Hot weather knitting

You know it is officially Too Hot to Knit, when you see me knitting with cotton yarn. Ordinarily I steer well clear of cotton. I find it hard, inflexible and top of the list for hand pain when I knit with it.

But the last few days with temperatures above 30c in the South East of England (and in the 20s at night) have meant that just looking at wool brings me out in a sweat. So cool cotton is the order of the day.

I was given one of those fancy facial cleansers that you need to take off with hot water and a cloth, ages ago and I haven’t used it because of lack of said cloth. Of course I could have bought a cloth (or cut up an old sheet or something) but like any self-respecting knitter my inner voice piped up to say ‘you could knit that’.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who, when faced with buying something that is either needed or wanted puts it off with a thought to make it yourself. Of course the reality is that other things compete for your knitting attention and the needed thing never gets made.

And in my case, the lovely gifted thing also doesn’t get used but just sits on my bathroom shelf looking fancy.

So, it may be ‘cracking the flag’s’ outside as my Grandma used to say, but come this evening I might be hot, but at least I’ll have clean pores.

Do you have any go-to patterns or yarns for hot weather knitting? I’d ordinarily go for socks but even they feel ‘too woolly’ for me right now.

An update on pattern sales

I've always been a proud supporter of Ravelry. I've exclusively sold my patterns there ever since day one. I've been proud to call Ravelry and the community there my knitting home.

But the recent site changed has caused problems for a significant number of people. Visual disturbances, migraines and reports of seizures.

All very worrying.

But much more worrying has been the complete lack of meaningful response from the team. People have been left unable to run their businesses effectively and without a social support structure they have grown to rely on.

We are now a week into the change and all we have is a weak opt-out back to the classic version (hidden behind several screens of triggering imagery)

I'm aghast at lack of response, the gaslighting and the dismissal of very serious concerns. I've been watching with increasing incredulity as the days tick past, with no action. I keep hoping that there will be something put in place to fix this. A solution, a timescale, a plan - heck - even an acknowledgement at this point would help

All I can do is to add my voice to those calling for action and look to my own business and my own website. I can’t possibly go back through years of blog posts and remove Ravelry links but I will not be adding new ones here until a solution is found.

In addition I have cancelled my monthly donation to the site (I don't pay for advertising there) and as of today I will have another, alternative platform for pattern sales, for those who aren’t able to access Ravelry.

I don’t know what the long term plan is - a lot depends on what happens with Ravelry over the next few weeks and months - and for that, the ball is firmly in their court. I truly hope there is a resolution that works for everyone. But in the interests of my business and my customers I have to come up with an alternative means of selling patterns.

You can find information on the alternative platform HERE

In love with shortie socks

I’ve no idea how I have managed to be over 10 years into my sock knitting career and never knit a pair of shortie socks before. I’ve seen the cute patterns over the years - notably the Rose City Rollers- that at one time everyone seemed to be knitting. I saw them, but somehow thought they weren’t for me.

This weekend though it dawned on me that I actually wear that style quite a lot in the summer. And as I hunted for a pair that hadn’t been claimed by my sock-magnet sons I realised that I could in fact knit myself some - revelation.

One of the beauties of these types of socks is that they use small amounts - just over half the amount of yarn needed for conventional socks. So I grabbed some suitable yarn from my stash (this is from Travelknitter - although I fear I have long since lost the ballband) - and cast on.

What can I say? Instant gratification is the order of the day. I cast on over my morning coffee and my mid afternoon I had a wearable first sock.

I don’t want to jinx things but it looks as though my sock mojo is back.

Going with gut instinct

As I’m sure you’ll know about me I’m a girl who loves to plan. Give me a notebook and a pen (or even the back of an envelope) and my first response to pretty much anything is to write a list.

But if this year is teaching me anything, it is that the best laid plans don’t always work out. My lovely 2020 weekly planner sits taunting me from the bookcase, with a lovingly laid out list of goals, deadlines and ‘Things to Do’ - not much of which has actually been done, for all of the current ongoing reasons.

At the beginning of the year I sat down and planned out my Temperature Blanket in detail - the colours I would use and the temperature ranges I would work to. The blog post is here if you want to read it.

And so far it’s been going really well. But this weekend I hit a stumbling block. Hitting a new temperature high of 23c I excitedly reached into my stash bag for the new colour and realised that the allocated yarn was a drab olive green which didn’t exactly thrill the senses.

But, never one to listen to my inner voice I ploughed on regardless, dutifully adding in most of the days stitches (about 2000 - if we are counting). It was at that point that I realised that I really (really) didn’t like the colour. It was way too dark and too jarring in the overall colour scheme. With hindsight it would have worked far better down with the cooler colours but hey ho. We live and learn.

So I spent a fun evening ripping it out and then decided to move the warmer colours up a bit. So the lovely sunny yellow (Butterscotch) is now covering ranges 22-24c . The next range up will be the warmer Tumeric (orange/brown) and so now I just need to look for another shade to fill in the top temperature range.

And I’m so much happier with the yellow - it sings perfectly and does exactly what these warmer sunny days should be doing. Lifting our spirits and giving us a good old dose of colour therapy.

And lesson learned (probably) - trust the gut instinct - it knows what it’s talking about.

Life after lockdown

My Temperature Blanket - Ravelry project page

I feel as though I need to preface this by saying that I thoroughly hate the term ‘lockdown’ and plan never to use it again after this whole crisis has passed. Especially since in the UK the term is relatively meaningless compared to the much more stringent conditions which have been in place across other countries. But, as a word, it neatly sums up this whole situation in a way that I don’t think any other word can. So it stays - for now.

I read an article the other day which was aimed at parents of school children in Denmark heading back to school. The premise was how to prepare kids for ‘re-entry’, the increased noise, traffic and general stimuli that they would face as they moved from so many weeks in a quiet home environment to one of much heightened activity.

It struck me that, although this was a laudable aim wouldn’t it be nice if society recognised that for many of us (raises hand here) the enforced quiet of this period of isolation hasn’t been at all bad. Obviously I spend much of the day either paralysed by anxiety or veering towards wild optimism but I do appreciate the increased time with my family, the longer walks, the absence of awkward, everyday social encounters. There are certainly elements of ‘back to normal’ that I am in no hurry to embrace again.

And, in our return to whatever normal looks like, wouldn’t it be nice for the needs of less extroverted members of society to be considered. Not everyone thrives in the atmosphere of a loud, bustling coffee shop for example. Not everyone is able to cope with the sensory overload that is a brightly lit, piped-music playing supermarket, but those are the types of environments that we seem to have ended up with.

Whenever I talk about this on social media I invariably get some ‘helpful’ comments about coping techniques, or therapy but that really isn’t the point. Society should be designed for the benefit of everyone, not just those who fit a narrow window of how normality is defined. I don’t know how many people would define themselves as introverted or hypersensitive, but I’m not so sure that we form the minority that the more extroverted amongst us think we do.

I love that some knitting shows have adapted to take into account the neurodiversity of their audience - with quiet spaces, chill-out zones, special pre-shopping times etc. As ever, the knitters are ahead of the curve. Wouldn’t it be nice to see these principles taken up my mainstream retail outlets and other community spaces.

Going to a knitting show seems like another world away right now, but I know that someday I will get the chance to go to another one and meet my knitting pals. And I’ll be safe in the knowledge, that among the knitting community at least, I can be assured that my need for quiet has already been taken care of.

The importance of downtime

Garter Ripple Squish on Ravelry

There are a few things about lockdown life that have brought my needs into sharp focus. Before this whole (waves hands wildly….) ‘thing’ I thought nothing of taking myself off to a coffee shop for a bit of downtime. Just me, my knitting, a coffee and maybe a podcast or a book. Or maybe just a drive out to a farm shop (again - one that served coffee), to a local country park. The destination wasn’t really important, it was just the need for aloneness that I was looking for.

But, in a house with 3 other people 24/7 is proving challenging in ways that I didn’t expect. We are a quiet family anyway. We have always lived at a distance from our family and we are not party people. We are definitely not extroverts, any of us - although my husband is a true ambivert.

The need for alone time is something that we have all really recognised during these last few weeks, and after some fairly spectacular meltdowns (mainly mine) we have come up with a means of trying to make sure each family member gets some time to themselves.

For me, I didn’t realise how much thinking, daydreaming and planning I do during my quiet, alone periods. Walking and being by myself often allows my brain to go off in all sorts of different creative directions. I’ve really noticed how little inspiration I seem to have for anything right now when even taking a few photographs or writing a blog post seemingly can’t happen without at least one interruption and someone looking for snacks. Add in the demands of doing a day job from the kitchen table and it’s no wonder that by 9pm I’m ready for bed.

Indeed, often the only thing that stops me heading for bed when the kids do is the need for an hour to myself - it would be nice to be sufficiently awake to appreciate it.

It has made me realise though, the need to be kind to myself. And to silence my own inner critic. Does it matter if I don’t post on Instagram today? Not in the slightest. Does it matter if my pattern has stalled or that all I’ve done this week is to knit on the same blanket? Nope. I’m the only one who will notice or care.

So I’ve taken to giving myself a big, comfortable permission slip to do whatever I need to right now. And if that means stashing an emergency bar of chocolate behind the big casserole dish in the pantry - to be eaten while playing late night games on my phone - that’s absolutely fine.

And if you are in need of a permission slip for yourself - you are very welcome to borrow mine.