The Meaningful Stitch - Episode 16 - Love & Knitting

hello there and welcome to the meaningful stitch this is episode 16 and i am amy palko i'm coming to you from edinburgh scotland and this is my digital home from home a place where i get to share with you my knitting practice and my knitting projects now if you've been here before you'll know that i normally draw a card from one of my many oracle decks to start us off and today's card comes from this deck which is the animal spirit deck from the wild unknown by kim kranz and the card that i've chosen for us for today is this one dragonfly so i'm just going to read you to the words from the guide it says dragonfly master of light illusion and the mind the dragonfly is an ancient and ethereal creature that awakens a sense of wonder in all the dragonfly is a symbol of the mind as it is always moving shifting shimmering and changing when the dragonfly card appears it's worth considering the quality of your mind and perception are they restless or still dreamlike or crystal clear the situation at hand may be different than it appears at first glance the dragonfly reminds us to calm the mind so the light of wisdom can shine through isn't that beautiful what a lovely card i love this deck it has so many beautiful images in it and i think the dragonfly well it's a particularly poignant symbol for me we're just coming up for the six month anniversary of having lost my grandfather on the 1st of january so we're just coming up to 1st of june so um and we had a beautiful track called dragonflies sung by eddie reader played at his funeral and it really speaks about the impermanence of life and the fleeting nature of it and that you know we're here for such short times so you know we really need to lean into what life has available for us and and to show up for it as fully as we're able to and i'm really struck by that today in particular because a couple of people in our community have lost loved ones so i'm just wanting to send my condolences to andrea from fruity knitting for the loss of andrew and also kaz from the we so and soul podcast who has lost her david so just sending them lots and lots of love and just wanting to say that i'm holding them in my heart and thinking of them so yeah okay so we have lots and lots of knitting and i'm surrounded by yarn here so i'm just going to get stuck in well first of all begin by telling you what it is that i'm wearing so i'll just stand up so you can see it a little better but this is my white horse by caitlin hunter and i have knitted it in creative linen by rowan and it's a lovely soft red shade all these bubbles now this might look familiar to you because i have worn another version of this of mine which was knitted in fonty bohem which was a cotton linen mix and this is also a cotton linen mix but that one was in a lovely almond green color so yes i did say that at some point i would show you my other my other version so this is it it's a top-down lace yoke with these beautiful bubbles it's a nice light sweater for me to wear just because the weather has all well i think it started to warm up a little bit at last it's taken a long time our may has been really pretty chilly and wet and quite unpleasant so i'm hoping for a sunnier june and maybe get out some of my summer knitting but i will share more about my summer knitting plans later because i want to share with you some of the things that i have finished now you might remember that i was knitting the astrid by junko okamoto when we last when i last recorded which was a wee while ago now it was about a month ago so like i said i do have a lot of knitting to show you i get through quite a lot in a month but this is the astrid so i i think i had knitted the body and i had knitted one of the sleeves but i had knitted the sleeve as the pattern had said which meant that it had a really pretty broad end to it here and quite a short cuff but instead i ripped that back and i decreased my stitches a bit more and um and did a longer a longer rib cuff just to to really give me the length so i will show you what it looks like on do a quick change here we go so it's a lovely lovely jumper i'm really pleased with it here we go [Music] a quick change so i've washed and blocked it it is sitting so much better on my sloppy shoulders and i'll stand up to show you it so this is it as you can see the sleeve fits me so much better i really like i have just kind of cinched it in here and lengthened the cuff because now it comes right down to my hand and that really makes all the difference i love the cable pattern and this is my first time knitting cables without a cable needle which was a new skill to me and one that i'm really very pleased with now because i have some more cable knitting plans so that will speed things up significantly and then yes the body all of this wonderful color work which i so enjoy doing i it's funny i don't think of myself as a cable knitter and i don't think of myself as a color work knitter more of a lace knitter or a brioche knitter or a shawl knitter but it's funny how we kind of create these i suppose these definitions for ourselves and actually perhaps they don't fit all that terribly well so um because really it cuts us off from from experimenting and trying new and different types of knitting to us so this was really an opportunity for me to to do an all over colour work jumper i have done one i think before in the past but uh but this was a lot more adventurous for me in the colour work area i was very concerned about puckering but i are not getting my attention right but actually i think i've done pretty well the main color is this beautiful oh i'll hold this up so you can see you can see the variation in the in the blend sort of greenish bits and orangey bits uh so that's from jameson and smith and it's in their jumper weight and i bought a cone of that so i still have quite a bit left of it and then this bright pink here and this kind of apricot sort of corally shade and the forest green just at the very edges here that's rauma phenol pt2 and then we've got some amethyst which is from hulst and then we have this fantastic chartreuse which is uh the colorway tilia by garthanor in their precili blend so other than the phenolpt2 the other two were both and were both leftovers because sometimes these colourwork projects don't actually use up a whole lot of yarn to have a really big effect like the tilia for example so um so yes it was nice to be able to use up some of my some of my leftovers i was a little bit concerned about the shape of this jumper i'm not gonna lie particularly when i was wearing it before blocking i was quite worried about the rolled hem i'll stand up again so you can see it [Music] so this is the rolled hem i'm holding up a little bit higher so you can you can see it um and i was concerned that it was causing the the jumper to kick out and kind of create like an a-line shape but actually now that it's finished and now that it's been washed and blocked it is lying so much better i'm also really pleased with the way that the neck is sitting on me and i don't know whether it's because i have these sloppy shoulders maybe maybe it's a good design for that but i don't know but but certainly i think i've seen some photographs of other people having knitted the astrid and the neck seems to sit pretty high up on them and for me it absolutely comes down and just rests on my breastbone so it's actually a pretty comfortable a pretty comfortable fit i've worn this quite a lot because like i said our may has really been pretty unpleasant so it's really given me a lot of opportunities to wear a nice cozy jumper i've been wearing it with my um skinny jeans and my leggings and i just putting on like a long sleeve t-shirt underneath it isn't i wouldn't say it's itchy or scratchy or prickly at all but it is a rustic they are rustic yarns so they're not um merino single soft or or silk soft you it's a woolly it's a woolly wool oh and i will just show you my floats as well i know people always like to see the insides so there's my floats and i catch my floats pretty regularly [Music] which is partially because i have been so concerned about not getting my tension correct and being worried that i would um i would end up with puckering so i really wanted to make sure that i didn't end up with that and i also made sure that i wasn't catching my floats always in the same place because i didn't want my floats to show through my main color so i think i've done quite a good job on it actually she says very modestly i'm actually i'm really pleased with it i think it's a beautiful jumper i love my color combination uh quite a few people have been commenting on the the color combo and i suppose it is quite unusual because you know i suppose this is quite a muted uh shade and then i've paired up with these quite bright pops of of neon uh and uh so yes i suppose it is quite an unusual color combo but one of the ways in which i like to explore a color is by bringing colors together which you might not necessarily automatically put together and i like to bring those together and sometimes i'll just have them you know still in the balls or in the skeins and i'll put them somewhere i can see them and then i'll go back and i'll visit them quite often and i'll see you know whether my um my eye is drawn to them i'll see whether i think those colors are working together or not and really give myself an opportunity to try out those colors with before even starting to knit with them and that's certainly something that i did with this and i knew that i wanted to use these three balls of rama together and i knew that this um that i had this cone and then after i decided to you know put them together in a little cluster and put them on a table in my home so that i could see them i i liked them more and more actually as as the days passed and then when i decided that this was going to be the the design that i i worked on is this project that i worked on i knew i was going to need another couple of another couple of colors and that's when i went through my stash again and found the leftover tilia uh the the procelli from my cell boot cowl and the amethyst from my slipstravaganza so i added them to the little collection of colors that i had sitting and and let them sit there for a little while longer until i got used to them and then i decided that yep that was gonna work and and i went ahead so i like to think a lot about my colors i like to think a lot about color in general but um but i do find it a really lovely part of our creative process is exploring what kinds of colours we can use and i think that we can find colour inspiration from lots and lots of places you know whether it is in other people's knitting projects and knitting patterns you and certainly i think we get a lot of ideas from that but i think we can get a lot of ideas from fabrics and textiles in general so you might see some patterns that will use a variety of different colors and you want to maybe explore you know how two of those colors work together in a knitting project or in a shawl or something like that i also love uh there's a wonderful instagram account what's it called i think it's called color cinema i will link to it in the description box below which you'll find all the links to everything that i'm talking about but um it's great because it takes a scene from a movie and then it picks out all of the different colors from it to create a palette and it really gives you an idea of how colors work together and what cut and sometimes it's quite surprising you know when you see some of these colors together but i think you know regardless of whether you choose to work directly with those colors i think drawing your attention to to the way in which color is used gives you a little bit more confidence in order to experiment with color in your in your knitting or in your creativity in your making so yes even just trying to to draw a little bit more awareness to all of these different places where where color is used and we can we can begin to to yeah have a bit more fun with it and be a little bit more playful because you know it's only knitting and if we don't like it we can always rip it back out and use the yarn for something else so yes there we go that's that this is the astrid by junko okamoto and yeah i'm really pleased with it and modified sleeves and uh i'm really pleased with those two so however it was a bit of a month for um modified sleeves because i also modified the sleeves on another junko project and this is the magnolia as you can see here it's i've knitted it and drops nord and really the the feature of the design feature of this um top is the split sleeve so i will take off this jumper and put on this other jumper so that you can see the split sleeves now i knitted this last june i think and yes junko in june that's what we did and uh i loved this knit i thought it worked really really well however there we go however i was not all that happy with my cuffs which was a shame because that's really such a big feature of the of the knit so like i said you've got these fantastic split sleeves like this and then you have a sinchies in for this long deep rib cuff that's got a cable pattern you see that that runs down the length of it now uh when i had finished this this was very loose it's supposed to have negative ease which means it is supposed to sit and really cling to the body but with positive ease it wasn't clinging to the body at all and what was happening was my sleeve was slipping right down my hand and then this was getting all a bit baggy and not very nice it's supposed to be a bit more structured it is knitted in an alpaca wool blend an alpaca is pretty drapey so i suppose it was always going to be a little droopy but but i went back and i ripped out the the deep rib and then i re-knitted it using 2.5 millimeter dpns double pointed needles so now it fits much much better i'm really pleased and i'm really pleased because my whole idea of you know getting this finally sorted was that when i go get my vaccine i can do a dolly parton so i don't even have to take my top off or you know do anything you can just get that which is very handy because my appointment is tomorrow so i will have my first vaccine tomorrow so that's really exciting really pleased about that so however that said i'm not sure whether i'm going to be wearing this tomorrow because we're supposed to have 20 degree weather which is warm for here it's probably not warm for anywhere else particularly but but it's warm for here so i probably won't be wearing an alpaca jumper which is a bit of a shame but i'll get over it it's okay so those are my two finished objects but i have been doing quite a lot of work on some other projects which i would like to show to you so the first of those is living in one of my cocoon tree bags i love this one because it's got the most fabulous peacock lining which as you can see is replicated with the colour work on the jumper that i've been working on so this is this is my third pink velvet jumper although i'm calling it my blue velvet for obvious reasons so this is a fantastic yarn i just love it can you see it it's a tweed it's from studio donegal and i got it from this is knit which is a wool shop in dublin i had it sent over during last year's one of last year's i knit 7 events so it's knitted in this lamb's world on a goal and my color work is knitted in chin fiber and this is the pattern actually calls for you to do your um color work in sury alpaca but i've done it using a double strand of mohair and i think it's actually worked out really really nicely i will show you the mo here because it was last month's fibre mohair um as part of their their subscription club so i've got one more skin to arrive but this was last month's isn't that beautiful really beautiful so as you can see i've got like a lot left and i also have oh yes i've got lots and lots of this left too so in fact i've got another one of those so i do have i do have some yarn left to to work with to make something else to go with it but i actually have not as you can see i've not done the sleeves yet so that's that's what's still to go but even after i've done the sleeves i think i'm still going to have a lot left over i was actually trying to decide whether to use a little bit of colour work at the at the bottom of the sleeve close to the cuff and i've not quite made my mind up on that yet so but there we go that's my that's my pink velvet it's a design by andrea maury as i said this is my third i chose it to knit it again because because i really like the pattern and actually as a as a designer it sits very nicely on me that the size the size really fits me well and i love peacocks and i love feathers so and i really love the design on it and i like how you can introduce this play not just with color but also with texture look at the fuzzy mo here isn't that fabulous so i should have this finished by next time i'm pretty sure but the whole idea of it was that it would go with my kilt that my daughter has made for me so next time when i finished it i will show you with the kilt because i chose the colors specifically so that it would go with that so i will share that next time so there we go that's the that's the pink velvet blue velvet and the next thing that i've been working on is uh the well it says it's a shawl as part of my shawl cowl it's called all the shawls all the shawls cal i would really recommend that you go and check it out check out the hashtag all the shawls cal on instagram and also all the shawls cal f o which is for the finished objects where i'll be drawing prizes from but uh you should go check those out because there's so much inspiration and you should also go to ravelry if ravelry is available to you that is because i have a ravelry group for this podcast the meaningful stitch and we've got a thread there it's a chatter fret thread and there's a finished object thread as well so if you're looking for some shawl inspiration those are really good places to look well last time i shared with you the 52 weeks of shoals book by linum and i've been so enjoying exploring that there's just so many shawls that i want to that i want to knit all the shells essentially and i had mentioned that uh joanna harriet has donated some prize patterns and she has a pattern in 52 shawls called stiper stones i think that's how you pronounce it i hope it is so i cast that on so this is my stipper stone so far it's such a fun project and once you're into the way of it you're you kind of know what's coming and what's happening next and so you can really follow it through and i think when it gets blocked out it's going to be really beautiful but you can see i've got three different colors of mohair there's like a very soft green here a darker olive green and then we've got this beautiful i think of it as duckling yellow and this uh my main color is uh bleached white from a host and they're super soft so that's what i'm that's what i'm working on just now it's a chevrons as you can see i'm using my using my markers i'll give you a little bit of a tip actually for these markers because at certain points you are increasing on either sides and on other part and on other places you're decreasing so i have two red markers for every decrease section so that i always know when i'm approaching it what i'm supposed to be doing so i think you know use your use your markers wisely and you make your your knitting life a lot easier so i'm about maybe halfway in the pattern however with each uh with each section of chevron added you're adding an extra bit 32 stitches so uh it's going to end up a lot longer which is going to be a lot more knitting so but i'm really enjoying this and it is very comfortable for comforting knitting i find and it's a beautiful pattern which which makes makes the knitting go easy too i find the more hairs that i'm using let's see if i can fish them out in my bag here so this is the this is the duckling yellow it's not called duckling yellow that's what i call it and this is this is um is air silk mohair and that's the same for my oh dear can't find it oh there it is for this uh beautiful olivey green and then my other mohair gosh where is it going oh there it is this one here i got this one in my advent calendar from my mum last year and it's from firm de france and it's just i really really like that color i think it's super pretty actually [Music] it apparently is the same color as my hair apparently my hair is actually also very pale green so there you go that's a that's another work in progress and then i have one more work in progress to share with you which is my half and half wrap now i know there's a lot of people knitting half and half wraps and it is basically just a lot of garter stitch so they're they're not uh make they don't necessarily make for a lot of things to say about them that said i so enjoy hearing people talking about their half and half reps particularly about the colors that they're choosing or about the the comfort that it's bringing them or the sense of community actually that's been built around it because this is a cal that's being run by caddy jack's nips podcast and lots and lots of people are knitting and it's just it's a really lovely thing to see and to follow the hashtag on instagram and see people exploring exploring the pattern the simplicity of the pattern and the the delight of the repetitive garter stitch the amount of comfort that that's bringing particularly through such uncertain times so my first color as you know was this fantastic bright flamingo i love this isn't it fantastic well i have finished my first half and now i've started my second half oh dear that's the wrong way around that's the right side is it yes that's the right side so my second color is turmeric yellow i think that's what it's called this is turmeric yellow and so i've only done a little bit and you've you knit you resolve all of your your um short row double stitches if you're doing german short rows or wrap and turns if you're doing wrap and turns um and now we've started to do this this yarn this is pearl soholin and quill which is the yarn that the pattern is designed for and you only get pearl soho from pearl soho i don't think they have stockists anywhere else so that this is a beautiful blend of wool and alpaca and linen i think and it just feels so scrummy you have these little flecks of the the linen which kind of show up as white i don't know if you can see that and that's because plant and material the plant fibers don't really pick up the dye in the same way that the animal fibers do so they resist it which means that you get these kind of flecks of white through that and which then really kind of lends itself to making this really beautiful color and beautiful texture isn't it gorgeous so i have a long way to go this is just starting this this first half and i think i cast this on for the spring equinox didn't i so that was 20th of march well we're almost at the first of june so this is it is a lot of knitting as you can see it's ridiculous um but uh i do find that it's a project for me that i can pick up and put down i can knit a jumper and then put and then finish the jumper and then pick this back up again while i'm considering what i want to cast on next or if i'm wanting to watch the television or actually if we want to watch a movie and everybody else wants to lower the lights then this is my project because i don't really have to look at it while i'm knitting it because it is just garter stitch so i can't really do any color work or cables or anything like that well i'm well the lights are dimmed but i can work on my half and half so so there we go i think we're watching a movie tonight so um i'll be i'll be working away on this then so there you go that's my half and half wrap uh and again you know i've been sometimes people ask me you know what colors do i think would would go well with another color but i think when it comes to choosing colors particularly for something like this you are going to spend like a long time with each color so you have to make sure that it's a color that you really want to work with yeah and so for me that looks like engaging with my with my core desire you know like what what's my soul really longing for what color does it just want to be drenched in you know what do i want to soak in and really spend a lot of time with for me this bright flamingo is just this is my summer color and i knew that starting it on the spring equinox i was looking forward to summer particularly when we were so locked down for so so long that the promise of summer was something that you know was really kind of keeping me going and i wouldn't necessarily describe myself as a summer a summer person apparently i'm not a summer person or a colour work person however i'm both so there you go and but the uh but the promise of summer encapsulated in this particular color for me was a real blessing over these past few months partially because like i said because of lockdown and party also because our weather has been so grim so it's really brought a little bit of brightness and a bit of sunshine my way and then following that through with some actual sunshine this ah this is just this is almost like liquid honey to me isn't it gorgeous so now i get to spend like the next few months as as we move through summer really kind of glorying and celebrating this beautiful shade of gold so i suppose this is like my golden flamingo shawl but yes so have a bit of a think of that i know these are not colors that would necessarily that somebody would necessarily put together and actually for me that's okay i you know i'm exploring i'm experimenting with with color and actually i do wear these colors together in the summer time i have a dress that's this color and i have a hipster shawl that's quite similar in shade to this um and i have um i have dresses in this color that i wear with a pair of shoes that's in this color so this is actually a color pairing that i'm very fond of but um but it really does give me an opportunity to kind of explore those two together in a much more tangible and tactile sense and really explore this particular appeal to my sense of aesthetic so there we go this next half of the half and half wrap has begun gosh well that's a lot of knitting so far let me have a little bit of a look at my nose and have a slurp of my tea so the next thing that i really wanted to touch on was some knitting that i've got my eye on and as i said you know we're coming into summer now so there is a little bit more of an eye to summer knitting some are tops some things that are not quite so so heavy as as these things and so i think i had mentioned to you before that i was intending to do a rocket tea by tanis lavallee and i i'm quite excited about doing that one i i do still have my plans to do that but in the meantime oh dear it's like we kind of get distracted don't we as knitters or our eye gets caught by all the pretty things and then that becomes what we want to cast on next well i bought a cone because it was because it was on sale i'm a sucker for a sale so i bought this cone and it is holst uh coast which is their wool cotton blend and just like with the other yarn that i showed you from pearl soho the linen quill the plant fiber has resisted the acid dye and so you can see that we've got actually a red dye here which is picked up on the wool and then the cotton has resisted it and which is then lightened the yarn to this beautiful shade of pink which is called candy now you can see as well it really is quite a thin yarn a light yarn so i am intending to hold this double and knit sarri nordlands celeste tea which is another yolk uh lace uh lacework top i think it's really beautiful there's lots of bubbles so a little bit i suppose reminiscent in some ways of the of the white horse that i had on just before but um but it's quite different it's quite a different lace work and different use of bubbles so i'll put an image up of it now so you can see rather than me just talking about it but my intention is is to use this doubled up however i did calculate my meterage because i maybe you do this too but when i see there's a sail on and i can get as a cone i find that very exciting because partially i don't have to i don't have to cake it up i don't have to wind it on my ball winder i can just start knitting straight from the cone which is great so that's always a good thing uh but also it means that i've got a lot of meterage to work with well there's a lot of meterage and then there's a lot of meterage i think i've got over three kilometers of yarn on this cone and when i figured that out i was like oh for goodness sake that's a huge amount so so yes i will probably get a celeste tea out of this and i'll probably get some other things out of this too i don't imagine that this lst will use up three kilometers worth of fingering weight yarn so so there we go that's one of my projects and i also had another project that i have planned which for another summer tea and it's in this which is the new liner magazine i am quite fussy about buying magazines knitting magazines because so often i will only really see like one pattern that i like and that's not really enough for me to be and to be investing quite a lot of money into into a magazine however there were quite a few beautiful patterns for example look at this sea mist shawl by george cullen which i think uses two skeins of fingering and one skein of mohair and it's brioche and it's beautiful so i love that for a start and then let me see this is the top that i am thinking that i would really like to knit and this is thea and it's by natalia isn't that lovely so this is a mohair slip stitch pattern i just love the way that it works and how it sits isn't that gorgeous so i'm going to use my lalland which i think i showed to you last time in which i picked up from the scottish textiles showcase on saint mary's street in edinburgh so this is my lanland lanland is lovely look at that ply it's really soft i think it's 100 yeah 100 lambswool 50 grams 175 meters so i think that's just delightful and my plan is to pair up with this skein of shibuya silk cloud so that's going to be my combo so this is a bit darker than this which i hope shows that i'll show that that's a good representation there so that's going to be my fiat and to be honest i need like 30 meters more for the size that i am plus the positive ease the pattern recommends so i'm going to have to knit the size smaller than that so mine will have it will still fit uh absolutely but it won't have the same amount of positive ease that the pattern stays so we'll need to see how that works i'm hoping fingers crossed that it works well because my hair is just awful to rip out so i'm really hoping i'm not setting myself up to rip out some more hair that would not be fun so much knitting goodness i also have my eye on another summer tea which is called the sea glass tea and it's by woolen pine and it uses up a lot of your leftovers which is why i really had my eye on it because when you knit a lot which you might knit a lot as well in it a lot um you end up with a lot of leftovers and i'm always looking for ideas for what to do with all of those leftovers and yes you could do a granny stripe blanket i've tried granny stripe blankets and i got into it for about a week and then that was about the limits of my of my granny stripe enthusiasm and i've seen people do scrappy blankets and things and it's i don't know i just i really struggle to to get my enthusiasm up for that so the um the sea glass tea looks like it does like a one by one color uh to create um a beautiful uh colored texture and so i'm really excited about exploring that and getting out all my leftovers and having a bit of a look to see what i have and what i think might work together and yeah so maybe even actually using my um skate my cone of the bleached white um in order to create a little bit more of consistency through the fabric or maybe not i haven't decided yet but that's something i'm quite excited about exploring and another really lovely pattern that's just come out is called the color craze shawl no sorry the color craze cowl by tammy gore and again it looked like it would be another good project to use up some of my leftovers uh dinah shared it on the knitting place and i really loved their version so i bought myself the the pattern and so that's sitting to explore too although i'm aware it is really more summer tea time and not so much cozy cowl time but that time will come soon and in scotland it could come next week for all we know so so yes i'm excited about exploring how to use up some more of my leftovers if you have ideas for how to use up leftovers in your knitting projects then please do share your ideas i'm always looking for projects for scraps or for mini skeins it's like i love mini skeins but they always kind of sit there and not really knowing exactly what to do with them so if you have some ideas then i would love to hear about those and you can leave your thoughts in the comments below okay so then i've got a section here in my notes called new things because it has been like a month since i last spoke to you so there's a lot of new things the first thing is i bought myself some yarn from izolda and because i heard last week that isolde was closing and actually this yarn arrived on the day that that news came through so i think that's very sad actually and we're losing we're losing that uh that will that will resource which was always exceptionally good but certainly because of brexit and because of the pandemic i think conditions economic conditions have been pretty fraught for so many and so it's perhaps not that that's surprising that we're seeing some of this coming through now in our community but uh but yes he's older is i'm going to be stopping stocking material objects or you know yarn essentially yarning books and i think they're just going to be doing digital prod products digital products from now on but before that news came through i had bought this in a sale there which is as gorgeous can you see like a caramel color and it's ramel garn which is lambswool not llama and it says gorgeous camel a camel caramel shade and i bought a sweater quantity now i am thinking that i might pick up some mo hair from drops drops kid silk possibly in the curry color way to team up with this and i really really like the sari nordlands design the coutar uh jumper sweater so i'm thinking that this yarn could possibly be for that so i think it's such a pretty design and it looks super cozy which again it's like not really the kind of knitting that i'm going to be doing over there over the next few months but certainly i think that would be a lovely project to start in the autumn the next yarn that i purchased was from another edinburgh yarn shop which is ginger twist and ginger twist studios don't do their um own yarn their own yarn dying and i bought this fantasy isn't that fabulous ginger twist studio so jess and kathleen are there and jess is the is the mastermind behind these gorgeous colorways and this color here is called melon balls on fire but look look how perfect is that i shared this with you last time which is mother of dragons which is from treyliz there's her mother of dragons and it's on her merino silk singles base and my mum bought me two skeins of this and now i've bought a skein of melon balls on fire which just happens to go incredibly well with that and actually i have another skein that which i think is malabrigo yes in the archangel colorway and it's in the mora base which is their pure silk which i think would look really lovely with this too look at that so i'm not sure exactly what i'm going to do with these just that so i've got two skeins of this one of this and one of this but they just all go so beautifully together that they feel like they have to be in something together so i'm not quite sure what that's going to be yet but i'm excited about that and we'll need to wait and see the next thing i want to show you is some yarn that i bought for me and my mum my mom got in touch and said that she really loved this new pattern by dawn is it dawn baker if i've got that wrong i will correct myself but she has some wonderful patterns shawl patterns that um are kind of can be described as assigned pooling so when you get like a skein of yarn and it's got a patch of variegation in it you can sometimes get pooling when you start to knit that up as a jumper for example you might find you start to get like a a large patch of one particular color in a particular place in your garment or in your fabric in general and there are lots of ways in which you can navigate that particularly by alternating your skeins for example but this particular approach a signed pooling actually makes a feature of it and and it does this and she's well she's done this in a number of different ways so there are gosh i think maybe four projects four designs that she has and that use a sound pooling and the one that my mom and i like is called calico although i do also quite like float so so there we go i'm going to show you the yarn that we have bought for for this which is from the wool kitchen now this is not the yarn that is specified in the pattern because that is chasing rabbits but in the europe and the uk we've been unable to get a hold of that and so when my mom showed me the pattern and said that she wasn't able to get the yarn i mentioned that actually i thought that yarn looked very similar to yarn that you can get from the wool kitchen which is this so this is my mum's it's called neon camo and it's a bfl bamboo blend it's 400 meters and it's got this fabulous patch of confetti and i and it's gorgeous green shade and then this is mine and this is called ground control it says gorgeous gray and this really bright coral so i will unravel this so that you can see what i mean by by this particular sort of style of dyeing so you can see that you have like this bright pop of color here and this is just the same this just has for this section here it's got the the speckles so it looks like when you knit up the fabric every time you get to a bit of this bright coral i'm going to do a particular stitch so that it becomes a feature but it looks quite random and it looks quite irregular a bit wabby sabby i really really love it i think it looks incredibly beautiful so i'm excited to explore that but first of all i need to send my mom her yarn so and i wasn't doing that because i wanted to show it to you first so sorry mom it's going to come to you now so so there we go that's the that's the ground control yarn isn't it gorgeous and because of the the way in which the color is done you end up with this really beautiful complexity in the in the coloring so there we go that's that and then i also i got the most amazing package in the post like truly properly breathtakingly beautiful uh i had been approached by a friend of mine called ivana and she has the republic of me podcast and she said that she was spinning a skein of yarn and that she thought it would be for me because i kept coming to mind when she was spinning and would she would i mind if she sent it to me of course anybody says that you're like oh no of course absolutely send it to me that's amazing i made him just feel so deeply touched and so moved and that somebody would be thinking of me while they were while they were doing their spinning or doing their knitting it's an incredibly lovely thing so um so yes i got back in touch and i sent my address and then the most amazing package like i said turned up because it wasn't just one skein but it's six skeins it's about 550 oh grams of the most amazing look at this it's a merino baby alpaca and bfl blend i think from what i can remember and it's kind of like a worsted weight i haven't decided yet what to do with it i'm a big believer in waiting for the right project to come along for the right yarn i'm just going to hold it for a while and and i know that the right project is going to come along for this and i just have to just have to wait and see what that's going to be i have a couple of ideas but nothing that's really kind of grabbing me and going no that's what you need to make with it so um and so i'm going to wait until that really grabs me and makes me know that it's going to be a pattern a design that's going to do this gorgeous yarn justice if you go to check out uh ivana's channel on youtube and you absolutely should uh you'll see that her most recent video is called spring vlog part one and in that you can actually see her spinning up this yarn and talking a little bit about it and she is just such a beautiful soul and her and her vlogs are just gorgeous they really give you a sense of what life is like in her corner of the world and she's so creative and her work is so inspiring and she she does all she does beautiful spinning and knitting and painting and you can see her working in her garden or this time they went and visited some beautiful camels and you met a baby camel since the whole thing was just completely delightful so um so i do recommend that you go and check her out and and yes you can go see her spinning this absolutely fabulous yarn and i'm going to keep my eye open for what i think the next the project for this is going to be because oh except now that i've picked up okay i can't actually put it back down again i'm just gonna hold it on my knees it's gonna be on my lap while i talk for the rest of the podcast so oh what else have i got to share with you um okay so i won i wanna give away another one i wanna actually i think you've got it in like the same i want it in the same way because i won the giveaway on twin or inits which i shared with you last time but uh but this other prize it took the long way around to get to me it's a very well traveled very well traveled gift uh giveaway prize and this is from sally journey who is um jackie from caddy jackson it's her mum makes these most beautiful quilts and these are the most gorgeous hexies and they have the most fabulous story behind them and i'm going to leave a link in the description box so that you can go and check out sally talking all about this particular project and why it's so incredibly special but what i will tell you is that each one of these is numbered so i have number 100 up here the backs are so lovely too so this has been hanging up in my bedroom since it arrived it went from the us to tokyo um and then round to me so it really did take the long way round but but it did finally arrive and oh my goodness it was absolutely worth it so these are well traveled uh lily and sally from you sometimes see them as as guests on carrie jack's podcast oh they talk about these uh little hexies as we souls so these wee souls are well traveled but here they are they found their home now and i'm very grateful that i get to that i get to enjoy these because oh my goodness aren't they just lovely so there we go that was that was another really lovely exciting package that arrived in the post and i've got more hair now what else do i have for you oh i'm actually mentioning two caddy jacks episodes one was for mother's day and you can see sally teaching jackie how to bake bread and i really enjoyed that episode it's just so lovely to spend time in their company and i think you'll really like that and then just this week we had an extra special bonus episode where caitlyn introduces us to her mum who's cynthia whitney ward who is an artist and that was just a complete delight as well so it's so lovely to meet these amazing women and with their their wisdom and their creativity and their compassion and i think you'll really enjoy getting to know them a little bit better too it's also going to mention i've been enjoying andrea murray's podcast on youtube it started off as a q a for her cal her march to me cal but she's decided to continue on because i think she gets so many questions and i think she's calling it on if i want to and it comes out every friday and it's just about 20 minutes to 30 minutes long and she basically answers maybe three to four questions from her audience and they are pretty technical but also creative too so i think if you are exploring knitting and you're always wanting to find out the best ways of doing something or a new way of doing something even then um then that's a really good podcast to go check out okay oh next thing we watched a great film on netflix it was so much fun it was called love it and monsters uh and it was it wasn't a very long movie maybe well i'm so used to watching tv series you know that that go on and on and on and on for hours and hours and hours actually watching a movie that was more contained than that and and really an example of good tight storytelling uh it kind of surprised as well subverted some expectations the special effects were very good it was even although obviously it does have monsters in it and it wasn't gory um and just generally i really enjoyed it it was a really good fun movie to watch last weekend uh something else that i watched on uh on youtube was a ted talk and my dad actually introduced me to this last week and it's by a woman called valerie kerr and her pot her ted talk was called three lessons of revenue revolutionary love in a time of rage and it is possibly one of the most exquisite and moving ted talks that i have seen certainly in a very long time she has such a miraculous way of weaving together a story and delivering delivering a message with deep intention and she does it with her whole body so her whole her hand movements and her way of her posture like everything about her is communicating the story to you and and i just found it incredibly powerful what a remarkable woman and uh and i think you'll really like it's about 14 14 15 minutes long i think anyway check it out you you absolutely won't won't regret it okay my last well that's us at an hour we've gone through lots and lots and lots of knitting i'm absolutely surrounded with it all now but before i go i was gonna read you one of my favorite poems because i thought if we're going to end on a recommendation for a ted talk about love then i wanted to read you a poem about love and this is from the nation's favorite love poems anthology and this poem is by odin w h auden and the poems called oh tell me the truth about love some say that love's a little boy and some say it's a bird some say it makes the world go round and some say that's absurd and when i asked the man next door who looked as if he knew his wife got very cross indeed and said it wouldn't do does it look like a pair of pajamas or the ham in a temperance hotel does its odor remind one of llamas or has it a comforting smell is it prickly to touch as a hedge is or soft as eider down fluff is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges oh tell me the truth about love our history books refer to it in cryptic little notes it's quite a common topic on the transatlantic boats i've found the subject mentioned in accounts of suicides and even seen it scribbled on the back of railway guides does it howl like a hungry alsatian or boom like a military band could one give a first-rate imitation on a saw or a steinway grand is it singing at party a riot does it only like classical stuff will it stop when one wants to be quiet oh tell me the truth about love i looked inside the summer house it wasn't ever there i tried the thames at maidenhead or brighton's bracing air i don't know what the blackbird sang or what the tulip said but it wasn't in the chicken run or underneath the bed can it pull extraordinary faces is it usually sick on a swing does it spend all its time at the races or fiddling with pieces of string has it views of its own about money does it think patriotism's enough are its stories vulgar but funny oh tell me the truth about love when it comes will it come without warning just as i'm picking my nose will it knock on my door in the morning or tread in the bus on my toes will it come like a change in the weather will its greeting be courteous or rough will it alter my life altogether oh tell me the truth about love well my loves i hope that you find love everywhere you look and that where you find it you feel well met and in the meantime i will speak to you soon and take good care

Channel: Amy Palko

Views: 9,846

Keywords:

Id: iIERrURnark

Length: 64min 12sec (3852 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021