Sunday's Sky & Introducing Knitters' Row Counter Necklaces

I just had to show you the sky looking to the west of our property yesterday evening!


Doesn't it look dramatic!

On Saturday I attended a Finishing Techniques Workshop at Canterbury C&H Fabrics taken by Jane Clarke which was extremely useful. One of the topics covered was using short row shaping and the three needle bind off for shoulder shaping to avoid that horrid steps and stairs effect that you get when the method of casting off groups of stitches over a couple of rows is used for shoulder shaping.


I can see I'll be using this quite a lot as not only does it avoid the steps and stairs effect but the three needle bind off makes for a very neat seam without any sewing!

Other areas covered were picking up stitches around necklines, mattress stitch and making horizontal buttonholes (photo on left) which are really useful for the very large buttons that are fashionable at the moment.

Both Jane herself and the manager of C&H Fabrics bent over backwards to make sure we had a good learning experience as well as being made to feel very welcome. The manager gave us cards entitling us to 10% discount on anything purchased within the next two weeks (to be used once only). I quite liked this because, at other workshops I've attended, the 10% discount has only applied to the day of the workshop. (I did use mine on the day, however!) He gave us a pile of vouchers each, too, to buy one drink and get one free in the coffee shop which will come in very useful. So, all in all, the Canterbury C&H Fabrics' workshops get a big thumbs up from me! C & H Fabrics are also about to launch an online store so, if you're not near one, you'll now be able to order online!





After the workshop was over, we all went down to the basement where the yarn is. There's a good selection of Rowan, RYC, Jaeger, etc, and I was looking for a pattern and some yarn to knit something for our gardener's new baby son. My choice was Jimmy from the RYC Classic Babies Collection and I bought the yarn to make it with (cashsoft baby DK which is gorgeous).





Other books I bought were Modular Knitting by Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer and the Rowan Felted Collection which has patterns for the most amazing felted bags and other felted items.


What really made by day, though, was to find this wire writer which, on browsing the internet I could only find in the US. So, of course, that had to come home with me, too!


Also, over the weekend I had a thought that some people might prefer a row counter necklace rather than a bracelet so I designed one for Knitz & Glitz.


It works along exactly the same lines as the bracelet and I made it just the right length so that the beads could be moved through the ring to count the rows easily. I haven't seen any other necklaces like this despite trawling the internet, so I think Knitz & Glitz may be the first to be offering them for sale.

These Italian Charm Bracelets which seem to be 'the thing' at the moment have also found their way onto the Knitz & Glitz site.

Click on photo to enlarge image

Click on photo to enlarge image

Starter bracelets are composed of multiple links which can be replaced with different charms so that the wearer can have as few or as many as they like or collect them over a period of time but the ones I've sourced for Knitz & Glitz, of course, focus on knitting related charms!

Another job accomplished over the weekend, with the help of my wonderful DH, was sorting out some packaging and labels, etc, which we've kept to a minimum. All sets of stitchmarkers come with a pretty organza bag so that they won't get lost!


A huge thanks again to all my lovely knitting friends who've promoted me on their blogs. I'm so touched by that and special thanks to dear Carrie Anne who promoted me on her podcast - BritKnitCast - which got me listening to it! I really enjoyed it and will be listening again. Carrie Anne always interviews someone on her podcast and this time it was Zoe of Hello Mango Yarn. So, if you haven't had a listen yet to BritKnitCast, I recommend you try it!