I Knit at Camp Bestival

We had a marvellous time at Camp Bestival again this year. There was a definite increase in the number of young people wanting to learn knitting and crochet. Lot's of happy faces and some that look not so happy but that's only due to the levels of concentration while finger knitting for the first time!

Pompoms were well and truly on the agenda, as usual. Who wouldn't want to look as beautiful and amazing as this young camper?

There was also lots of finger knitting, as usual. We encouraged people to plait the finger knitting and make things like hats...

...or mats...

 ...or coasters.

I taught this reveller to make moss stitch and she was very proud of her new skill! This is picture and story is a little misleading, however, as I work with a team of volunteers who help me run the knitting tent at Camp Bestival. They all work so hard every year and I'm so grateful for their help, skills and friendship. Ros, Annette, Gemma, Nikki, Angela, Heather & Seb, and Mike - thank you for being amazing and making the knitting tent fabulous!

Camp Bestival is an amazing festival for families. There is so much to keep the young people entertained all through the day, not just on the main stage, with lots of treats for adults thrown in. This is the 7th year we've been at Camp Bestival running the knitting tent and we are there because the organisers want us to be. It's amazing to teach young kids (and adults!) and share our love for knitting and crochet and to be given the opportunity to do this at Camp Bestival every year is a testament to how fantastic Rob and Josie Da Bank are. They are helping to engage an army of young people in knitting and crochet and I know this because we get to see lots of regulars who return every year and when they ask to learn something new we are thrilled. Thank you to the Da Banks, your festival is marvellous.

And now it's on to Bestival in September, which is a an entirely different festival! And I can't wait.

I've recently added a few new colourways to the Ziggy Stardust collection. The speckled effect is really popular so I thought I'd have a go and base it on song titles from David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars album.

Below are the first four colours. There are four more to come, I just haven't been as happy with the colours as I'd like to be so I'm still working on them. I reckon I'll be happy by next week, though, and so they'll be ready and online for sale.

buy them now at www.iknitshop.org.uk

Lady Stardust

Soul Love

Five Years

Moonage Daydream

Fyberspates Vivacious Pattern collection launch at IKL

We are super excited to welcome Jeni from Fyberspates to shop on Saturday 29 November.

Jeni will be with us to launch the new Vivacious pattern collection. Jen will present a trunk show of all the new garments for you to squish and squeeze and you can talk to Jeni about the patterns and yarn and it will be lovely.

Hard copy books will be available and a code for you to download your own electronic version will accompany each book sale!

Everyone is welcome! We'll have nibbles and cake and tea and cider and, of course, loads of time to knit and crochet.

Vivacious is one of my favourite yarns and one of IKL's best selling. That's because it's gorgeous! Superwash merino with a high twist in 4ply and DK, the yarn is soft and squishy and the colours are amazing! You can see some of the colours below.

So come and see us on Saturday 29 November and buy the book and craft with us.

Rockpool Candy's Big Crochet§

My friend Inga is just the most marvelous crocheter in the whole of Norn Iron, and probably beyond. Inga, or Rockpool Candy, had a lot of work in last year's crochet coral reef exhibition at The Royal Festival Hall's Hayward Gallery. In fact much of the exhibition was her work.

I was astounded then by her work; it's so amazing that I just stood dumbfounded by the creative energy that obviously went into doing them as her work is often pretty big. Creative energy comes easy to Inga. It oozes from every pore. I loved seeing them for real as up to then I'donly seen them online.

You can catch Inga doing her big thing at a craft show last weekend in Leeds.

crochet coral reef

excitement for the crochet coral reef is growing and the shop was packed on Thursday night. Not everyone was crocheting coral reef but those who were made some brilliant contributions.


Thursday nights at IKL are still being used to promote the coral reef project run by The Institute for Figuring. Don't think that the project is confined to Thursday's though, if you want to come down and contribute please please feel welcome any time.


Gxx

The Campaign for Real Knitting

There's a famous story about Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier. Whilst making the film Marathon Man little Dusty had to film a scene where he'd been incarcerated, run-down and looking a bit shabby. The story goes that he went a few days without sleep and ran for some time so he was physically drained and looking a bit of a state. When Sir Larry saw him and enquired as to why he looked so bad he said to him, "Why not try acting, dear boy?". It's probably apocryphal, but it's a good line anyway.


The Method has been used for years by many actors keen to impress with their realistic performances, from Brando to Daniel Day-Lewis. I'm quite keen on it - ham-dram. What's this got to do with knitting then? Well, two nights in a row this week we've been watching telly and been confronted with some so-called knitting that leaves much to be desired. If Ed Norton can learn to perform magic tricks for The Illusionist, or Hilary Swank go through training sessions for Million Dollar Baby, then why can't actors at least have the good sense to learn to knit instead of pretending? It might look good to them, but, seriously, it looks crap and we can tell when it ain't real!


This week's situations were on Friday, in the TV comedy 30 Rock Jack McBrayer was supposedly kniting a bikini - as if! Although distracted by trying to work out what's happened to Alec Baldwin's face we still spotted it was a crocheted bikini top with a needle stuck in the end. Lame. You can't fool us! There's also a situation here of gender stereotypes which is far too big a subject to go into here, but just cos he's camp doesn't mean he has to knit, you know? Exhibit 2 - Saturday night film Demolition Man. Sly Stallone knits a lovely red jumper for Sandra Bullock, overnight!? Not as bad as the McBrayer episode, at least we don't see Sly pretending to knit, but we do have to believe he's done it, which it quite difficult. Actually, this is another contender for a gender-stereotyping theses, but, again, no time right now to get into that. The film is redeemed a little by the brilliant line, "I'm a seamstress? - That's great. I come out of cryo-prison and I'm Betsy-fucking-Ross..."


So, here starts the Campaign for Real Knitting (CREAK). We already have our knitting in films page (which needs another update) telling you where you can see the great art on screen, but if you see a situation of pretend knitting or crochet we all have a duty to write to the actor in question. Would they take speaking the lines of the Bard with such idle contempt? Learn to knit, you just look silly otherwise.

Craig

Son of Stitch 'n Bitch is here!

I have, right now, in my sweaty little hands one of the only copies in the UK of the new Son of Stitch 'n Bitch book! Oh yes, it's here, and it's brill. We have shipped over a special batch of copies exclusively for the UK SnB Day on November 10th - you'll be able to get the book there first before anyone else, and ask Debbie to write her name in it too. But before then, is it worth it? Of course, we're going to say it is...but it really is. As a man who knits it is genuinely frustrating at how little there is in the way of fashionable men's knitwear patterns in just about every knitting magazine. Sure, most of them pay a passing nod and include maybe a boy's or man's pattern per issue, but only one, and even then they are generally pretty bland. So it is with honest excitement that I say the book is full of really sexy, gorgeous stuff (and that's just the models. Ho ho). I was walking down Oxford Street just the other day, looking in the window of BHS I was disappointd to see the usual contrast - the ladies knitwear was stylish, interesting, textured, cabled, sexy....the men's knitwear was plain, brown, bland. Why?

For obvious reasons I can't scan the images and post here but believe me if you're a bloke, or if you have a bloke, there will definitely be at least one thing here that you can knit.; from really simple hats and scarves, to socks, stylish and silly. For the more experienced knitters there are some great sweater patterns, including my favourite the Ernie sweater, by Andrew Steinbrecher in bright day-glo stripes (sounds hideous but I love it!) and a really sexy white cabled jumper by our old pal Heather who we met last year at I Knit London. Of course, Jared's stylish smoking jacket stands out too (Jared I hate you, you are a crafty genius!) All this, and cushions shaped like beer bottles, 'beer gloves', beanies, hats, caps and more, plus Debbie's 'Lucky Socks' with dice motif...now you have no excuse why you can't knit your man something for Christmas this year, and I have no excuse not to do more knitting. There are genuinely loads of things here I'd love to make, with 45 patterns in total, both knitting and crochet.

Debbie will be holding a workshop at 10.30am at the SnB Day to work on the Argyle scarf featured on the cover of the book. We expect this to be oversubscribed, so we plan to choose ticket numbers for this workshop beforehand at the show. It seems the fairest way! And, if you're still waiting for your tickets they are in the post as we speak!

Cx

Cx

Bye-bye boys' night...but hello to bog roll covers and book groups...

Hello everyone...yes, I am still in the land of the living, although my bulging discs have slowed down my socialising somewhat I am satiated with my current diet of internet, daytime TV and quiz shows. Physio continues but no real improvement (although I've come off the painkillers at last). If only sitting down was possible rather than having to spend all my time lying on my right-hand side, which restricts activity just a bit. Anyway, thanks to m'colleagues at the National Theatre who sent me these gorgeous flowers (and choccies too, not pictures cos they didn't last long enough!) They are beautiful, but I daren't get too close as, mentioned in the last post, sneezing is like stretching my sciatic nerve the entire length of my body. Ouch.

Readers of the newsletter will have seen that there's a-change a-coming at I Knit London, with a shifty around of our knitting group night and other stuff. It's all down to 'popular demand', honest! The Wednesday night meetings at the shop are getting very popular and we realised that meeting on the same night every week left some people with no chance of experiencing IKL...and that's just not fair is it? So, we'll still be having the fortnight in the pub (if anything just to keep G & I sane - we've spent more time in the last year in the shop than we have at home!) finding all the best alehouses for knitting, and we'll also be at IKL every Wednesday in between. No change there, but from 4th October we'll be having it on a Thursday too. Every Thursday at IKL from 6 as usual for those who miss the Wednesday. This means that film night (left) finds a new home on a Friday - which seems like a perfect start to the weekend. We've had some good films in the last few weeks, but numbers dropped - probably because they weren't too well known - but it's always a good night, and genuinely relaxing (if you can sit down that long. Ouch). We kick off with The Talented Mr Ripley on Friday 4th October...which links nicely to the book group, another new venture!

I put my hand up and admit that I haven't read a book for almost TWO YEARS! I know, shame. I got bogged down in a biography of Arthur Rimbaud and, being an anally-retentive, pedantic geek I felt I couldn't start another book until I'd finished that one. Mmm. Well, thanks to Ravelry we discovered a desire for a knit-friendly book group and offered ourselves up as a venue. We can't take any credit for it, but we're really excited to host it, on the last Tuesday every month, and I have just finished the book (The Cry of the Owl, by Patricia Highsmith - that's the link to Ripley, by the way, if you didn't get it). We're called The Kniterati and anyone can come along. We've put a page on our website to keep folks up-to-date with meetings and books. It has dawned on us that in order to have 'a life' we need to include everything we do into IKL - that is our life, and pretty much everyone we know we've met through the knitting group, some great new friends and some brilliant times.

Sadly, in amongst all this shuffling around something had to give...and it was the Friday night men's night. I think we're both proud that for over a year we hosted the only dedicated knitting group for men in the UK (?). We were never trying to make any kind of statement, we were just offering a place to go and enjoy a few drinks without those weird looks - believe me, we still get them, and unless you've been a part of ANY minority group it's probably quite hard to understand that feeling of freakishness you get when fingers are pointing. Happily, we've always enjoyed being freaky. We never thought we were different, better or worse than anyone else but the men's nights have been some of the best knit nights I've had, and, again we've made some close friendships that will last. Next Friday, 28th September, is the last ever. Join us if you can, whoever you are and whatever you've got.

One more thing to mention before I go and lie down (on my right-hand side, ouch) and it's these two books...

After the phenomenal reaction to the Jean Greenhowe booklets we chose Tea Cozies as our 'book of the month'. It's gone down a storm. I am now realising that for all the overstyled Rowan magazines, the glorious Erika Knight (love her!) books, the expensive hand-spun silk yarns and the unfathomable-but-beautiful Victorian lace shawl patterns there's a whole host of us knitters who just like the simple things in life - and what could be cozier, more English and more useless (which makes it a must-have in my book) than a cozy for your bog roll or a woolly jumper for your teapot? Gerard's messing with nature and knitting this sheep cosy (below) with alpaca, and Tom hasn't lost a fight with a very small Tommy Cooper impersonator, he's actually modelling the very latest in 'crocheted top hat toliet roll cozies'.

And, very finally, if you didn't think they were cute, you surely will this...a new pattern from Artesano's Hummingbird range this papoose is possibly the dinkiest, cutest and most adorable thing I have ever seen. Baby not included...