Knitting Stories

Meet the maker

How the duck got its beak (and other stories)

'This pattern should be impossibly frustrating,' I wrote of a pattern I was knitting back in early 2020, 'and yet it’s the most delightfully compulsive...

Meet the maker

In Shetland no one swatches

In the English speaking knitting world, travelling to the Shetland islands, 130 miles north of the Scottish mainland, has become something of a Haj-like pilgrimage....

Pattern round-ups

9 cardies good, 18 cardies better!

It seems like last week's list of cardigans has only partially satisfied the spring-time knitters' appetite for knitwear they can undo and do up again....

Pattern round-ups

Unbuttoning the spring

Coming home from work in the daylight, daffodill buckets at the supermarket checkout, blosssom appearing on street corners, and leaving the house without long johns:...

Knitsplaining

Wild and Washy

'I'm making a baby blanket, so it's got to be washable.' 'It's a sweater for my son. There's no way he'll wash it by hand....

Life in the day of a wool shop

Overheard in the wool shop this week

It's been cold, rainy and grey outside all week, but inside in the wool shop you've all been giving us plenty to smile about. Here...

Travels with knitting

The unbearable delightness of a wool show

Waterloo station had never looked so woolly. It wasn't a yarn bombing event, but ten minutes until the departure of the 10am train to Farnham,...

Life in the day of a wool shop

In search of the perfect sweater

The key ingredients for the perfect pudding, an old friend of mine explained, are something crunchy, something creamy and something fruity. He expanded this theory...