So, You Want a 4ply Yarn for Colourwork, Huh?

Earlier this month I was asked to compile a list of 4-ply/fingering-weight yarns available in the UK and suitable for colourwork. I asked my Twitter followers for their favourite yarns, and the resulting thread was so wonderful that I decided to share the tips with you.

Designing and knitting colourwork will always be something I love doing. Colour combinations are endless and it is so satisfying to see a colourwork stitch pattern begin to form. While it may look daunting to beginners, colourwork knitting has its own logic and rhythm to it. Through my years of teaching colourwork, I’ve learned that finding the right yarns is key to a successful project.

So, here is a list of some of the excellent yarns you can use if you are a UK-based knitter (or if you want to use a British yarn).

The Classics:

Jamieson’s of Shetland and Jamieson & Smith are the two classic Fair Isle yarns. The two companies both sell genuine Shetland yarn in a myriad of colours.

One of Scotland’s best kept secrets is JC Rennie whose yarns include both a Shetland-like 4ply and a Supersoft Lambswool 4ply. You might have seen the Lambswool 4ply sold under other labels, but the full colour range is available from Rennie. Wee County Yarns sell 10g mini-balls of Rennie which allows you to combine a lot of colours without committing to full balls.

John Arbon is always incredibly popular at shows and it is easy to see why when you look at their range of yarns. Knit By Numbers 4ply comes in 100+ colours and the set-up makes it easy to choose and mix colours across the whole range. Their Exmoor Sock 4ply is a classic sock yarn that comes in 13 colours that all work well with each other.

Garthenor in Wales has several 4 ply yarns perfect for colourwork. Their Preseli comes in a stunning array of colours while their Number 2 is all about natural sheep colours.

Designer-Led Yarns:

Marie Wallin has developed her own British Breeds Yarn which comes in an array of beautifully heathered colours. Marie used to be Head Designer at Rowan Yarns and her eye for colour continues to be classic and subtle.

Another designer with a strong sense of colour is Susan Crawford whose Excelana 4ply is influenced by Susan’s love of vintage fashion. Excelana has a nice grip which makes it excellent for colourwork.

The name Alice Starmore is synonymous with incredible colourwork designs and it’s no wonder she has her own yarn. Starmore’s Hebridean 2-ply is a beautiful yarn available in painterly colours.

And Milarrochy Tweed from Kate Davies is another design-led yarn with a beautiful palette. The addition of mohair to the fibre blend gives it a subtle halo as well as good grip.

Yarn Shops’ Own Yarns:

Looking beyond designers with their own yarns, let’s look at yarn shops. Two yarn shops that popped up in the comments were Wensleydale Longwool Sheep Shop which has developed their own 4ply yarn (which comes in 25g balls - perfect for projects where you need plenty of colours, but only a small amount of each) and Baa Ram Ewe whose Pip Colourwork also comes in handy 25g balls and has proven popular.

Indie Dyers:

British indie dyers are also dyeing yarns perfect for colourwork and many offer miniballs or small set-ups too.

Gathered Sheep Yarns dyes gorgeously sheepy yarn in deep, autumnal colours. Giddy Aunt Yarns goes for a clear, saturated colour range.

One of my favourite yarns is Kettle Yarn’s Baskerville 4ply which comes in a beautiful set of colours which reminds me of stones or minerals. Baskerville is a Gotland/BFL mix which makes for a nice, toothy yarn. Their Northiam 4ply is pure BFL and slightly loftier with strong, confident colours.

In Wales, Triskelion Yarns dyes a beautiful Corridale 4ply in their signature semi-solid colours.

Another of my favourite dyers is RiverKnits whose science background is evident is how she works with colours. Severn 4ply is a woollen-spun 4 ply weight yarn with a warm, woolly handle thanks to the Jacob fleeces used in producing the yarn.

The delightful Bluebell Yarns have a host of 4-ply breed specific bases. I have my eye on the Falkland/Corridale base for colourwork purposes.

Meanwhile, Marina Skua’s hand-dyed Mendip 4ply showcases a truly wonderful colour range (some of those oranges and yellows are on my mind) and the base is a sourced Shetland-cross.

Small Flock/Farm:

Whistlebare produces yarns from their own flocks and their Cuthbert’s Sock 4ply has a satisfying crunch to it. At time of writing they were waiting for the new Spring 2021 spinning to drop.

One yarn I keep wanting to try is Uradale Yarns’ natural Shetland 4ply. You can also buy organically dyed yarn from them, but my eyes keep being drawn to the natural sheep shades. They are stunning.

And The Grey Sheep Co. also has a lovely selection of 4ply yarns. They comes in both full skeins and mini-sets. The colour palette is muted with a slight hint of variegation.

Black Isle Yarns from the Scottish Highlands has a very fine sportweight that I’m assured leans into 4ply category: Auchen. And The Birlinn Yarn Company from the Outer Hebrides makes an exquisite 4ply that is inspired by the incredible landscape around them.

One of my favourite yarns is Cartref DK and it thankfully also comes in a heavy 4ply. It is a pure Welsh yarn: Welsh sheep and spun/dyed in Wales by careful specialists.

Doulton Border Leicester is a no-kill farm focusing on a rare sheep breed. Their 4ply yarn comes in 27 jewel-like colours and is smooth to work with.

These are the yarns I’ve compiled thanks to my own experiences and also Twitter suggestions. I have left out most commercial yarns or any imported yarns (although there are plenty of those available in the UK too and many are excellent). I urge you to keep exploring yarns and have fun along the way!

- Karie

Making Landscapes

Dorothea the Sheep, in a field outside Lyngby, Denmark

I miss walking through landscapes. I miss seeing sheep dotted on hillsides, a reminder of where our wool comes from. I miss making memories by buying yarn on my travels. I miss meeting fellow knitters and coming away with inspiration. 

Instead I make things at home and dream through my hands as they manipulates stitches and yarn. 

So, I have an announcement because I know I am not the only one feeling like this. 

Please join me for a series of conversations and workshops that I'll be hosting via Zoom over the next few months. I want to connect you with those hillsides, with those landscapes, those people. I call these Making Connections and I hope you can make it (no pun intended!). 

The first conversation will take place on November 19, 2020 at 6pm GMT. I've invited author and knitter Esther Rutter to join me in a conversation about creating imaginative spaces and travelling through woolly landscapes. 

I am sure you all know Esther Rutter already. She is the author of This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History. Her book tells the story of the knitted heritage of the British Isles and is full of fascinating histories of communities whose lives were shaped by wool. From the mill workers of the Border countries, to the English market towns built on profits of the wool trade, tradition and innovation have always intermingled in knitwear industries.

Esther and I share a fascination with how we engage with landscapes and how much knitting is shaped by both our inner and outer landscapes. How many of us end up buying yarn and patterns to remind us of specific places and times — and when we wear our makes, we are reminded of where we were when we made them. 

You can buy a ticket to the In Conversation With Esther Rutter: Making Landscapes via EventBrite. Tickets are £6 each.

The view from the headquarters of Alafoss Yarn Company just outside Mosfellsbær, Iceland.

The second announcement is one that I know many of you have been requesting for a very long time. I'm going to teach a series of workshops online, starting with my signature Knitting the Landscape class. Moreover, I am going to run these workshops, so they are available/suitable to several time-zones. 

Knitting the Landscape is a workshop with a difference. You don't have any homework and it does not centre upon a specific skill. Taking cues from psychogeography, a method for exploring everyday landscapes, this workshop asks: what is the fabric of your own everyday life? Together we will investigate what knitting means to you and how knitting can be used a creative exploration tool. From fields and mountains to concrete high-rises, Knitting the Landscape is a way to connect with not just places you have been but also knitting itself. 

It's a class that means a great deal to me, and I am so excited that I can finally offer to people regardless of geography! That in itself gives a certain sense of frisson to me! We'll be talking map-making, cartography, and geography .. but without the actual constraints of where we live!

So far I am offering this class twice: 

Saturday, November 21, 2020 at 10am GMT/ 11am CET/ 9pm AEDT

Saturday, December 5, 2020 at 9pm GMT/10pm CET/ 2pm PDT/5pm EDT

Knitting the Landscape is suitable for beginner knitters and up: if you can cast on, knit, purl and cast off, you can do this class! Materials: grab a heap of scraps and some suitable needles. You also need pen/paper and an open mind.

Due to the nature of this class, tickets are very limited and are priced at £45 each

A sheepy landscape..

I am incredibly excited about connecting with everybody despite the constraints we all live under at the moment. I am also very excited to bring you conversations with people who are truly inspirational in the way they approach making and crafts.

Five Things You Should Know as a Beginner Knitter

Sometimes the internet is very good at throwing a lot of information at us and it can get really overwhelming. What do you really, really need to know when you first begin to knit? Obviously you need to know how to cast on and how to work a knit stitch. The rest is just sprinkling on the top of your ice cream Sundae, right? Maybe. Here are five things I wish I had known when I first started knitting.

1. Use colours that you like.

When you first start knitting, you’ll probably pick up some bargain yarn or get some yarn from a friend’s yarn box. You don’t want to invest too much in supplies — because you feel like you might just mess things up or you might not enjoy knitting.

Here’s a tip: if you use a colour you like, you’ll enjoy your knitting far more than you if you have to stare at a colour you don’t really like.

If you use a colour of yarn you like, you are also more likely to use your finished item afterwards!

2. Don’t Spend Too Much Time on the Internet!

I know, I know. You are currently reading this blog post, so who am I to tell you to get off the internet? Here’s the thing: many well-meaning people can make a simple thing look really complicated and scary, so try not to do a deep dive before attempting something new.

Are you working a cable for the first time? Look up a simple tutorial and then try it out in your knitting. Don’t look for more tutorials or blog posts, because suddenly you’ll be looking at seven different ways of working a cable and it’ll seem scary.

Knitting is just one stitch at a time and if something goes a bit wonky, just take it back to where you know you were right and then try again. No need to look up three more videos. You got this.

3. Learn To Love Your Ball Bands

That piece of paper around your ball of yarn? It contains all sorts of important information.

It suggests needle size and standard gauge (and those are really just suggestions!) but it also tells you what the yarn is made of, how much yarn you get in a ball and how to care for your finished item.

Most importantly, the ball band tells you about dye lots. The dye lot number is super-important! Make sure to always get all of your yarn in the same dye lot. The colour might look identical in the ball, but if you knit something in different dyelots, there will always be a subtle difference.

Spend that extra bit of time on checking for the dye lot and you’ll be spared a lot of potential heartbreak.

4. Not Everything Will Be Perfect & That’s OK

One of the hardest things about being a knitter is accepting that you’ve spent a lot of time making something .. and you might not like it once it’s done. I always start a new project thinking it will be the best thing ever, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out like that.

Maybe the hat looks weird on your head. Maybe the colour wasn’t quite right. Maybe you hated the yarn so much whilst you were knitting that you hate the finished item. It’s okay, it happens, and it does suck.

Have a box where you keep these items. You might end up donating them, or gifting them (a friend might love that pink hat), or you might discover that six months down the line those crazy blue socks are actually really awesome.

5. Don’t Force It

Are you sitting there still stuck on a project six months after starting it and you are hating everything? That’s fine.

Sometimes we think we might like something and it turns out that something is not for us. Maybe knitting isn’t your thing. Maybe you’d be happier with crochet or embroidery or Minecraft or yoga. Different strokes for different people.

Just promise me that if you are hating a project, it might be that the project is wrong for you.

Knitting a garterstitch scarf is incredibly tedious and even the most patient knitters would rather chew their own hands off than make one. Maybe cast it off early and sew the narrowest ends together - that way you end up with a useful cowl and a empty needles!

Also, the yarn might be totally wrong for you. As beginners we are often drawn to yarn that looks fun in the ball: different textures and fun little effects woven through the yarn make it look like the project’s going to be super-fun too! Sadly often these yarns are hellish to work with and can kill a lot of desire to knit. Try another yarn.

But don’t force it. Knitting is supposed to be fun!

What do you wish you had known as an entry-level knitter? What would you tell your past self?

Shawl for an Art Lover

Yesterday I released Shawl for an Art Lover, a pattern for the shawl I designed for my wedding.

I was always going to wear something knitted at my wedding and it was always going to be a shawl. I knew I wanted something big, beautiful and imbued with meaning. After I finished my book, this was the first design I started sketching.

Shawl for an Art Lover uses one of my favourite shawl constructions — the humble triangular shape — and the pattern motifs are inspired by the city in which I live: Glasgow, Scotland. The delicate lace takes its cue from the sinuous Art Nouveau lines of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s iconic architecture, while the solid strip with its Estonian nupp and lace stitches calls back to the tenement tiles seen in the 19th century apartment blocks throughout Glasgow. The pattern is named after House for an Art Lover, a Glasgow house designed by Mackintosh himself and we photographed it at the Mackintosh Queen’s Cross Church, the head quarters for the CRM Society.

I fell in love in Glasgow and I also fell in love with Glasgow itself. The shawl reflects that.

The shawl I knitted uses 5 balls of Rowan Kidsilk Haze, a silk/mohair yarn. I know it is a yarn that divides the waters but I chose it because I wanted a lightweight shawl that would keep me warm on a cold January day. KSH is magical that way - the fluff traps air and keeps you cosy even in the depth of winter. Many years ago I also used to work for Rowan and it was a nice way of embedding those memories into the shawl.

However, I’m going to give you some yarn substitution tips if you don’t feel like knitting a giant shawl in a yarn that is somewhat unforgiving if you make mistakes (or if it makes you sneeze).

• Be mindful of yardage: you need around 1050m or 1150 yds to make Shawl for an Art Lover.

• Even though Rowan Kidsilk Haze is marked as a laceweight, be careful substituting it with a true laceweight: the fluff adds a lot of ‘bulk’ which means it looks more solid than it actually is. If you substitute KSH with a true 2ply or even a cobweb, your shawl will look less ‘substantial’ and more delicate. You might like that effect, but if you are wanting something that looks more like the fabric I’ve created, you’ll be looking at a heavy laceweight to a 4ply. You know I’m going to tell you to swatch!

• Think about the fibres: Silk and mohair make for a super-romantic combination, but if you are wanting something more practical or rustic, don’t be afraid to experiment. Alpaca is going to give you drape, Shetland will give you a crisp feel, Merino is going to be soft and wearable, pure silk will be fluid and drapey, and .. you know I am just going to swatch for you.

The top swatch was done in a 1ply Shetland yarn which I have previously used for my Mahy shawl. It is a crunchy, oatmeal-type yarn and the stitch pattern comes out looking clean and well-defined. This sort of yarn has a lot of stitch definition and stitch memory, and it will remember its blocking for a long time whilst also softening a lot with use. It is not romantic nor top-end-restaurant elegant, but it is honest and wears well. For an everyday shawl, a Shetland-style yarn would be an excellent choice.

The bottom swatch was done in a new John Arbon sock yarn, the Exmoor Sock 4ply, a blend of Exmoor Horn, Bluefaced Leicester, Devon Zwartbles, and Falklands Corriedale. It’s a really interesting mix and one that I can see myself using for shawl designing. It has a handle of a standard merino/nylon sock yarn with with added lustre and drape. As you can see, you still get a nice stitch definition and the 4ply fills out the spaces between the stitches a bit more, giving the shawl a more solid, substantial feel. Using a 4ply sock yarn would make a practical and bold shawl.

The two swatches laid on top of the Kidsilk Haze sample should help you visualise the difference. See the crispness in the Shetland swatch? The solid feel of the sock yarn? Both look stunning and so different to the airy softness of the silk/mohair.

• Nupps: a few people have told me that they are afraid of nupps. Please don’t worry! Their difficulty has been vastly exaggerated! Nupps are small bubbles made by knitting several times into the same stitch and then working all those extra stitches together. There are plenty of great tutorials out there and if you really, really hate nupps, you can always substitute them with beads. It’s absolutely allowed.

Finally a look at how the entire shawl looks like when not worn. It is .. rather large which makes it perfect for wrapping around you. The shawl is well-worn in this photo (sorry, I got married in it before we went for a photo shoot) and you can still see the drape and lovely halo here.

I wanted to make something that was beautiful, that felt beautiful as I was knitting it, and which made other people feel good too. I wanted to write a pattern that was enjoyable and allowed other people to imbue their own makes with their own meaning. I’ve already received comments from people who plan on knitting this for their own wedding. It is something you can knit for the special people in your life (including yourself! - never forget that) and wear for special occasions — but ultimately Shawl for an Art Lover is about letting beauty and love into your everyday life.

On Designing Knitting Patterns

The other week I gave a talk to the Kirkmichael’s Women’s Group about my life in knitting (it is a good life and one that I am happy to have, even if the path there was one of slings and arrows). The talk went well and I received some excellent questions. I’d like to share one of them with you.

How do you design patterns?

I design two types of patterns, essentially. I design for others, and I design for myself.

The first kind of pattern is a response to somebody else’s idea, product or moodboard — “seaside rendezvous: pastel colours, shells, beach, ice cream; summery garments and accessories perfect for wearing on holiday” — or maybe I have been asked to design a pattern for a new yarn. I like these sort of challenges because they push me outside my comfort zone. To use my seaside rendezvous example, I do not typically work with pastel hues and I will need to study the moodboard images hard before I know what atmosphere my design’s supposed to evoke. Spending time on Pinterest and Google Images is literally part of my job description!

The second kind of pattern is much more labour-intensive than you might expect. I tend to start with a story, and I need to figure out how to translate the story in my head into something on the needles, and eventually a wearable piece. A good example of this is my Rubrication shawl from This Thing of Paper. I knew I wanted a big, red shawl named after the practise of adding red lettering to books. I also knew I wanted to design something which would function as a metaphor for writing and creating. Eventually I created a pattern in which the stitches are reminiscent of quills and nibs and ink dripping down the leaf of a page (yes, I included leaves too). Working out how to interpret my story is a process full of swatching, of writing, and figuring out how to distill the core idea.

But how do I design the patterns?

Ah, the technical aspect! I teach design classes and this is what I tell my students: you need to have an idea and you also need to know how that idea works mathematically.

I do a lot of swatching and I have a few boxes just devoted to yarn for swatching as I need to have a lot of bases covered: 4ply handdyed, worsted-weight woolly yarn, mohair lace yarn, Shetland-style yarn in various colours .. Once I have my idea sketched, I’ll find a suitable yarn and work a swatch (at least 6” by 6”). Sometimes I like the resulting swatch, other times I have to knit a lot of swatches.

Once I like the swatch and I’ve blocked it, I start by working out the gauge. Depending upon the type of pattern I’m writing I might need to plug numbers into a spreadsheet (hello, garment designing) or I know roughly what kind of base numbers I’m working with (hello, shawl construction and increase ratio).

I always, always calculate and write the pattern before I start knitting, because I don’t want to waste time knitting up something which won’t work late in the knitting process. An example of this would be a bottom-up sweater where the stitch numbers don’t work with the yoke design. As a knitter, you will be able to fudge away those extra 7 stitches. As a designer, I need to know the right numbers.

Designing one-off patterns for myself is not something I do very often, but somehow I ended up doing just that last month. It felt like a combination of responding to a yarn pattern request and designing something because I had something stuck in my head.

The Hillhead hat pattern was a frivolous, unplanned pattern (I plan my pattern releases somewhat obsessively) that somehow wormed its way into the world. I had stuffed three balls of yarn into my suitcase while I was travelling and was doodling in my notebook. When I was a child, my gran knitted me a much-loved colourwork sweater and I was trying to recreate the stitch pattern.

The end result of all this unplanned activity was a hat. I put the work-in-progress on IG, worrying that I had knitted myself into a dead-end. Instead the kind comments encouraged me to continue and it was a design process much unlike anyone I’ve experienced before. I did not try to tell a story (apart from trying to remember a stitch pattern from my childhood) and most of the knitting was done whilst travelling with very little preparation beforehand.

On a slightly funny note (or maybe it speaks to the year I’ve had), this morning I found a folder with a collection’s worth of already-written and -charted patterns that I had forgotten all about! I will need to sift through the designs and see which ones are viable, then figure out where the ‘gaps’ in the collection are before designing into those gaps. But that sets me up for 2019 and all the things ahead.

Anyway, I hope that answered a few questions about my design processes and how my design brain works. I’m not as prolific as some designers, but I do work hard at getting you some nice things to knit!

The Tale of A Scarf: When Knitting Chooses You

September 2014 - wearing the scarf

Everybody says that I chose knitting, but I think knitting chose me. Yesterday I was looking through a drawer and came across a scarf I knitted in early, early 2008. Around the neck it went and I wore it running various errands. I wore it as a secret badge of honour.

This is what I was, this is me now, and this is what knitting brought me.

I fell horribly, terribly ill shortly after I moved to the UK. I don't talk about it much because it is a really boring topic, but I was very ill for many months. The illness meant I had to stay in bed and I could only do a very limited number of activities. I read a lot of books but I needed something else to do.

After one of my hospital visits, I persuaded David to stop at a local yarn shop. I bought a crochet hook and two balls of Twilley's Freedom Spirit from a quirky girl in the shop. I liked the name of the yarn and I liked that it was green. Dave was surprised I knew how to crochet. I made a hat that evening.

I crocheted more hats and gave them to friends. I realised that yarn was expensive and that crochet used a lot of yarn. On our next visit to the yarn shop, I bought a pair of knitting needles and three balls of Noro Silk Garden. I sat in bed wondering if I could remember how to cast on. While I was trying to remember, I looked down and my fingers had done it. Muscle memory from years ago. My body which had almost given out on me was now helping me. Knit two, purl two..

the scarf

And this is it. A humble k2, p2 scarf in a Noro yarn. Looking at it now, my stitches are incredibly even, the edges are (mostly) slipped and the fringe is a bit awful looking. Starting this scarf was the start of many things in my life. Recovery, finding friends, building up a new life, and settling into what would become a passion and a career.

I knit a lot. I have knitted many, many things much more beautiful and much more complex than this scarf. But this is where it all began. This is when knitting chose me.