Marina Skua Podcast Ep 34 – Summer wool knits, gratitude, a bit of basketry and a garden visit

My name is Marina, I'm a knitwear designer and yarn dyer based in Bath, in the south west of England. And on this channel I talk about my craft projects, mostly knitting and yarn related, but also some seasonal making as well. Now I think in the last video I was sort of complaining about how much rain we'd had recently considering we'd had such a dry month the month before and over the last few weeks we've had so much beautiful weather which has meant I've been able to spend a lot more time outside, been able to enjoy the countryside going on lovely long walks and working outside in the garden which has been really lovely, just being able to take some of my work out to a little shady patch and enjoy the birdsong while I'm working on the computer or on knitwear designs is just really really lovely. But today it's clouded over and it's starting to rain a bit which honestly the countryside needs. We seem to be going through spells of lots of rain and then no rain and then lots of rain again and I'd rather they just alternate a bit more frequently, you know a few days of rain a few days of sun would be much better. But the fact that it's a little bit cooler today means that I can double up on the wool layers and show you some of the things I've been working on recently. Now the cardigan I'm wearing is one that I released the pattern for yesterday and if you've been watching for a while or seen the podcast before you might have seen this either in its in progress stage or when I finished it a couple of months ago, since then it's been in test knitting and I encourage you to go and look if you're able to use Ravelry, go on Ravelry and check out the tester projects because there are so many amazing colour combinations there and beautiful versions that people have made. This is the Galdor cardigan which is G-A-L-D-O-R and I've had a few questions about what it means. It is an old English word as a lot of my pattern names are and it means like an incantation or enchantment which is just, I wanted the pattern to be quite whimsical and yeah, not entirely grounded in reality, something that you can sort of take yourself out to the woods and forget what time period you're in and just yeah, it's very floaty and really nice for layering. So it's got these nice loose sleeves, it's got colour work around the neck and around the cuffs on the sleeves and I'm really, really pleased with it because it's something that is, I don't know, when I designed it I thought that it was a little bit less perhaps wearable than some of my other designs because it's quite an unusual shape, it's definitely not really following any kind of current trends as far as I can tell but I originally came up with the design in response to a call for submissions from Emma from Wooly Mammoth Fibre Company and the concept she came up with was really interesting, it was about the intersection between the arts and crafts movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s and how they took inspiration from the medieval period and so you've got this interesting thing of the aesthetics of two very different time periods and seeing the things they have in common and there was a lot of appreciation of making things slowly, doing things by hand and sort of the idea that if you're going to make something, make it useful but also make it beautiful and it's a concept I really love and it's something I wanted to explore a little bit and it's been really, really wonderful as a layering piece. I didn't expect it to be quite as wearable as it is because I kind of thought it's got these loose sleeves, your forearms are still going to get cold, it doesn't close, it's actually so good for layering when it's a bit warmer and the evenings start to cool down and it's just something you can throw on but it's still really loose and comfortable so it doesn't feel like you're being swamped by anything. So yeah, it's something I'm really, really proud of. I've been amazed by the response so far to the pattern. People have been really, really kind and encouraging. I'm hoping to see lots of people knitting it. Emma of Woolly Man with Fibre Company had a shop update recently with some yarns that are the same specs that I used for this one. I used limited edition yarns so she's got some of the same yarn, so the Dorset that I've used as the white background colour in the colour work, she has had some of that. She's also had a new Sfartflus yarn spun up to the same spec as the main colour I've used here and it's really fun to have a design that ties into those smaller batches that Emma's creating from local fibre that she is able to source within her area and find a useful wool that otherwise probably wouldn't be used for anything useful or beautiful. So yeah, I'm going to show you some of the details because it's got a more interesting construction than you might suspect just by looking at it and so I'm going to show you those. So I will take it off to do so. So the whole thing is actually worked in the round because there's a lot of stock in it and with the colour work and things I do not like doing colour work flat. My purl tension is terrible, I've mentioned this before and so I decided to do the whole thing in the round and then it's got quite a few steeks so I recorded a video which is a few videos back on my channel. I'll put a link to that in the description box below where I'll have all the details of the pattern and everything and that just shows a fairly detailed tutorial for how to do the steeks and also what the garment looks like at the stage where you're about to do the body steeks just so you can sort of get your head around it because I know that steeking can be a bit intimidating and I can totally see why. I was scared when I was doing this because if I'm following someone else's pattern and I'm doing steeks it's fine because I know that they've done all of the work beforehand, they know that everything works out and so I'm just creating that someone else has created and that's fine but with this there was the fact that I couldn't try it on once the body was completed before I was doing the steeks and usually with doing designs there's always the knowledge that if it goes wrong I can rip it back, I can start again, you know even if it's a bit troublesome to rip it back I can do that, I can rewind up the yarn, I can give it a rinse, I can steam it, whatever, the yarn is usable again. If you steek something that you aren't sure about you can't use that yarn because you've cut the whole thing in half so for it was the first time I was nervous about steeking because I just wanted to make sure that I got it right and I was so relieved when I did it because you know all of my calculations had worked out beautifully, the fit was exactly what I was hoping for and yeah really pleased with that. So the video is there to sort of talk you through it and hopefully try to make it a bit less scary because you can go and see on Ravelry that a lot of other people have made it, have done the steeks, it's worked out fine for them and yeah it's not as scary as it seems and it's also quite fun just slicing your knitting in half is satisfying somehow. So it's steeked and then you pick up stitches for the front band which is again worked in the round and then there's another weird steek there where there are details for that in the pattern and I've done it so that the front band and the sleeves are completely faced so you knit those in a contrast colour and then stitch them down which completely hides the floats of the colour work because I didn't, like with it being an open cardigan and not one you can button up, I didn't want it to sort of fly open and then you just see all the floats here I think it would be a bit ugly so I wanted to make sure that there was a really nice quality finish on all the bits that you might see when you're wearing it. So the cuffs are completely faced as well and they're stitched down to give this sort of nice wide sleeve like that and then this is a bit I'm particularly pleased with at the back we've the little vines are done symmetrically to make sure that they're both growing up on the front and then on the sleeves they both grow around in the correct direction so you can see there and yeah I really like the little detail at the centre back neck I think it's really cute and so yeah it's a really fun design it's one that I'm very very proud of and I'm really pleased that other people seem to be enjoying it as well because it's it's me finding a style that is a bit more me and okay I'm gonna do a tiny bit of story time. When I was a teenager I wanted to be a costume designer so I did a lot of work with operas I first got into sewing in a serious way because of the costumes in Lord of the Rings which I thought were incredible if you didn't know I am quite into dorky stuff like that you shouldn't be surprised yes really loved the mixing of historical and fantasy elements I think a lot of fantasy costumes can be a bit gaudy and I really liked the way that Lord of the Rings costumes felt historical even though they kind of weren't they draw from historical elements which is something that I like to do I like to take a very specific thing of a style and take it into something completely different so yeah I wanted to be a costume designer I spent so much time sewing historical patterns not doing things completely correctly in terms of like I didn't go the whole hog with the hand stitching everything and sourcing period accurate fabrics and stuff I was just enjoying myself did a lot of work on operas in the wardrobe department which was loads of fun and then you know I went to university and studied languages and it was all very different and I kept drawing and did some knitting and things but I used to dress like really quite weirdly when I was in sixth form and could wear whatever I wanted I go in wearing like massive skirts with giant petticoats and stuff because it's like I'm 17 and the way I dress in this environment literally doesn't matter so I can dress in whatever way I choose and it's loads of fun and I knew that it wasn't going to be something I'd do forever but that was super fun and it is really nice after quite a long time to sort of come back to the point where I am designing things that are possibly slightly off kilter a little bit unusual but are very much my personal style and that that seems to resonate with people and I'm able to do that and kind of make a living from it it's quite amazing so yeah I want to say thank you to all the people who have got the kaldor cardigan pattern already and yeah so now I'm going to show you this top which is one that I have just finished and is the next in my design queue so this one is one that's designed again to be sort of the summery weather but an English summer where sun isn't actually guaranteed and you might want to feel summery but also have a bit of warmth going on as well so it's in a very lightweight yarn and the yarn is a vintage 24 ply by wool decanted I think I mentioned them in a previous episode when I was working on this top it's a really really lovely yarn it is soft it's lovely to wear against the skin I really love this natural colour it's like it's I mean it's basically beige that's the the word beige is so very uninspiring I think we go with oatmeal when you want it to sound a bit nicer but it's I think a mostly white yarn white wool with some brown blended in which just gives it that warm shade and so yeah I have done just stand up a bit so I can show you so it's got a split hem you start at the bottom and then it's just got these little traveling stitch details down sides and then at the underarm they split and one goes up over the shoulder on the front and one goes over on the back and then you've got this nice round neck it's one that is fairly simple there's not a huge amount going on the stitch pattern is very very easy to remember you can sort of get the hang of it after a couple of repeats which means that most of the body and things is fairly mindless but isn't because you've got the little panels at the side it has a little bit more going on just to add some interest and keep you engaged slightly so yes this is one that I'm just finishing off with my tech editor just ironing out and making sure the pattern's in really good shape then it's going to go to test knitters and it'll be released later in on in the summer probably towards the end of August so yes if you want to join my mailing list for test knitters so if you want to hear when I have new test knits coming out I'll put a link to that below you can sign up there and that will mean that you are notified when new test knits are open to apply for it doesn't mean that you'll be signed up automatically to join the test knit it just means that you know when they are open and then you can decide whether or not you want to take part and yeah I do want to give a quick shout out to all of my test knitters because you know test knitting is a lot of work there's generally a deadline that I think for a lot of people is slightly faster than you would want to knit it yourself I know that having a deadline on projects is always a little bit nerve-wracking especially if it's not something you do for a job and so many of my test knitters have done really really lovely jobs so I just want to appreciate that so I'm going to show you a sneaky peek of one other design that I've just finished off the sample for I did show a sneaky peek in the last episode I think I just showed the hem off in that one but as I finish the sample now and I'm too excited not to talk about this I'm going to show you a very quick glimpse of the whole thing this is a design for making stories for issue seven so it won't actually be published until March next year because you know as an indie designer it can feel like some of the lead times on designs are fairly long you know you come up with the idea you might approach a yarn company to see if they want to offer yarn support then you make the sample then you do tech editing then it goes through test knitting then you've got to get everything ready for publication whereas in a printed magazine you've got that multiplied by however many patterns there are and you've also got the whole printing process and getting it out to distributors and everything so it's yeah it's a whole deal and so I don't want to wait until March to get excited about this I'm just going to show you really quickly yee so it's a really fun design it's called fan light um and yeah it's once again me doing something that kind of feels like a little bit weird but I really really like it and I'm really glad that um Annalisa and Claire at Making Stories liked it enough to want to publish it um it's really exciting this is knitted in my own yarn in mendic four ply so the body is the undyed white sheep colorway so that's the sunny base and then the two contrast colors are bloom and rose both on the stormy colorway uh the stormy base sorry and so yeah I'm super pleased with it it's got some lovely details and I know they're going to do a beautiful job photographing that and putting it into that lovely magazine and I've worked with Making Stories quite a lot they are friends of mine and you know when I submitted it I was just thinking this is a bit weird like this would work fine as an independently published pattern but are they going to go for it for a magazine and I'm really really glad that they liked it enough uh to want to publish it so yeah it's very exciting it's still I think I've mentioned before I still feel like quite a new designer even though I've been publishing patterns since the end of 2018 um yeah it's still it still all feels there are lots of exciting things going on and it's nice to see that people are liking what I'm doing um so yes now I'm going to show you a slightly strange project um I've been doing a lot of quite fine knitting um I mean this top I knitted on 2.5 millimeter needles um despite that it worked up really quite quickly um and the yarn was so like smooth and lovely to work with but it didn't feel like it dragged at all um but as a sort of counter to that I wanted to do something big and chunky and slightly mad um enter the basket of weirdness um so in here I've got all sorts of yarn um that are all things I had in my stash we've got a whole variety of stuff from commercial ones to bits of hand spun to um some that I used to use for weavings uh for like wool hangings and things uh there's a whole mishmash of stuff in here and I'm making a big giant chunky cardigan thing um I have talked more about this um this particular project in a video on Patreon where I've talked about uh how I'm using the yarn and the stitch patterns and how I'm sort of putting everything together um I think that once it's finished I will put it up not as a pattern but as a kind of recipe uh on Patreon um just for subscribers there um I don't want to do it as a pattern because so much of it depends like I won't be able to do yarn estimations because I'm working with so many different things and holding them together and it yeah the margins would be ridiculous um so I think as a recipe thing it'll work quite well um so yes it's very much my colors when it's finished I will be able to truly blend in with my sofa um and yeah it's colors that make me really happy I'm working on eight millimeter needles um which is super fun I don't remember the last time I used needles this big because I've just been doing a lot of quite fine knitting um so yeah big mad chunky project I'm going to be working on that again soon now that I've finished off these couple of samples and I'm very much at a sort of in-betweeny stage with my knitting where usually when I finish things I immediately want to cast on new things um and while I do have quite a few designs queued up um I am I'm not taking a break but I'm just taking a few days of like not knitting um and then I'll be getting back into it uh but I am I've been doing more basket making um which if you've been watching the last few episodes you will have seen a bit of this one by the way because I know people will ask I didn't make this basket this is one that was given to me uh by a family member um it's a beautiful one uh really really lovely willow and yes so not handmade but I've got a couple here that are one isn't quite finished um because I have run out of material and I need to go foraging in the woods so the first one is one I made over the weekend and it's not very good I will admit um up to the point where you reach the edging I think it's very nice but then after that the edging is all a bit ugh it's still one of the things that I am not very good at and I also think in this case it was a poor choice of material um so I used split bramble as the sort of the framework and then I used dandelion stems as the weavers um and something that I think dandelions get a bad rap um they're they're nice plants they're very useful you can use them for dye you can eat them you can eat every single part of a dandelion plant and they also smell absolutely lovely in the dye pot they smell sweet and floral and really really nice because you don't think of them as a scented flower but this smells really really nice and yeah it's got that sort of sweetness to it which I just didn't expect at all um so yes strange little basket uh made from weeds from my garden um again probably too small to be useful for much I can use it for storing needles and things while I'm darning um but yeah you know free material and a way to kill some time whilst watching nonsense television um and yes so this is I haven't tried a little woven base like this before uh so that was fun and nice I'm just trying out different techniques and seeing what I can learn because I do have some willow soaking at the moment out in the garden um which I'm hoping to be able to weave with in the next few days if there's a window where it's not raining because the kind of basket I would like to make is going to take a lot of space and if I do it in here I will probably break things so I'm hoping to be able to do some weaving outside um and yes that's actual nice willow that has been specially prepared for basketry uh so I want to make sure I do a good job so I've been practicing my techniques as a sort of run-up to that to make sure that I don't waste it uh so this one I'm really pleased with how it's coming along you can see it's not finished uh it's got a big old gap in the middle because I've run out of ivy um but this one I'm quite pleased with how it's going I think it's a really nice shape um I like the slight differences in colour of the ivy I'm not sure how well they're coming across um I'm really pleased with my little eye of god where the handle joins on um I think I've done that more neatly than I have done on previous baskets so my skills are improving um but yes we've just got some gaps to fill in and so next time we go for a walk I'll make sure to cut and gather some more ivy and dry those out and get them all ready for finishing off this uh one thing I do wish I had done is I've made the frame so you can see here you've got these cross pieces which are what you weave the ivy in and out of um the frame is made of bramble and I wish that I had included another strand of bramble in the handle because it's just a little bit flimsy feeling um and so I can't I can't really do much about that in terms of structure because it's kind of integral to construction of the basket but I think what I'm going to do is um I have some vinco growing in my garden uh periwinkle and it needed cutting back so I've got a lot of vines of fat that I've gathered which is much finer than the ivy and so it'll be able to take a smaller bend that's a strange way of saying that basically the ivy I think I need I'm I'm still working on picking the best ivy because um some of them are too brittle some of them are just too um too weak and so the ones that brittle where you have to bend them back on themselves around the frame here I don't know if you can see but they can sort of crack a little bit which I think structurally it'll be fine but um it doesn't look very nice and so I'd like to get a little bit better at knowing sort of how to pick the ivy and judge which ivy I'm picking um and how to soak it for the correct amount of time as I say I'm not intending to become a master basket maker or anything it's just something I'm enjoying working on and improving my skills um so yes I think I'm going to take the periwinkle and just loop it around the handle um and I might be able to get a few extra strands of periwinkle going along there just to lend it a little bit more sort of substance um yes so basket making um honestly not something I really predicted getting into um in fact I there are quite a few things where I've done craft I've attended craft workshops um things like basket making and ceramics and pottery um things where I don't necessarily want to get all of the kit to be able to do it at home um so I screen printing excellent example there is no way I'm gonna do screen printing at home but having done a screen printing workshop uh was really really fun um I used to do a lot more workshops when I was not self-employed um because I had the means to do that a lot more frequently now less so uh hence being very excited about being able to make things with free stuff I find on the floor um but yes so I did a basket making course um at Farnham Maltings um which is a lovely place if you're able to get there for workshops they're really good and lovely um yeah so I did a basket making day course there learned how to make a basket I still have that basket it still smells amazing because that cured willow just smells wonderful um and that was sort of that I was like right I've done my workshop I've got my basket that's great I didn't think I was actually going to get into it and that was years ago and then yeah the realization that you can make baskets um not from things that are specially grown and harvested for that purpose but just things that you can find in your local area um it's just really exciting to me and yeah it's been lovely to get into a little bit now one last thing in this episode I'm going to do something I've not done in a while and share a garden visit not my own garden but one we went to go and see a couple of weeks ago we went to Brian's Ground in Herefordshire which is a few hours drive from us and we went for their closing weekend because I believe the property is being sold and so is now closed to the public but I just wanted to share that because it's a really really beautiful garden and I thought some of you might enjoy it and so I'll have that just after the end of everything here and so if you want to keep up with me between podcast episodes you can follow me on Instagram where I post fairly regularly you can sign up to my newsletter on my website where you'll get emails once or twice a month and you can also join on Patreon where I share bonus videos and you can also get discounts and access to zoom calls and just recently I've added a discord group for patrons only which is something that is only just beginning so it's still very small but hopefully will be a really nice way to share projects we're working on and encouragement and inspiration and help each other out with the things that we're working on I do want to say a massive thank you to all of my patrons there have been quite a few people who have joined up recently which is just so lovely it's really really nice to have people there and hopefully we'll get to the point where I have enough patrons that will be able to support me doing an additional podcast episode every month so if that's something you're interested in please do check out the link below and every single subscription really really helps and so until next time I hope you enjoy your little garden visit. Bye-bye!