If the world weren’t suffering from Covid right now, hundreds of knitters, spinners and other fiber enthusiasts would be enjoying the last bits of Shetland Wool Week, an annual gathering celebrating the native sheep and textile industry of the northern British Isles. I’ve had the luck to visit the Shetland Islands, but not at the time of the Wool Week, so I can only imagine how much fun it would be. That doesn’t stop me from celebrating along with all of the other virtual attendees this year.
I have purchased the Annual for a number of years and look forward each time to pouring through all of the articles and patterns. It’s a great resource that I think is well worth the price.
Ahead of the event, the organizers of Wool Week ask a designer to produce a pattern for a kep (hat) that serves as a physical reminder of the festival. The pattern is free, and the version this year, Katie’s Kep, designed by Wilma Malcolmson, is shown in a variety of colorways of Jamieson and Smith Spindrift Yarn (good luck finding it in stock right now!). This is a free pattern to download from the Wool Week website. You also can join a Knit-along; a great way to see the multitude of color combinations other knitters have used for this lovely design.
This year I decided to become a Sponsor for Wool Week because I wanted to contribute to keeping the event alive in a difficult year. A reward for that was a second pattern for gloves that match the kep you see here. I’ve made many pairs of mittens and mitts, but have never made a pair of gloves; put off by the fiddly bits of the fingers and the inherent problem of making enough room between the fingers without leaving gaps. My knitting/spinning friend Margaret and I were discussing this issue recently, and while she was ready to dive right in, I was thinking I just might make the design into mittens. That is until today when my Wool Week feed on Facebook announced a Youtube video on that very subject by the exceptional knitter Elizabeth Johnson. I watched it through twice, and have bookmarked it for when I actually get to the finger part of these gloves. She is absolutely correct in saying that they are a bit of a pain, but her tips are absolutely perfect, and have encouraged me to give it a try. She also shows how to construct an “afterthought” thumb at the end of the video. My method is quite similar, but I expect I’ll modify it now having seen her version.
Together with Hazel Tindall, Elizabeth has put together a downloadable video of tips and tricks of Shetland knitting that is a great addition to your “how to” library.
I had a meeting yesterday with my mentor for my Capstone sweater. Meeting up at Webs is always a hazard for me as yarn just seems to leap off of the shelves into my hands. I actually did pick up a very small packet of cotton for a clas in inkle weaving, but was otherwise good and kept to my resolve not to add to the yarn pile. The good news from the meeting is that I’m ready to complete the sweater for submission. Another milestone met.
My other stop was at the Barns and Noble bookstore nearby. While I usually read books on my tablet, I love bookstores very much and need to spend time in them (particularly since our local library is closed to browsing), seeing what has been newly published and what people are reading. It also gives me a chance to look at the knitting magazines that I don’t subscribe to — particularly those from overseas. The British publication The Knitter jumped off the shelf when I saw that the cover pattern was from my friend Kristin Blom from Uppsala in Sweden.
In the time I’ve known her, Kristin has published a raft of patterns, both for the Jarbo yarn company and in The Knitter magazine. In fact, she was featured in the magazine for issue 154 in August. I wasn’t able to find it in stock, so am eagerly looking forward to a copy that I was able to order online. Kristin is one of the designers I interviewed for my book, and what I said about her then still applies. She is hard to categorize as a designer, but that is one of the things I most like about her. She seems utterly unconstrained by convention, sometimes focusing on the back of a sweater rather than the front, and knitting a long shawl sidewise to take advantage of slip stitches that would be otherwise less dramatic.
Kristin Blom is someone whose designs you should keep an eye out for. Her Blood Moon shawl appears in my book, and if you have little ones to knit for, take a look at Elliot’s cardigan.