Colourwork Knitting at the Yarn Barn

Undaunted by the recent snow my intrepid bunch of knitters arrived brisk and early for a colourwork workshop at the Yarn Barn in Milnrow. My lovely group enthusiastically got stuck into mosaic (slipstitch) colourwork knitting, Fairisle and even knitting continental-style with a yarn in either hand :-)

With Judith as our lovely hostess (and her lovely, spacious shop to be tempted by!), some lovely wristlets and wristwarmers were produced...

Thanks for a lovely day ladies :-)

Oh, nearly forgot -  I'll be doing more workshops for Judith throughout the year, including beginner's crochet, knitting in the round, socks, illusion knits and more, so be sure to check the programme for details :-)

Workshop news! - Blockprinting on Card and Fabric

Fancy a creative Friday workshop blockprinting? I'll be showing you how to make a lovely tote and cards using these beautiful Indian stamps at The Make It! shop in Chorlton. It's fantastically simple and you can create great effects with just basic acrylic and textile paints - and best of all, no drawing or painting skills required!

 Here are some simple examples I printed up on card and fabric.

And here's my finished cotton tote.... fun, fast and easy!

New year new book! - 250 Knitting Stitches by Debbie Tomkies

A couple of weeks ago a very special parcel dropped through the letterbox - even more exciting than yarn! (I know, how is that even possible?).

My latest book has been published!

Working on this latest title has been a real adventure. You might think that compiling 250 different stitches would be a challenge but the real challenge was keeping to 250 and reluctantly leaving some out!

Nonetheless, I hope I have included something for everyone. There are the essentials for newer knitters, as well as more challenging stitches for more experienced knitters, historical traditional stitches from around the world and exciting new stitches from my design portfolio.

My personal favourite aspect of the book is that every stitch has both charted and written instructions. As someone who flits between both I find this approach particularly useful and if you're a confirmed chart/written knitter you'll be able to follow the patterns using your preferred method.

 You can pre-order a copy of 250 Knitting Stitches from us here in the UK (published by Search Press). Readers outside the UK will find it in all good stores stocking Interweave publications where it has the slightly different title, Knit Stitch Dictionary. On which subject, the publishers have used UK terminology in the Search Press edition and US terminology in the Interweave edition so you should always be working with familiar terms and symbols :-)