Happy New Year!

May 2025 be filled with woolly wonders!

I honestly don’t know how we’re in 2025 already. I’m sure the years have become a blur now!

We’ve started the new year with a new Knit and Crochet-a-long. We’re going to be running one every two months throughout the year, so if you have a suggestion then please let me know!

For this first one, we’ve chosen the Emotional Support Chicken, as that felt about the right vibe. Everyone seems to be struggling a bit at the moment for one reason or another, and so having a fun project which can give you a bit of TLC (tender loving chicken!) seemed like a really good idea!

I’ve been trying to choose the yarns to start mine, and I must admit that I’m struggling to make a final decision – however I promise to have cast mine on by this time next week, so I’ll show you my final yarn choice then!

At the moment though, I’m working on getting the last of the Coast and Castles Blanket sample squares finished as I really want to get it sewn up and on display asap. I’m still waiting for the pattern edits to be finalised, but I will get the final clues released as soon as I possibly can.

Can you tell what this square is going to be yet?

I’m making full use of my Woolma bobbins (and honestly there are times when I reckon I would be in such a muddle without them!) as I’m doing intarsia for this square instead of fairisle.

For those who aren’t sure of the difference between the two techniques, fairisle is where you carry floats behind your work, using (usually) two colours at a time. The back of a piece of fairisle looks like the image on the left here, with different strands visible all the way over.

The reverse side of intarsia however, is like the picture on the right, where you can see different blocks of colour with the yarns twisted where the colours meet to stop there being a gap between the stitches.

The choice of which technique you want to go with is largely based on what the colourwork pattern is, but also on whether you are working flat or in the round.

You can’t really do intarsia in the round as you have to work back and forth across the piece to enable the same strand of yarn to be used throughout.

If you are working flat and have large areas of one colour then it is worth using intarsia instead of fairisle as carrying the floats over large areas can cause the fabric to pucker where you carry your floats.

So what else is happening this week?

We’ve finally had the Knitting Fever delivery in, so our Lykke and Noro have been mostly restocked. We are still missing a few sizes of needles and hooks, but most are now available again. Also if you were waiting for the 5″ interchangeable needle sets to come back in stock – we now have a variety of colours available! These are a great thing to put your Christmas money towards if you have any left!

Now that we’ve hit January, we’re back to ‘Winter Hours’ until the end of Feb. This means that we’re closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. We’re still open Wednesday to Sunday though, so there is still plenty of time to pop in and have a squish!

I’ve also been playing…

Andy and I like to go out for a drive once a week on our day off if we can. Last week during twixtmas we headed over to Wrexham as despite how close it is, neither of us had actually been there before. Whilst we were there, we found a tiny little market stall which was selling off 100g skeins of Ella Rae 100% merino dk yarn. 11 skeins of it may have fallen into my basket…

I decided to have a play at a new, and very simple, colourwork sweater design whilst we did a bit of a movie marathon (Starwars!) over new year. I’m really chuffed with how it’s looking given the skeins I picked up were a very random selection of colours due to being what was left – 6 skeins of brown, and then one each of camel, burgandy, blue, purple and red! I’m really enjoying working with it – it’s a lovely bouncy DK.

This is likely a longer term project as I have SO MUCH to get on with, but sometimes you just can’t help casting on something new!

I’m also being VERY tempted by the Jennifer Steingass pattern sale. I love her sweaters and if I had the time I would be making all of them! I’m definitely thinking of getting the Goldenfern pattern, I think it would work up beautifully in West Yorkshire Spinners Exquisite…

There are not enough knitting hours in the day!

On that note – I’d best get back to my squares!