Cat Kelly Crafts Ep. 10 // Knitting Podcast // All the scary things… steeking & shearing!!!

can you hear the sheep i think one of them might have lost her lamb and the rain oh mommy she find your alarm i suppose it's topical to have that noise in the background of a living podcast doesn't it can't complain about that [Music] the sheep they're just not gonna be quiet are they hello how are you all welcome to my knitting podcast my name is kat and i am a knitter in northern ireland and this is where i talk about all my knitting i'm sure you know what an editing podcast is if you're here watching it otherwise you'll be very confused can you imagine coming across knitting podcast if you weren't a knitter yeah that would be interesting anyway hopefully i won't keep you very long today i'm hoping this is a short one because i don't have a huge amount of time um but i'm just going to do a quick run through a couple of finish objects and what i'm working on in a minute can you hear those sheep i really should have done a sign check both for the rain that's battering against the window and the sheep that are bad in the field next door anyway you're very welcome let me take you through some of my knitting um i'm wearing my mohair fluff as i call it which was just um a garment that i made pretty early on in my knitting journey i forgot to include it in my rundown on my last podcast of all the knitted garments i've made in my first year of knitting so in honor of its presence it's getting worn today so that it's not left out um i think i forgot about it because i didn't really follow a pattern i heavily modified the ranunculus because that was the only other garment i've knitted at that stage and um yeah i'd also talked it away at the back of my cupboard with all my other dance gear because i tend to wear this as something to throw on over my leotard when i'm at my ballet class so i might actually work to my ballet class tonight um it's not the warmest so i've got my big jacob shawl so i might put that on if it gets cold this room is really hard to gauge what temperature it is so i might get cold hopefully i'll not be talking long enough to get cold um so actually my only finished object that i'm going to show you today is also a ranunculus that color gorgeous so i cast this on as a birthday treat to myself but it is actually going to be a gift so it's a gift knit and i chose a super wash yarn because i thought that would be handier for the person i'm gifting it to you and i picked it up in hank's yarn parlor in belfast which is another lovely yarn shop that we have and it wasn't um a yarn that i'd come across before so it's fiber space yarns it's their vivacious four ply and it's the color blush so it's 100 superwash merino um and i think i'm probably just going to include that little label with the gift so they can see um how to wash it but in my experience the superwash does tend to be fairly robust in the washing machine um i get the impressions maybe not the same in every country but here in the uk we can easily get like bio-washing powder or non-bio-washing powder so i tend to throw my super wash socks just in with the ordinary wash and try and remember to use the non bio washing powder and keep it like at 40 degrees or 30 degrees so far they're holding up okay but then i've only been knitting socks for a few months so hopefully it'll hold up um i also you know because i love the miraculous is such an enjoyable net that i thought that's the perfect thing to knit as a gift because if they choose not to wear it or it's just not really their thing it's no no skin of my nose i really enjoyed knitting it and enjoyed knitting it with that person in mind so that's my idea behind that and also before i forget i mentioned the ranunculus in my last podcast and said that i was rather confused but i updated about their sizes and i thought that they'd only included smaller sizes and someone commented to say no no i think there's bigger sizes too so i checked just before i recorded and yes there's a huge range of sizes within the royal oculus nine so i think the original is now the size three and there for there are two smaller sizes but it goes the whole way up to size 11. so that's a really big grange and i really hope that that means that some people who are put off knitting a ranunculus before can give it a go now because it's such a moorish little pattern it's so quick it's so it's just so enjoyable and you know you've got the patterning in the yolk that keeps your interest and then you really don't have very much before you're doing your ribbon casting off um and if you do the short sleeve version you stop you don't do sleeves the sleeves are the end of the yoke so highly recommend that pattern as you may already know and i'm not the only knitting podcaster to mention it so that was a lovely little finished object and i think it only took me less than a week anyway to do because it was my birthday week and i was going to do some knitting if i wanted wasn't i i also cast on something else on my birthday so um these are just my socks that i have in my little bag from sarah of the taylormade podcast so i love to have a pair of socks and then this bag just i pick it up as i'm leaving the house and pop it in the bag because you never know when you're picking up kids whether they're gonna run a little bit late um so i have part finished these are socks that i'm making of course i don't have soft blockers so you're going to have to imagine how pretty they are these are socks i'm making from the 52 weeks of socks book so i'm doing my usual where i knit one sock and one pattern on the second sock and another pattern so they're a pair of sisters not twins so sorry i've got a little tin of stitch markers rattling in the bag this was the first one that i knitted i'll try and hold it out so you can see the pattern because it really is rather pretty and that one is the una um in the 52 weeks of sark's book and actually if you pop earnest socks on instagram you can see lots of different examples of it i went through the 52 weeks of soc's book and put like little post-it markers on the socks that i like the look of would like to try um i thought i'd only highlighted ones that were top-down because i don't i've tried knitting toe up before once and i needed a pair two at a time to up and really didn't particularly enjoy it so i thought first time around i'm gonna have a look at the ones that are cuffed down and ignore the toe up ones but i must have accidentally marked one that was toe-up so my second sock in this colorway which is a peony colorway from west yorkshire spinners the signature four ply this sock is a two up and this one's called intersections i think the color's blowing out a little that's a bit more like the color of this and i also knit a dress for my youngest by kelly of railroad katie's i'm trying to remember the name of the dress the moonglaia dress so i knit her a dress and this and this on the leftover well then i have so i thought well i'll make myself a pair of socks so actually this time around i haven't minded doing the top socks um i'm using my little nine inch circulars but i started it off magic loop um so yeah getting used to using these they're handy because if you're throwing something in a bag you don't have these big extra loops that are hanging out so tiny little circulars are very portable so um finish one and i'm just chugging my way through the other goodness knows how long it'll take me to finish it that will depend on how many minutes i spend waiting for the kids yeah so i think that's all my finished objects we're whizzing through that's good don't want to be talking for too long i feel my throat going already and because i thought that won't be a short podcast i only got myself a glass of water so here goes i really hope you can hear me over my crooky throat and the sheep bleating on the rain battering against the window so works in progress i have shown swatches of this beautiful yarn before i honestly don't know how to show you this this is the um the blackbird colorway in the neve base from wild atlantic yarns that i bought because the fabric that the yarn gave was just so beautiful and there was a blackbird hopping around the garden and i kept thinking of him and thought i would really like that yarn i don't wear a lot of black because it doesn't tend to suit me not so close to my face and i don't wear a lot of yellow either because it also doesn't suit me but i just fell in love with this colorway and it's a gorgeous i think it's a it's merino and silk so it's quite a luxurious yarn for me i tend to go for a little bit more rustic than that and i had a very specific idea in mind of what i wanted from it when i knitted a swatch i got this idea in my head that it would look lovely with a a band of moss stitch around the edge so i admitted a swatch with the stockinette and a little band of moss stitch at the bottom and i really like this watch so i'm stuck on that in my head and it's very hard to kind of work backwards when you have an id in your head of exactly what you want and then you're looking for the pattern that will fit that i think had i have ever knitted a cardigan before and had i have ever knitted flat before i might have given a go trying to design something myself but i'm very glad that i eventually found a pattern because i honestly wouldn't have known what i was doing um so this pattern is the rebel rebel cardigan i'm gonna hold it up now and see if you can see what it looks like yeah that's not actually showing up okay there and it's a bit of a funny shape to show um so i'm trying to remember how i actually started off because it's stockinette i've kind of just and it's worked back and forth so it's you know knit one row purl the next it's just kind of been my pick it up when i'm wanting something easy to work on so i have been working on it for a wee while and i'm trying to remember how i started off i think you started off and you worked the back to the bottom of the armhole and then you'd done a provisional cast on so you then worked the front to the bottom of the armhole and then you join them in the round not in the round you join them and then you're knitting back and forward across the whole cardigan i hope that makes sense it's a really um really simple pattern to follow i find it really easy because this it literally is my first time doing anything that isn't knitting in the round so it's been yeah it's been fine to follow um i've made a few modifications in that i was determined to have a moss stitch border but the pattern has a garter edge to it so that wasn't a big modification to do it also um was plain at the back and i wanted a little bit of the moss stitch sitting at the back of the neck and i think i saw someone's project on ravelry where they had brought the garter edging across so i sort of figured out how i could do the right number of moss stitches across to do the same and because the neck falls you know it just separates there's no like separate neck stitches it just separates and falls either side of your shoulder or your neck down over your shoulders meant that that was relatively easy for me to figure out as well and i'm really loving how it's working really loving how it's turning out and the idea is that this will be a slightly dressier cardigan only because i think the fabric is going to feel quite luxurious but it's also going to look good if i throw it on over a t-shirt and jeans and just sort of dress up a casual outfit as well really beautiful fabric to work with or yarn to work with and very different from my rustic kind of usual palette of the yarns and yeah i think that color has shown up quite well it does blow out you can kind of see you know it's a slightly luxurious yarn to me anyway so enjoying that one lots of i think i've got plenty more i think i was meant to be like 25 centimeters or something so i still got quite a bit to go it's really hard because you can try it all and see exactly where it is and then it will have three quarter length sleeves and i think there's a little split and sleeves and i'm you know i'll decide whether i keep that in or not when i get there so enjoying that really pleased i eventually found a pattern that kind of fitted what i had had in mind specifically for that fabric not the easiest thing to do so it's um the rebel rebel cardigan and it's by libby johnson and i'll pop the links down below obviously for that and um another project that's my work in progress it's quite a scary one so i don't think i've shown this at all on the podcast i've just been chipping away at it and because it's been so long since my last podcast you've not seen it so it's an all-over color work tank top as we call them here this top i think maybe is what it's called so i will show you it but it doesn't look quite right yet so this is my first all-over color work um project um and i've kind of if i'm honest i've kind of fallen out of love with it a little bit um i wanted to i started knitting in the marie wall and british breeds wool that i had bought with the spent local voucher at the yard shop up in belfast folklore yarns but i knew i wasn't going to be buying more of those because they're really expensive they're beautiful colors and oh my goodness marie wollen has obviously put so much time and effort into that and all of her experience of working in color comes through because i honestly think you could have lifted any selection of those balls of yarn and not worried about the colors thrown them together and they would have looked amazing but they're like six pound a ball and you know jefferson smith as uh comparison is about three poundable or 295 and 595 or whatever you know something along those lines so i started off with um the murray won colors so you can see that at the bottom this is really rolling up which i'm hoping blocks out we shall see um so you can see the marie won colors actually that's them too are really quite cool pinks apart from this little one that's a bit brighter and i tried to order the best duplicates that i could from uh jefferson and smith which worked out really well from much of the colors and i'll put them down below so you know anybody else can see the ones that are closer you can close than maybe not so close but this pink here was supposed to match that one and as you can see it's much more corally it actually was um more pink and i ended up experimenting a little and dyeing it with tea so i made it more corally but it was it was sugary pink and i'd rather a coral pink than a sugar pink for me um but i sort of worked in some of the sugary pinks in here i sort of blended them in in this little block um to try and make the color less corally but overall it's see it doesn't look so bad when i'm looking at it here on the screen but i think it's maybe going to be a little too pink for my liking but i i still think it's going to fill a niche in my wardrobe and obviously all this work i'm not ripping this out i mean i'm happy to rip things out as you know if you're a regular viewer but i'm not ripping this one out it's going to get worn even if it's just worn to keep me warm when i'm like gardening that's fine perfect so obviously those of you who have done color work or sticking before will see that i have to stick for the first time so it's a v-neck and this will then be cut and turn into the v and then these are the armholes they look a bit more obvious but the v-neck looks very strange doesn't it so i am at the point where i've crocheted up either side and i can theoretically cut my knitting so i might do that i might do it today i feel like i'm going to need to sort of sit myself down and steal myself and have some peace to do it so it might not happen over the weekend if the kids are around but maybe i'll find time after recording today before the school run maybe if i don't do any housework i will um yeah and i'll probably record that and pop it in at the end so um cross your fingers that it will work out for me please and then you pick up um you pick up stitches and do a corrugated rib around the neckline and the armholes it's actually a beautiful pattern and i think it's probably more well written than i can appreciate at my sort of beginner stage because the patterning at the top is all worked out so it joins correctly it's been really easy to knit because you're never carrying your floats any longer than five stitches which i don't catch if it's five stitches or less um so it's been really easy to work the floats i think i can feel that my tension has got better as i've gone along so it's probably been a really good project for me um i didn't i love how the corrugated rib at the bottom looks but this curling up i think is going to be the being of my life so i uh i ripped it out and started again three times because i was not happy with how it was curling and this little extra bit and the main color was a little bit of stockinette and then some ordinary ribbing and that was supposed to kind of stop the corrugated rib from rolling and allow a little roll at the bottom rather than the whole way up the rib or the corrugated rib so we shall see if that works after it blocks if it doesn't it doesn't it's going to get worn it's going to be i love um wearing like sheila's or body warmers um because quite often if you're working about in the house like i don't know i used to do quite a lot of decorating in our house and haven't done for a couple of years but you know if you were doing things like that it's lovely to have your arms and your hands free but keep yourself warm at the same time and it's also really useful when you're working outside so it will definitely fill a niche in my wardrobe and maybe i'll do a less busy i mean i don't know what i was thinking of course it was going to be busy it's all over color work yeah i don't know i just knew that i'm kind of fallen out in love with this but it doesn't look so bad here so maybe when i try it on i'll be a bit more no i can wear that we shall see it's been a fun project and i've enjoyed it so that's my only other working project in progress so this is going to be a nice short episode which is good and i only have a couple of acquisitions to show you so hi board if you are a pot knitting podcast viewer how bored are you of seeing everybody with their beautiful cones so yep i took advantage of the crayola rebecca from the craya bear had a fabulous um 20 discount with willie knit and um i previously had uh i think was the light gray or the frost gray comb from woolly net which i have used in three projects yes three projects so far so i knitted um brogan's uh from witchcraft i knitted her bare head scarf in it and then i knit myself a ranunculus um where i held it double to get a thicker wintry ranunculus with longer sleeves and then it has been the mean gray color in this so it's that color there and i'm still gonna have a little bit left over so what i really value about buying a cone like that was the freedom it gave me to um give a pattern a go that maybe um well actually none of those patterns were patterns that i wasn't sure whether i wanted or not but i feel like having these three cones is going to give me just the freedom to cast something on and give it a go without worrying about it because of how much you've got on each cone so you're not trying to calculate the projects that's going to use your use your yarn to the best yeah it's just the freedom the freedom of it so this one is keel kelder kielder see the blue a bit better that's quite bright yeah i think actually when my face is there it shows it a bit better it's like a lovely sort of grayish blue and this one doesn't have i think this one is dark apple green it's fairly accurate it'd be coming up a little bit more yellow than it is in reality it's um cool green it's not as yellow maybe it's coming across there and then this one is smoke grey so it's just a little bit darker than the gray that i have previously and i've no plans for what i'm going to use these for but i think they work well together for color work if i decide to go along that route um i have a project where i want a number of different grays so this might be one of the grays it's a scarf um and i want to do a pop of yellow with various shades of grey so possibly but yeah took advantage of the um 20 discount of my birthday money and treated myself to colors definitely need to that to be my thumbnail for the video don't i although maybe maybe people would be like oh not another not another podcaster who's bought loads of woody knit cones but delighted with those and yesterday knock at the door from the postman of course i just got out of the shower why do i always leave my showers too late and then run into that issue and a parcel arrived this is brogan from willie knits um pluto lobby that gosh i can't remember knight brogan you're gonna have to remind me was it the smell that put you off this particular colorway i think the the um pluto lobby can be really strong smelling but maybe it was not maybe you just didn't have a use for this particular color wait look how gorgeous it is it's like a really um it's not a warm cream maybe it is a warm cream but it's got such sheen to it hasn't it it's actually really reminding me of my goats mohair i'm going to update you on that because i have no hair everybody and i'm wondering when i eventually create something perhaps yarn from that mohair wouldn't that be nice held double and you could probably use just one strand because let's face it my yarn from the mohair is going to be fairly rustic and it would be a nice dk weight or something hmm anyway look at that so gorgeous thank you so much brogan i don't know what i'm going to make with it but i'm going to make something gorgeous enough for a jumper there yes yes yes so yes goat news i did it i clipped the voice i'm so proud of myself that i did it i mean you have no option it's literally animal welfare you have to get the fleece off them so i've been talking to a lovely lady oh gosh i've forgotten her first name now um she's farm crafts on instagram and she sells these um oh my goodness you should look at the yarn she sells so she processes the mohair and makes these fabulous nearly like craft yarns because they're so brightly colored and they'll have different twists in them um i don't know all the names but there are different like the one that's like the bee or beehive twist fabulous chunky yarns oh they are beautiful but um she and i were messaging backwards and forwards about clipping the goats because she has a larger heart than i do um my two little boys and she gave me lots of advice including that um she's tried using electric shears and they frankly terrified her and she had bought cotty hand shears instead and that she find them great to work with um so yeah i followed her advice i ordered a pair of jacotti handshares and yeah it worked really well so i clipped sam on sunday and then frodo on monday so i did pretty happy with the job they don't look terrible i'll put some footage in at the end and some photos i was so wrapped up in getting the job done that i don't have a huge amount of footage of it i would love to have had like a a time lapse of the before and after but i wasn't that organized so apologies for that maybe next time i'll be a little less fraught about it i did nick sam's leg oh but luckily had some of the purple spray so he's healing up beautifully not a problem with it in fact he barely even flinched when it happened but oh i don't know if you're the same but when my kids hurt themselves i get this awful like flip in my stomach that oh would nearly make you sick and you really have to push it away so you can deal with their injury i kept like for the full day after i'd nicked him i kept thinking of it in my mind even when i was falling asleep and i didn't get that flip feeling so that was a lesson learned not to be careful around there it was their front legs oh gosh anyway got the fleece off them my youngest acted as wool sorter so she was deciding what should be kept and then we were keeping some that would just go on the compost or we might use it to try and um suppress weeds around little hedging plants and things like that um i think she's very high standards which maybe isn't a bad thing because let's face it i don't need a huge amount of yarn or fiber to play with to try and make yarn from not my first round anyway um so i have two small pillowcases one from each boy one from each goat so i've not taken any photos of that yet and it's pouring outside so hopefully i'll get some photos of that and pop them in as well um so you can see what it looks like completely raw so yeah very proud of myself very pleased that it went okay i was able to check their hooves and trim their hooves and you give them a really good check over while they were i'd ordered a halter so i was able to keep them still with a halter and yeah the problem has been getting them into his table at night since because i didn't want them to have the cold shock of being outside and it's a good idea to keep them inside afterwards but they don't want to go inside they're quite happy outside so the benefit of the rain is that the temperatures are going to be quite warm so i maybe they've got shelter where they are i'll maybe leave them out tonight because the temperatures aren't due to drop too badly and it's going to be dry tonight so if they don't look too wet this evening when i go down to check on them then maybe stay outside and then that's them growing the next next clip of fleece from them so in six months time i'll have to do it all over again but that's good i know i can i can do the hard things so that was yeah that was an exciting week and i could barely move afterwards all the sides of my muscles because you know i was i've got bruises on my thighs because i was holding them between my thighs and then leaning over to clip them you'll see in the video i show you it was quite the workout but yeah successfully done so it's so good to get something that you've kind of been dreading and looking forward to at the same time don't and the fun part starts now i'm hoping that i'm not i don't do what i can quite often do and just like leave the fleece in those pillowcases because i don't know what i'm doing i'm going to give myself the freedom to get it wrong and just play with it it doesn't have to be i'm not going to produce debbie bliss mohair from my boys yarn or fleece oh my it's going to be rustic but that means it might go quite well with the pluto-loopy i reckon oh i was going to lift a plate but they're all yarn barfing together um yeah we shall see so i will update you on that as it goes who knows when i'll actually do anything about it i certainly won't be washing the wool when it's raining like that outside because i don't want wet no hair drying in the house that's gonna have to be an outside job at least for the first time so that is me i'm going to stop talking and let you all get on with your day and hopefully that means i can get on with something i probably won't get editing this today so today's friday that i'm recording this but you'll probably not see this until the weekend um and yeah the world is a a fraught place at the moment isn't it and i think you can wonder whether you should do something as frivolous as sit and chat about knitting when the news is full of conflict and human suffering but two things one we're hearing so much about what's happening because it's so close geographically to us but we have to be aware that these kind of conflicts happen all over the world all the time it's not something new just because it happens to feel like it's on our doorstep conflict no matter where it is in the world has an impact on us all um so it feels a little odd to be putting up a knitting podcast and talking about something so frivolous and being proud of yourself doing the small things but also having grown up um in the teal end of the troubles here in northern ireland i have it instilled in me by my parents that you carry on you do your day-to-day you still go shopping in belfast even when you're a young teenager my mum would have said get on the bus go to belfast you need to know belfast yourself and those were the days when you had to know what to do if there was a bomb scare and you knew that you could be delayed for five six hours in a winter evening because the buses weren't running because of another bomb scare um yeah you have to keep going with life so i hope that sitting down and having a little knit alongside me chatting about my knitting has brought you a little moment in your day that just feels normal because normality has to carry on no matter what's going on around you um i think we all learned that through chronovirus in the last couple of years too but i guess this is a different kind of reality that feels very at the fore at the moment so i really hope that you have a lovely few weeks until i speak to you again and yeah enjoy your knitting enjoy the things that you can and yeah value the people around you because ultimately that's all we can do isn't it fine join me every day and share that joy where you can i think we're pretty good at that as knitters so all getting very philosophical but i didn't feel like i could just sign off a podcast without mentioning what's in the news which i'm trying not to listen to but you can't avoid it can you blanket coverage all right um yes take care of yourselves and i will speak soon bye [Music] do [Music] oh well that was slightly terrifying i'm actually quite glad that i'd sort of decided that this then wasn't my favorite project in the world because my heart was beating quite hard enough but look it's annoy a vest it's got armholes got a v-neck let's hope it holds fingers crossed of course i had to try it on as well can you tell i'm really proud of myself not that i'm looking too closely to check it's not fraying or anything but it seems to be holding up do you know what i actually quite like it after just saying i'm falling in love with it i quite like it it's gonna look good sticking what a ride so [Music] hello [Music] you

Channel: Cat Kelly Crafts

Views: 1,828

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Id: oAMBEi7X-k8

Length: 41min 21sec (2481 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 13 2022