Early Mist

My new design for Artesano has been published. Early Mist is a stole knitted in Manos del Uruguay Serena and is part of a collection of easy/intermediate patterns using just a few skeins of yarn available as a pattern booklet.

Early Mist features an easy zig zag lace pattern which actually consists of only 4 pattern rows. It really is very easy if you know basic lace skills (yarn over/yarn forward, k2tog, ssk).

If you've not tried Serena, I highly recommend it. It's so soft and light and gorgeous to knit with and the new colours about to launch are to die for.

This pattern is available from Ravelry and I expect it'll be available from your local UK/European Manos del Uruguay/Artesano stockists. The e-book with all the 5 patterns in the collection is only £3.50.

Artesano have gone for the 'light as air' photos again which I just love.

I didn't manage to get any pics before I sent it off but I did get a pic of it blocking.

A big thank you to Leni for knitting this sample for me. Leni is one of my new sample knitters and is doing a great job. She's an amazing spinner too.

I'm still taking sign ups for my new online Continental Knitting Course starting on Thursday. You can go through the lessons at your own pace & you'll have indefinite access to the course material. There's more about the course in the post below.

My first online class!

Want to learn to knit faster? Want to learn to knit the continental way? Want to knit like this?  My first online Continental Knitting Course is ready for sign ups. It starts on 1 March but you can sign up & catch up any time before 6 March. I've not decided how often I'll run the course in the future and whether I'll run it as a 'on demand' course or scheduled course. The course has been tested and based on the feedback I've received I've re-shot a couple of the videos. 

During the week-long course you'll learn how to carry the yarn in your left hand and knit continental style and do Norwegian Purl. Norwegian purl keeps the yarn at the back (normal continental purl brings the yarn to the front like English knitting). Keeping the yarn at the back all the time makes combined knit/purl combinations much quicker. Ofcourse, when you learn something knew you will be slower to start with but if you put in plenty of practice you will reap rewards.

The course will be delivered in daily lessons. Watching the videos and reading through the material will only take a few minutes but how successful you are depends on how much time you set aside to practice. I recommend several short periods of practice on a daily basis. You can go back and watch the videos after the course has finished. You also have the opportunity to ask question or e-mail me directly.

I'm offering this course at a special introductory offer price of $40 (approx £25) for this first course. Normally courses will be priced at $50. You can live anywhere in the world and still take this course. Time zones doesn't matter as you can view the videos and material at any time. Sign up here.

 Earlier in the week I promised pics of my current wip as it wasn't a secret one. Well, before I had a chance to take progress pics I finished it. I ran out of beads on the cast off row and had to call the shop I bought them from to get them to send more.

 I'm not revealing pictures of the complete shawlette yet, mainly because i haven't taken any proper shots yet. But you can see some of the stitches and the pretty beaded, picot cast off.

 I haven't even decided no a name yet. But this is the last design in the Amazing Luxury Knits Subscription. If you've signed up you'll get this pattern automatically in March. If you've not signed up you can still do it now. By the end of March I'll put this collection into an e-book for all subscribers to download.

If you're keen to get ready for when this pattern is released, it's knitted out of one skein of Araucania Botany Lace (which despite the name is actually sock yarn) and 4mm needles. For the edging I used illusion/miracle beads. They're much bigger than any beads I've used before but I love the result and the colours are so pretty.

Thank you to everyone for their support about the whole kal media/All Craft Media/Knit/Inside Crochet situation. I and all the other designers involved really appreciate it. This article summarizes the situation nicely.

Introducing 'Jinny'

First, I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone who commented on my last post and tweeted about it. I think it's important that designers, knitters and other crafters are aware of what's going on with this company. If you've no idea what I'm talking about, read the post below this one.

There's been a lot of secret projects lately and most of them I can't reveal quite yet. But one of my recent deadlines has already been published. I sent in the sample and pattern about 2 weeks ago so I'm very impressed by how quickly this has been published. 

 'Jinny' is knitted in Manos del Uruguay Lace which is a gorgeous blend of baby alpaca/silk/cashmere. It's very luxurious and you only need 2 skeins to knit this beautiful shawl.

 The shawl is worked from the top down as a hybrid triangular shawl. The centre back insertion creates a bit of shoulder shaping which makes this a very easy shawl to wear.

 This shawl looks impressive but it's not difficult. The only stitches you need are knit, purl, k2tog, ssk, sl1 k2tog psso, yarn over/yarn forward. There are charts and written instructions. If you're new to lace or haven't tried lace yet, why not try one of my Easy Lace workshops. I'm teaching it at several venues this spring. The first one is at Purlescence in Wantage, nr Oxford on 10 March. A few days later I'm teaching at The Cornwall Yarn Shop in Launceston, Cornwall. On 17 April I'm teaching at Spin A Yarn, Bovey Tracey, Devon and on 11 May I'm teaching at Hulu Crafts, Modbury, Devon. Contact the respective shops to book. The Easy Lace workshops will teach you how to work yarn overs/yarn forward, different directional decreases, how to read a lace chart, how to shape within a lace pattern. You'll get plenty of practice during the day.

 'Jinny' is part of a new collection of lace patterns from Artesano and is available in a new lace booklet, Lace 1,  which you can get from your local Manos del Uruguay/Artesano stockists or you can buy it as a single pattern pdf here.

A bit thank you to Pixie for knitting this sample.

My Story - more info added

Added 25 May: Just a quick update re the Yarn Forward/Knit/Inside Crochet story.  A few weeks ago ACM went into receivership and Knit which will now be called Yarnwise, Inside Crochet and one other mag will now be published by Tailormade Publishing. I'm very pleased to hear about this development and I will consider submitting to these mags again in the future.

Added 22 Feb: This morning I came across this blog post and this blog post with more experiences of problems with ACM. Rock & Purl's original post (which i refer to below) has also had some excellent advice left in one of the comments about legal action, well worth reading if you're a designer still owed money & considering legal action).

Another issue I forgot to mention yesterday is that lately some designers who had patterns published in Inside Crochet have seen their designs appearing in a North American publication. It seems that ACM had a clause added to their contracts meaning that they could sell on designs to other publications without any more compensation for the designer. Most magazines will pay the designer a percentage of the original fee if the design is used in further publications. You can read about this here if you're a Ravelry member.

My orginal post written on 21 Feb 2012:
I've been wondering whether or not to post this for a while now and after reading Rock & Purl's post on the subject I've decided to tell my story.

Several years ago (in 2007) I had my first design, a sock pattern, published in MagKnits, which was an online magazine based in the UK. I was ofcourse very, very excited. It was my first published design. I never got paid for it but never chased payment either. The payment wasn't that much and I was just so excited about being published. The editor of MagKnits later started up Yarn Forward. When I next submitted to Magknits I was asked if the design could be used for Yarn Forward and ofcourse I said yes. My design would be published in a proper print magazine. Very exciting. I did get paid for this design. This gave me the confidence to submit more designs to Yarn Forward and longterm readers of Yarn Forward will know that I have been a regular designer for that magazine for several years until last summer. Being published gave me the confidence to submit to other magazines and the rest is history as they say. Because of this early association with the owner of Yarn Forward/Magknits, when there were problems with the company, which there was regularly over the years, I was very defensive and loyal towards the owner.

Fast forward to December 2010. A designer friend e-mailed me and asked if I'd been paid for my recent designs for Yarn Forward as her payments were late and she'd heard rumours about the company going out of business. I checked what I was owed and discovered that one of my designs was overdue for payment. I wasn't overly concerned. They'd paid me late a lot of times in the past but i always got paid in the end. I e-mailed them and got no reply. By end of February 2011 I was owed for 3 designs and fired off another e-mail followed by a phone call to the office.

I should explain how most magazines pay their designers. Designers usually send in designs and their accompanying patterns months before the magazine is published. Most magazines (but not all) pay their designers after the magazine has been published. As a designer, if you're having patterns published monthly, which I was at the time, you can easily end up in a situation where by the time you realise payments are late you've already sent them several more designs.

So in March last year I wrote this post on Ravelry (you can only read it if you're a Ravelry member - basically the post is asking advice of other designers and what they would do if in a similar situation). By that time I'd e-mailed the magazine several times and received no reply or reassurances which was worrying me. In my Ravelry post, I didn't mention the magazine's name or anything that could identify the magazine. I was worried that other editors would read it and think I was being un-professional. Several designers immediately recognised who i was writing about and pm'd me to tell me their stories. Turned out I wasn't the only one who'd had problems with payments. Later the owner of this company found out about the thread and outed her own company. I was shocked when I realised how wide-spread this problem was.

At the time i had several designs which I'd sent in that hadn't yet been published and one or two designs I hadn't yet completed and I refused to complete them until I was paid the money I was owed. I also had commissions for future designs which I refused to accept until I got paid and later refused altogether.

To cut a long story short, as last spring went on I had several more designs published and every single payment was late. By this time I was aware of how wide-spread this problem was and designers were starting to talk more openly about lack of payments. I gradually got paid everything I was owed but I had to chase every single payment and by September last year they didn't owe me any more money. I've never submitted any more designs to them.

After my post on Ravelry, a few former staff contacted me as well and told me their stories which horrified me even more. The company who owned Yarn Forward which last year changed their name to Knit (and are due to change their name again soon) also owns Inside Crochet, Handmade Living, Sew Hip, Simply Beautiful and there is a new quilting mag, Modern Quilting, coming and I've heard rumours of a vintage clothing mag too. A year ago the company was called KAL Media and as fas as I understand was owned by Kerrie Allman, who formerly owned Magknits and Hipknits. Last spring KAL Media went into liquidation and the company changed to All Craft Media which I understand is owned by Kerrie's husband. I guess this means that a lot of creditors weren't being paid when the new company took over, which is what I've been told by several former staff. The new company did however promise to pay money owed to designers but I still know of designers who haven't been paid.

I don't understand how they can manage to still publish monthly magazines as so many designers are no longer willing to work for them. However, there are always new designers coming on and this company has always been good at giving new designer a chance (they gave me my first chance at being published). It worried me that those new designs either don't know what's going on or are so desperate to get published that they're willing to risk not getting paid to get published.

At the moment there is a lot of talk on Ravelry about a sock club run by Knit magazine. I was asked to supply yarn for the club a year ago (while they owed me money for several designs). I said no without any hesitation. If you're interested in knowing what's going on with the sock club and you're a Ravelry member you can find their Ravelry group here and here. There's a lot of unhappy members at the moment.

My reason for writing this post is to explain why I no longer design for Knit or Inside Crochet and to warn knitter, crocheters (and others who buy their other mags) and designers who are not aware of the situation about what's going on. It's not my wish to see a company go out of business but I must admit,every time I see one of their mags in the newsagent I get very angry and even more angry when I see people buying them as I know how they treat their designers. Without designers and other contributors these mags won't exist.

I could go on and on and I've rambled on for long enough now. I'll leave it up to you to decide how you feel about it. If you love the mags and still want to buy them, that's your decision and I respect that. But by writing this I hope a few more knitters will be aware of the situation around this company and can then make an informed decision about future purchases.

Next time I'll share some of my current wips. I'm knitting stuff I can share at the moment which after weeks of deadline knitting is quite exciting. I'm also getting very close to taking sign ups for my first online class.

Valentines Pattern Sale

Happy Valentines Day! To help you celebrate this week, I'm offering 3 for 2 on all my patterns in my Ravelry Pattern Shop. E-books can be purchased as a qualifying pattern but you can't have an e-book as your free pattern. (ie if you buy 2 patterns and an e-book you'll get one pattern free, you can't choose to have the e-book free). The offer is available until end of Sunday 19 February. You don't need a coupon code, it's set up as an automatic offer.

so what pattern will you choose? The obvious choice this week is Amore. A small modified triangular shawlette with hearts down the centre back.

 Do you fancy a Cappuccino break? The Cappuccino Stripe shawlette is a quick and easy knit and will keep you shoulders warm during your trips to the pavement cafes in spring.

 Ready for a shawl using laceweight yarn? Blossom is one of my easier laceweight shawls and it's so beautiful.

 Not quite ready for laceweight yet? Carmen is knitted in sock yarn and is a fairly easy first triangular shawlette.

 Cherish is a warm little shawlette, especially if you knit it in alpaca as in the sample, perfect to wear when you need a comforting hug.

 The Cornish Rhapsody shawl, which is a crescent shaped shawl, was the pattern for my first ever mystery KAL last year which was great fun and I'm planning another one this year.

 Want more of a challenge? Sophia is a top down triangualar shawlette with a knitted on edging. Choose between beads or no beads.

 Need something to keep your hands warm? I've got a choice of fingerless gloves and these cabled ones, Trethawle, are one of my favourites.

Enjoy Valentines Day and enjoy choosing your patterns.

I'm off to teach at Spin A Yarn today. This is my first workshop this year and I'm looking forward to getting back to it. I've also been working hard on getting my first online class off the ground and we may open for sign ups later this week. Keep an eye on the blog for more news later this week. By the way, next week i'm teaching a cable workshop at Hulu Crafts. Always wanted to learn cables? Come and join us. Contact the shop for details.

Vines - A Quince & Co Design

Have you heard of Quince &  Co? You will have done if you've been reading my blog for the last month. Over Christmas I went on a Quince & Co binge. I knitted the Wayfarer Mittens in Chickadee and the Cappuccino Stripe Shawlette in Tern. I also had a secret knit on the go over Christmas and I can finally reveal it: beautiful infinity scarf in Lark. This was a great 'on the go' knitting. I knitted on this everywhere: at the pub while we were waiting for the Boxing Day Hunt, in church, in the car, watching TV, chatting with friends.

 'Vines' features a reversible woven cable stitch pattern which is really fun to knit. The pattern looks the same on both sides of the fabric which is great for scarves.

 I used 4 skeins of Lark but you can easily make the scarf longer or shorter by using more or less wool. Lark is a 100% American Wool and is gorgeous to knit with and perfect for cables. 'Vines' starts with a provisional cast on and is knitted flat then the ends are grafted together at the end. But you can do a regular cast on and seam the ends together if you prefer. You can ofcourse not join the ends and wear it as a regular scarf.

The patterns is available here, this is the Ravelry link and you can see the whole 'Scarves, Etc' collection here.

Quince & Co isn't that easily available in the UK yet but Loop in London is my pusher I mean supplier. They've got a great selection and ship parcels very quickly.

All photos in this post are used with permission from Quince & Co.

Another Cover

The March issue of Let's Knit magazine came today and I was very excited to see my design on the cover. Kaja is knitted in The Little Knitting Company Papiro which is a fabulous cotton yarn. 

This delicate top has a pretty lace detail on the back.

There are also lace details around the front neckline and hems. This pretty top also has waistshaping and 3/4 length sleeves.

 Make this top now and you'll have a pretty, feminine top to wear through spring and summer.

 But that's not my only design in Let's Knit this month. Nicola is knitted sideways in stripes which is very flattering. The elbow length sleeves have chevron lace pattern and the edges are finished off with garter stitch.

 This cardigan is perfect as a layering garment through several seasons.

 And the King Cole Merino Blend dk is an affordable yarn which is lovely to knit with.

 Both Kaja & Nicola were knitted by The CraftiePixie, who did a great job as always.

And my third design for Let's Knit this month is Tanya, a cute crochet cardigan. The cardigan has a cropped shape with elbow length sleeves. Tanya is crocheted in Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend in an interesting extended double crochet (UK terms) stitch pattern.

 The cardigan is worked in 3 pieces and the only seams are the top of the sleeves/shoulder seams and side seams.

Three reasons to get Let's Knit this month.

Want a peek at a design coming soon? During the Christmas week I designed & knitted a reversible cable infinity scarf for Quince & Co. See it here. Pattern coming soon.

Garden Party

It's certainly a bit too cold for most of the UK this weekend for a Garden Party. We don't have snow here in Cornwall but I think a lot of the country had snow yesterday. Although it's cold it doesn't mean you can't dream about a garden party though.

 These pics were taken a week ago on a very chilly, very sunny January day, and although Sarah was freezing most of the time it does look summery, doesn't it? The Garden Party Shawl was first published in Knitting magazine in the summer of 2010 for a garden party themed issue.

 The shawl is a top down triangular shawl with trellis diamonds. It's a fairly easy stitch pattern and it's charted and written out. Perfect as a first laceweight shawl as it's knitted in a heavier laceweight. You'll need 800m/880yds per 100gr skein.

 Thank you to Sarah for modelling this shawl for me. We did the photoshoot at Mount Edgecumbe in Cornwall overlooking Plymouth and the Plymouth Sound. For some reason I love photos shot on the beach.

 If you start knitting this shawl now, you'll be able to wear it for a garden party this summer. As you can see it looks perfect with a casual top and jeans but it looks equally fab with a pretty summer dress.

 Come on, you know you want to. Get the pattern here.

I've been working hard this week on setting up my first online classes. Yesterday we shot the videos for the first class. I've decided to run the Continental Knitting workshop first as it's a fairly easy workshop to run form a teachers point of view. It's also a very popular class. Not sure what Continental Knitting is? Take a look at this video  (ETA: new link added) to find out why you need to take this class (by the way I can knit faster than that but not while I'm being filmed & talking at the same time. Oh and my girls thought I had a stronger accent on the video than I do in real life and that I was using my 'phone voice'. I was hoping I was using my teaching voice, maybe they're the same. If you want to take this class in person with me instead I'm teaching it in May at Spin A Yarn, Devon. More details on my online class coming soon. It's not quite ready yet.

Crystal Cascade

I feel like my blog has turned into a series of new design announcements and that every post advertises something and it's not what I want this blog to be. When I first started blogging I was just a knitters. I wasn't a designer or yarn dyer or knitting teacher. I started the blog to share my knitting with the world.

I am pretty proud of all my designs and I love sharing them with you. At the moment I've re-doing a lot of old patterns and trying to get some old magazine patterns published. 

'Crystal Cascade' was published nearly a year ago in Simply Knitting and I'm so pleased to make it available to you.

 It's a half hexagon shawl worked form the top down and features a diamond and flower lace pattern which ends in a scalloped edging.

 The shawl takes 100gr (800m/880yds) lace weight yarn. Its a thicker lace and not at all scary to knit with. The pattern has charts & written instructions.

 Fancy a beautiful shawl for a special spring/summer event? It'll look great with a special dress and you can see how great it looks with a casual top and jeans.

 You can buy Crystal Cascade on Ravelry and on Craftsy. Craftsy is a website for crafters which I only discovered fairly recently. Their pattern shop has just gone live and I've got a few of my patterns up already with more to come. Here's my Craftsy pattern shop. Craftsy is a great place if you're a multi-crafter.

I can't share any of my current knitting. I've just finished a deadline sweater which is blocking now so will have some sewing up to do over the weekend and I'm working on a very special lace shawl. On Sunday i'll either be working on my second sock or I've got an idea for a new shawl using the same stitch pattern as the sock and handwarmers i shared earlier in the week and I may do some swatching for that this weekend. Come back on Monday to find out what I do for my Sunday Knitting this week.

Have a lovely weekend x

Cappuccino Stripe

I'm kind of in shock that it's already February. What happened to January? Anyway, it's time to reveal the next pattern in The Amazing Luxury Knits Collection. Here it is: Cappuccino Stripe.

 Over Christmas I was looking for something to knit, something quick. I had 2 skeins of the gorgeous Quince & Co Tern which I was desperate to do something with. I felt these two colours went nicely together. I combined the idea of stripes with a new shawl construction I was keen to try out and Cappuccino Stripe was born. It's a very quick shawlette to knit. I knitted mine in just a few days over Christmas. The project fitted easily into my bag & its perfect for picking up and knitting a few rows here and there.

 I used 2 50 gr skeins of Tern but you can use any 4ply/fingering weight yarn. And if you buy 2 100gr skeins of sock yarn you can make a shawl that's much bigger. In fact I do have a couple of skeins of sock yarn set aside in my studio to knit myself a bigger version. I'm thinking it may be perfect for when we go on holiday at Easter.

 Cappuccino Stripe has a simple double eyelet edging along one edge of the shawl. This edging is knitted at the end of each row. The shawl starts in one corner and the shaping creates diagonal stripes, the shawl ends in a simple crochet chain edging. Even if you're not an experienced crocheter this is an easy edging. All you have to be able to do is a simple crochet chain and double crochet (single crochet if you're American). There are plenty of You Tube videos that will show you what to do if you're unsure.

Cappuccino Stripe is available as a separate pattern here and as part of The Amazing Luxury Knits Collection here. If you've already signed up to Amazing Luxury Knits, your pattern will be ready for you to download now. Next month, March, is the last month of Amazing Luxury Knits & I'm planning something special.

This was one of the designs we shot last week during out big photoshoot. Thank you to Sarah for doing a great job modelling this design. The photos were taken at Mount Edgecumbe in Cornwall, look across the Tamar to Plymouth.