Stash Attack

I have run out of my favourite wool, the wool which I know how to work and which I know like the back of my hand. Due to the well known slow time over the summer months, the finances are lagging behind too. So I have been looking at my stash with inventive eyes. 

I have a wool which is so thin I struggle to put it through the machine. It is a felting wool which I bought when I was just starting machine knitting and I had no idea what I needed to buy.I have two cones in two separate colours. If I run them through the machine together they produce a nice speckled effect. Combine with grey as a contrast colour and the result is really rather lovely.

I knit it up with a grey felting wool. The difference in the two types of yarn show once felted and the patterned panels which would normally make 40×40 cm square cushion covers have come up just over 28×28 cm in width. I was prepared for this. I am eyeing up a foot stool which needs recovering and I think that would be a good use of my tiny panels. 

Results

I soaked the latest round of knitting. Then blocked it out. I got away with my repairs (see last post) on one.

Bit this one is just too bumpy to use. 

I’m pleased though because I’d written off both pieces of work.

Business Planning

I mentioned in the last blog that I have a mind which is constantly trying to apply logic to this world and failing. I hope with this near constant disappointment by trying to get my life as organised as possible. So I’m a bit surprised that I haven’t done a business plan before. It’s practically on page one of my well thumbed copy of The Handmade Marketplace, my bible and touchstone on my way to becoming a successful small business.

I worked through The Prince’s Trust workbook (which got a mention last time) and do you know what I found? I have been seriously under charging for my cushions. 

In my previous calculations I’d rounded up here, down there, not included Etsy fees, zips, etc, and finally plumped on a price for my cushions that I think people wouldn’t mind paying, rather than what they should be prepared to pay for a quality product.

Doing a business plan made me realised that realistically I was making only £3.00 on each cushion, which was quickly swallowed up if the postage went over what I charged, or if the buyer wanted to return the item.

So now I have to be brave and put my prices up. I will sit at my computer screen and wait for the cries of horror from my followers, but they will hopefully not come. It comes at the right time. I am going to close my Etsy shop for a few weeks to give me a chance to build up stock for The Handmade Fair which I’m attending in September, and when I return there will be new prices and a new business head on my shoulders.

Jury’s Out

Over the last few days I have been forced to take a break from my day job, my knitting machine and the childcare. I have had to sit in a room with nothing to do but read and write. Have you guessed what I’ve been up to yet (the title is of course a big hint)? That’s right, jury service, ( I of course won’t  mention the case or what went on the deliberation room).

At first it seemed like the most awkward thing that could have happened. I’ve done it before but not recently enough to be excused, I’m in charge of childcare so I had to find cover and because you have no idea how long it will go on, for it it has to be cover you can cancel or extend as you need to (basically my Mum, my Mum is a star and she genuinely enjoys spending time with a snotty toddler). 

If my husband, who hasn’t done it before, had been called he would have been interested, it wouldn’t effected the childcare set up, and it would have improved his commute considerably for a few weeks. Still I can feel my logical, over organising mind searching for order in a situation which is beyond my control. I shall strive for grace to accept the things I cannot change (blimey a bit of my Catholic upbringing floating to the surface there).

So I have decided to spend my time writing a business plan. What? I hear you cry, you should be concentrating on court cases and such like. I assure you I will not be doodling my USP instead of paying attention in court. But there is a lot of sitting around to be done and so I feel must use it constructively if I can. Is this a trait common to most crafters? I suspect it is. 

I have downloaded a guide and a work sheet from The Prince’s Trust website. Which I find is a great source of inspiration and advice for small businesses in the UK. The website is aimed at young people but a lot of its advice applies across age groups.I’ll let you know, in the next post, how I get on. 

I have also been concentrating on improving my photos with a plan to apply for Not On The High Street before the end of the year. Here are some of the results.

My Top Five Tips For Machine Knitting

 

1. If you start producing loops at the edge of your knitting, check you haven’t got your weaving brushes on – and also check your yarn is feeding correctly through the tension mast.
2. If you drop stitches at the side of your knitting, take the weights off the knitting to prevent it from getting worse. Grab your tools and get those stitches back on the needles anyway you can. To prevent dropping more stitches move your edge weights up more often and hang them a tooth or two over the edge of the material – Also check your yarn is going through the tension mast correctly.
3. Changing your main colour yarn is a dangerous moment. This is when you are most likely to deposit your nearly finished garment, weights and all on to your feet, so always check the yarn is in the sinker plate holder correctly twice, and then maybe just once more to be sure.
4. When doing a repetitive task always get a system in place so you are less likely to miss a step. I normally sort the yarn, then the carriage, then the needles.
5. If you’ve been at it for a while, you’re getting tired and you start to make mistakes, that’s the point at which to go to bed. Never knit tired.

 

I have compiled this list from my own mistakes and from having done it wrong myself soooo many times.

Use the Best Materials You Can Afford

I have recently splurged out on some lambs wool from JC Rennie, a British Wool producer. It was a bit more than I would usually spend, but my word was it worth it. I produced my first swatch and I haven’t looked back since. I love this wool, in a very deep and real way.

I have set up my old Jones KH585 which has an eight button patterning centre rather than the punch card on the Knitmaster 360. Even through it is older and more basic, it works as smooth as a lounge lizard on an ice rink. It makes me smile.

 

Combining the JC Rennie Wool and the classic machine makes the experience of knitting a real joy. The wool stands up well to a gentle felt. Because of this, I don’t have to cast on and cast off, I can cut it after it’s been felted and small mistakes are just felted out. The time this saves has made me think I might be able to create a lot of items in the little time that the family work schedule allows and if they are popular than I might be on my way to making my hobby my work.

It has made me think of a piece of advice I’m sure I read somewhere, ‘use the best material you can afford’. This is very true but I would add, practice of the cheap stuff first, with knitting machines, there’s a lot of mistakes to work through first.

Post Sixteen In which I celebrate because I have made a sale.

Just a quick blog today.

I have made my first sale! To a friend of the family but nonetheless it is nice to wave good buy to one of my creations.

I am working on learning to hang hems for another item which should still be useful for a summer project. After a temper tantrum and an early night I think I may be close to cracking it.

Post Thirteen The Idle Knitter Underground

Sometimes things just fall into place, and you get the inescapable idea that the universe is trying to tell you something.

I had a fairly clear idea of what I’d call my baby, we had a girl’s name and a boy’s name ready, but we kept an open mind too, I’ve heard babies don’t always suit what you’d like to call them, and this is exactly what happened after my Tiny Trouble Maker was born. At some point in the hazy days after she was born my husband looked at her, and asked “Alice?”, and after a thorough check for any silly permutations or acronyms, Alice she became.

This slotted in nicely at Christmas. I had been looking at those beautiful and over the top editions of Alice in Wonderland and musing to my Dad that it would be nice to get one for Alice and write in it for her. Dad went very quiet and changed the subject which seemed odd to me as Dad will usually egg me on to spending if it’s on books. It turns out he had an unbound copy of the original Alice manuscript up in the loft dated 1979 from his time working in the print trade. He had it bound and gave it to Alice as her first Christmas present. it is a thing of beauty.

It was here I found out the story was originally called “Alice Underground.”

Then I happened to catch a very interesting radio programme called “The Story of Alice”  on Radio 4 which was all about what happened to the manuscript after Lewis Carroll’s death. And finally into my inbox drops an email from Etsy announcing a competition  ‘Redesigning Alice’ all to do with Alice Underground to celebrate the 150^th anniversary of this work. Now I know I’ll not get anywhere with this competition, the standard will no doubt be very very high but I feel a bit like the universe is telling me I should at least try.

Post Twelve – In Which I Ponder The Evolution of Knitting Patterns and My Own Struggles With a Baby Cardigan

I have been thinking a lot about knitting patterns lately. Even though they are very restricted, standardised and mathematical there is a lot of art involved in writing them. I am not just thinking of the creativity required to design and make a beautiful garment or accessory, the actual process of writing them clearly and in a way which is easy to follow is so hard. I make this observation from the point of view of someone who is not trying to write from scratch one but merely rewrite one for the one specific size I would like to make.

Thinking about this lead me down a tangent of contemplating what a knitting pattern really tells you about the time in which it was written. As a university history student I remember the truism that every piece of writing is a mirror of its own times. I have come to think that this is especially true of knitting patterns. Post war patterns in the UK, are on the whole, succinctly worded. This is possibly because paper was scarce but also because there was possibly someone around to ask if you’re not sure. These patterns assumed more knowledge on the part of the knitter than modern day ones do. Thanks to the fascinating work of people like Susan Crawford  who ‘translates’ these patterns for modern wools and modern figures the great garments these produce are still accessible to us.

The assumption of quite a high level of knitting skill is still evident in the way Swedish and Norwegian patterns are still written today. The hand knitting project I am working on at the moment is ‘Rusila’ by Elsebeth Lavold  from ‘Viking Knits and Ancient Ornaments.’ and it is most refreshing to have just a few lines of instruction for the knitting of the back.

As a beginner starting out however I loved the row by row written patterns. They guided me by the hand, they whispered in my ear that everything would be alright and they helped me produce some of the best knitting I’ve managed to date. To this day when a pattern says ‘work as the chart for X rows’ my first reaction is, “I can’t do that.” Then I remember I can and I plough on.

And what of this pattern I am rewriting? First I need to tell you I am a magazine addict, so when I started down the route of machine knitting I went out to find magazines. I subscribed to one and bought old 1960’s ones on the internet. I have at last found pattern I would like to try. A baby cardigan that I want to adapt. The original pattern is a bit lacy at the bottom so I have removed that and replaced those rows with plain knitting. I’m doing ok but there are a good few mistakes in the pattern, which considering I was just copying the text, is actually pretty impressive. In my defence the pattern is pretty inconsistent, sometimes it mentions decreasing on the left of the work, or on the armpit side (these are both the same side).

I have managed to produce this, but I am not convinced it will sew up well. I will update when I have tried

So I marshal my conclusions thusly:

Modern patterns are a great help to the beginner

The way they are checked closely and carefully is brilliant

Everyone who writes one is a genius, not in the Apple sense of the word, more in the Times crossword sense of the word.

Someone who writes a whole book of them should earn free coffee at their coffee shop of choice for life.

Post Number 11, in which I get over excited about buttons and podcasts and the biggest snood in my world gets posted onto my Etsy Shop.

I have my first commission! It’s from a family member, does that count? I am very excited about it any way. It is for two cushion covers which will hopefully match a rather snazzy cushion which has a slight nautical theme so I have been button shopping of course! I thought this would be a prefect job for Etsy, which it was, look at this.They are just right, I tracked them down at Celestina Jewellery.

I accidently bought some sock yarn too, but just look at this colour.

It is the Sherbet Lemon colour-way from ‘Yarns From The Plain’ I just couldn’t walk away and I am so glad I didn’t, every time I look at it it makes zingy little happy things happen in my head (it is also a a baby magnet – baby that is not babe – my Tiny Troublemaker has had it off high surfaces more than once to have a little play with it). I have ordered a sock pattern to knit it with, update to follow.

I must admit I have come late to the world of podcasts which is why I have spent sizable chunks of this week catching up with the most excellent Curious Handmade podcast. I love to listen to people talking about knitting whilst I am circling the streets of my home town with a pram trying to induce an afternoon nap in an eight month old. Helen Stewart who presents it knows how to describe knitting projects in a way that has me simply itching to pick up my needles again. It is a true joy to find something new that makes you so happy without making you put on weight, I would certainly recommend a look if you get a chance.

I have just posted another snood to my Etsy shop and it is a whopper! 280cm long, made entirely of merino wool it is one of my favourite things in the world. Please do pop by and take a look if you get a chance.

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