This little charmer is Cute as One Button, one of This Is Knit’s most popular patterns. It’s easy to see why – it’s a simple little garment which comes in two sizes and which knits up really fast.

It’s designed for Aran weight or worsted weight yarn, and this one is made from Malabrigo Rios – soft as a cloud and machine-washable, and just look at the bright happy colours it comes in! Both sizes take just one skein, and when you buy the yarn, the pattern’s free.

What’s more, there’s no seams at all in this wee cardigan, because it’s knitted from the top down. So it’s the simplest thing ever to customise to fit that dotey wee recipient. It’s a good thing that there are always babies to knit for, because it’s really, really hard to make just one Cute as One Button!

If you’re looking for a perfect marriage of yarn and pattern, then may we commend this beauty? It’s Sivia Harding’s Heart to Heart Beaded Scarf knitted in Debbie Bliss Luxury Silk DK, and it’s lovely.

First, the pattern. It’s a very straightforward crescent-shaped shawlish scarf, knitted from one end to the other, with a clever and straightforward lace panel on one side, a garter stitch panel on the other, and the most satisfying selvedge edge we’ve seen in a long time. The lace is lightly beaded (we used a beading technique we hadn’t tried before, with complete success, which we’ll blog very, very soon).

Now, the yarn. It’s simply delicious. It’s like knitting with velvet. It’s got a beautiful sheen, and the gentle ply makes it comfortable to work and fast through the hand. The colours are a joy, and at 100m per ball, the yardage is very good. We can’t wait to work with it again, and we’re thinking of special occasion garments. Lisa’s Winterberry Shrug would seem obvious (but if you’ve got any other ideas, please tell us in the comments). The whole Heart to Heart took just under four balls of the silk (that’s 195g out of 200g) on 4.5mm needles, so it was fast to work too.

A lovely pattern in a beautiful yarn. with a touch of beading? Yes. That’ll do.

We’re in a particularly good mood – it’s St Patrick’s Day this weekend, the leaves are coming out on the trees and the days are getting longer. So we’ve decided to celebrate with a competition!

We want photographs of your crochet or knitting in a uniquely Irish setting! It can be a finished object or a work in progress (we love both!), and as for what “uniquely Irish” means, you decide! Baby booties by the Cliffs of Moher, a tea cosy snuggling up to a pot of Barry’s Gold Blend in Edinburgh, a bookmark nestling in a copy of Dubliners in Tokyo…. “Irish”, after all, means lots of things!

Entering this competition is easy: just post your picture in the thread in our Ravelry group. You’ve got until midnight on March 24th 2013 IST to post your entry, so there’s plenty of time to scout a location and get your work in the frame.

If you don’t know how to post a picture on Ravelry, here’s a chance to find out how very simple it is. There’s details on this help page, but we thought a couple of screen shots might be useful.

The easiest way of posting a picture in a forum thread is to upload it to somewhere else on the internet and then link to it from the thread. “Somewhere else” can mean a flickr account, a photobucket account, your blog, or simply a project page on Ravelry. Since everyone that’s entering the competition will already have a Ravelry account, this last is the one we’ll concentrate on here.

When you’ve set up a project page for your chosen object, you can add pictures to it by clicking on the tab that the arrow’s pointing to here:

That will bring you to a screen offering you all the photo upload options – we’re going to concentrate on one here…

…the one that makes it easy to post a project picture in a thread. So when you’ve uploaded your project pictures, go to the thread you want to post in, and click on “reply to thread”, down at the bottom right hand corner of the page. This will open a reply box, with a set of little images running along the top of it. The arrow’s pointing to the one you click on to add a picture:

You’ll be offered a number of choices here. We’re linking straight to the picture on the project page, so select that option:

This will allow you to select the project picture you want to display in your post, and then to add text if you like.

And that’s it! Your picture will appear as if by magic in the thread. What’s more, your readers can hop straight to your project page just by clicking on the picture.

But what, you ask, is the prize? It’s an armful of Irish yarn! Head on over to the competition thread for details, and then show us what we’re made of this St Patrick’s Day!

As for this coming weekend, we’re open as usual on Saturday, but closed on Sunday and on Bank Holiday Monday. We’ll be open again on Tuesday morning at 10.30am

A few weeks ago, we shared the revamped Glenties Cowl with you, made in light and lovely Mirasol Api yarn. Well, the weather’s taken a turn for the chillier, and we’ve got another snuggly cowl for you today, this time a brand new one.

It’s the Silver Ridge Cowl, made from the inspired combination of Katia Hechizo and Katia Illusion, so you get both subtle sparkle and subdued elegancet in the one cosy project. Add some contrast buttons, and you have a unique accessory to keep you warm all winter.

As with Glenties, the pattern for Silver Ridge is free with the purchase of the yarn and available right now. Just the thing now it’s got a bit colder, and there’s time to knit one or two as Christmas gifts.

So much yarn! We’ve got so much yarn! Pretty much every day this week, we’ve had a delivery of sumptuous goodies, so much that we can’t tell you about all of it in one post. It’ll all be on parade during the Yarn Tasting, of course, but here’s a sample

Debbie Bliss Winter Garden is new for 2012-2013. It’s a chunky marled yarn made up of merino wool, baby llama, silk and linen, in a cosy palette of jewel colours. You can see the finished effect in this jumper, the Wide Ribbed Sweater from the Winter Garden pattern book.

The pattern book has ten patterns for garments and accessories – they’ll work up fast and keep you toasty all winter (even if you’re not in the garden).

In addition to yarn, we’ve been getting boxes and boxes of sample garments from all our favourite designers for you to admire and try on at the Yarn Tasting – this jumper is just one of them. If you haven’t booked in yet, there’s still some places left. It’s going to be such fun, and there’s so much for you to see.

And there’s more yarn coming next week…!

Aren’t those hooks just lovely? They’re the new Knitpro Dreamz set, and we haven’t been able to stop admiring them since they arrived last week. They range from 3.5mm to 8.00mm, and they’re made of sturdy wood – warm to the touch and gentle on your yarn. The perfect gift for the crocheter in your life, especially if that’s you.

But if you don’t crochet (yet), there’s a matching set of interchangeable knitting needles:

Knitpro Dreamz interchangeables cover a range of sizes from 3.5mm to 8.00mm. There’s four cables in the set, together with end caps and tightening keys (we blogged here with hints and tips for using these). The colours glow like jewels and make it pretty much impossible to mix up the needles in your projects. What’s more, the cables are a smart matt black, and the whole kit comes in a black brocade case, just like its crochet counterpart.

But that’s not all – although they haven’t arrived yet, we’ll be receiving the Dreamz sock needle set in a month or so. If you’d like us to put a set aside for you when they come in, just get in touch!

Friday and the Ravellenics Opening Ceremony are fast approaching. Training’s going well and we can’t wait to see you at our Mass Cast On – you can still get a place on our booking page. We’ll post a special Ravellenics blog post later in the week, but in the meantime, click on over to the Team This Is Knit thread on Ravelry for news as it breaks. Go Team This Is Knit!

We must have some of the fastest keyboardists on Earth, you know – no sooner was Woolly Wormhead’s Hat Design Workshop announced than it was booked out. It’s on Sunday August 12th, which is some time away, and a lot can happen in four months. So we’re talking a little about it here, and encouraging those of you who weren’t lucky enough to nab a place to put your names on the waiting list (this worked out very well for Kate Davies’ workshop – a few spaces came free and were made available to the entire waiting list on a “fastest finger first” basis!).

Woolly Wormhead is a terrific designer, specialising in hats: traditional, quirky, show-stopping (often all three together), and all cleverly designed and a delight to knit. But rather than tell you all about her in our words, we thought it would be better to read her own. So here’s our interview with her:

TIK: When did you start designing and why?

WW: I started self publishing my designs in 2005 through my old blog, as a way to not only record what I was doing, but also to see if there was any interest in what I was doing. At the time I was a full time Art/Textiles teacher and was struggling with health issues, and found that writing my designs in pattern form helped keep my brain active, as well as provide another creative outlet for me to explore. I’d always made and designed my own clothes, whether sewn or knitted, that’s something I’ve done since I was a child, but writing them down to share, and grading them for different sizes, made everything more real. The response to those first designs provided the encouragement I needed to continue.

TIK: Why do you design hats?

WW: There are many reasons why I like to design Hats!

They are portable, and as we travel a lot and live in a relatively small space, portable is a must. They are perfect for learning and practising new techniques, as they don’t need the same commitment that a larger project does, and they’re relatively quick to make and reknit. I have a short attention span and get bored very quickly knitting larger projects, so Hats make perfect instant satisfaction projects. Let’s not forget circles and spheres; a Hat builds on these shapes and allows for some pretty amazing patterns and structures. Hats are expressive and fun to wear – they can dress up or dress down a mood, the most versatile of accessories. Finally, to me, Hats are little wearable sculptures. My specialism is 3D Textiles, and Hats are as good as it gets when it comes to mixing fashion and sculpture.

I did say there were many reasons, right?

TIK: What’s the most important characteristic for a hat to have?

WW: Good fit is pretty important – one size doesn’t fit all – sure, knitting stretches, but stretch it too much and it distorts. In my mind, it also needs continuity between the brim and the body and the crown – that’s pretty important for a good design.

TIK: What’s your favourite knitting technique?

WW: Hmm… not sure I have a favourite technique! There are several I like to use, such as kitchener, provisional cast-on, short rows. I’m especially loving short rows at the moment! I think any technique that allows me to create a seamless 3-dimensional construction is going to be a winner with me. I don’t like seams or picking up stitches, and would much rather graft something or find another way around the construction that, while it may seem a little challenging at times, will overall produce a neater finish and provide continuity in the design.

TIK: What do you say to people who claim that hats don’t suit them?
WW: There’s a Hat out there for everyone, they just haven’t found the right Hat yet.

You can read more from Woolly Wormhead and browse her designs at her website at this link. We can’t wait till August, when we get to find the right hat, and design it, and make it!

(All images in this post are (c) Woolly Wormhead)

What a lovely day we had on Saturday! We were honoured to host Kate Davies’ Steek Sandwich class, and the mezzanine was transformed for the day into a workshop space, with plenty of space for the fifteen lucky attendees.

Steeking is a traditional Shetland technique, allowing complex stranded colourwork to be worked in the round even if the final article is flat, like a cardigan or a blanket. We got a chance to examine some really impressive work, including the beautiful cardigan dating back to the forties that she blogged in this post – it’s an amazing piece of knitting (Kate found it second hand on eBay!) and shows that steeking, well done, resists wear over generations.

But Kate’s come up with a new spin on the technique which gives a smoother, neater edge to the steek, and that’s what she was teaching on Saturday.

We had to do a certain amount of preparation before the class, working up a small piece of colourwork in the round using Studio Donegal 2 Ply Merino. This turned out to be an ideal yarn for the purpose – with lots of colours to choose and contrast and excellent rustic “stickiness”, it also works up fast.

The first thing to do was to stabilise the edges of the steek with a line of crochet – even people who didn’t usually crochet found this fast and easy:

For the next stage, there was a certain amount of nervousness, which turned out to be completely unwarranted:

When the steek was cut, nothing bad happened at all! The edges didn’t fray, the knitting didn’t dissolve. What happened instead was neatening and tidiness and a fair deal of smugness, which turned out to be completely warranted:

By the end of the class, there was a lovely expanse of confidently steeked and edged headbands, and fifteen knitters with a new technique in their toolkit. We can’t wait to see what they do with it, but we’re certain it’ll surpass our wildest imaginings.

The thing about knitters is that they tend to be a good as their word. When we announced that Kate would teaching a class here, a certain contingent proclaimed that they would be there, with bells on.

See? As good as their word.

You can read Kate’s account of her trip over on her blog – she had as good a time as we did, it seems! We miss her dreadfully, and we’re already thinking of how we can entice her back. So watch this space….

We’ve got a lot of reasons to be excited just now. First of all, there’s new yarn in the shop, and it’s amazing!

There’s Jamieson and Smith Jumperweight in the subtle undyed colours you can see above. Shetland wool has Protected Geographical Status under EU law just as Roquefort cheese and champagne have: wool can only be legally sold as Shetland if it’s actually from the islands. This is beautiful yarn – it’s what traditional Fair Isle is knit in, so it’s strong enough to steek and soft enough for garments.

Just a few days ago, we got our first delivery of Skein Queen yarn, which is just as lovely but utterly different. We’ve got sockweight, laceweight and cobweb, and the colours are as vibrant as the Shetland’s are quiet.

The sockweight comes in two blends, one that’s half merino, half silk, and one that’s merino with some nylon for strength and wear. The laceweight (they call it Delectable, and they’re quite right too) is half merino and half silk, with generous yardage of 700 metres. But for yardage, the cobweb wins: 2600 metres of merino/silk/cashmere in colours that have to be seen to be believed.

But our greatest reason for bouncing up and down in excitement just about now is that Kate Davies is coming back to This Is Knit to give a workshop on steeking tomorrow. The event’s been booked out pretty much from the moment it was announced, though some people were lucky enough to get a cancellation place last week (it really is worth putting yourself on the waiting list if an event’s booked out, you know).

Kate was here for the Yarn Tasting last September, and it was very very hard to let her go away again. She’s an excellent teacher and a very talented designer, and we’re very honoured to host her workshop.

Some of us simply can’t wait.

We’d like to wish you all a lovely weekend. We’ll be closed on Good Friday, open from 10.30am to 5.30pm on Saturday, and then closed on Easter Sunday and Monday, re-opening as usual on Tuesday at 10.30am.

The weather may have taken a turn for the cold, but there’s still a a very high chance of chocolate over the coming days.