An Italian Knit Night

Tonight, Wednesday 18 Jan, is Knit Night from 6.30pm until 9 at jelly ArtPad (that’s the one upstairs at 42 Market Place) and it is also the last Knit Night for Barbara before she returns to Milan – so that makes it Campari O’Clock?

In other news, to try to be more organised or otherwise known as “less-confusing” from forthwith the 1st and 3rd Wednesday evening sessions shall be referred to as Knit Night, the 2nd Wednesday daytime sessions shall be Purl Day. Thank you to everyone who responded to our request for help locking and unlocking and blogging. So as Barbara departs, the team of Alison, Mel, Ella, Laura and Suzanne are joined by Gillian and Pat. Thank you all.

Ci vediamo alla serata dei lavoretti a maglia!

Ciao

As the Outcasts have been hanging out together since 2003 – knitting, making stuff, and doing random things – and as Jelly has a lovely new, very old premises – formerly known as The Coopers Arms at 29-31 Market Place – we thought that we could make the Christmas bash extra special this year and invite our favourite makers of beautiful things to take part …

It was chilly and getting dark in Coopers at the last evening knit session so from the next session (2 November) we will return to the jelly at 42 Market Place on the first and third Wednesday of each month.

The daytime knit session (2nd Wednesday of each month ) will actually be in The Coopers this month for a change.

Keep warm, keep knitting

Have you seen this?

It is a safe link so don’t worry, it just involves llamas and typing

Wish I could be there but then I get to spend time instead with my growing teenagers on their birthday 10/10.
Knitted presents anyone?

These past few days (from Thursday 8 September) you could have found us in Jacksons Haberdashery and Wool Department as part of of the National Heritage Open Days – as from Emma’s earlier post here, we were on hand to help people with knitting dilemmas, help new knitters and just have a general chat – sounds like a perfect outcast day.

A special big thank you to all the outcasts that came to help with running the sessions including Melanie Nabarro, Debbie Orr, Kira Moffat and Emma Bradbury. Not forgetting the hard work bringing the pattern booklet together by Pat Lewis and the wonderful designs. Here’s a sneaky few shots from the photo day.

There booklets are a limited first edition run of 100 only, containing 8 patterns to knit and crochet:
* Classic Cloche
* Garden Twisty (crochet)
* Choker (crochet)
* Brioche Stripe
* 40′s Cherry Brooch
* Evening Out Gloves
* Mabel Bonnet
* Heritage Bag

They will be on sale, priced £6, this coming Thursday 15th September, 6-9pm as part of The Vintage Catwalk in Market Place, Reading. Alternatively leave a comment here to reserve a copy and we will be in touch to organise getting the booklet to you.

Dust off your needles for the return of Innocent’s Big Knit campaign for 2011. This year they are planning some shiny new little hat patterns for their innocent drinks – all in aid of inspiring even greater involvement to raise money for Age Concern.

Image courtesy of Innocent Drinks, Big Knit 2010

For full details, patterns and great galleries go to http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/bigknit/index.html

The deadline for sending hats to Innocent is 14th October and little hats will start to appear on Innocent drinks in Sainsburys and Boots from 16th November.

Happy knitting …

It’s almost here, Heritage Weekend starts on Thursday (it’s a long weekend, okay..). We will be in Jacksons of Reading from Thursday 11am, running a special beginners knit workshop/ informal knit lounge to a more advanced knit surgery. Pop by and see us, we will be there Thursday 11am-4pm, Friday 11am-2pm, Saturday 11am-3pm. Here’s a sneaky peek of a special A5 booklet created by some of the talented outcasts, costing £6 this first edition is limited to 100 copies containing 8 new designs. Available from Thursday 8th September, grab one before they run out.

I can’t use the word ‘stashbusting’ without having the Kate Bush song ‘Cloudbusting’ playing in my head. This adds an air of upbeat determination, so I recommend listening to it while you’re reading this.

See?

So, at the moment I am trying to decrease my stash by stashbusting – making things in order to use up my stash of yarn, rather than making new projects with new yarn. I’m not doing very well so far, but I haven’t bought any yarn for myself for over four months now, which is a bit of a record for me.

I’m trying to save money and empty the many boxes of yarn I realised I had when we moved house recently. I had managed to hide yarn all over our flat – at the bottom of cupboards, drawers, in bags, in the space between the legs of the coffee table… When I packed it all up I realised I had six boxes of yarn and found things I didn’t even know I owned.

It’s forcing me to look at the fibre more closely and think about what could be done with it, rather than picking the final object and buying what the pattern suggests. I am more creative with what I knit and I try new things because the pain of the expense of yarn purchasing is that little bit further behind me. There’s also the joy of the ‘Eureka!’ moment when the idea of what the yarn could be clicks into place.

My favourite stashbusted knit so far are some knitted slipper boot things that I made with some impulse buy yarn I bought in Jersey. They look more like knitted wellies than slippers, but they keep my feet toasty warm.

My oh so fetching knitted wellies.

It means I don’t know what my next project will be, I’ll just have a rumage through my boxes and see what I can find. But as Kate says, ‘I just know that something good is going to happen’.