Smoking Needles

This week is manic getting ready for Woolfest next week. I'm in Birmingham this weekend. I'm teaching Professional Finishing Techniques at Sitting Knitting on Sunday. By the way, if you only ever do one class, this is the class every knitter should take. It teaches you so many skills and helps you get over the 'hate finishing/hate sewing up' thing. You'll learn how to sew up using mattress stitch, how to set in a sleeve cap, short row shoulder shaping (wrap & turn short rows and German short rows), three needle cast off, how to pick up stitches for button bands and collars, blocking tips and how to work a one row button hole. So much information in one day. I think there may still be a space or two left. So contact Sitting Knitting if you can make it.

My needles have been on fire this week. I thought it would be a good idea to knit up a few samples from the book in the yarns I'll be selling at Woolfest next week. But I'd left it too late to get help from my sample knitters so on Friday evening I cast on for Macy. 

Macy was one of the samples I used for my book proposal for Beaded Lace Knitting and I knew it would be a quick knit. I chose a lovely magenta pink Navia Duo for the body. The Navia Duo has only 180m per 50g ball and I needed around 400m, so I knew I'd have to break into a third ball, so I decided to use light grey for the edging which matches the silver beads I chose. I cast on Friday evening and finished early Monday evening.  And yes I did do other things over the weekend and I did sleep. It's just a very fast knit. I'm planning a blog post, probably next week, on how I get so much knitting done. It's partly because I'm a fast knitter which is due to being a continental knitter but there are also other reasons.

I was tempted to cast on for another 4ply/sock weight shawl as they're smaller it'll be a quicker knit but I've got some Lang Merino 400 Lace but I don't have any samples knitted in that yarn so I decided to do Gillian. Gillian doesn't have that many beads and the pattern repeat is easy to memorise so I knew once I got into it it would be a quick knit. I took this photo yesterday morning and I've got several more repeats done since.

I'm really enjoying knitting with the Lang Merino 400 Lace and I've ordered a few more colours for Woolfest. I want to design a new shawl using this yarn and I've got some ideas.

I've also ordered some new colours of Zauberball and Lace Ball and especially in the Lace Ball, there were some colours I really liked the look of. So I may be casting on for a new Lace Ball design to knit on while we're away. Having said that I've got four commissions due soon after we get back so I may end up knitting two of those instead.