Embrace imperfection

This week's Tuesday Tip is less of a tip and more of a mindset shift, and it's around the idea of perfection.

If I could offer knitters - both new and old - one piece of advice it would be to let go of the idea of your handknits being perfect. If we want something to be perfect and to look as though we bought it in a shop we can just go ahead and buy it.

Machines make the same thing, in the same way each time. They churn out endless, identical items untroubled by fatigue, emotion or thoughts and feelings.

Human beings aren't like that and thank goodness.

Think about it in terms of an average adult sized sweater. It will contain 1000s of stitches all of which you have created perfectly. There might be a couple of stitches that aren't - why on earth would you chose to focus on the 1 stitch that's wrong, rather than give yourself credit for the 1000s and 1000s that are absolutely perfect?

Embrace imperfection - life's way too short to focus on the tiny imperfections, especially as they are the things that show our humanity.

Two ways to a neater ssk

A short and sweet tip for you this week. If you find that your ssk stitches look a little loose or distorted this is for you.

SSK is the abbreviation for a left-leaning decrease. Two stitches are slipped knit wise, separately to the right hand needle, then are knit together. This introduces a twist into the stitch though, which can be irksome and stand out a little in the finished piece.

Alternative 1: Slip the 1st stitch knit wise and the 2nd stitch purl wise, then knit them both together.

Alternative 2: Work the ssk as normal but on the next row purl through the back loop (or ktbl if working in the round)

Both of these methods help to untwist the stitch and produce an ssk which lies flatter in the finished work.

Anything you'd like me to cover in this series? Please let me know in the comments.

Where the magic happens

It was a long time coming, but this past weekend I finally got to go to an in-person yarn show. My first in over three years, since Covid intervened and overturned everything.

And oh my goodness, was it worth it. A really well organised show - thanks to Laura (aka The Lonely Knitter) - the East Anglia Yarn Festival, Norwich was a real treat to attend. There was plenty of space, stalls were thoughtfully set out and loads of seating too.

I did set out with a bit of a shopping list - the grey yarns from The Little Grey Girl are for a Love Note sweater, and the set of browns/speckles from Lay Family Yarn is destined for a colourwork sweater. The rest were all pure impulse purchases - and very happy ones at that.

Whilst the shopping and yarn squishing was fun by far the best bit was being able to chat to people. Real live people.

It was lovely to catch up with old friends but I was also able to talk to people who previously I had only ever chatted to online. It’s quite bizarre really when you think of it. Some of these people I feel as though I know really well, we chat online most days, certainly most weeks and I share things with them that I probably might not even tell my family. But until now our entire relationship had been via my phone.

Very odd. But the perfect testament to the positive, powerful upside of social media. It’s easy to focus on the negatives, but without social media I wouldn’t have known any of these people at all - I wouldn’t even have known there was a yarn show going on in the first place!.

And there’s the energy! I had quote forgotten the buzz and the excitement of a yarn show. So many yarny folk packed into one space creates their very own hum of activity. It’s impossible not to survey the hall, stuffed full of woolly goodness and not smile.

It’s such a joyful experience. Chatting to vendors it seemed that for a lot of the visitors it was their first ever yarn show experience - partly a reflection of the fact that many people either took up knitting or returned to it during the pandemic.

If you haven’t yet been to a yarn show I would urge you to have a go. There is a comprehensive list here - do have a look and see if there is one near you.

Start small - maybe leave the huge shows until you are a bit more confident - and also check out my top tips for attending a yarn show that I shared over on my Instagram account. And if you are hesitant maybe rope in a friend to come with you, that way you’ll always have someone to chat to and to help with those all important yarny decisions.

When the universe has your back

Blanket is the Garter Ripple Squish with 3 strands of sock yarn held together

Do you ever have one of those moments/weeks where you just feel a bit overwhelmed? Pulled in so many different directions at once. So many things whirling around in your head that you don’t know where to start?

There are many parallels that I can draw between knitting and tarot (two of my favourite things to do during quiet moments). That’s a blog post for another day, but sometimes - quite a lot in fact - the daily card that I draw has a habit of being uncannily on the nose.

This was the card I drew the other day - the Seven of Wands - which is all about finding courage and inner strength. It’s also a really great reminder to look to yourself for advice and help - not to rely on others for support. To be your own guiding light as it were.

I took this as a signal from the universe to undertake a mass unsubscribe from a ton of business-y type email lists. Things I’d signed up to, to get free worksheets or PDFs. Things that were filling up my inbox with a metric ton of (often contradictory) advice. The ‘must do’s or even worse ‘must not do’s’ were starting to put me on edge and make me doubt myself.

So I spent a happy hour unsubscribing from lists, as well as muting or unfollowing a bunch of accounts on social media that were just getting to be a bit too much. And boy, do I feel better for it.

A good spring clean was just what I needed to freshen up my socials and to give me lots of new ideas and inspiration to follow.

It made me think about the issue of seasonality and social media. I know that the accounts I follow in autumn/winter are perhaps very different from the ones I want to see more of as spring approaches. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing necessarily. All things go through seasons - including ourselves - and so to me it makes sense to have that reflected in my social media feeds.

What do you think? Do you like to see the same things all year round or do you find yourself going through ‘seasons’ too?

5 good reasons to knit socks

There are way more than 5 - obviously - but I was in need of a catchy title.

1. People will think you are really clever. I’m not sure why this is but a lot of people attribute sock knitting to the ‘really hard’ category. No word of a lie, I once had a real-life, actual brain surgeon tell me that she could never knit socks as they were ‘too complicated’. She spent her days doing the most mind-boggling surgical feats with people’s brains for heavens sake. Yet she thought my plain vanilla sock was too hard.

2. Turning a heel is as close as you can get to magic without a wand. The point I made above, notwithstanding there is something a little bit magical about turning a heel. It was always my favourite part of teaching a sock knitting class. The part where you knit backwards and forwards for a bit and suddenly manage to bend your sock tube through 90 degrees. It still delights me even now.

3. You get to knit with all the cool yarn. It’s a well known fact that sock yarn doesn’t count towards your stash. And you can always pick up a 100g/400m skein on impulse at a yarn festival and know, with certainty that you can knit a pair of socks out of it.

4. You’ll always have warm feet - I haven’t worn a pair of commercial socks in years and my feet are eternally grateful.

5. You’ll never fear having to take your shoes off in airports again. My husband travels a lot for work (always in handknit socks) and he’s lost count of the number of times total strangers have approached him in airports or on planes asking where he bought his socks from. Cue the smug ‘spouse of knitter’ expression as he explains that they are unique and not available anywhere else.

As I said above, I could keep going but there are the first 5 that spring to mind. In short sock knitting is just my favourite thing to do (apart from drinking coffee and cuddling my cats). And if you don’t currently knit socks I hope this has inspired you to give them a go.

If you are looking for something to get you started, head to my free patterns page and there you’ll find a free download for both a cuff down sock pattern and a toe-up one as well.

Happy sock knitting

Five things I love about knitting

5 things I love about knitting

The alternative title to this was ‘A love letter to knitting’ and also ‘Knitting lasts longer than friends’

Seriously though I don’t think I’ve ever had a friendship last as long as I have had a relationship with knitting. I’m not one that makes friends easily at the best of times and as a card carrying introvert I often prefer the company of my needles to others.

I do love a good catch up with friends over coffee, don’t get me wrong but I’ve never been great at maintaining friendships over time, as people and circumstances change.

Over the years I have often felt as though is a bit of a character flaw of mine - the fact that, unlike others I’m not in touch with any of my childhood friends, or people I was at Uni with, or worked with in various jobs and places over the years. But it took the pandemic for me to realise that actually, I’m OK with that.

The people around us and friendships that arise from that are constantly changing and evolving - and that’s probably a good thing.

Goodness me, that got a bit deep didn’t it? This was intended to be a light hearted look at why knitting holds such a firm place in my heart. So in that spirit and with tongue firmly in cheek may I present

5 things I love about knitting:

1. Knitting doesn’t demand that you make conversation with it

2. You can ignore it for months at a time and it won’t sulk

3. Knitting will forgive you if you shout at it

4. Knitting will do it’s level best to stretch to accommodate your needs

5. Knitting will always be there for you, no matter what

What about you - what do you love about knitting that you can’t get from others? Do let me know in the comments.