wish to turn your head aside for the next photo, as I'm going to show you... gasp... the wrong side of my knitting!

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The wrong side of my Harewood Hap.

EVEN THAT PART IS PRETTY NEAT! And it's not magic. Or particular talent on my part. It's just that the project, yarn and technique all worked together - pulling in the same direction - rather than being obstacles in each other's paths.

What more can I say? I apologise for all the hurtful things I've ever said about you. And I do hope you'll come and play again soon.

With all good wishes,
Jen (an older, and wiser knitter than when we first met)

P.S. If you would like to have a go at knitting the Harewood Hap from The Book of Haps, then you may find this tutorial video helpful:

I've Always Wanted To Make A.......

Is there something you’ve always wanted to make, or perhaps a technique you’ve always wanted to try, but have never had the courage to give it a go? What if there was someone else doing the same thing at the same time so you could muddle through together?

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Jen has always wanted to make a Pinglewin.

Through November, we’re challenging you to dig out the discarded, the never started, or the vague notion that never materialised into a plan and make something. It doesn’t have to be knitted (whisper that bit quietly), nor should you feel the pressure to finish a project inside a month. The aim is to get you going, even if you end up discarding the project again, although I hope you won’t. There will be a randomly selected prizewinner at the beginning of December.

If I've piqued your interest, there's a Ravelry thread set up for this MAL (it's for making, not just knitting) so you can let everyone know what you'd like to do before the start of November. The idea is that you're not working on your own, but that you'll find someone else with a desire to do something similar so that you can buddy up and cheerlead each other.

So if you’ve never tried stranded colourwork, but always wanted to, or if you have an unopened sewing pattern bought in a fit of optimism, now is the time to say so. I’m sure you won’t be alone.

Please tag your projects #alwayswantedtomake and post to the thread what you’ve always wanted to make. Obviously you shouldn’t set up a Ravelry project page for things that aren’t yarn related, but do post lots of photos on the thread.

What's in a Number?

Last week, somebody on Twitter posted a link to this table from positiveintegers.org (I really apologise for not making a note of who it was). It was billed as a useful resource for designers because it lists all of the factors of the numbers between 101 and 200 so you know at a glance which numbers of stitches will fit to a particular stitch pattern.

But then it really got me thinking. What if you're working on something with a change in the number of stitches in a repeat. Let's say you have a sweater with a 2x2 rib at the bottom and a 7 stitch body pattern, you can find the number closest to the size you want that will give you both. Similarly if you want to decrease evenly, you can see how many decreases you can make and cross reference against the resulting number of stitches to check whether a second decrease of similar size is possible.

I should have been doing other things, so of course I looked through for the really useful numbers - those with a large number of factors. This was when I discovered something that probably everyone else knows: 168 is a really, really useful number. OK, so it doesn't have 5 or 10 as factors, nor does it have the largest number of factors in the range, but, if we can get over our having 5 fingers on each hand for a minute, it does have plenty to work with (16 in total) and it isn't a number that springs immediately to mind.

So will I be changing how I work out stitch counts? Well, in all honesty, probably not. I'm still firmly wedded to using a spreadsheet for grading as exact numbers of pattern repeats (particularly for larger numbers of stitches) don't always give the right interval between sizes and cross referencing is much quicker. I will however bookmark it as a starting point when looking to combine two stitch patterns.

Geeky mind dump over.

PictureThisKAL Prizes

We are into the final weekend of the PictureThisKAL.

Get your photos of your finished objects onto the FO thread before midnight on Monday night and you could be in with the chance of winning one of these brilliant prizes.

Will you be lucky and win a Funyin kit from Kate Davies?

This graphic hat was inspired by John Clappison's 'onion' cruet design for Hornsea pottery (1963). Combining colourwork with cables, it is also a fun knit. During the design process, onion became fun-ion, which in turn morphed into funyin, which translates from Scots as one-that-is-fun or that-fun-thing. 

The kit includes two skeins of Buachaille yarn, a digital download of the patterns and a project bag to keep everything in.

The other prize is a digital download of the KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook. This is perhaps perfectly matched with the inspiration behind this KAL. Whereas we asked you to knit something based upon a photo, this book takes you through a process to produce your own colourwork motifs from everyday objects or views.

Containing twelve case studies and three accessory patterns, the KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook offers a wealth of tips, tricks and inspiration for you to take your stranded colourwork knitting to the next level. Beautifully photographed and clearly illustrated throughout, this book reveals how everything from factories to fruitcake can be used to inspire knitting projects based on the things, places and plants that you love.

We are hugely grateful to Kate and Felix for donating the prizes and to all of the knitters who have shared their inspirations and projects from start to finish. The lucky winners will be announced on the Prizes thread next week, so if you want to be in with a chance, get your needles going!

A Shetlander's Fair Isle Graph Book

A few weeks ago, the postman delivered a book from Shetland. Jen remarked, "The Wool Week Annual is bigger this year - that's a bit of a surprise," then opened the package. It wasn't the Shetland Wool Week Annual, but something a little different (the Wool Week Annual arrived a couple of days later and more on that another time!).

A Shetlander's Fair Isle Graph Book in Colour consists of reproductions of two notebooks from the second quarter of the 20th Century. These originally belonged to Bill Henry who was in charge of the Hosiery (Knitwear) Department at Anderson & Co. of Lerwick through the middle of the last century. 

Carole Christiansen's introduction gives a great insight into the knitting industry in Shetland and really sets the scene for why what follows is a little special. Usually, if charts were drawn, their purpose was to give the knitter an idea of how the colours should change, rather than which colours to use. What sets these notebooks apart is that they have been fully coloured in, that is directing the knitter to colour choice as well as pattern.

What fascinates me about this book is the air of mystery over who actually drew the charts and what the purpose of the charts was. Is this a record of Fair Isle motifs that Bill had seen coming in from the local knitters, or were they produced by him, or someone for him, to direct knitters to a particular pattern, or a combination of both? Whatever the truth this is an important record of how external influences affected design through the period of the books, from the inclusion in the earliest pages, and thereafter absence, of swastikas to the appearance of Norwegian styles through the 1940s.

The big draw of this book is obviously the huge number of Shetland colourwork patterns to use within your own knitwear, but I think it is more than just that, so if you have an interest in the development of knitting, or are looking for a reference for colourwork, then this is a must-have book.

A Shetland's Fair Isle Graph Book was produced by the Shetland Guild of Spinners, Knitters, Weavers and Dyers and is published by The Shetland times. It is available from The Shetland Times bookshop and is priced at £20. 

Disclaimer: We received a review copy of the Shetlander's Fair Isle Graph Book free of charge from The Shetland Times. We have not received any other payment for this review, and are sharing it because we think it's a great book!

How to: Hexa Hap tutorials

One of the joys of knitting is that once you have mastered a technique, or found your perfect pattern, you can keep on going happily as long as you please. Equally, you could find a pattern you long to knit and discover that you need to learn something new in order to make any progress. It's the latter of these that keeps us interested in what we do as neither of us, me in particular, can say we know about, and can do absolutely everything possible with needles and yarn.

Image © Kate Davies Designs Ltd

Tom van Deijnen's Hexa Hap from The Book of Haps cleverly relies upon repeating the same sequence throughout to produce a fully reversible fabric. It also employs a couple of techniques that may be less familiar, so we have produced these short videos to help you to get to grips with them.

First is the intarsia twist, which gives a smooth, reversible transition between the two shades of yarn:

Hexa Hap tutorial part 1: Intarsia Twist

Hexa Hap is modular in that you work a triangular wedge at a time and then pick up stitches for the next wedge. Here's how to pick up the stitches:

Hexa Hap tutorial part 2: Picking Up Stitches

I do hope that you will find these tutorials helpful. You can see more over on our YouTube channel: Arnall-Culliford Knitwear on YouTube

Picture This

Following on from the HapsarehappeningKAL, which still has plenty of chat going on a month after it finished, we racked our brains to come up with a new idea for the next knitalong. After much discussion about the topic, scope and name, we settled on picturethisKAL.

The idea is simple: knit a project that is in some way inspired by an image. It can be a photo you’ve taken, it can be a famous painting or photo, it can be any image you like! Your project can be inspired by the image’s colour, texture or shape. It’s up to you! Our aim is for the knitalong to be nice and inclusive. If you have an idea of what you want to knit next, then make it so. There’s an image for every possible project.

This KAL will run until Monday 17th October 2016 at midnight Alaskan time. To get involved, please tag your project on Ravelry with PictureThisKAL, and use the hashtag #PictureThisKAL on Instagram and Twitter. This allows everyone to see all of the inspiring projects involved in the knitalong.

There will be weekly prizes, selected at random for works in progress and also a prize for finished objects. Full details for eligibility are in the KAL thread.

Stuck for inspiration?

It could be a landscape such as this one of the river through Wick by Claire (soup dragon).

You could choose to match colours from other crafts, such as this cross stitch made as a present for Georgie (georgievinsun).

Perhaps something in the garden, like Danielle's (KnittingNixon) roses.

You could take inspiration from the colours of garden wildlife as Beverley (0bev0) has. 

Or you could be like Alix (AlixPearson) who is basing her colours on a memorable dinner in Sweden. 

Whatever you choose, get casting on now and join in the fun!

How to: Nut-Hap tutorials

I absolutely love to learn new techniques. I'm a sucker for a nifty way to make things, and I love to finesse my knitting. Sometimes it can be overwhelming to look at a new pattern and realise that it includes a heap of things you've not done before, so we aim to hold your hand with some of these techniques.

Image © Kate Davies Designs Ltd

My Nut-Hap design for The Book of Haps features a few tricks to give a really polished finished scarf. First up is the tubular cast on - my all-time favourite way to give your knitting a professional finish. Here's our YouTube video to talk you through how to work the cast on:

Tubular cast-on method for any project, using Jen Arnall-Culliford's Nut-Hap as an example.

Nut-Hap then uses tucks to create an architectural shape to the lower edge. These are worked in with the ribbing of the body, and we've made videos to show you how to do the separating row:

Learn how to work a separating row for a tuck in your knitting, based upon Nut-Hap by Jen Arnall-Culliford

And another video to show you how to work the joining row:

Learn how to join your knitting to form a tuck as featured in Jen Arnall-Culliford's Nut-Hap

I do hope that you will find these tutorials helpful. You can see more over on our YouTube channel: Arnall-Culliford Knitwear on YouTube