It was late July 2021 and my phone pinged. A friend Whatsapped me a photo they’d seen online of a guy knitting by the side of a pool. I glanced at the caption long enough to see it was something to do with the Olympics. My phone pinged again. Different friend, same picture. Then it pinged again and again and… Read more →
What’s your favourite bind off? Oh that’s easy – it has to be the tubular bind-off. It’s everything I want in a bind off – lovely stitch work, a last bit of drama before the project is finally over, and a counterintuitively pleasing edge-free edge. But maybe best of all is that it feels like a secret between me and… Read more →
‘I just don’t have the time. Life is way too busy at the moment’ This familiar response from non-knitting knitwear-admiring friends comes when I gently suggest they could make one too if they learned to knit. Implied here, is that I am lucky not to be so busy and have enough time on my hands to knit. But I am… Read more →
Over a year and a half since the last one, I’m happy to say that Absolute Beginner knitting classes are starting again on 3 October. Or maybe better to say that I’m utterly over the moon about it – which may surprise you given the website’s list of what I’ll be teaching: How to cast on, knit, purl, cast off, sew up.… Read more →
At other times of year, 6 weeks can go by with little to show for the passing of time. But the period that lies between the end of July and beginning of September makes a line in the year which feels to me, not unlike a weather front, or the beginning of a new series. Tone, mood, and rhythm are… Read more →
That the shop becomes quieter in the summer months seems almost too obvious to be worth mentioning. We make things to keep us warm, so our’s is a winter sport – right? The regular recurrence of this sleepy section that the shop settles into over July and August is something I now take for granted. It’s warm outside and therefore… Read more →
‘Do you think that bit where I went wrong back there, shows? Would you undo it? ‘ This whether-or-not-to-frog question is as much a question about the knitter as it is about the knitting. For the answer involves reading the person and their feelings about their knitting. Mistakenly encourage an eager new knitter to rip it back, and she has to… Read more →
Socks on the beach, cables in the glow of a head torch by a camp fire, zoning out with rounds of plain knitting under a tree by the paddling pool.. summer can be the perfect knitting season. It can also confound us with unexpected challenges, particularly if it’s happening far away from your box of trusty tools, and not within… Read more →
It started quite randomly – a proud photo of an impressive garlic harvest sent by my sister to the family Whatsapp group. A slightly absurd word association game began playing out in my head: garlic… stalks… plaiting… bicycle.. BERET! Now out of the ground, those alliums’ gloriously long green stems plainly needed braiding. And if she was going to be… Read more →
Making and finishing a thing is great. We all know that. But it’s not always easy to get there. It needs lots of stuff to come together at the same time. We need to like what we’re making, who we’re making it for, what we’re making it with, how the stitches go – there needs to be some good-enough balance… Read more →
