Arrived from The Net Loft

This adorable collection of items arrived all the way from Cordova, Alaska, sent by the lovely Dotty Widmann from The Net Loft. Earlier this year in June/July 2016 The Net Loft hosted a fibre festival called "Fisher Folk".

I designed a fair isle style fish pattern for use with yarn made from the one Shetland sheep they have in the town. Dotty produced a knitting kit to go with the pattern and these were given to each of the 100 participants at the festival. As there was a very limited supply of the yarn I was delighted to receive a sample kit (and lots of other goodies) in the post recently.

Inspiration for the fish motif came from patterns used on fishermen sweaters. In particular those from the Moray Firth Gansey Project in Scotland. There was to be exhibition of these sweaters on loan to the festival in Cordova and I thought it would be appropriate to include a net style motif from the Scottish Ganseys. The fish knitting pattern is called Catch of the Day and is available now on Ravelry.

I  was not able to attend the event, but if you'd like to read more about it, there are two very interesting blog posts by The Net Loft and the Fringe Association which include images from the festival and interviews with participants.

Scots Pine

The Scots Pine glove pattern I originally designed for "Make Your Own Gifts" magazine published in October 2014, has been updated. It's been modified to include instructions for two colours rather than the original one colour.

This new version uses Stylecraft Batik DK in Olive / Old Gold and has an autumnal look to the combination, with the contrast gold colour used for the rib sections. But you could use any DK weight yarn, approximately 140m (150yds).

The glove is knitted flat on two needles. If you haven't quite mastered knitting in the round with double pointed needles, this is an alternative. There's a lace pine cone pattern which repeats three times down the front of the glove (which is much easier to knit than it looks), a  thumb gusset, with a sewn side seam.

Skills required to make these include:

Cast on/off
Knit/purl stitch
Make one stitch by lifting the bar/strand between the next stitch and knitting through the back of the loop (M1)
Bring yarn to the front of the work (Yf)
Pass a slipped stitch over the next stitch (Psso)
Knit two stitches together (K2tog)

Giveaway Winner

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway and your lovely comments.

I'd like to announce that the winner is...

crazydazy

...if you could contact me via my email with your details and I'll have your prize in the post asap.

mail@handknittedthings.co.uk