Winter Woollies KAL 2015

We have had a busy few weeks since we came back after the Christmas break, so one thing I haven’t had a chance to do is reveal the winner of the Winter Woollies KAL we had towards the end of last year. If you want to read more about what we did, see here and here.

So after a lot of deliberation we choose Bev’s project as our winner!

Bev actually used all the shades in her Hat and Mittens, we only required 5 or more to be used but we thought she put them together so well in her finished project, look at that lovely corrugated rib! For her prize we sent her a copy of our book Knit Real Shetland and a selection of 2ply Jumper Weight in her choice.

If you want to see some more examples of what people made, have a look at the finished objects thread on Ravelry here. If you have any ideas of different kinds of Knit a Longs you would like us to do, leave a comment here or send us an email: mailroom@shetlandwoolbrokers.co.uk we had great fun doing it and would love to do more!

Happy Knitting xx

Winter Woollies KAL: colour and patterns

Hello! We are so excited as to how many of you have picked up the colours for the Winter Woollies KAL! there is still plenty of time left to get involved so today I thought I’d share some of our thought on the colours and a few ideas for free patterns available on Ravelry.

As you know the Knit A Long requires you to use at least four shades so we (Me -Ella, Amy and Kharis) tried to pick 2 lots of four shades of 2ply Jumper Weight that worked together. Our first group is shades 1,203,FC34 and FC41

To us these colours make us think of dark nights, snow, ice, stormy skies and seas.. all typical of a winter in Shetland! our second group is FC43, FC38, 65 and 9113

These colours are more ‘inside’ inspired shades – roaring fires, christmas trees, baking and mulled wine.

We hoped  by having these two groups it might give people more ideas – of course you can mix and match to your hearts content, it is just a starting off point and by changing one or more you get a different look –

Sometimes it can be daunting to try and come up with a pattern too, even once you have decided on your colours.. To that end I thought I’d show you some fun patterns all available for free on Ravelry – they all call for fingering weight yarn which is what 2ply Jumper Weight comes under and a few even call for 2ply Jumper Weight exactly (Fair Isle Cuffs, Kite Mitts, Shwook hat) so all you have to do is pick your colour arrangement..

clockwise from top left; fair isle cuffs, kites, far me socks, classic colourwork cowl

retro sampler, snowflake fingerless mitts, solidago socks, shwook hat

sheep may safely graze, tourbillon, stem and leaf cowl, fair isle flower sock

You will see some of the patterns only use 2 or 3 shades, all this means is you will have to add a couple more shades in to get to your 4 colours. This is easily done by doing a bit of background shading or foreground shading. If you feel you need to rechart the Fair Isle into your colours there are a few good free options – one is this Chartmaker which is free, there are also a few good tutorials online about using Microsoft excel to colour a chart (like this one)

I hope this has given you some ideas! We cant wait to see peoples ideas begin to take shape – remember to tag your project on ravelry and instagram using #winterwoolliesKAL and to share your projects in the group on the Jamieson & Smith Lovers group page

Happy Knitting!