Category: Knitting
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Crochet Cast On
This is the first of two posts on the Aeolian top pattern highlighting techniques you may not have used before. Our Aeolian top is ideal when summer days are not as warm as they should be, it’s also easy to throw on in the evenings as the weather cools. Aeolian is knit in Ainsworth &
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Modified Three Needle Bind Off
Aeolian Top This is the second of two tutorials for the Aeolian top. To mirror the chain edge created by the Crochet Cast-On we used a Modified 3-Needle Bind-Off at the side seams. This eliminates the purl bumps and gives a very flat chain edge. It involves a cat’s cradle of yarn and a bit
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Closed-Loop Cables – Increasing and Decreasing
I’ve always enjoyed knitting cables, I find them more intuitive than lace where I can get horribly lost, but when I designed the Heart’s End Hat pattern and Miss Havisham Mittens closed-loop cables were new to me. With closed-loop you can use a stand alone motif rather than an all over pattern, just enough to
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Fair Isle
I have three different types of knitting: a small portable project for travelling; knitting for work, we always need samples and there’s usually a time limit so these are the ones I work on most and finally something I’m making for myself, this is the one that takes the longest. I’ve just finished a Kate
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Seed collecting
I recently asked a question on Instagram about including free gifts with orders. If I send out an order of our hand dyed yarns I sometimes include a sample skein of yarn on a different base. If you’re at a show you can squish any of the skeins you like before you make a decision
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Lewes
The plan was to publish this pattern at the beginning of December; a perfect last minute gift that used scraps of yarn – then the website went wrong. Really, really wrong.
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Howling
Howling: a fictional Sussex village in Stella Gibbons’ classic novel, Cold Comfort Farm. A place where gumboots are essential and the wind comes in “snarling cries”. Also the name for this easy to memorise, mock rib cowl that’ll keep the snarling cries at bay.
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Utility: Worn and Wearable
Sadly my life is not dressy and glamorous. T-shirts and jeans are my normal workwear, I only have to put on a skirt for comments to be made on my appearance – not always a good thing! Occasionally I’ll buy or make something for an event which sits at the back of the wardrobe until
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Selborne
Selborne is a small village in Hampshire close to where our grandparents lived when we were children. Famous to most for the home of Gilbert White, the naturalist and for us the zig-zag path and violets. We would be packed into the car with our cousins and taken to the “secret woods” where you could stand
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Sampler
Sampler, a warm woolly scarf to keep out the winter draughts and just what you need to knit when the temperatures hit 30°C. We had this scarf as a sample at Woolfest and we also meant to have the pattern all typed up and ready to go. Well that was the plan, it was never
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Provisional crochet cast on
When I taught myself to knit in the early 1980’s life was simple when a pattern said cast on you did just that, a simple cable cast on and off you went. There was only one way to cast on, wasn’t there? It appears there are nearly as many ways to cast on as there
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Wiveton
I live with a bird watcher and our holidays are spent where the birds are sometimes this has added benefits, the bird observatory on Fair Isle is fantastic, luxury rooms, amazing scenery and a museum with knitting, what more could you want?
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Hot Water Bottle Cover
Our house is old and over the years it’s been pulled about, the floors have been taken up and the windows were replaced when a neighbouring house was bombed and now nothing fits. With the wind in the right direction the curtains can move in the draught let in by the closed windows, there is
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Ainsworth & Prin Kits
I spend hours travelling to my day job. About three and a half hours a day driving in and out of London, sat in traffic contemplating the rear bumper of the car in front and day dreaming. I’ve been on fantasy hikes, bought houses in remote places and started new businesses, I am even Lady
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When pear shaped is good
When Louise said that I was to come up with a few lines of inspiration for our first blog post my mind went blank. It does the same when I’m trying to remember a song or book or even more embarrasingly when I go to make an introduction. Then I had a light-bulb moment, pear
