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The podcast returns with a brand new sock pattern…the last secret of The Handmade Sock Society has now been revealed! Today I’m chatting about the yarn that inspired this sock design, and my new(ish) adventures over on YouTube. We also have some KAL winners, the results of our little June charity pattern drive, and some updates on my own WIPs. If you’d like some crafty company as your work on your latest creative project, come join me!
Show Sponsors
Meadow Yarn; Anj is the heart, mind, and hand behind Meadow Yarn. She spends her days dying yarn and telling stories in the Suffolk countryside. The regular hand dyed shades you’ll find in their online shop are influenced by the surrounding landscape, the north sea coast, and the big skies overhead. For an extra dose of imagination with your knitting, Anj also releases her limited edition yarn fictions from time to time. These capsule yarn collections are inspired by her original short stories. You can download them and read along as you knit. As well as their own label, Hand Dyed Yarn, Meadow Yarn also stocks some of Anj’s personal favorite wools and supplies, Icelandic Lopi, Hazel Knits, KnitPro needles and notions, Eucalan wool wash, and arrange of inspirational journals and magazines. You can find them at meadowyarn.co.uk.
Find all your favourite luxury yarns and discover plenty more at A Yarn Story, Bath’s premier yarn store based in Walcot Street, Bath, UK. From gorgeous skeins by The Fibre Co and Walcot Yarns to a fine selection from Shibui Knits, La Bien Aimée, House of a la Mode, and Julie Asselin, there is plenty for the discerning knitter to enjoy. With friendly and knowledgeable staff to help you browse, there is plenty for the discerning knitter to enjoy. Visit the store at Walcot Street, Bath or shop online at www.ayarnstory.co.uk.
Show Links:
Subscribe to my YouTube channel; I’ve just post a video of my completed Píosa Cardigan
Píosa Cardigan by Renée Callahan @eastlondonknit on Instagram
Louie & Lola Yarns inspiring colourway ‘Joy’ in merino nylon sock
KAL Winners
Spinifex Socks FO Winner Post 63 by SarahKnitWit
Knit20for2021 June Winners
From Ravelry Post 79 by Macen1231 who nominated Round Mountain Fibers
From Instagram @julianejansch who finished a WIP and nominated @frida_fuchs_yarns
Winners can contact me via email (support@curioushandmade.com) or on Ravelry
The Handmade Sock Society 4
All 6 patterns have now been released for The Handmade Sock Society 4 ; The Curling Mist Socks, The Picnic Blanket Socks , The Wild Bees Socks , The Spinifex Socks, The Lavender Fields Socks and The Scribbly Gum Socks are all available now. Don’t worry if you’ve not signed up yet, you can join in anytime!
The Handmade Sock Society 4 on Ravelry
The Handmade Sock Society 4 on Gumroad
#thehandmadesocksociety on Instagram
#thss4 on Instagram
#thehandmadesocksociety4 on Instagram
Huge thanks to my brilliant sample knitter, photographer, model and test knitter Deb @tinkhickman, your talents have no end!
Huge thanks also to my other test knitter extraordinaires Tracy @comfyredcouch and Karina from Louie & Lola
The Handmade Sock Society 4 KALs
The Lavender Fields Socks FO Thread this KAL will run until August 1st,2021
Keep an eye out for The Scribbly Gum Socks FO Thread on the Curious Handmade Discussion board on Ravelry
Knit 20 for 2021 Toy KAL
I need your support and encouragement to help me tick the ‘toy’ prompt off my knit202for2021 list, so I’ve decided to add this pop-up event to the regular #knit20for2021 KAL. There are prizes to be won and so much cuteness to come.
The rules are simple:
- You can enter with any knitted or crocheted toy pattern
- It’s okay if you finish a WIP or cast on a new toy
- Post a photo of your finished toy on Instagram with the hashtag #knit20for2021TOY or in the thread in the Curious Handmade Ravelry Group.by July 31st.
I am trying to complete 2 toys for this challenge:
The Panda Kit by Susan B. Anderson and the Sadie Souris Kit by Cinthia Vallet
I’ve started my Panda kit with Deb’s (@tinkhickman) encouragement
Free Curious Handmade Workshops
Simply Curious Socks: Free Beginner Sock Knitting Pattern & Workshop
The Spindrift Shawl: Free Beginner Shawl Knitting Pattern & Workshop
Join the Curious Handmade Group on Ravelry for new pattern announcements, KALs, support and questions for patterns and any other fun things that come up, and join our Curious Crew Newsletter at the link below
Show transcript:
Welcome to the Curious Handmade podcast. You’re listening to episode 341. This podcast is all about crafting a life of happiness and creativity. I’m your host, Helen, and you can find me on Ravelry as HellsBells and on social media as Curious Handmade. You can also find full show notes and transcript on my website at curioushandmade.com. I’d like to say a big thank you to my sponsor, A Yarn Story.
Hello, and welcome to the show this week. Apologies for missing last week unexpectedly. I had the kids home for school holidays, and it was just a bit too much for me to try and record. I still have them home for school holidays this week, but I’ve managed to capture a few moments where they’re hopefully quietly doing something for a little while. So I hope you’ve been well and enjoying some creative pursuits. I have been quite busy with lots of different creative projects, and I have been sharing a little bit of those on my YouTube channel, which is also called Curious Handmade.
I just shared my finished object, my latest finished object, the Píosa Cardigan, and did a little review of that project there. I’ve been really enjoying making some videos. I’ve been doing that with my daughter, Sophie again. She’s been helping me with the editing and filming, and it’s just a really nice thing to do together. So I hope to be bringing you more regular videos. I don’t want to promise anything because I haven’t been so good at it in the past, but I’m really going to try to do some regular YouTube videos over there.
I do plan to keep up my audio podcasts as well, and yeah, just sort of see how that goes for the next six months or so, and maybe make a new plan for next year. But for the time being, I’m keeping things pretty much the same here and just doing that as well. Before I get into the main content of today, I just wanted to announce some winners of various knit-alongs we have happening for the Sock Society season four. We have the Spinifex Socks knit-along winner to announce, and that is post 63, which is SarahKnitWit is the winner. So congratulations, Sarah for completing your Spinifex Socks and winning that knit-along.
And then for the Knit 20 for 2021 challenge, we have the June winners to announce. From Ravelry, we have post 79, who is Macen, M-A-C-E-N 1231(Macen1231), and she has nominated Round Mountain Fibres as her prize. And on Instagram, we have @julianejansch . I’ll spell that. J-U-L-I–A-N-E J-A-N-S-C-H. And she finished a work in progress for that prompt, and she has nominated Frida Fuchs Yarns in Berlin. So congratulations to the winners. Please get in touch with us, either by email support@curioushandmade.com or HellsBells on Revelry, and we will organize those prizes for you. Otherwise, we will try and get in touch with you, but you’re very welcome to get in touch if you are listening to the show.
This week saw the publishing of the very last socks in this season’s The Handmade Sock Society, which is The Scribbly Gum Socks . And I designed these socks quite a while ago. I’ve been fairly organized this year in terms of having my designs ready in advance, which is something quite new to me, but it is fantastic. And for these ones, I was very much inspired by the yarn I used. The yarn for these socks is Louie & Lola Merino nylon sock, and the colorway is Joy. And I saw this on the Louie & Lola Instagram feed, and just fell in love with the colorway and it really inspired the whole design. And so thank you, Karina for the beautiful yarn. She very generously sent me a couple of skeins in the colorway in two different bases to try out. We ended up selecting the Merino nylon sock base, which is 75% super wash Merino and 25% nylon, which is a really good blend for socks.
And I’ll just read you the description of the socks. You’ll find the Scribbly Gum tree almost everywhere in the Australian countryside. Their smooth, golden trunks are etched with nonsense messages: squiggles, scrawls and meandering lines in the bark. They almost look as if they might mean something. These strange doodles are the work of mysterious, almost invisible moths. Not being made of wool, Scribbly Gums don’t seem to mind their artistic little guests, and the distinctive graffiti these moths leave behind only makes the trees more beautiful.
The Scribbly Gum Socks are inspired by the wonderful collaboration between the eucalyptus tree and the secretive Scribbly Moth. They are knit top-down, starting with a 1×1 rib cuff. A fun twisted stitch pattern mimics the iconic scribbles down the front of the leg. The sock is finished with a regular slipped stitch heel flap and gusset and a wedge toe, but of course you can swap them out for your own favourite finishes if you prefer
So thank you to everybody who is participating in this season of the Handmade Sock Society. I hope you’ve enjoyed all the patterns. That feels kind of nice to have them all published now. And yeah, I think, judging by all the finished objects that have been popping up on Instagram and Ravelry for the previous designs, you’ve been enjoying the patterns.
I want to say a huge thank you to my dear friend, Deb @tinkhickman, who knit the sample and photographed the samples, and knit all the socks for the season and photographed them in very trying times with COVID lockdowns and not always being able to photograph them on a model. She has had to model them and photograph them and knit them. So I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Deb and just appreciate her work so much. And I also really appreciate my test knitters. Tracy, TracyRR, who is @comfyredcouch, as well as Karina from Louie & Lola [who] test knit one of the sizes for me, and Deb also test knit them as well as knitting the samples. So thank you so much team. You’re awesome.
So the knit-alongs will continue for another two months, and as usual, we will have prizes for each of the individual socks in the collection, as well as a grand prize for people who have finished… Probably will include people who have finished five or six pairs of the socks in the season. So keep posting those in the Finished Object thread in Ravelry, and I guess we’ll set up a special thread for people who have knit five or six of the designs this season as well. And we’ll be drawing the final winners, I think, in about two months time. So you still have quite a lot of time to knit these latest socks, as well as finish any others you have in progress.
I’m also hosting a knit-along for the Knit 20 for 2021 toy prompt. This was very much a selfish knit-along so that I would focus on knitting my toy for the prompt and a lot of people are joining in as well, so I’m, yeah, really thrilled to have some good company while I knit my toy. And I’ve started with the bear by Susan B. Anderson. I had a kit that I purchased early last year and had arrived, I think, around April last year, or maybe June, I can’t remember. Anyway, I ordered it around March and then COVID hit and the mail slowed right down.
So yeah, I’ve had it in my stash for a while, and I started knitting it. I was really encouraged by Deb. I bought a kit for her as well as me, and so she has one in the UK and I had one sent to me in Australia, and so she’s also started knitting her bear and she texted me to say, “It’s really not that difficult. You can do it.” So with that encouragement, I started and have made really good progress, actually. It was quite quick. She was absolutely right. And so I’m up to the head and there’s a little bit of shaping in the head. So I’ve stalled out a little bit. And then I needed to get some stuffing because you stop it at that point, but now I have the stuffing and I will keep progressing on that project.
And I really want to get to my Sadie Souris by From Cinthia, Cinthia Vallet. I have a kit for that as well. So I’m really, really keen to at least start my little mouse before the end of July. I set the knit-along for June and July, knowing it would take me ages to even get started, which it did, but now I’m up and running, I think I’ll definitely finish the bear. Definitely. If I have to stay up all night, at the end of July I will finish the bear. But hopefully I will do better than that and get onto my little mouse as well.
And also in June, we had a giveaway for my advent/ scrappy designs. I was giving those away. And also, if people purchased those patterns, I decided to donate to the UNHCR. I did this last year with just the habitation throw, and I wanted to celebrate my birthday month with another giveaway and another donation to such an important charity. And so all in all, with those four patterns, we have… People purchased £1,180 worth of those patterns across the four, Land of Sweets, Dust of Snow, Habitation Throw and the Hearten Cowl. And I have converted that to Australian dollars and rounded it up slightly. So that comes to a donation of 2200 Australian dollars to the UNHCR.
So thank you so much to everybody who purchased those patterns in the month of June and helped me celebrate my birthday month. And I had a lovely month. I purchased some lovely things for myself. I got sent some beautiful gifts from friends, including some of my knitting friends, so thank you so much, you are so generous, and I had such a lovely, lovely celebration. That’s all I have for you this week. I will keep it short and sweet and hope that various background noises of puppies, and kids and other family members are not coming through too much in the background, but I don’t want to push it too much.
So just before I sign off, I would like to thank my lovely sponsor, Meadow Yarn.
Have a wonderful week. Happy knitting. And I’ll talk to you again soon.
