December 2014

New Year reflections: leading to making all patterns free!

I love reflections! This is a puddle on the road where we walked on Christmas Day - very close to darkness so fuzzy and unclear but the water was still so the reflection is still quite distinct.

In knitting Fair Isle, the designs are often very attractive when reversed, and Felix Ford used several ideas like this in her lovely new book, The Domestic Soundscape - see here. And here is a preview of some designs on which we are working for a (less than usually naff) seasonal pullover.

A new worsted spinning frame! Whoopee!

We have been looking for an additional spinning frame for a while ... we have had to make people wait for their worsted spun yarns, which are growing in popularity due to the softer initial handle. So it was great news to hear in late October that a poor orphan Cognetex spinning frame sitting in Italy was not needed when the rest of the mill was being shipped to China. The photo above shows the unhappy orphan languishing in Italy ...

The colour of frost

One of the best times of day is early morning (for us larks but not for my owl husband!) when I go to visit the sheep. They live in their own timescales - they cannot be hurried and regard stressy people as just plain weird. So I adjust and it's wonderful. There is a particularly special feeling on winter evenings when the ewes are in lamb, in the barn and gently munching their hay - were it not a little draughty I would stay the night with them but I am not as well equipped as they for outdoor living ...

Wovember inspirations: designing yarns part 4

Following from Part Three, here is a picture of our Elegance range, launched this year, in natural colours in DK and 4-ply, and occupying a neat place between the work-a-day Blacker Classic and luxury Blacker Swan ranges. Part Four describes the Blacker Yarns development process in more detail.

Wovember inspirations: designing yarns part 3

I always feel a little pang of regret when the joyous celebrations of Wovember are over and was so glad to see the continuing inspiration and novelty from sheep, through language and pictures, this year. For the sake of completeness I am adding the two final parts of our yarn designing information, as it very much reflects our journey in making and I hope it will encourage comments and ideas.

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