I’ve gone out sockless with sandals 4 of the last 7 days. Summer, this is not, but it’s definitely on the way. For the shop that means there’s a gear change of sorts. Our days are less frenetic and there’s more time for shooting the breeze with the knitters who swing by, all the better for story telling and overhearing.… Read more →
“The thing about a croft is that it’s a life-long tenancy. You don’t own the land. You’re just custodians of it for your lifetime… There’s a mindset where you realise that you’re part of a long tradition that started in the mid to late 1800s and you’re just continuing that legacy“. Meg Rodger’s croft is on the Hebridean island of… Read more →
“The only mistakes we make”, we’re told, “are the ones we fail to learn from”. So what was the lesson here? A mis-stranded skein of yarn was unknowingly loaded onto the swift for ball winding. In a matter of seconds, the whole thing was a snarled up spaghetti-like mess of tangles. The customer smiled nervously about an appointment she had… Read more →
We’d been getting requests for months, or possibly even years, before I finally caved and did a round-up – about this time last year I think – of sweater patterns on Ravelry that would make reasonably good matches for Toast’s ready-to-wear knitwear collection. Why the resistance? Well it’s complicated. Picking out patterns that are a match for sweaters we can… Read more →
I was trying and failing to steady the skate which I’d hung from the rack on the cieling. The weight of the the boot kept pulling it over. I tightened up the strings now attached to the eyelet hooks, but it wasn’t helping. The object of this delicate balancing and steadying excercise was to get the left boot pointing forwards… Read more →
Anna Husemann sits in the centre of a striped Louis XVI sofa, her face framed by long golden curls and a perfectly straight-cut fringe. Behind her is a studio pinboard of colour swatches, mini skeins, stencil cutouts and magazine clippings. There is an orderliness to the whole arrangement – Anna, the sofa and the items of the board – which… Read more →
Yes, Part 5 means that there are another 4 that came before, but don’t panic – they happened last summer and the summer before that and we have them all listed here so you don’t have to hunt them out. Plus thanks to the timelessness of the super designs we found back then, they’re still just as good to knit… Read more →
We know that knitting monogamy is not for everyone. Unlike human partners, knitting which gets passed over for a while in favour of another project, doesn’t experience feelings of abandonment or jealousy (as far as I know). And far from slowing things down, plenty of knitters hold that working on several projects simultaneously means there’s always a suitable project to… Read more →
There may be practical reasons for dividing the year into 4 separate seasons with beginning and end dates, but real world weather doesn’t always seem to get the schedule. No sooner had east London got its first dose of proper coat-free warmth this year, than it seemed to turn its back on spring, for another go at being winter again.… Read more →
A few days ago, this came in an email to the shop.. ‘I would love to make the Burgos with the João but I don’t want to use a second laceweight silk yarn, as I don’t do silk and want to keep that wonderful 419 green colour.In theory, would it work to just make it 2 or three sizes larger… Read more →
