Yarndale, pt 1 - All the People, So Many People

"You travel a lot, don't you?", Lindsay (aka The Border Tart) said to me when we bumped into each other at Yarndale. Sometimes you need other people to state things. I do love a good train journey even when it means loud people at 6.30am or drunk people at 7pm. I love sitting by the window and watching the mist obscure newly tilled fields, the sun set over faraway hills, and the birds heading south in intricate formations. Alas, I don't have as much stamina as I'd like and so a good train journey often means recovery time at the end of it. I had a seven-hour round-trip to Yarndale Saturday and I spent Sunday reading in bed. Today I am knitting whilst watch the sunlight play in the trees across from the living room windows. Yarndale was really lovely, actually. I work from home and often I don't really realise how many of you read this blog, knit my patterns, and follow me on Twitter/Instagram. I live in a little yarny bubble in my little leafy neighbourhood where I know everybody. Then I go to a place like Yarndale and you are all so very real and so very, very lovely. It was so overwhelming in such a fantastic way - so many stories, so many hugs, so much laughter .. it felt very special. I don't really want to single out anybody but I want to mention two people in particular.

First, the lady from Northern Ireland who unfortunately caught me just as I was heading out to lunch. I am so sorry I had to dash off and not be able to spend more time with you - I really, really needed to sit down and have something to eat. I do hope we manage to see each other in November, but I understand if you cannot make it to the work shop.

Secondly, I was so incredibly pleased to meet Charlotte B. who I have known online for many, many years and whose support & encouragement over the last five years has meant such a lot to me. I would have loved to have spent more time talking to her because I would not be doing what I do today with her stubborn encouragement. Thank you, Charlotte.

I want to show you two moments from Yarndale.

Still thinking about this two days on. #regram @kateheppell and the #scollayalong meet up at #yarndale2015

A photo posted by Karie Westermann (@kariebookish) on Sep 28, 2015 at 4:10am PDT

Th

We had a Scollay cardigan meet-up following the BritYarn and Knit British knit-along this summer. This is one of the most amazing/surreal/strangest/fantastic moments of my life. Look! I was so incredibly pleased that I was grinning like a loon! And I loved hearing all about the modifications - from the gorgeous woman who had turned Scollay into a jumper to the lovely lady who knitted the sleeves flat - and seeing ALL THE COLOURS.

Secondly, then was the book launch party at the Eden Cottage Yarns stall.

So, we had a little party on the @edencottageyarns stall in celebration of the Drift book! L to R: @allidecks @letesknits @clare.devine @inspirationknits yours truly and @traceytodholder #designersgowild #drift #yarndale #alpacabunch A photo posted by Karie Westermann (@kariebookish) on Sep 26, 2015 at 1:19pm PDT

Hijinks, I tell you, hijinks. I had never met Louise Zass-Bangham before but often admired her work - and we got on like a house on fire! Not sure Victoria of Eden Cottage Yarns will ever allow us in the same place at the same time ever again. On a more serious note, Louise had sage words to say about friendship in the knitting world. Many of us are like-minded people who share interests and passions - why not make friends with the people you meet? I see so many posts on the Ravelry designer fora about "competitors" and I feel that line of thought means these people miss out on some fabulous conversations with pretty amazing people.

I am so glad that I made it to Yarndale despite a very early start. I hope to be back next year because I really like the atmosphere - it was colourful, warm, and very Yorkshire. I like Yorkshire.

Tomorrow I'll share my very few purchases and talk about some of the vendors I met.

Yarndale, Hygge & Drift..

This is the week of everything. My best friend is turning mumble, mumble - but she is in Sweden and I am in Scotland. I cannot celebrate with her and though it hurts every year, this year it feels worse than ever. So happy birthday to Christina, the light of my life. I miss you so much.

This is also the week in which I release three patterns (stay with me) and I'm going to a woolly event in North Yorkshire. It is the week where many other special people celebrate big events. It's the week where I look at my to-do list and wonder what has happened to my sanity.

This is Top Hygge - I was feeling very whimsical when I named it! It is the hat that spawned the entire HYGGE collection and the name is Danish slang for 'peak hygge' -when things just cannot get any more chilled or happier. We shot the pattern photos during a picnic on Glasgow Green. It was a slightly damp day, but we had a picnic blanket and food with us plus the most amazing garden surrounding us.

The hat uses exactly one skein of Thick Pirkkalanka from Midwinter Yarns (worsted weight, it runs 170m/186 yrds per skein). It is a slouchy, relaxed hat with easy lace columns and a big pompom on top of the crown. The pompom eats up a lot of yarn, but thankfully the pattern is written so you just keep making the pompom until you run out of yarn!

I've been chatting to Estelle of Midwinter Yarns about Thick Pirkkalanka. It is a great woolly yarn with a lot of bounce and I found myself wondering what '100% wool' covered. According to Estelle, the yarn hails from Norway before it is processed in Finland (I believe) and the wool comes from Dala and Rygja sheep. For some reason I thought there was a bit of Spæl sheep involved, but I cannot find any trace of that in our correspondence. I do love a bit of added Nordic-ness.

The next pattern from the HYGGE collection will be released this Friday. Dave and I went north this past weekend and somehow landed probably the best photos we've ever shot. It helps the yarn and the pattern are ridiculously photogenic, but I'm still really pleased!

The next pattern is called Brygga. It is a squishy, chunky cowl knitted in two hanks of Ullcentrum Lovikka (again from Midwinter Yarns). I rarely knitted with very chunky yarns, but I really enjoyed working with Lovikka which felt crisp and had great stitch definition. It is a Swedish yarn which is normally used for making mittens in Lapland and neighbouring regions, so I felt taking it out of that mitt-making context would be a lot of fun.. and it was!

Like all HYGGE patterns, I wanted the knit to be cosy and relaxed. I also wanted it to be really wearable and practical. In Scandinavia you are never far from the sea (we are the Viking nations, after all) and everybody spend so much time either on boats or watching the sea from the shore.

Brygga means jetty in Swedish - the quintessential place to watch life go by during the summer (either hurling yourself into the water or dangling your feet) and a fabulous place to rest during a chilly autumnal walk. We shot the photos in a small Scottish fishing village overlooking the North Sea - thoughts turned both to the lost landscape of Doggerland underneath the calm surface, but also of Scandinavia just beyond the horizon.

And then, finally, I am thrilled to say that I am one of the designers behind the brand-new Drift collection from Eden Cottage Yarns. I am honoured to be included with international names such as Thea Colman, Åsa Tricosa, and Justyna Lorkowska as well as homegrown talent such as Louise Zass-Bangham and Clare Devine (among many others).

I was asked by Eden Cottage if I wanted to design a shawl in the most soft, delicious alpaca you can imagine. I accepted the challenge and played with the traditional hap construction to come up with the Swale shawl.

(photo by Eden Cottage Yarns)

Like so many of my patterns, I tried to keep it simple but effective. If you have never knitted a hap before, this would make a great introduction to the construction. Swale is knitted almost entirely in soothing garter stitch with just the edging providing a little bit of space. The shawl is quite large - but I find that I often prefer large shawls these days and Swale is relatively to knit because ECY Whitfell is a DK yarn. The alpaca also allows for fantastic drape.

You can see all the other Drift patterns at the Eden Cottage Yarns stand at Yarndale this forthcoming weekend. I'll be at Yarndale on Saturday (catching the dawn train from Glasgow!). I'll be bringing the HYGGE samples to the Midwinter Yarns stand (meet me there at 12.30!), hopefully get together with the Scollay-alongers at 2pm (check out the Brityarn group on Ravelry for more info), and then see you at the ECY stand at 3pm! Hopefully I'll also get a chance to browse stalls as a regular person as I missed out on the marketplace at Edinburgh Yarn Festival.

Wowza, what a long post but so much is happening at the moment! I'm off to have lunch and will then attack my inbox with gusto. Wish me luck - and if you are going to Yarndale, make sure to say hello!

Sunlight Shifting

So this is what September feels like: waking up, sitting at computer, remembering to have lunch, working, saying hello to David who quietly comes home, finally shutting down all screens, looking up, and seeing the sunlight shifting outside the window. Soon it will be dark. Soon it will be winter and I will wonder where the year went. At the moment I am hanging on. I am happy because I am too busy to remember to be sad. I am content because I have no time to rue things. I am singing because I have no time to think. This is better than it has been. I miss my friends whom I haven't seen for a long time. I miss hearing the birds sing and feeling the sun on my skin. I miss waking up and having an empty day. I need to relearn how to take time off.

We went north this weekend and I saw the sunlight shifting. The light is bluer up north. It is clearer, more translucent, and more fragile. I sat on a stony beach and watched the waves roll in. Then we had a photo shoot and I straightened my shoulders while the gulls cried. Now I am south again, back to warm light, asphalt and stolen moments.

The sunlight is shifting and I am moving with it.

(photo by David Fraser)

HYGGE Pattern #2: Skovtur

Time is a rare gift. This month sees friends and family celebrating big birthdays or momentous life changes; I am travelling a lot for work; and I struggle to find pockets of time between it all. The air now has a slight touch of chill to it in the mornings or evenings. The world is slowly tilting and I feel the pull inside me to embrace it.

Skovtur is the second pattern in the HYGGE collection to be released. Skovtur means "a trip to the forest" or "a walk in the woods" in Danish. I designed these fingerless mitts knowing that I'd be reaching for them again and again. Right now they are a perfect layer of protection against that slight chill, but soon the long cuffs will come into their own as the autumn winds hit Scotland. The colourwork lends an extra layer of warmth as well.

Skovtur [Skorw-tur] uses two colours of Thick Pirkkakanka from Midwinter Yarns. I used the Teal and the Deep Orange (I also used this colourway in the Fika shawl but in the thinner Pirkkalanka yarn) - but the world is your oyster when it comes to colour combinations.

Some possibilities:

+ Barely There Grey & Stonewashed = wintery North Sea colours.

+ Raspberry & Plum = fruity jams and preserves.

+ Mulch & Mustard = earthy, autumnal leaves.

+ Denim & Natural Pale Grey =  your favourite jeans.

+ Blush & Soft Turquoise =  stones and the sea touching each other.

+ Black & Barely There Grey = class Scandi combination of high contrast

As long as you use two colours with sufficient contrast, you will be fine. If you are unsure whether there is enough of a contrast, take a black & white photo. Do the two colours look identical? Then you need to switch out one of them. Do the two colours do distinctly different? Then you are fine!

Note that Skovtur uses one hank of each colour - but in reality you are using roughly a quarter of a skein of the contrast colour. The next HYGGE pattern is also knitted in Thick Pirkkalanka and uses just over 1.5 skeins. In other words, if you think you might want to knit something to go along with your Skovtur mitts, you will want to order an additional skein of Thick Pirkkalanka in your contrast colour of choice. 

You'll be able to see the HYGGE samples at Yarndale later this month (note to self: stop wearing them!) and Estelle of Midwinter Yarns will be super-happy to offer colour advice.

Enjoy - I am off to knit :)

In the Loop 4

Most of my late August was taken up by work for In the Loop 4. If you don't know ITL, it is an academic conference about knitting and crochet. This year it took place in Glasgow - the culmination of many years' work by the Knitting in the Round crew at Glasgow University - and I had been persuaded by the organiser, Linda Newington of the Knitting Reference Library at Winchester School of Art - to submit a an abstract. Lo, my paper on Faroese jumpers and Nordic knitting traditions was accepted and much time was spent researching and writing. I am very thankful for the staff at The Mitchell Library for being particularly helpful.  

Miss @kariebookish talking at #intheloopglasgow

A photo posted by Louise Scollay (@knit_british) on Aug 26, 2015 at 7:37am PDT

In the Loop was exceptional. While I talk knitting every single day, I found it invigorating and useful to discuss my discipline in a more academic way: Just how do we define the idea of authenticity in knitting? What role does gender play? How do we address the problem of sustainability within our practice? What about knitting and lifestyle commodification? These are just a few of the topics the conference touched upon. I felt my brain stretch with every paper and I left thinking about my own work in a new way. I also relished being able to spend time with my woolly chums: Louise, Susan, Jeni, Tom, Helen, Zoe, Anna and Anna. And meet new woolly chums like Tom, Alison, Anna, Siun, Helen and Mary. I salute you all for inspiring me, making me think and making me laugh.

Absolute privilege to hear Annemor Sundbø talk about Setesdal jumpers. Privilege. #knittinghistory #knittingtradition #knittersofinstagram #knitting #intheloop4

A photo posted by Karie Westermann (@kariebookish) on Aug 26, 2015 at 10:20am PDT

There were many great papers. Here's a short selection of the ones that have stayed with me.

Dinah Eastop on archives, preservation, and digitalisation. Some real problems facing the archivists trying to digitalise cultural heritage,

Annemor Sundbø on the Setesdal jumper. An absolute honour to listen to Annemor talk about the evolution of a Norwegian design classic.

Helen Robertson and her textile practice was incredible. Helen places Shetland textile practices within the landscape - I was blown away and completely inspired by her thoughtfulness.

Alison Mayne and Kate Orton-Johnson on knitting communities in the digital age. Two very different, yet very similar approaches. This is a topic dear to my heart (for obvious reasons) and both nailed their papers.

Rose Sinclair delivered an outstanding paper on 19th and 20th c women's craft guilds, clubs, and societies. She also spoke with authority of the erasure of race within crafts. I really hope she publishes this paper - more people need to know about her research.

Jonathan Faiers delivered a plenary talk on knitting on the runway. This was my other 'goosebumps' moment as he moved from Schiaparelli's bow-knot jumper through 20th C high fashion history towards today's super-bulky knits. Very, very thought-provoking work on trompe l'oeil knitting. So thought-provoking that I had to skip the next session just to digest and unpack Faiers' words.

Sustainability was given a lot of thought. Tom van Deijnen spoke about his visible mending work whilst Tone Tobiasson and Ingun Klepp delivered a call to arms about wool being part of a sustainable future. I found both talks incredibly engaging and inspiring.

Finally, I want to leave you with this film by Anna Kouhia. I found it very moving and poetic. I was lucky enough to have a conversation with Anna about how our bodies influence our crafts - the movement of our hands, in particular. I hope you will enjoy this as much as I did.

PS. ITL4 featured a fashion show which included work by Gudrun Johnson, Lucy Hague, Kate Davies and myself. You can catch it here. I don't usually think of my work as being part of fashion, so seeing it in this context felt a little strange (I need to think more about this, clearly). I also only had one sample home that I could lend the show which I slightly regret. Oh well. It was interesting.

Pattern: the Fika Shawl (and other Musings)

Well, first of all, the Fika shawl is now available to buy on Ravelry. It is the first of five accessory patterns that make up the Hygge collection - a collaboration with Midwinter Yarns. Fika is the Swedish word for 'taking a break from the fast-paced world and hang out with friends (or yourself) over a cup of coffee and watch the world go by'. I bet having a word like 'fika' makes Twitter conversations a lot easier.

But releasing a pattern all about slowing down and allowing yourself to breathe is .. well, it strikes me as deeply ironic. The past three weeks have been hectic - even by my usual standards. I have been hard at work on this collection, magazine commissions, various future collaborations, and some overdue design work as well as writing/giving a paper at the knitting conference In the Loop (among other things - it was rather full-on!). I had two hours off yesterday and they felt amazing.

I cannot wait until I get a chance to grab my friends and head out for a really relaxing fika - maybe at the local Swedish cafe? That would be fantastic.

Anyway.

The Fika shawl is knitted in two hanks of Ohut Pirkkalanka - or Thin Pirkkalanka. It's a fine-weight Finnish pure wool yarn - Ravelry calls it as 3ply/light fingering. I'd call it a heavy lace with a nice grip. The yarn is heathered and only blooms slightly when you block the shawl. I like it a whole lot and am curious if anybody knows what the '100% wool" covers? I could swear there was a bit of Gotland in there, but I am not an expert.

The next pattern in the collection is out next week. And the next is out the following week etc. But for now you can buy Fika (or the Hygge collection if you want to save money) on Ravelry. I am off to find some coffee and maybe ten minutes of quiet solitude.