My Year of Kate Davies. . .

Definitely more knitting than blogging going on here lately.

2018 is already turning out to be the year of Kate Davies. Last weekend, I finished my Warriston sweater and have been practically living in it ever since.  This is an older pattern of hers, but feels just as current and creative as her latest designs.  Sometimes you just want the satisfaction of a quick, chunky knit. I started this back in December, had knit most of the body and then put it aside. I was then working on a lot of projects on tiny needles; I really needed to pull this out and finish it and I'm so glad I did.

The yarn is Jamieson's of Shetland Aran in a rich chocolate colourway called Broch. It has flecks of deep blue and a bit of orange in it. It knits up a dream.  I decided to add a contrast colour for the pocket linings, just for fun. This is some Hebridean aran that I've had in my stash for yonkers. I like the unexpected pop of purple.

Kate's West Highland Way club is now in full force and everything she's released so far has been gorgeous. I used some of my remaining Milarrochy Tweed to knit the first pattern - the Craigallian hat.  I used all of her neutral colours and added just a teeny bit of the vibrant Stockiemuir green. Against the soft grey it comes out quite muted, but I like the effect. At some point I'll get around to casting on the accompanying mittens. 

Next up was the STUNNING Strathendrick which I cast on almost immediately.  It's a monumental bit of knitting - a huge, boxy, sweater - but I have nothing like it in my wardrobe and the fitted sleeves and split hem give it a very modern look. I'm not the biggest fan of flower motifs so have just removed them and left some white space.  I am loving the colours and yarn I have chosen.  It is all Jamieson & Smith jumper 2ply with the exception of the red which is Cambrian Wool 4ply in Welsh Red.  I bought four balls of this last year at WonderWool and have been waiting for the perfect project to show them off. I am smitten with the colour and think I'm even going to enjoy knitting the sleeves on this one.

I will be quite some time working away on Strathendrick, addictive as it is.  My aim is to finish it for the Edinburgh Yarn Festival in March.  However, that doesn't stop me planning my next Kate Davies design. This week she released this beautiful yoked cardigan completely at home among the mossy landscape of the West Highland Way.  I've been inspired to dig out my Hebridean wool for this. My precious 4ply from Uist Wool has also been waiting for the ideal project.  I have a few skeins of Alice Starmore's Hebridean 2ply that will hopefully work with it. It'll be a softer look than Kate's but I'm excited to cast on.  Though patience is definitely not one of my virtues, I will try to wait until I'm at least up to the sleeves of Strathendrick. Can't promise though.

This is my inspiration photo for the cardigan (which I may knit as a jumper - not decided yet). It's the view from the top of Eavel in North Uist and one of my favourite hikes from last year's Hebridean holiday.

What will Kate come up with next???

This Thing of Paper, This Thing of Beauty. . .

"As a knitter, I find the connections and parallels between knitting and books compelling. The move from something handmade to machine-made is one which is perhaps most poignant to us knitters as the world keeps reminding us it would be quicker (and probably cheaper) if we bought a machine-knitted garment rather than insisted on making it ourselves. And yet we persist."

These wise words are from the introduction to Karie Westermann's new book This Thing of Paper, which explores these connections between knitting and the early production of books. It rings a bell on so many levels for me.  I started my career over twenty years ago as a bookseller in an independent bookstore.  A bookworm since seven, I absolutely loved my job.  Then came the rise of the chain stores with their unfair discounts and competitive advantages. And then Amazon came along. And then pallets of cheap mass market books stacked high in Costco and Walmart.  It was all about the price, not the experience and not the knowledge and passion of the staff. I got tired of people wandering in, asking for recommendations, browsing carefully curated displays, then writing down titles and ordering online. In short, it was no longer any fun.  I then moved to publishing and found a whole tribe of dedicated people in the indie presses who were as enthusiastic about good writing, creativity and undiscovered talent as I was.  But they were just a small part of the huge publishing conglomerate that I worked for and frequently never given the respect and resources they deserved. When my bosses started regularly referring to books as units, then publishing was no longer fun, particularly when social media was in its early stages and it was more important to get "likes" of books than to actually read or talk about them.

What has all this got to do with knitting?

Well, since I moved to the UK and started going to wool shows around the country, meeting knitters in person and through ravelry,  I have definitely found my tribe again (and it's no coincidence that knitters are often huge readers too). An appreciation of the physical object, of the time and talent that it takes to produce something of beauty, either in text or texture, unites us all.  I will admit that when self-publishing first started to make inroads into the industry, I was skeptical.  But for knitting and other craft books, it's been a revelation; authors and makers have really been able to take a theme close to their heart and produce gorgeous and authentic books that reflect their vision and passion. Would a mainstream publisher have taken a chance on Kate Davies' earliest books ( I think they would now, but I'm glad she has retained all the creative control and is continuing to self-publish).  Would they have looked twice at something like Anna Maltz's quirky and fabulous  Penguin:  A Knit Collection?  Probably not.  And these are only two examples of the many wonderful and original self-published craft books I have added to my collection over the years, and that keep on appearing. Long may it last!

And This Thing of Paper is another incredible example.  The book itself is a joy to hold; as much thought has gone into the production values as the patterns. The paper, font, photography are all beautiful and Karie has written short essays on the various aspects and components involved in creating medieval manuscripts and early printed books.  A bit of book history and part of it too - a copy is going to be held in the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, such an incredible honour.

I was one of the Kickstarter backers for this project and thus lucky enough to test knit one of the patterns - the Rubrication Shawl - back in June.  It is a stunning pattern, which as Karie writes, was designed to resemble "nibs spilling ink across a surface and droplets becoming leaves (we often refer to a leaf of paper, of course). It is a pattern which is both text and texture."

I used Countess Ablaze's English Gentleman Fingering in one of my favourite wool blends, BFL and Masham, and I love the vibrant colour and soft and cozy feel of this shawl. It shows off the intricate stitch patterns perfectly.

There are eleven patterns in total - two cardigans, one jumper, four shawls (a Karie specialty), one cowl, a pair of mittens and a hat and fingerless mitts set. Reading through the essays and seeing the inspiration behind the designs has also inspired me to pay tribute to the innovation and creativity that has personally touched me, as a reader, as a bookseller, as a publishing sales rep and marketer, and as an appreciator and collector of the printed word.  The history of the book is ongoing. The indies are holding on and in some cases making a comeback.  There is every reason to be positive and celebratory. Print is definitely not dead.  We can read. We can knit. Sometimes I wish I could do both simultaneously. We can persist.

I've already knit one other project in the book, inspired by one of my favourite small presses, but I will leave that for another post. There is a KAL starting up in Karie's Ravelry group on Monday, January 15th and running through to March. Pop in and join us!

A Productive January So Far. . .

There's a wonderful sense of well-being when all your knitting projects are going well and working out as you'd hoped. I finished my Stevenson Sweater, by Kate Davies, using all twelve colours of her new Milarrochy yarn and I am in love. It fits perfectly and I can now be a walking shade card, whenever I want to choose colours for another project.

Here they are in bright sunshine - the yarn bloomed beautifully and while there is a bit a of prickle factor, I'm not terribly sensitive so am happy to wear this against bare skin.  It will be a great piece to wear in warmer weather as is, and I'll layer it over a long-sleeved shirt in the cooler months.

Kate's new West Highland Way club released its first pattern - the Craigallian hat and mittens - yesterday and I've already cast on for the hat.  I only used about two-thirds of the yarn to make the sweater - below are my left-overs and there is plenty to pop into future designs.

While getting ready for the club pattern releases, Kate also published Carbeth, a very quick and quirky jumper, knit in bulky yarn.  It's such a quick knit that I managed it in four days.  I think it probably does look best in a single colour, but I was good and used up stash.

The brown/olive is some Cascade Eco that I've had for years. The variegated is a skein and half of Fleece Artist Back Country. Last year was the 150th anniversary of Canada's National Parks and this Nova Scotian dyer created special colourways for each of the province's parks. This green is celebrating Gros Morne in Newfoundland. I loved the idea behind the colours and ordered two skeins each of five colourways. When the box arrived, I got a bit of a shock - I had been so focused on ordering the right park, that I failed to notice the weight. I thought I was getting fingering; instead, I got chunky! Since then, I've been looking for suitable patterns to use some of it up, so am thrilled this came along and the colours remind me, appropriately enough,  of a Canadian pine forest.  I made a few mods - added some inches to the cropped length and changed the collar. The original has a rolled up collar, but I can never get them to behave properly.  I have to block this, but it's the perfect jumper to throw over a pair of jeans.

I seem to be a bit obsessed with green and brown at the moment. To match my Elska hat, I've also cast on some mittens in mostly the same colours.  These are the Shaila Mittens by Ella Gordon and it's really nice to have a smaller colourwork project on the go.

I love it when the year gets off to a great start.  So much fun knitting ahead. . .

Knit to the End of the Year and Turn. . .

2017 will be a hard year to beat.  I had two absolutely marvellous and unforgettable trips to Shetland and the Hebrides, with lots of lovely weekends away to parts of the UK that were new to me. And this really was the year that I had loads of fun with my knitting.  Back in January, I decided my word for the year would be colour - I really wanted to cast on more colourwork and to really think about picking colours that would work well together.  Looking back at my projects, I'm really happy and also surprised at what I came up with.

It started with my Lausavisa jumper, designed by Karie Westermann.  This is one of my favourite knits of the year and I wear this a lot. I definitely need more yoked sweaters in my closet.

I played with colour, not just on yokes but sleeves, the body and even as a single contrast row. 

My Kildalton cardigan, designed by Kate Davies was my most complicated knit of 2017 and continued the trend of knitting a lot of blue, which I hadn't really registered until I brought all these photos together.  

And here are the rest of the tops I knit. I was really chuffed to get to my goal of twelve garments in one year. I got so many comments on my teal Carpino, designed by Carol Feller (second on the top row ), saying that the colour really suited me, so maybe I need to further explore the blue family.  Mind you, I'd also really like more reds in my wardrobe too.  And then purple is this year's  Pantone colour . . 

My favourite knit of the year - and the most colourful - was my Next Year in Lerwick sweater (bottom right), designed by Tori Seierstad.  I learned so much from this project, and while I may be reluctant to embark on another with quite so many colours (and thus ends to weave in), it has cemented a love of fair isle for me.

I also knit quite a few cowls and shawls, again experimenting with how different coloured yarns could be combined, whether through intarsia as in my Harewood Hap by Bristol Ivy, inspired by Mondrian, or my Marled Magic Shawl by Stephen West, which taught me tons about mixing yarns together for texture and shading, or my Strandwanderer by Lea Viktoria which cleverly made the most of a variegated yarn.

With every project you gain in knowledge and confidence and I'm excited to see where my knitting takes me in 2018.

It's already off to a colourful start.  I subscribed to Kate Davies' West Highland Way yarn club at the end of last year. She has developed her own line of 4ply yarn, called Milarrochy Tweed and there are twelve patterns to come over the next few weeks, using both Milarrochy and Buachaille, and Cumulus, a wispy silk/mohair blend - I'm very curious to see what she comes up with for that!  As part of the yarn club, we received a 25g ball of each of the twelve Milarrochy colours.   Those 1200 metres whispered "sweater quantity" to me and I was quite impatient to start knitting with this gorgeous yarn. I searched around Kate's previous patterns and settled on the Stevenson Sweater, which I had actually been wanting to make before my Shetland trip, but just never got around to it.

I've managed to use all twelve of the colours (sorry, the light isn't great in this photo and thus the vibrancy of all these shades doesn't really come through).  You can read all about Kate's development of the yarn in these posts on her blog, here and here, and the inspiration behind her palette here.

It's fascinating reading and the yarn is lovely to knit with. With a little care, as it is only a 1ply,  it spit-splices successfully and so I don't have too many ends to weave in. I should be able to finish this over the weekend and I'm looking forward to seeing how the yarn blocks and blooms.

I have two words that I will be chanting to myself throughout 2018 -  especially at wool shows. They are STASH and WIPs.  I have far too many of both and really need to make a dent in the former and get the latter off the needles.   I did get as far as listing and organizing the lot over the holidays, so there is really no excuse - I just need some self-discipline!

Let's see where this year takes us. . .