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Today on the podcast I’m getting ready to head to Ireland for the Knitting Pipeline retreat, so of course I need to consider which projects will come along for the trip. And I also have all the winners from our wonderful Shawl Society 4 giveaway, where members shared their happiest places with us…resulting in lots of warm fuzzies.
Show Links:
(Closed) Giveaway Competition Thread
Winners!
Free pattern or collection:
1. Post 136: by SueCQ
2. Post 13: by LizSolomonWright
3. Post 8: by oakbayknits
4. Post 290: by wishfulthkn
5. Post 78: by mebakes
6. Post 16 by teabird
7. Post 276 by Valeknit
8. Post 180 by cathleen55
9. Post 303 by knitterlyobsessed
10. Post 9 by HelenMc
Grand prize winner:
KnittingCounts with post #24
Clio Pullover by Elizabeth Doherty
Episode 263 Transcript
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Welcome to the Curious Handmade podcast. You’re listening to episode 263. 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 on my website at curioushandmade.com.
Hello, and welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me today. I am recording this episode about a week in advance, because next week, i.e., this week, I will be at the Knitting Pipeline retreat in Ireland, joining some long lost friends and new friends, and I’m so excited. At this point, I’m obviously before the trip. I’m just doing as much as I can to get ready for a week away, and … yeah. But I’m so excited to be meeting people and of course, by the time you’re listening to this, the week of the retreat will almost be over. It’s always a bit confusing when I’m recording a show in advance and trying to chat to you as if time has already passed that hasn’t happened yet. But anyway, I’m sure you’ll forgive me. And I just wanted to not miss a week.
So something I promised on last week’s show was that I would announce the winners of the Shawl Society season four launch giveaway. The prizes are 10 patterns. So the winners can choose the pattern or collection of their choice from my designs on Ravelry. There are a couple of patterns that are not actually published on Ravelry that are published in magazines, so I can’t give you those ones, but most of them are available for prizes. So the winners of the 10 patterns or collections are:
Free pattern or collection:
1. Post 136: by SueCQ
2. Post 13: by LizSolomonWright
3. Post 8: by oakbayknits
4. Post 290: by wishfulthkn
5. Post 78: by mebakes
6. Post 16 by teabird
7. Post 276 by Valeknit
8. Post 180 by cathleen55
9. Post 303 by knitterlyobsessed
10. Post 9 by HelenMc
So, congratulations to the winners of the prizes and what you can do to claim your prize is to message me on Ravelry at HellsBells and just let me know what pattern or collection you would like to receive and we’ll get that sent over to you. The grand prize is a little collection I curated from some things I had to hand, sort of stash, sort of just some nice things I had. And so I have a gorgeous skein of botanically dyed yarn from Ocean by the Sea. And when I was looking in my stash for a prize for this giveaway, I couldn’t go past yarn by Ocean by the Sea, because that is basically the theme of the whole collection. There is also a knitting journal from Laine Magazine, My Knitting Notes; a gorgeous project bag which is by gillymakes, and it’s in a lovely Liberty print. It’s a really sweet bag. This bag was one extra I had after the recent Country House retreat, so I thought I’d like to include it in this giveaway. And, of course, a Shawl Society enamel pin.
The prompt to enter the giveaway was for people to talk about their happy place. So of course it was lovely to read people’s entries and also lots of people posted photos, which was so nice. And I’ve spent a good few hours reading through the thread and I really enjoy these giveaways because it allows me to get to know you a little bit better as well. Get to know my knitters a bit better. And it’s just so interesting, what people say. I think there are a lot of people whose happy place is the beach, which is nice. And I guess I have quite a few happy places, but the beach is definitely one of the main ones. It always takes me back to childhood and fun, happy times growing up.
A lot of people also were forest, woods, mountain people. So they’re more inland. And a lot of you are homebodies. A lot of people’s happy place is their craft room or their couch or sofa, and I can totally relate to that. I’m such a homebody. Being at home is totally my happy place and since I’ve been working from home, I couldn’t be happier. So I totally relate from that, and that was really nice. And then there was quite a contingent of people whose happy place was wherever friends, family, grandchildren and their knitting is. So that was very fun as well. And yes, of course, we can relate to that too.
So without further ado, the winner of the grand prize is Terri. Her Ravelry name is KnittingCounts, and her happy place is her home. She has posted a photo of her lovely house, and she said, “My happy place is my home. If I’m not here, you can be sure I am yearning to be here. I love my house so much I want to hug it.” And it is a very sweet looking house. So, congratulations Terri, and if you could message me on Ravelry at HellsBells and let me know your postal address, I will pop this prize in the mail to you. So, congratulations to all our winners and thank you so, so much to everybody for sharing who entered. And I really, really enjoyed reading through, and I know that you all enjoyed reading each other’s posts.
I can see in the thread that lots of people have posted and wanted to respond to other people, and then realized it’s a competition thread so they’ve deleted their post, and I think that’s a bit of the frustrating thing about these posts, is that you want to just chat and talk in the post and respond to people. It makes it a bit difficult to draw the prizes if we do that. So I kind of wish that Casey would come up with a way in Ravelry that we could have entry posts and just non-entry chatting posts. But anyway, it’s a lovely thread to read through, and if you’re looking for something to cheer you up on Ravelry at some point, these giveaway posts are really lovely to just scroll through and see people’s beautiful places that they like to go all around the world.
I must say that we have some very speedy knitters in the Shawl Society Season Four. A lot of you are well underway with your shawls, if not finished. Probably several of you are finished by now, by the time you’re listening to this. At the time of recording, people are well underway. Really, really loving seeing your yarn choices, and there is a general chat thread in the Curious Handmade group on Ravelry, as well as a finished object thread. I haven’t really thought out prizes for the knit-a-longs for each month, but I think I’ll just try and do prizes as per normal. I will be moving halfway through the Shawl Society, to Australia, so the prizes at some point might get a bit delayed in terms of sending, but I’m trying to be really organized and get things prepared ahead of time. So I will endeavor to do that. But for the time being, for this shawl, it’s all fine. So enter your finished shawls for the Sea Gleam shawl into the thread and we’ll have a little prize for each of the giveaways each month, and a grand prize at the end, which I’ll put together at some point.
At the moment, I am, of course, contemplating my travel knitting for the Knitting Pipeline Ireland retreat. And I think we’re going to have a decent amount of knitting time. There’s quite a lot of knitting sessions earmarked, as well as free time during the week. So I am really, really looking forward to that. I have been working really hard and I am looking forward to a bit of a break, even though it’s a work trip for me. I feel like it’s not real work. The real work has already happened, because I have designed a special shawl for the retreat. The name of the shawl is called Mount Juliet, which is named after the hotel we will be staying at in Ireland. So we’re going to be knitting on that next week, and I’ll share more about that shawl when I get back, in next week’s episode. But I’m looking forward to casting on with retreat attendees.
And I am also going to take my Clio pullover, which is a pullover design by Elizabeth Doherty, and I am yet to cast on, or to start working on the neck band, and I’ve been talking about that for a while. I went to start doing it, but definitely needs some concentration. There’s different rates of picking up stitches around the neckline depending on the stitch pattern in the body, and there’s also one of Elizabeth’s signature braids that goes round, and I haven’t done that before. So I will need to have a, I don’t know, an hour or two or three, concentration to do that. I thought it might be a simple picking up stitches and doing a rib neckband, but no. No, no no no no. But it will look gorgeous, so I want to make sure it’s perfect, because that will be a real feature of the pullover.
So, as a result, I’m still working on the body and hoping it’s not getting too long. I’m sure it will be fine. I’m not really too fussy about the length of my pullovers, although hopefully Elizabeth’s not listening to me saying that, because she’s very particular about where it should fall for best effect. Which is true, obviously. If it falls in the right place it looks better, but I’m just hoping that it will work out. There’s a reason I have a sweatshirt with “winging it” across the front.
What else? So I will be taking my Pebbles and Pathways socks. I’m still working on those socks, which is a design by Marceline Smith, and I have missed the window for the knit-a-long now, but am very much enjoying knitting those socks. I’m on the leg of the second sock. So I’ve finished one of the socks and am a good way through the second. So that might be a finished object fairly soon. I’m not really in a rush to finish those, I’m just really enjoying them, and they’re just really nice easy yet interesting project to pick up from time to time.
The other project I’ll be taking with me is a Piper’s Journey shawl, which is a pattern by Paula Emons-Fuessle. And I’m knitting that in some Quince and Co Tern yarn, which we were very generously given at one of Paula’s Knitting Pipeline Georgia retreats. And the color is mist, and Tern is fingering weight, and it is 75% American wool, 25% silk. So I think that’s perfect for a shawl, and I have three skeins of it, which was a very generous gift from Paula. And the pattern calls for Chickadee, which is sport weight, but I think it will be absolutely fine in a fingering weight as well, I think. I looked on the patterns and I couldn’t see anybody who had used Tern, which kind of surprised me, but a lot of people have used Chickadee, which the pattern calls for. But I think it’s going to be okay.
And I also think that it could be made slightly bigger if you wanted to. I need to look through some of the patterns on Ravelry again, but it’s got a garter stitch body and an applied lace border. So I don’t really see why you couldn’t just knit as much of the body as you wanted and then put the border on at the end and just sort of go to the end of the shawl with the border. So I think that will work. I haven’t had quite a close enough look at the pattern to be able to tell that, but I’m kind of assuming that would work. And if not, I’ll just knit it to the pattern. I kind of fancy a slightly bigger shawl, but I’m not sure if I’d have enough yarn for that anyways.
So I’m looking forward to using this lovely yarn. I haven’t knit with Quince and Co yarn much. I think I went to their Knitting Pipeline Georgia retreat three times, I think. So I have three lots of Quince and Co yarn, and I haven’t used it yet. So I’m really looking forward to using one of the batches. And I’m also using one of the other yarns for a special project as well, which is a secret at the moment.
So that’s my travel knitting. I’m sure a couple more projects will sneak in there. Maybe another pair of socks. I don’t know. That’s plenty, isn’t it? I don’t need to take more than that. I’m planning on just taking carry-on luggage, so maybe it should just be those three projects, that’s plenty. So hopefully I can remain relatively restrained when I’m packing. I’m sure when I am faced with a small carry-on bag I will be able to do that.
The other thing I mentioned on last week’s show was that I’m planning to have transcripts of the podcast, and I’m super excited to say that that is going ahead, and just soon after I recorded, finished recording last week’s episode, I actually received the transcript back from the company. And it was really good, and just a couple of teeny tiny edits were needed in terms of some of the names, which is to be expected. But yeah, really, really high quality, really good value. And so I am going to be providing transcripts for the podcast on curioushandmade.com in the show notes going forward. And if any other podcasters are listening and are interested, I was recommended the company by my podcast editor. And she said she hadn’t used them, but she had heard good things about rev.com. It’s R-E-V.com.
So I tried them out. So they charge one dollar per minute, so it’s really straight forward pricing and the longer I ramble on, the more expensive it is. But that’s okay. Most of my episodes are less than half an hour, so it’s not too bad. I think it’s really good value, and the quality’s really good. And so I’m really pleased to be able to provide that for anyone who needs it. I’m not really sure how to get the word out about that, but hopefully people will discover it, and I will share about it in the newsletter and online a little bit. But if you know anybody who can’t currently listen to the podcast and would like to be able to, please do let them know that that’s going to be available.
I don’t know if I’ll go back and do them. I might try and see if I can see from statistics my top x number, most popular episodes or something and do those. But at the moment, I’m just going to start here and go forward.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the show this week. I look forward to catching up with you again next week. Have a fantastic week. Happy knitting. Talk to you soon.
