Basically, we cover up all the shelves and lay out as many tables as we can fit into the shop; on top of these we put all the yarn we’re discontinuing. There could be whole ranges of yarn, shades of yarn and some you might not have seen before. There will be odd balls, several balls and packs of balls, no matter what, all balls are €3 each.
There are things to consider: you have to book your slot, you only have 20 minutes (you’re timed), you have to prepare, dig out the patterns, check your favourites on Ravelry, make sure you know how much double knit/aran/chunky you need. Have a look at the post linked above if you’re not sure and make sure you book your place quickly before they all go.
You’d think as I own my own yarn shop that the last thing I’d want to do on holiday is go to another wool shop wouldn’t you?
Of course not, rather disappointingly I only managed to visit 3, maybe 4 if you count the market stall too. If time had allowed there was at least 2 more I could have got to – next time I will.
Ramshambles
My first port of call was a lovely little shop called Ramshambles in York. Located at 46 Shambles, York, North Yorkshire, YO1 7LX. The shop reminds me of our old premises in Midleton with it’s ‘Old Curiosity’ windows, whose display of brightly coloured yarn enticed me in. Katey the owner is lovely and delighted to help, like our shop the place is packed to the ceiling with yarn, patterns, needles and notions. There were lots of lovely yarns from King Cole, Debbie Bliss, Noro and Highland Textiles. My naughty purchase was a hank of Ramshambles own hand dyed Blue Faced Leicester Sock Yarn in a riot of pink yummynous called Vaudeville.
There were other lovelies just calling to me from the shelves but I had to be strong and resist because as I’ve other new birthday yarn to use too and I have yet to master knitting in the bath or shower without getting your yarn wet.
The second shop I managed to call to was Babes in the Wool in Hull. They can be found at 113 Newland Avenue, Hull HU5 2ES and the owner (whose name I’ve forgotten, sorry) is lovely. The shop is nestled in a busy street and draws you in with it’s large window. There is a good stock of yarn including ranges from King Cole, Woolcraft, Katia and Debbie Bliss. I was rather smitten by the Blue Faced Leicester Aran from Debbie Bliss of which I purchased 3 balls (possibly with a future grandchild knit in mind).
My third shop was Knit & Stitch in Doncaster at 26 Market Place, Doncaster DN1 1NE.
I have to confess to having been here before and had to return because it’s just so lovely. This time the windows were happily full of huge balls of aran and garments in pretty colours.
The new purchase is the one on the right
I was on a mission though to purchase another ball of Jarol Pure British Wool Aran to go with one I’d bought on my previous visit. As I discovered a this pattern in The Knitter shortly after my last visit and think the yarn will be ideal for it. However, I’ve just realised I need another ball, usually a perfect excuse to return to the shop but it’s not exactly what you call local is it? I shall have to persuade my friend (real strong arm tactics needed, not) to pop in for me.
Whernside Cushion by Alice Underwood
My best friend recently moved back to Doncaster (hence my visit) and she was tempted by a lovely soft angora by Rowan and a 50/50 blend aran by Katia for her mum. The shop is jam packed with yarns from King Cole, Sirdar, Katia, Debbie Bliss and Noro. Again there was yarn calling me and if that wasn’t bad enough Knit & Stitch also sell patchwork fabric. Upstairs there’s the fabric come classroom with a whole wall full of edible ‘sew me’ cottons. Knit & Stitch have two other shops one in York and one in Maltby and I’d really recommend a visit if you’re ever near one of them.
Lastly, I managed a quick visit to the wool stall on Doncaster Market which sells James C. Brett yarns and lots of buttons. Some of which I purchased for my daughter Dina’s latest cardigan.
Based on the woolly joy I discovered on my trip I’d definitely say a trip to the area would be worth it if your ever there.
As you might expect my life is being dominated by squares at the moment. In my naivety I thought this latest charity collection would be lovely and simple – really! What was I thinking?!
So there’s the making of the squares, that bit is simple. Except I’ve had to take an executive decision and forgo the making part to move onto the blanket stage. This involves the all important selecting of the squares and laying them out into a blanket. (this can take a while)
Then there’s the sewing:
Sew 4 squares together to make a strip
Sew 5 strips up to make a blanket
Sew all ends in
Crochet the border
Now to be fair to blankets look absolutely beautiful, particularly because they’re made up of multi-coloured squares that you probably wouldn’t put together if you had the choice. Mixing the colours and styles up really adds to the eclectic feel of the blankets and hones in on the popularity of ‘Shabby Chic’ at the moment. Truthfully, you could probably sell the blankets in a vintage store FOR A LOT OF MONEY with the current trend in all things handmade. Don’t worry I won’t.
I won’t…HONESTLY.
The good news is we have 40, yes 40 blankets in various states of completion, which is fantastic and has made all the work worthwhile. We still have approximately a week left to get as many squares in before we have to send of the blankets, so please keep at it.
In the meantime I’ve just discovered that I’m short of a square to complete the blanket I’ve been sewing up, so I’ve had to crochet a quick one.
It seems like ages since I managed to get on here and post up a little snippet of life in the shop.
For the past 2 weeks we’ve been so busy with the blankets that it feels like we’ve done little else. Given the time restraints for the collection (3rd August) it’s very difficult not to get absorbed with knitting & sewing squares. I have managed to get a pair of socks knitted and think I could become obsessed. They’re the first pair I’ve made using the two circular needle method as championed by Cat Bordhi. If you’re interested in seeing this method check out her video on youtube.com http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=mcafee&p=cat+bordhi+socks
If you were on Ardmore Beach this week you could have possibly spotted me trying to get ahead with my Autumn/Winter Samples.
If that wasn’t enough the Innocent Smoothie/Age Action Campaign is back again, more about that another time. I’m off to knit or sew, or both if that’s possible.
Our blanket collection for The House of Hope in Vanadzor, Armenia is well underway and there are squares everywhere.
I’ve got piles of them sorted by size, strips already sewn to be made up into blankets and several finished blankets complete with crochet border, a very basic crochet border believe me.
We’ve calculated it takes approximately 7.5 hours to sew the squares together, sew in all the ends and crochet the border. So we’ve been trying to sew the squares up as they come in to try and keep on top of things. A big thank you to those that have been sewing as well as knitting.
As you might expect, the squares initially came in, in various sizes and dare I say shapes. Undeterred all squares are being used and as you can see the blankets are beautiful when sewn up.
Please keep your squares coming in as we would love to be able to give as many residents as possible a blanket each. It might be a little ambitious though as there will hopefully be 80 people, nothing like a challenge.
I’ve spent the last few days trying to gather up everything we’ve collected in for the The Kyl Assylum in Belarus. As you can imagine my office tends to resemble a very untidy wool shop at the best of times but there are times when the whole thing just gets out of hand. Lately the problem has worsened as the sample balls of wool fight with my stash, the paperwork and the ever increasing number of carrier bags containing donations. As if that wasn’t enough, my son shares the office so I can keep a watchful eye on his computer use and ‘spend some time’ with him whilst he battles aliens on his XBox 360.
It was lovely to go through everything again, some of the items are so beautiful. In total there were 30 Scarves and 24 hats to send to Kyl via the Bureen Chernobyl Project. In addition to the hats and scarves we also received a couple of boxes of toilitries to pass on and we had a good rummage and found a good few jumpers too.
Some of the donations that came in have been more suitable for children so I have separated these out and will be forwarding them on to The Children’s Chernobyl Trust for them to pass on to needy boys and girls. In addition to the 31 hats and 13 pairs of gloves we’ve had 13 baby and toddler cardigans donated too to pass on.
Thoroughly, embracing the tidying up bug I also managed to go through the XBox king’s old clothes and sorted out everything that he’s grown out of to send off with The Children’s Chernobyl Trust items.
Happily there’s now space to house all the knitted squares were hoping for.
I thought it was time to update you all on the progress of my ever increasing blanket which is now 54.5″/138cms. As you can probably imagine knitting the 2 rows per day is taking much longer now on account of the blankets size. To be on the safe side I need to make sure I have three quarters to an hour spare when I start to knit. Unfortunately, our weather is anything but May like which has inadvertently been a godsend as there is some warmth from the blanket.
Sitting under the weight of it whilst knitting in heat is not great.
I think I have a little over a months worth of knitting left before I’ll reach my target length of 6 foot.
In order for you to judge the length and to give you a bit of a giggle you can see me modelling the blanket so far. I’m 5ft3 on a good day.
Some of you may recall we knitted 14″ blankets for the maternity hospital a couple of years ago now and the pattern many of us used was knit on the diagonal.
20cms/8″ or there about
The beauty of the pattern was that you started with 1 stitch and increased by 1 stitch on every row until you’d reached your desired size. You then knit one row plain and begin decreasing 1 stitch every row until they’re all gone.
Easy peasy!
8inch/20cm Charity Blanket Square
Materials
Any weight of yarn
Appropriate size needles for yarn
Eg: Double knit yarn = 4mm,
Aran weight = 5mm
Chunky yarn = 6.5mm
Super chunky weight = 10mm
Abbreviations
K – Knit
KFB – Knit into the front and the back of the next stitch
K2Tog – Knit the next 2 stitches together
Instructions
Cast on 1 stitch
1st Row – Knit into the front and the back of the stitch, (2 stitches).
2nd Row – K1, KFB, (3 Stitches)
3rd Row – K1, KFB, K to end, (4 Stitches).
You can see that by increasing in every second stitch a decorative border is produced. Repeat row 3 until either of the sides is approximately 8”/20cm (please note you are working on the diagonal).
Next work one row in knit without any increase.
To decrease K1, K2tog, K to end.
Repeat this decreasing 1 stitch on every row until only 2 stitches remain, K2Tog
OK so I’ve got the knitting needles out and had a good rummage through my stash so I can give you a couple of ideas for 8″/20cm squares.
A really unblocked stocking stitch square
Stocking Stitch Square
Using 6.5mm needles and standard chunky yarn cast on 25stitches loosely. Working in stocking stitch (1 row plain, 1 row purl) knit until your piece of knitting is square ending with a wrong side row.
Cast off loosely.
Hint The best way to check this is to fold the bottom right corner over to the top left corner diagonally. If the edges meet on the left side your piece is square.
Moss stitch square
Moss Stitch Square
Using 6.5mm and standard chunky yarn cast on 24 stitches loosely.
1st Row: Knit 1, Purl 1 to end of row
2nd Row: Purl 1, Knit 1 to end of row.
Repeat these 2 rows until knitting is square (as above). Mine took 44 rows.
If you’re making squares remember it’s easier to block slightly smaller ones to 8″ but we can’t make larger ones smaller. Having said that we will use them. You can also use 2 strands of double knit yarn held together to make a chunky yarn.
As our collection of winter woolies for Chernobyl draws to an end we are happy to announce our next charity project.
Global Missions Ireland (Charity No: CHY13718) is a Cork based charity that undertakes in missions both at home and around the world. Locally they run feeding programs to reach the people in the City of Cork.
On foreign missions they work with the local church to reach out to the most vulnerable and marginalised in society. The charity’s main aim is to run mission trips, which provide people with an avenue to work abroad or help a community, which they feel, are in need. They send people from the medical field, construction industry, teachers, housewives any sector that they find will help in the country that they are working in.
This year Global Missions have got a team going to the ‘House of Hope’ retirement home in Vanadzor, Armenia. Here there are 80 men and women taken out of deplorable conditions to live in safety and comfort. It was set up to house the elderly community who had been living in derelict buildings and containers since the earthquakes in 1988.
The team will be running feeding programs, giving bread made in the ‘ House of Hope’ bread factory to those in the community that are in need. They will also visit with social workers other in the locality that are in need of help to try and rehabilitate and rehouse them into better conditions.
These elderly people need our help as they have very little and Global Missions has specifically asked if we’d be interested in making lap blankets. These will help to keep the residents that little bit warmer whilst at the same time giving them a gift of kindness they can cherish.
Calling all of you that knit and/or crochet for your help. We’d also welcome those of you that sew or can be a little creative with felting old jumpers.
What we’re after?
As we’re making lap blankets these can be either the complete, finished article or 20cm/8″ squares which we will sew together to make blankets 100cm x 120cms/40″ by 48″
Squares can be made using any yarn however, please remember these blankets will need to be washable and warm. Chunky yarn will knit up quicker and remember that you can always use more than one strand of yarn together. Two strands of double knit worked together is the same as using a chunky yarn.
Squares can be in any pattern/design of your choosing and we have no colour preference. knit, crochet or as I mentioned before sewn or felted it really doesn’t matter. Take this opportunity to use up your leftovers.
Spread the word – we’d love to hand over as many blankets as possible. Tell other knitting groups, schools & colleges, residential homes, church groups, etc.
The closing date for our collection is Saturday 3rd August. It would helps us enormously if you are making squares if you could send them in sooner if possible to allow time to sew them up. Even if it means giving them in in batches.
There are absolutely loads of lap blankets available on www.ravelry.com
There are also loads of patterns available for 20cm/8″ squares out there in cyberspace, just type ‘knit a square’ into your web browser.
The Knitter/Simply knitting Magazine ran a campaign for Refuge last year in which they asked for squares the same size to be donated. You may well have a copy of the magazines neatly filed on a shelf. Crocheting a square should be simple enough as you just stop when you’ve reached the right size.
I intend to pop up a few square patterns when I’ve knitted some examples but I wanted to get the collection underway.
Technically speaking if your tension is correct, casting on 28sts (loosley) with chunky yarn on 6.5mm needles will give you 20cms horizontally. Knit in stocking stitch until square is 20cms vertically and cast off loosley.
Hint: I’m terrible for casting on/off too tight so I use a needle at least one size larger
Confessions of a Fibre Strumpet 