Saturday 2 January 2010

New Year, New Patterns, New Skills!

Happy New Year!!

Yes - I've been very busy! All kinds of busy in fact; looking after Mum while Dad was in hospital (heart problems - he's home now and keeping well with lots of medication!); having an operation myself (arthroscopy to trim cartilege tear in my right knee, and they also diagnosed arthritis); and (of course!!) designing knits and writing patterns!


Since I last posted I have published 3 patterns - two double-knitted scarves and a beret. You may realise from the images below that I have also invested in a new camera and have put a lot of effort into taking good photos with it to show off my designs:

Falling Flowers:



Sky at Night:


And Lórien:


I've also invested in a decent camcorder, and have started to make technique videos for lefty knitters. The one I've 'embedded' below is about the long-tail cast-on. This is part of my growing mission to make available clear and correct teaching material for lefty knitters. It seems (from what I see in Ravelry) that lefties are often pushed to learn knitting in the right-handed direction due to a combination of the erroneous widespread notion that mirror knitting involves lots of pattern translation, and because of a lack of left-handed teachers, or at least teachers who caqn teach lefty knitting styles. While many lefties are fine knitting in the same direction as right-handers many lefties are not, and I've now (mostly via Ravelry) come across many who gave up on knitting until they tried it mirror-style.

Anyway - here is my first half-decent technique video. While there are still a few issues to work on (camera shake and lighting) I think this one is good enough for public viewing, so I've uploaded it to YouTube.