| Skills, snow, sales, US, UK and OZeyarns |
| Welcome to Signatur Newsletter #20 - Whether it's your first or 20th, I hope you'll find plenty of knitting treats to tempt you, teach you and tickle you. |
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| Wonderfully for Sydneysiders we're having a very chilly time with some of the coldest days in over 50 years! It actually snowed in the Blue Mountains early last week - a knitter's paradise! |
| Studio Open Day |
 It's been a big year - and now it's time to
clear the shelves!!!
There are Signatur samples, discontinued designs and garments knitted in discontinued yarns & colours, all availabe at my Killarney Heights studio.
Saturday 28th August 10am to 4pm
Sunday 29th August 1pm to 4pm
Yes, you are welcome to bring friends and family.
And yes, you can still place on order for a garment or a kit
And of course you can visit the studio at other times
Simply call & make a time from Tuesday to Saturday
Ring Tel: 02 9453 9091 or email Jane for the studio address.
Overseas visitors warmly welcomed. |
| KNITTING CLASSES OZ |
You'll find details for my Studio classes below, but here's the dates & times
Mitres by Design Fri 27th 9.00am - 12.30pm
Intarsia Knitting Fri 27th 1.30pm to 5pm
Mitres by Design Sun 29th 9.00am to 12.30pm
These aren't beginners' classes - all levels of knitters are welcome.
If you can cast on, knit and purl you'll be fine!
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| Back in the US and UK |
| After a year of Swing Swagger Drape promotion, Stitches & classes, October see's me return to the USA for Stitches, more classes and hopefully onto the UK for the Knitting & Stitching show (to be confirmed) |
| KNITTING CLASSES USA |
  Join me for Mitre, Intarsia and Fit & Style classes across America at your favourite local yarn stores & at my favourite show. |
| Farewell sweet Slub - be quick |
 SALE - One of my favourite yarns has been discontinued: Mollydale's 8ply slub which I've been using for the Coco Slub Jacket (left). I have enough yarn left for a couple of knitting kits. Five ready-made garments will be included in the sale A$555 down to A$414 - 25% off! Have a look at the Coco Cardigan in all its colourways here.
Leather Bag Straps - Again I can no longer buy the colours: I have about 6 pairs & some single straps remaining - pinks & reds. These can be used for knitted bags & fabric bags - they are beautifully made. There are two styles 70cm long and 100cm which have the buckle feature. These were $60 a pair and $80 - now half price to clear.
As well as garments in discontinued yarns there will be some balls of yarn as well, along with the bag handles and hand-made buttons. |
| Left: Coco Slub Jacket which incorporates one hand dyed yarn with 7 solid colours. I used this design in the last newsletter to talk about variegated yarns. I continue the story below with Colorado. |
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| KNITTING CLASSES - follow links for more details |
 Mitres by Design
Also called modular knitting, domino's or magic squares. Learn the basic Mitre and how this grows into a seamless piece. As a designer these are so much fun! I can create A lines, Boxes, knit flat or form a tube. In the class we work a sample from the basic mitres to half, full and quarter mitres, increasing stitches to create a flair in a garment too! Friday morning class, Sunday morning class
Intarsia Knitting
Often called Picture knitting. The Metro Coat is Intarsia. Cast on in blocks of colour & knit vertical columns of colour from a diagram. Once you learn the basics of interlocking, or twisting the colours at the join, you soon see results. Learn to master tangling yarns & then how to follow a graph. You may not want to knit anything too demanding but the skills learnt in this class wil let you add coloured cables to a basically plain design - great for kid's knits. |
| Juliana from ozeyarn.com lets me play |
 Running the studio & website, traveling & teaching in the USA last year was challenging. Since I'll keep doing this because it's a lot of fun, I looked at a changes to sigknit.com. Then, along came Juliana Ellis and Ozeyarn. Juliana relaunched ozeyarn.com in July following a break, but only after spending 7 years establishing a wonderful clientele of discerning knitters from 40 countries. |
| Signatur 8ply now available from ozeyarn |
 Juliana's reputation was based on supplying only quality .jpg) yarns, primarily but not exclusively from Australia and New Zealand. That's why it's so exciting to have Signatur 8ply available through Ozeyarn But there's more. She's let me design here first two Projects of the Month, gorgeous Fingerless Gloves & fun Mitre socks. They're designed to look great but just as importantly, to help you learn the wonderful Mitre knitting technique via a simple kit project. Visit Ozeyarn and click on Project of the Month for more. |
| The Longest yard - why it's different and what to do |
Yarn quantities in yards - what to do! - I receive many questions regarding Swing, Swagger, Drape when materials are listed by yardage. This practice allows yarns to be substituted, which is essential when selling a book to an international market. Yarn shops simply won't stock a book if they don't have the yarn, which makes absolute sense. At the base of a pattern page the 50g ball quantities used for the garments photographed are also given.
FAQ - Why does the knitting kit contain 22 balls when the instructions say 20 balls.
Trendsetter's Merino 6 has 135 yds to 50g - it is only just an 8ply thickness.
Signatur 8ply has 100 metres per 50g - 110 yds.
So if a designs calls for 1350yds simpky divide by 135yds = Trendsetter 10 balls /
divide by 110yds = 13 balls
The Ozeyarn site allows designs from the book to be sold by quantities per size with all the length options, and Juliana has included additional choices to purchase with buttons as well. |
| New Yarns - Colorado variegated |
 After the Melbourne Craft show I went yarn shopping and found Colorado by Heirloom.
What attracted me first was the subtle Olive, but what surprised me more was the differences in the variegation throughout the colour range with Red and Denim - like the Olive - quite subtle. Yet the brown and grey was quite bold.
I thought this would make an interesting follow-on to last month's story on varigated yarns. At the same time tieing this into my teaching in the USA, when I talk about changing commercial patterns. So I found a great cable sweater with a collar to apply this too. |
| How swatching helps the design process |
With the more colourful or variegated colours the yarn creates the interest. A simple all over texture like double moss or rib is perfect.
I enjoy knitting a stitch pattern, so I pick subtle hand dyes; then I can at least add a cable to the knitting.
I swatched to demonstrate how the differences in the contrasts
made me approach the swatches as a designer.
All swatches are 32sts with variations on the 6 st repeat.
The different cables repeats change the rows per repeat, but can
still be applied to the same pattern base. |
| Swatch 1: 4mm needles in Olive |
 Swatch 1: 4mm needles in Olive - this has a low contrast to the colours.
The pattern repeat has the cable twist every 4th row over 4sts, this creates quite a firm cable twist - see how much narrower the cable is than the K4. This also changes the row tension.
I found the K4 without the cable had a little buckling happening - It should be a needle size less - 3.75mm as the swatch is also floppy. |
| Swatch 2: 3.75mm needles and the brown yarn |
 Swatch 2: 3.75mm needles and the brown yarn - high contrast between the beige and chocolate.
I made this swatch without the cables, as the yarn creates the pattern. With the smaller needle size and no cables this swatch is the same physical size as swatch 1. Working a garment from the pattern without the cables will change the fit of the garment. |
| Swatch 3: 3.75mm needles in Grey. |
 Swatch 3: 3.75mm needles in Grey.
The contrast is mid tone - not as subtle as the Olive and not as bold as the Brown.
I have made the cables 6sts every 8th row - with this variegated yarn I think the larger cable works better than the 4st cable.
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| Swatch 4: 3.75 needles and Signatur 8ply |
 Swatch 4: 3.75 needles and Signatur 8ply.
Classic yarns achieve great stitch definition.
This is the original stitch pattern with 4 stitches per cable. I started the sample twisting the cable every 6th row, then the right hand cable the last 4 cable twists are every 4th row as the original stitch pattern. |
| The cable pattern tension is for st-st - looking at my Swatch 4. When twisting the cables every 4th row I lose 1 stitch in width per cable - 12 stitch repeat = 11sts x 2 = 22sts - so 2 pattern repeats to 10cm. Should I wish to knit the sweater without cables as swatch 2 I'll get a larger sweater as I will effectively have 2sts more every two pattern repeats - so if we have 10 repeats over the garment we'll have 20sts = almost 10cm/4". |
| Wonderfully, Juliana has added Colorado to ozeyarn.com |
| I will add the variants I have created with the swatches below for Juliana to add to the pattern and also include notes on how this will effect the finished cheat size of the pattern. |
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| Looking forward to seeing you at our open day here in Sydney or at a knitting class or show in the USA. I do still have confirm my plans for the UK. |
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| If you'd like to ask a question about anything in this newsletter - or anything at all, please email Jane. Thanks for your support - Laura, Petra, Meg, Sue, and I look forward to seeing you in the knitting circle! |
