Yarn School

I went up to Glasgow to take part in the Glasgow School of Yarn last weekend. It was a good excuse to visit some friends in my lovely old hometown of Glasgow (I find it easier to love Glasgow when I'm not subjected to the constant dreary weather).

The weather was very dreary over the weekend, but we got only light rain showers instead of the heavy rain that was forcast, so I didn't get too wet. Anyway, we've been suffering from near drought conditions down in Oxford lately and I find myself actually missing rain, so it was nice to get a good dose for once.

But enough of the weather, you want to hear about the knitting! The School of Yarn was held at the Mackintosh Church at Queen's Cross. A most appropriate location, since Charles Rennie Mackintosh is one of Glasgow's most famous style icons (the genesis of the name of the knitting weekend was the Glasgow School of Art, housed in one of Mackintosh's better known buildings). Mackintosh designed buildings in the arts and crafts style, but appropriately he and his wife were active in textile design as well.

Stained glass window in the Mackintosh church 

I took two classes, Plug and Play shawl design with Amy Singer and Steeking with Ann Kingstone. I suppose I could have picked up most of the information from knitting reference books or the internet, but I found it really useful to have everything packaged conveniently in a 3-hour class. Also, it was fun to meet some teachers who are members of the kniterati, and additionally, I learned some useful things from my classmates.

The woman I was sitting next to in the shawl class was a video podcaster, and she shared with me a bunch of knitting podcasts she listens to. I'm always on the lookout for new podcasts, so I'll check them out and perhaps do a podcast review in future.

The woman I was sitting next to in the steeking class was a continental knitter, and she showed me how to improve my purl technique. I learned knitting from a British knitter (my husband's granny), but immediately gravitated to the continental method. But since no one ever demonstrated the method to me, I always suspected I wasn't doing it quite right. When knitting I hold the thread around my index finger and use my middle finger to push the yarn into position. When purling I used my thumb and middle finger to pull the yarn into place. But now I've learned how to purl without the assistance of my thumb - I just use my middle finger to hook the yarn around the needle. I'm hoping that having fewer fingers to coordinate will help speed up my purling, and presumably it should reduce hand strain as well (not that I often suffer from it). 

Unfortunately, though I've been working on perfecting this new purling technique, I haven't made progress with any lace shawl or steeking projects. I abandoned the shawl I started in class because I wasn't happy with either the yarn or the lace pattern I chose. I bought some lovely Old Maiden Aunt merino/silk 4 ply in my signature chartreuse colour at the Yarn School marketplace.

Old Maiden Aunt merino/silk 4ply in grellow - irresistible!

I'm going to try to design a nice leafy lace top down shawl for it, using a chart from my Vogue Knitting Stitchionary (volume 5, lace knitting).

For the steeking class we had been instructed to knit 4 swatches for homework. This was really helpful because the idea of cutting knitting is terrifying; it was comforting to have plenty of material to work with, and additionally to get the group support of the whole class. We were instructed to use shetland wool, and it really is amazing how the cut ends stick together. My cat has been playing with the cut up scraps for days, and they are hardly unraveling at all!

Ann Kingstone introduced us to her new pattern Tess, a pair of colourwork slippers that use steeking.

How perfect would these be for Christmas presents?!

The pattern is being released in 5 installments as part of a KAL (knit along). I've bought the pattern but have not started yet because I've already gotten hung up on the new cast on technique (Judy's magic cast on), which I have actually done before but have already forgotten. This is exactly why classes and demonstrations are so critical, to help us overcome the knitting hangups that prevent us from starting projects.

Knitting dresses

There are two kinds of knitters, process knitters and product knitters. Ok, there are actually more kinds of knitters than that - as many kinds as there are knitters, really. And process versus product is like nature versus nurture - it's always a mixture of both. But if I had to choose one over the other, I would say I'm a product knitter.

Product knitters are more focussed on completion, process knitters savour the activity of knitting. Process knitters hate finishing and sewing up, and can leave projects unfinished for months while they get on with other knitting. Product knitters can't wait to finish the items on their needles so they can start enjoying wearing their knitting.

The product knitter in me loves finishing - that is when everything comes together and I can finally see how my new item of clothing looks and fits. It probably also helps that hand sewing reminds me of my childhood, when I used to spend many happy hours piecing together tiny clothes for my dollhouse dolls. Hand sewing for me is play, not drudgery.

I knit mainly to make things for me to wear (I'll admit it, I'm a thoroughly selfish knitter). And since I mostly wear skirts and dresses, I have to knit skirts and dresses. You have to be a product knitter to even consider knitting dresses. They must be the most boring item to knit ever, involving miles and miles of stockinette. Yet I went ahead and knit two dresses this year. I started one in alpaca early this spring, and then when it was time to set aside winter fibers I immediately started another one in hemp.

I finished the hemp one and blogged about it back in June. I picked up the alpaca again in September and finally finished a few days ago. The pattern is Still Light Tunic by Veera Välimäki - knit from the top down, it has a fitted raglan top with pockets tucked into folds on the front. The pattern is well written and the styling is ingenious and flattering.

Like all good patterns, this one includes a schematic

I knit my Still Light in the yarn the pattern calls for - Drops alpaca - a very affordable Norwegian yarn available in a brilliant range of colours. I get mine from Scandinavian Knitting Design. The yarn has recently gone up from £2.99 to £3.15 for a 50g ball, but even with today's prices this dress used less than £30 worth of yarn. Personally, I see no reason why knitted items should cost less than store bought - but it doesn't hurt.

I chose teal, to match a button I bought at La Droguerie in Paris.

All told, it probably only took me a couple of months of knitting, with a long summer hiatus in between start and finish. The worst part (as always) was the sleeves. I absolutely hate knitting sleeves. They are usually the last part of a garment to be knit, and by the time I get to them I am thoroughly fed up with the project and just want to be done already. I was slightly tempted to leave the dress sleeveless, but it wouldn't have been very practical in alpaca, so I soldiered on.

I had to redo the cuffs several times because I didn't measure the sleeve length correctly. I did the first one too short, redid it, and then did the second one too short as well. And then, when I went to undo the second sleeve, I mixed them up and undid the first sleeve instead! D'oh! There was only one good thing about these sleeves - they are 3/4 length, so at least I didn't have to knit all the way down to my wrists.

My Northern Light

But oh, the joy when everything was done, the project was blocked, and I could admire my brand new dress. I wish I could have worn it immediately, but it is still too cosy for this time of year. I probably won't be able to resist wearing it to Yarn School in Glasgow this weekend. It's cold and wet up north, and with any luck the venue (quite appropriately a church designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh) will be suitably drafty.

Putting the Garden to Bed

We're coming to the end of the garden season. I should be able to get a few more weeks worth of swiss chard and parsnips, and the cabbages probably won't be ready until winter (if then - I have yet to have any real success with cabbage), and I'll have to plant broad beans and bulbs later this fall. But most of the plants are reaching the end of their life, and it's time to tidy up and cover as many beds as possible to prevent a proliferation of weeds.

I'm going to be controversial and admit that this is my least favourite time of the gardening year. I know, it should be a time to celebrate the bountiful harvest - but both my husband and I are neat freaks, and the garden gets VERY messy this time of year. Some plants are dying off and looking very sad, others are flourishing a little bit too much for my liking. Also we completely lost control of the weeds this year because we were away quite a bit over the past couple of months. On top of which I lost my allotment key and was not able to visit the plot for several weeks until I acquired a replacement.

But we finally made a good start this weekend tidying up. We have three compost containers on the allotment, but even that is not enough to keep up with all the garden and kitchen waste, so we tried burning some of the leftover plant materials for the first time. Our allotment neighbor let us borrow their handy metal bonfire barrel, so we were able to have a very tidy bonfire. Unfortunately the plant material was not nearly dry enough and we have no outdoor skills whatsoever, so we had to use a lot of lighter fluid to keep the fire going. Which means I can't use the ash to fertilise the plot, but at least we had the satisfaction of getting rid of all the mess.

Nightfall is coming earlier - soon it will be too dark to visit the garden after work.

We try to cover as many beds as possible over the winter, because what with the shortening days and holiday travel we know we won't get down to the allotment often enough in the upcoming months to keep the weeds at bay. Weeds still somehow manage to grown under the black cloth covering but they are pretty sparse and spindly, easy enough to dig up in the spring.

Hoping the cover keeps out the weeds - and the foxes & badgers

In terms of the boutiful harvest I'm most pleased about the pumpkins and beans. I got fewer pumpkins this year but they were larger than last year, so I'm going to interpret that as progress. The genius of beans and pumpkins is that you don't have to harvest them until the end of the season and they store easily through the winter, so you get to enjoy your garden produce for longer. I harden off the pumpkins in the kitchen by the heater for a couple of weeks, and this year I'm storing them in the hallway outside our flat (they need heat and humidity for the curing process and a cool, well-ventilated space for storage). The beans mostly dried on the vine, so we didn't have the trouble of storing them until we were ready to shell them. The shelling by hand was a bit of a chore - I suspect my husband will be getting a bean sheller for Christmas this year.

Shelling beans - with no help from kitty

My husband is most pleased about the parsnips. After getting a lot of freakishly forked parsnips last year we carefully cleared the bed of rocks, and so far this year's crop has been perfectly formed. Perfectly formed, but enormous. Some of them obviously should have been picked earlier, but I'm not a huge fan of parsnips so they had to wait for my husband to return from Paris at the end of September. I cut out the inner core from the especially large ones and they were perfect roasted.

I've been convinced to grow more rows of parsnips next year. They are easy to grow and you can leave them in the bed late into the season, so you have a continuous supply into winter. Along with the pumpkins and the slowly swelling brussel sprouts, we should be all set for Thanksgiving!

Chasing after Fall

We've been enjoying some spectacular Summer weather lately, but I'm not really in the mood for Summer anymore - I'm ready for Fall. The changing leaves and the earlier evenings make it impossible to ignore its impending arrival. So I decided we should take advantage of the warm weather to go looking for Fall colours.

Native British trees don't put on quite the same impressive array of foliage as North American or Japanese trees, so had to try an arboretum. A colleague at work recommended Westonbirt arboretum, about a 1.5 hour drive west of Oxford, and luckily friends with a car were willing to provide transportation.

I was looking forward to some brilliant Japanese maples, but in the end we found a lot more of interest than just pretty leaves. They had some lovely statuesque sequoia, pines and plane trees, including this majestic oriental plane tree.

There were also, surprisingly, still a decent number of shrubs in flower, including this unusual find, a suitably autumnal Carolina allspice (reminding me it is almost time to start baking pumpkin pies!)

 And for a taste of the Japanese maples, here is one with brilliant red helicopter seeds.

But I think my favourite discovery was the fruit trees. Not edible fruits, but lovely colourful berries. The most amazing, which I've never seen before, were the Asian spindle trees, with delicate little umbrella seedpods dripping orange berries.

There was another variety with bright pink and orange seed pods, and then there were the white berry shrubs and the blue berry shrubs - too many to remember the names. Suffice to say, I'll be brushing up on my oriental botany if I ever get a house with a garden.

And finally, for a taste of the Winter ahead, a stunning weeping silver holly.

The lovely photos are thanks to my husband who mostly patiently followed my artistic direction (i.e. pointing and saying, 'Ooh, take a picture of that!')