Yep, I’m off to London again tomorrow for the Ravelry talk at Knit Nation! Should be interesting to hear from Jess and Casey about how the big beautiful creature that is Ravelry came about and where they see it going. After that there’ll be a few nippy sweeties with Fiona from Bucks New University and Emma K from ‘Knitting’ magazine – I’ll see if I can take a few pics and post when I get back.
Month: July 2010
Make and Bake for Mencap
Knitting, tea AND cake – surely a match made in heaven, yes?! Well why not combine all 3 for a good cause
The Knitter magazine and Mencap are urging knitters everywhere to grab their knitting needles, bung on the kettle and put on a Make and Bake tea party, to help raise money for the learning disability charity Mencap. Not only that, but if you hold a Make and Bake event you could be in with the chance to win a fabulous prize – 2 tickets for the Knitting & Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace in October.
The tea parties are a simple, enjoyable way for knitters to raise money for a good cause ( as I said you’re off to a pretty good start with the tea and the cake ) so to help people get started, Mencap and The Knitter have put together a fundraising pack which is packed full of handy fundraising tips and recipes for delicious summer treats.
To enter the competition all you need to do is take a picture from your Make and Bake event and send it into Mencap. The winning shot will be the picture that best captures the spirit of Make and Bake and the winner will be the proud owner of two crisp tickets to the Twisted Thread Knitting and Stitching Show 2010 at Alexandra Palace on 7th – 10th October 2010.
The closing date for the competition is Monday 20th September, so be sure to submit your entries to Mencap by then, you can submit up to five images per person and the sizes shouldn’t exceed 2MB per image. Either email your pics to ruth.attride@mencap.org.uk or post them to:
Make and Bake competition
Ruth Attride
123 Golden Lane
London
EC1Y ORT
Make sure you include your name, full address, email address and a contact number.
I’m off to put the kettle on . . ..
Oops
It sort of slipped my mind that I hadn’t updated the Kitglobal website since we did Make Do and Knit back in March. I KNOW! I should be ashamed of myself, not quite sure where the last 4 months have gone but I’ve just put that right. If you have a look at the site you’ll see that things are changing again, well I don’t like to let the grass grow . ..
On The Pins
I’ve normallygot SO many ideas running through my addled brain that sometimes it means nothing actually gets done – not this week though. I’m trying to be super productive having had a large on/ off / on / off project finally confirmed as OFF last week which meant I didn’t really achieve anything. So this week I’m working with lots of lovely twinkly beads for a wee project to be launched next month, enough hints, here’s a pic and I’m off . . .
Ok I think I’ve cracked it
Right so after about half an hour of checking out the Ravelry wiki, scratching my head and crossing my fingers I think I’ve managed to add links to the side of the blog that should enable you to click on the image and buy my two latest patterns. If you’re not already on Ravelry you’ll have to create an account to buy but it’s free and you’ll wonder what you ever did without it. I’m off for a glass of wine and to watch the rest of ‘Kingdom of Heaven’.
Night night
Two new patterns now available on Ravelry
I just added 2 more designs to my Pattern Store on 
both of which are great Summer knits, or indeed any other time of year!
There’s the Sapa Beaded Bag, a cute little ‘throw over the shoulder’ bag which is great if you only need to carry the bare essentials around with you. It’s decorated with 2 colours of beads throughout on both the main bag and the long strap. 
Then there’s the Gaia Beaded Bag which is more generous in size and worked in 3 colours of bead.
Both designs are knitted in Rowan Denim which is one of my favourite yarns to work with as the character of the designs will develop with every wash as the yarn fades. You can buy patterns from my Pattern Store even if you’re not on Ravelry ( assuming you’d want to of course ) I just need to work out the jiggery pokery to make it possible – bear with me whilst I work it out!
The old, the Stoll and the new
The old?
That’ll be me, well at least the way I’m feeling today but pleased that my latest design for ‘Knitting’ magazine made the cover.
The Stoll?
Found a new home for it, just need to dismantle it and get it down 4 floors, into the car and drive it 500 miles to it’s new home
The new?
The lovely new collection hugely talented knit students from Bucks New University, have a look at their work on their website ‘Red Shed Textiles’ here. Why Red Shed? Well as anyone who’s been to the college will know the department’s based in a huge red shed which used to house some of the building courses. At least it has windows now, when I worked there it was like working in a sauna, anyway, enough rambling.
Enjoy
Floral Sleeveless Top, Knitting issue 79
This pretty little stocking stitch number is knitted in Garnstudio Drops Cotton Viscose. There are vertical stripes of lace across the upper bust and back with a deep slit opening at the back fastened with a single button. I’ve used Gedifra Amara for the embroidery because the colours look stunning against the lustrous black of the viscose and it’s a very easy design to wear whether you dress it up with a floaty skirt and a pair of girly heels or dress it down with a pair of skinny jeans and ballet pumps.
The embroidery is placed assymetrically placed on the garment travelling over the left shoulder to the back.
In terms of difficulty it’s a simply shaped garment with lace holes echoing the shaping of the armholes and the opening at the back. I know that embroidery on a knitted item can sometimes be offputting if you don’t feel that your embroidery skills are up to scratch and though I use embroidery in a lot of my designs I’m self taught so the stitches I use are well within everyone’s capabilities. Just to show how ‘do able’ the stitches are I’ve done little how to video clips for the 4 main techniques I’ve used in a new section of the blog called ‘How To’s’ here
Once bitten . .
Now I’m the ripe old age of 42 there are a number of things that having tried once, I will never do again.
What sort of thing do I mean? Eating pickled eggs, drinking raki, eating oysters, watching Torchwood, trying to work a cable on a 12 gauge Dubied, that sort of thing.
Having just returned from what was otherwise a FANTASTIC week in Provence the next thing to add to my ‘NEVER do again’ list is to travel Rynair. I know, what was I expecting given the low fares and the fact that you have to pay for everything as an ‘extra’ ( wasn’t Michael O’Leary talking about charging passengers to use the toilet at one stage?) I shouldn’t have expected high class service from an airline run by a man who’s obviously seen a lorry load of sorry looking sheep being carted off to slaughter and thought ‘what a great business model’. You would hope though that having checked in online as instructed you could turn to up at the airport and NOT have to stand in an ever-lengthening queue of fellow travellers for an hour and a half just to drop off a bag. Wasn’t the online check in meant to make things faster? Oh yes I suppose in normal circumstances it would but when there’s just one huge line of passengers for 6 flights all scheduled to take off at the same time, things predictably begin to fall apart.
Sam and I had planned to start the holiday with coffee and croissants in Departures before swanning off with friends to a beautiful farmhouse in St Didier. We actually started the holiday running like the possessed through the terminal up to Departures stripping off anything vaguely metallic as we went to make it quicker to get through security – thanks by the way to the member of staff who cut us to the front and the lovely lady passenger who could see the sweat dripping off us and let us in the queue in before her. And why is it that in these circumstances your flight ALWAYS leaves from the departure gate that is furthest away? Having shoved the metal items in my bag whilst running because I didn’t think there was time to stop to put them back on I then had to stop to remove my shoes and run, run, RUN to the gate, only just making it in time. Not a very dignified start to the hols but what a week, lots of sun, swimming and great French food and wine. Plus I got a lovely email from a friend ( thanks Helen ) telling me that my latest design for ‘Knitting’ magazine had made the cover! . . . Au revoir
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