knitting Archives — Picking Up Stitches

Broadstairs – yes, we’ve moved to the coast!

January 31, 2020 by Annie Leave a Comment

Broadstairs by the sea!

I’ve moved – Broadstairs is now the place we call home. More precisely, the lovely village of St Peter’s on the edge of town…

Yes, after decades in North London, we’ve taken the plunge and moved to the Kent seaside. It’s a beautiful little seaside town, with stunning bays and cliffs and lots of shoreline walks.

My new village not only has a village green, complete with stocks for anyone who misbehaves, it also has a stunning Medieval church – St Peter-in-Thanet – and one of the longest churchyards in the country that leads out to fields!

The medieval church of St Peter-in-Thanet

Angel statue in st peters thanet graveyard

The graveyard is a peaceful place to visit

Fields at end of graveyard of St Peters Thanet

The view of the fields from the end of the graveyard

Cauliflowers growing in the field beyond the woods

Floral delights

You probably know that I love crocheting flowers (like my floral wreaths and Flora gloves) so I’m more than happy that I’ve now got my first ever garden. I’m currently swotting up on what to do when, and being surprised by all the lovely bulbs and flowers that are appearing all over.

Beautiful Christmas rose Hellebore

Gorgeously scented winter honeysuckle is blooming now and smells wonderful.

There’s also a bird feeding station just outside our living room window, and I’m also enjoying a spot of birdwatching from the warm – robins, magpies, collared doves, sparrows, blue tits, long-tailed tits, wood pigeons, blackbirds and starlings are all regular visitors (as well as the greedy squirrels).

Lily’s enjoying watching the birds too!

Dedicated craft room!

Best of all, I now have a dedicated craft room at the end of the garden, with the woods behind it, so, as soon as I finish unpacking, I’ll be organising my yarn and fabric and getting cracking on some brand new designs.

I can even use it at night!

Lessons in Thanet

My move, of course, means that I’ll no longer be available to teach in London all the time, though I will be returning on a regular basis (as long as enough people want to learn on the same day). So if you’d like to have a lesson, just join my mailing list, or drop me a line so that I can tell you when I’ll next be back.

It also means that I can now teach in the Broadstairs-Margate-Ramsgate area as well – I already have a few lovely places to teach, so I’m looking forward to meeting some Thanet crafters soon…

PS Lily’s loving life in Broadstairs too!

Autumn colours come round again

September 19, 2018 by Annie Leave a Comment

Crocheted autumn leaves acorns and flowers

Autumn is a welcome relief

Autumn is finally here, thank goodness. The summer was so hot that I rarely felt like knitting. Lily my dog found it all too much too, and spent lots of time lazing in front of the fan dreaming about the park!

White and black Staffy lying on a bright coloured sofa

Lily is bored with all the sunshine

So, now that autumn is in the air again, Lily’s enjoying finding sticks in the park, and it’s time to get back into knitting and crocheting with a vengeance!

Noticing that the leaves were changing colour gave me a burst of inspiration. I soon came up with some new leaves and flowers to create an autumn wreath. Here’s the original inspiration…

And here’s what I came up with: a special sunflower, acorns and three different types of leaves. I particularly love the oak leaves I created eventually.

I used Stylecraft Special DK as there’s such a huge choice of colours. Then I decided to add some Michaelmas daisy-type flowers, too, and crocheted a jade background. I made the background in Deramores Studio DK to fit a 17cm polystyrene wreath. The technique I used, I found on the Attic24 blog. I love this blog and the wreaths Lucy makes on there.

Positioning and sewing the items on the wreath took as long as crocheting some of the motifs. Eventually it was all in place, though. I love the result. So much so that I’m going to run classes on how to make one in Crouch End in October. I’m running an autumn wreath class at The Village Haberdashery West Hampstead mid October too. But, this September, I’m teaching simple autumn leaf and flower classes here in North London.

Here’s the finished wreath…

Keep the coffee cozy

This month, I discovered some Sirdar yarn I’d forgotten in my stash, and it was perfect autumnal colours. (Sadly, it’s now discontinued, otherwise I’d have bought some more). I used it to crochet some autumn takeaway coffee cup cozies, which were popular at last month’s Makers Market…

For knitters, I’ve come up with a basic knitted cup cozy and coaster which I’m teaching at my beginners knitting classes throughout autumn in Crouch End. In October. I’m also teaching them at an afternoon course at Fringe in Muswell Hill.

Not wanting to leave out the crocheters, I’ve also designed a couple of simple crochet mug cozies too. Don’t worry, I’ll put the pattern up on the website very soon! Classes for these this autumn too!

Be prepared for autumn winds

Realising that it’s soon going to be gloves and hats season, I decided to knit a new hat. I chose a WoollyWormhead pattern called Toph which is a really interesting to make.

This is me modelling my finished hat. You may notice that I used the rest of that Deramores Jade DK for the motifs.

It’s knitted from side to side and uses a technique called German short rows, for which I’ll be adding a ‘How to’ section soon. By the way, I’m going to be putting up a lot of knitting video and pictorial tutorials as well over the next few weeks, as lots of people are coming along to my knitting classes at the moment.

Happy again!

And finally, just in case you were wondering, here’s a picture of our Lily looking a lot happier with the temperature!

Mittens and gloves and socks and coats – it’s cold

March 19, 2018 by Annie Leave a Comment

Mittens time

It’s been so cold recently that I’ve been really glad that I’ve made so many pairs of mittens over the past few months. It all began before Christmas when I decided that some pretty fingerless mittens would make perfect presents for my sister and my nieces. I’d soon designed my Flora Fingerless Mittens, which feature a floral granny square as the central motif on the back.

I’ll be writing another post about the Flora mittens as soon as I’ve put the pattern on sale (you can already buy the actual mittens from my Etsy store), but in the meantime, here are just some of the lovely colourways…

They’re either made in Stylecraft Special DK or in Deramores Studio DK. Hope you like them – I think they’re quite feminine and perfect for chilly spring days!

Bobbles and stripes

My second design is so warm. It’s not got a name yet, but I’m loving wearing them on wintry walks with Lily the dog. They’re striped and have an offset bobble effect to give texture and add warmth. I’ve already whipped up quite a few.

Here’s some more underway on the back – very Harry Potter colours!

And here’s the bobbly front – it’s alternating double crochets and treble crochets…

Any ideas what I should call them?

Chunky mittens

Once I’d started designing mittens, seems I just couldn’t stop! I worked with two strands of the DK together and came up with these chunky mitts, which are sooo quick to make… I like the crossed treble effect and love the contrast embroidery as well.

I decided that a pair of quick-to-hook fingerless gloves would make a perfect beginners’ project, so I came up with a chunky, yet slightly lacy pair which I’m now teaching in my classes (the timetable’s here) – they just use double crochet and trebles, and are going down really well!

There’ll be some pictorial how-to help up here on the website very soon.

Out with the needles

When I was a teenager, we often knitted up gloves for ourselves, and the other day, I discovered some of the patterns my sisters and I used to use… One even still had the handwritten notes about yarn amounts used!

Even more needles

Thinking about keeping out the chills, I decided it was time to wind up the lovely HeyJay hand-dyed yarn in Rouge Jacket I’d bought at the Wool Fair last year (read about that event here) and finally embark upon some socks.

Another nostalgic moment – I suddenly remembered how, as a child, I used to help my grandmother wind hanks of wool into balls.

Nothing was wasted in those days, and any jumpers that we’d grown out of were unravelled and the yarn washed in hanks to remove the kinks, then wound into balls and knitted again. When there was no-one to hold the yarn on our outstretched hands, we used the back of a chair. And that’s exactly what I did.

I’ve chosen a pattern from Socks Yeah! book from Coop Knits I bought at the Knitting & Stitching show and used my KnitPro dpns in 2.5mm. It was so odd switching from chunky to 4 ply, but it’s providing welcome variation.

Another WIP (work in progress, that is) but then again, I have finished something…

Don’t forget the dog!

It’s been so cold, that I couldn’t forget our Lily. She’s a Staffy-cross rescue dog (do check out the lovely charity we got her from All Dogs Matter). She has really short hair, and we couldn’t have her shivering… So it was just as well as my finished project for this month was my Butterfly coat design, made from the spare Rowan Pure Wool Worsted DK (which you can get here among many other places) from the Martin Storey Windy scarf I’d made for my friend’s 60th birthday.

Lily’s little coat fits snugly and has a fleecy lining, and what’s more it matches her lovely collars from Rad N Bad.

Just like her skull coat I made the other year!

Hope you’re all keeping as warm as us!!!