I think a lot of us have had an experience where we’ve bought something or purchased a pattern and it turns out the brand or designer is not someone whose values align with our own. The Sunset Highway sweater was one of the big popular sweaters a few years ago, you’d see them everywhere at yarn shows or anywhere where knitters would congregate. I turned up at Perth 2018 with a plan. A list of yarns I had already chosen from the vendor previews, a coloured in version of the yoke, I had this grand vision of what my sweater would look like. I cast it on soon after and as it took shape on my needles I loved it. Towards the end of 2018 I got pregnant and I wore my beautiful Sunset Highway the whole way through it, like a cosy hug. I wore it to EYF 2019 and loved seeing the sea of them all in different colours. I used the leftover yarns in another project.
2018: Before the redesign!
And then it became very clear that the designers values were not values I shared. I put my sweater away, I didn’t feel comfortable wearing it anymore. There wasn’t any way for me to access the rest of the yarn anymore so I didn’t want to lose the yarn by frogging it, but I also didn’t want to unravel months of work to make a big 4ply sweater either. It’s my favourite fitting sweater! So eventually I came up with a plan.
I designed a new yoke chart. I frogged the yoke! And I reknit it up. And oh, my goodness. I LOVE IT! It’s like a whole new sweater and I can wear it again knowing it won’t make me feel uncomfortable nor anyone else! The sleeves are still recognisable but the yoke it very different and I’m hoping that will show the intent to distance myself. In fact, I love the new yoke so much I’m considering actually making ANOTHER full sweater! And this time I’d alter the arms as I’m going too. Decisions….
I have christened this ‘new’ sweater the Sunset Byeway. If you want to make your own I’ve put instructions below. I needed some extra MC but the rest of the recovered yarn was enough.
1: Pick up your stitches. You’ll be picking up on the third round below the colourwork, so you have two rounds of plain stockinette to frog as well. Using the same size needle as you knit the body with, pick up the stitches across the full round. Trace down to find the start of the row and place a marker there on the row you’re picking up.
2: Start to frog. DO NOT FROG FROM THE TOP! I started by trying to cut the cast on and then frog down and it DID. NOT. WORK. Instead the easiest way I found was to find where I joined in the MC (purple in my pics, point A), undo the knot and then gently frog it down. You will need to pull it through stitches for a few rows before you can wind it into a ball but *trust me*, not as much as you’d need to the other way. Then when you’ve got to the final colourwork row, find where you fastened off CC1 (green in my pics, point B), undo the knot and unravel that final row. This should leave you with a yoke separate from the body. Frog the body down to the picked up stitches, then frog the yoke back from the bottom.
3: Knit! Follow the chart. / = k2tog, \ = ssk. Then you’ll need to reverse engineer the rest of the top for the size you knit. Replace increases with decreases. The short rows took me a little bit of figuring out but I basically drew a bunch of dots (to represent stitches), marked the longest short row point and then counted out where they would be and wrote them out. It took a bit but it wasn’t too hard. I added in an extra row to catch the last wraps (there will only be one on each side as you’re going shortest row to longest) and then also a plain row before starting the neck ribbing.
4: I would recommend maybe a few extra rows of ribbing on the neck as it will probably curl. I tried a few different stretchy cast offs before I found one I liked the look of (I ended up using icelandic cast off). Block and enjoy!
The Fasten Off YAL ends tomorrow! So if you’re still a little overwhelmed about the fabulous range of designers and patterns available I thought I’d pop up a list of my favourites.
Aoibhe Ni – Aoibhe is a phenomenal crochet designer and her tunisian crochet patterns are renowned for being a perfect introduction to the craft. I think she may be one of the most recommended to me designers of all time, I think at least half of my crafty friends have crocheted one of her patterns! This YAL I picked up the Finola shawl and I can’t wait to get stuck in now that some other projects are finished. You don’t even need a big long cable hook, a regular hook should work fine! I am so excited to learn a new craft.
Aphaia – I have been a BIG fan of Kirsten’s designs for a long time now, as anyone who follows me will know. She has a great range of patterns available for the YAL this year including socks, hats, colourwork, lace, even a super cute mammoth tea cozy!
Carolyn Lisle – Oh my goodness the COLOUR just jumps out of the screen at you! Beautiful hats, mitts and socks! I see some really interesting construction methods and some cool ways of using those skeins you may have that have lovely regular pops of colour.
Emily K Williams – I GASPED when I opened this designers page. Oh my goodness you just have to check out her deisgns, they are stunning. Colour, texture, lace. And incredible size inclusive garments. Those fair isle sweaters, Wilkhaven and Arrina, were my second purchase.
Fuzzy Mittens – adorable knitted toys! They are extremely cute and there’s a really wide range.
Holli Yeoh – A veritable treasure trove of patterns, Holli has loads on sale! She has lots of different types of patterns but the ones that really stand out for me are the garments. There are loads of adult ones but she has some fabulous kids and baby ones!
Kari-Helene Rane – Knitted dresses anyone?! I also love how gender neutral a lot of her designs could be.
WIPinsanity – Holy colourwork batman! Stunning designs! Kathleen is also co-runner of the YAL, but her designs really speak for themselves. The Tracery Vest is just breathtaking!
La Visch Designs – Shawl heaven. The full fade hap is just beautiful.
Lotta Groeger – Gotta share a fellow nerd and Critical Role fan! And her patterns are beautiful.
Louise Tilbrook – Honestly if I make a favourite designer list and Louise isn’t on it then something has gone wrong on my end! I’ve been a huge fan of her patterns for years. I firmly believe she has a pattern for everyone! I’ve knit quite a number myself.
Natalie Servant Designs – All of her patterns are gorgeous but what really caught my eye are her advent ornaments designed to work with yarn advent calenders. Beautiful!
The Knitting Tutor – If knitted Christmas baubles are your thing then look no further!
Ukee Knits – The colourwork just hits you right in the face, absolutely beautiful! Alder and Cathedral Grove made their way into my library!
Woolly Wormhead – Woolly has to be one of the most innovative hat designers out there, her patterns never fail to inspire. I have a number of her patterns already just waiting to be cast on! I highly recommend all of her work.
I hope you’ve enjoyed a quick look through my favourite designers participating in the Yarnalong! It’s your last chance to pick up some discounted patterns so if anything catches your eye act quickly.
I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to write a blog post about this before now, probably because I was knee deep in NaNoWriMo, but better late than never!
I am participating in the Fasten Off Yarn Along! This is a non-Rav based alternative to the Indie Giftalong where every participating designer hosts their patterns on a non-Rav site such as Payhip, Gumroad or their own website. I expect almost everyone who reads this blog knows about the accessibility problems of Rav and many of us were sad we couldn’t take part in the GAL, so Kathleen of Wipsanity and Rachy Newin decided to join forces and set up the Fasten Off YAL!
There are over 90 designers participating with over 2000 patterns for sale – each pattern is 25% off if you use the code ‘FO2020’. All of my paid patterns are currently on discount until the YAL sale ends on December 5th. But that’s not when all the fun ends! There’s a really fun Discord channel where folks chat about their projects and all kinds of things, there’s bingo, there are prizes…
There’s a FAQ page here and you can search for designers and patterns here! This is a fantastic event, please come along and have lots of yarny fun!
30 is finally here, phew. I’ve felt like I’ve been in suspended animation a bit for the last few weeks, knowing my 20s were coming up to and end, just willing the day to come sooner so I could finally move on from it looming over me. Not in a bad way! I’m excited to be 30! Don’t get me wrong, my 20s were absolutely brilliant, but over the last couple of years I’ve become essentially an entirely different person and I feel like passing this landmark allows me to be a bit more free, fully shrugging off some of the old shackles of my younger self. My aim in this blog post is to just have a good old reminisce about my 20s. It won’t cover everything at all but it gives me an excuse to think about some of the great things that have happened in the last decade.
When I turned 20 I was living in a house with three Uni friends and oh boy it really was a dump! The walls were made of what felt like cardboard, the fire alarm was wired in and on a hair trigger so one night we ended up having to prize it off the wall, the back door went directly into the living room with the worst draft so we had to put a matress up against it to try and retain heat, the boiler broke for 6 months over the worst winter in a very long time, when you used the shower sometimes water came down into the kitchen below through the light fixture… but we had a bloody great time. That year me and one of my besties (also housemate) both got stricken with severe lurgy and spent weeks on the sofas with duvets over us playing Oblivion on the Xbox and rewatching Notre Dame de Paris on repeat. We must have watched it easily 100 times if not more. The sofas were all feather stuffed and sometimes, 10 years later, I STILL find those effing feathers on my stuff!
The next year I had moved in with Sam into our own little flat which was really lovely, it was nice to just be a couple together. He started college and I was working on my first year of Honours. I got my ears pierced (finally) and saw Avengers at the cinema, getting extremely sucked in to the MCU fandom instantly. My friend Cia taught me how to knit and it became an instant passion, one that I don’t think I’ll ever move on from. That summer I spent a few days in 20c hot weather and deluge level rainstorms traipsing up and down an esker with a military grade GPS taking measurements every 1-2m so I could use them to make a model of a section of it. It was great fun but hot and wet work and each day I ended up absolutely soaked through my hiking boots, waterproof trousers and waterproof coat. They were lent to me by my in-laws who run Duke of Edinburgh so they were proper hardcore waterproofs and it still soaked right through, it was a very wet week. It was nice to get going on my dissertation work though, it was due in December and by September I was already having severe anxiety about it. But I pushed through and by deadline and after my birthday I had my full 3D model and 8,000 words fully written and submitted. I think the deadline was the Monday and I submitted it on the Friday before. It was such a relief! I haven’t read it since because I know I’d just find too many things I could have improved. I got a high B for it through which was super exciting!
The rest of 22 was a bit of a rollercoaster! I graduated University with a 2:1 Honours degree which I was chuffed with, and I also got engaged! I also got my third tattoo to commemorate finishing University. What a whirlwind. Then we had a couple of months of scrimping by before I managed to find myself a job in August. Thank goodness. Like all folks with their first ‘grownup’ job (especially one that pays well) I was super enthusiastic and happy to be working and making money but the shine started to wear off after a while. Anyone that’s worked in a call center, especially a very busy sales one, will know that it wears you down pretty quickly.
After a few months once we’d dragged ourselves out of our overdrafts we knew it was time to move flat, the one we’d been living in for 3 years was horrible damp and it was affecting Sam’s asthma. We ended up moving to a lovely little maisonette not far down the road. It was weird having stairs in our place again! It was nice having a more functional space, we had friends over to play boardgames regularly and I even had my own little box room to put my craft things in! Cia and I started the Tipsy Knits Podcast in 2015 after we went to the Indie Burgh Yarn Crawl and we had great fun.
Sam found a job, then just before I turned 25 Sam and I celebrated being together for 6 years and then a few days later we got married! It was an amazing day, we had friends and family come from all over. It was just fantastic to be surrounded by so much love and see so many people we don’t get to see so often. Oh boy we really danced the night away! There’s just too much to try and type that I’ll just put some photos in instead. We went on honeymoon to a cabin on the shore of Loch Long for a few days and it was so lovely. We went for a lovely big drive up Rannoch Moor, through Glencoe (where I cried because it was so beautiful), down to Oban where we got some fantastic fish n chips, then along the coast and back to our cabin. We also kayaked up to the old ammunition factory which was really interesting and fun. At night we sat in the hot tub and watched the stars and the trains along the mountains on the other side of the loch. Such a beautiful week, I don’t think either of us wanted it to end.
The next year we took a leap and bought our own place which was stressful but amazing. The feeling of picking up the keys and then walking in and knowing we owned it and we could do what we wanted was pretty overwhelming. Then pretty quickly we found out we needed the flue replaced which was a very expensive reminder that indeed, we did own it, and we were fully responsible for everything that happened. It was totally worth it though. Over time we painted a wall in the lounge purple and, after a horrible leak, got the en suite remodelled. It’s so nice to have a space of your own you can do what you want with.
We were lucky enough to have enough savings to afford to go away for our anniversaries so for our first we went to Iceland for the weekend. We did a tour of the Golden Circle which was absolutely incredible and had a day to wander round Reykjavik which was just stunning. We had been booked on a Northern Lights tour but the weather was too cloudly all weekend. We missed the lightshow by about 12 hours which was disappointing but just gives us reason to go back! For our second we went to Disneyland Paris (we’d wanted to go for our honeymoon but couldn’t afford it then). It was my first time at a proper theme park and it was just amazing! We had an absolute blast. I’d love to go back sometime. Our third anniversary we spent in Prague. We spent an entire day at the zoo and STILL didn’t see everything! We had lunch watching the elephants which Sam absolutely loved as they are his favoureite animal and they had a baby one! So cute.
Then at the end of 2018 we found out I was pregnant! We were both absolutely ecstatic, we’d been talking about kids pretty much since we got together over 9 years earlier and we were absolutely on cloud nine. Well, pregnancy really did a number on me! I ended up with morning sickness so bad I couldn’t go to work even on medication and I even ended up in the hospital at one point because I’d thrown up over 100 times in a day. By the time I was about 16 or 17 weeks the nausea had died down significantly apart from a few days here and there and I was able to go back to work in the February. Then in the March everyone in my building found out we were being made redundant. I was six months pregnant at the time and it was not exactly expected news. Luckily one of the higher ups had noticed I was pregnant and very upset and took me aside after the announcement to let me know that I would at least get my full maternity pay. Phew. If he hadn’t done that I don’t think I’d have coped as well with the news as I did, the panic was real. As I knew I wouldn’t be coming back to work after the baby (who we nicknamed Skittle) was born I took my maternity leave a little earlier than I had planned which was nice, it gave me time to appreciate a bit of my own company before I wouldn’t have peace for a while and it also meant I didn’t have to commute to work or speak to customers while it felt like my hips were going to fall off!
My mum stayed with us for a month over the end of my pregnancy and J being born and it was a total lifesaver. Since then I’ve been a full time mum! I got a knitting pattern published in a magazine which was SO exciting. The rights have since reverted to me and I’ve released that pattern plus a matching hat and mitts pattern on my own store and it’s been wonderful. I’ve been doing a lot more cross stitch and started sewing clothes which is great. I’ve also realised I’m nonbinary which was been pretty great. In 2018 I came out as bi and it was like a puzzle piece in my soul which had been put in wrong suddenly fit right, and the nonbinary thing (which I have literally been thinking about since I was young enough to be aware of myself but I just didn’t have the words) has just amplified that feeling. Being able to sew my own clothes has been awesome in regards to that cos I can sew what I what and not have to conform to the (frankly abysmal) plus size female fashion out there. My first attempt was a pair of Heyday Dungarees made from a duvet cover and I love them so much! I’m getting a sewing machine and fabric for my birthday (today!) so hopefully I’ll be busily sewing at the time this goes up on the blog.
Some other things that happened and were awesome
– My sister got married which was just a glorious day. We went to Budapest for her hen and it was amazing
– My brother got married in the US and when all of, well, the pandemic is over he’s going to hold a big party and we’ll all go and visit
– I became an aunty! And found out nephew two is on the way!
– Cut my hair from bum length to pixie to completely shaved, then dyed it purple when it grew out again
– I found Critical Role in 2016 and knit them all hats for Critmas in 2017 (I think) and they wore them and used the picture as the promo pic for Talks Machina!
– We survived the Beast From The East
– Went to a bunch of gigs
– Went to Edinburgh Yarn Festival a bunch of times and loved every moment
– Joined an international virtual knit night and made friends around the world
– Joined a fanfiction night and made more friends
– Joined a writing group and made yet more friends
– Went white water rafting in Italy (and fell out)
– Took part in Operation Social Justice
– Two of my favourite people got married just before lockdown
– We saw Robot Wars being filmed and it was awesome
I haven’t talked about everything, obviously, but I’ll pop some photos up in a gallery. It was really fun writing this and having a good bit of nostalgia.
30s, here I come!
My 20th birthday
My 20th birthday
Winter 2010/11. The Kelvin froze over! This was the year we had no boiler all winter
Today is the big day, my Golden Rays patterns are out! You can buy the cowl, hat and mitts as individual patterns or as an ebook at a bit of a discount.
All the samples were knit in Rowan Felted Tweed in Alabaster and Turquoise which says it’s a DK yarn but feels more like a plump fingering to me. I used 3mm and 3.5mm needles for them all and I can reach gauge with both 4ply and DK so it’s perfect for using up those stash skeins you don’t quite have a plan for!
If you use the hashtags #GoldenRaysCowl, #GoldenRaysHat and #GoldenRaysMitts I’d love to see what you make. Anyone up for a KAL?
Well, this one I’m kinda surprised about. I’ve had it ready to cast on for pretty much a year but kept putting it off, then I decided to do it as my Quiet Queers Craftalong 2020 project which then got pushed back (rightly so) so I was eager to cast on! I was a bit nervous I wouldn’t like it because it was completely out of my comfort zone but my goodness if I don’t LOVE IT! I want to knit about a million of them! Next time I’ll go down a size for sure. This one only used 75g of yarn so I had a lot more left over than I expected! It was also fun to learn a new cast on. I am going to wear this under my dungarees, under my jumpsuits… it’s so comfy and it’s going to be PERFECT for layering! If you’re unsure about this pattern I would highly encourage you to try it. I feel so confident in it!
Pattern and designer: Ripple Bralette, Jessie Mae Designs
Started: 13th July 2020
Finished: 16th August 2020
Yarn: FibrePunk British Sock self-striping, Bramble (75g)
This has been in my queue for absolutely ages. I started winding a giant ball of scraps held triple ages ago but only recently thought I had enough to make this sweater. I held the giant ball along with a strand of a full skein I didn’t think I’d use in other projects so it was a perfect way to use yarn I didn’t have a plan for but didn’t want to give away. It was super fun to knit and really simple, I really loved seeing the colours change as I went. It is such a snuggly sweater and I look forward to being able to wear it in winter!
Stats
Started: 21st June 2020
Finished: 22nd July 2020
Yarn:Mothy And The Squid 75% superwash merino 25% nylon, Anemone
Yummy Yarns UK Sparkly SW Merino Nylon Stellina, Pansy
I flew through this project! I used some of the yarn I got for Operation Social Justice which worked perfectly – it was a sock set so the contrast mini was perfect for the shoulders and i-cord. I found the pattern got a bit tedious after a while but I LOVE the finished look! I think I will knit more of these when I really just need a mindless project I can whip out quickly. It works so well with so many clothes!
Stats
Started: 9th June 2020
Finished: 19th June 2020
Yarn:Chromatic Yarns Sturdy Sock, Operation: Social Justice [Insert Class Here]
My third Ama Sweater! I started this before Covid-19 really hit the UK and worked on it on and off through lockdown. I finally finished it in time to block it before we saw my in-laws again and my mother-in-law really loves it. It looks great on her! I think I’ll take a break from this pattern for a while though, for someone that hates knitting things again, three is a pretty good number!
I was lucky enough to test this pattern for Rosie of PixelAtlantis and oh my goodness it is such a fantastic pattern! It’s so well written, clear, cute, fun and fast! I want to make about a billion pairs of these. I highly recommend this pattern!
ramsay_baggins 