Hi there, lets continue the presentations of all the wonderful talents I met at the I Knit Fandango show in London this May. I didn’t have the time to post yesterday so we are a day behind “schedule” but I’m sure you’ll forgive me for that. Long weekends are not necessarily good production weekends and this one was spent with friends and family so not much knitting or writing got done:)

Now on to today’s subject. So at the I Knit Fandango show my booth was across from the talented Linda of Kettle Yarn Co and she was assisted by her friend and designer Renée Callahan of East London Knits. Both Linda and Renée were present at Unwind Brighton last summer but I did not get to know Linda until now. Renée however I did get to know last year and was pleased to get a chance to meet her again in London.

Linda founded her company Kettle Yarn Co in 2013 and her focus is on luxury yarn, quality blends of British yarns that are ethically sourced. She has a great sense of colour and the yarn bases she has chosen to work with are all gorgeous. Her booth was full not only of her beautiful yarns but also with knits made from her yarns – shawls and sweaters and those all drew people in and made people want to cast on for one of those in her yarn immediately!

Linda is an independent hand dyer like myself only she has reached a stage where she is able to focus solely on her yarn business as a full time job – something I currently dream of:) Another thing that inspires me about Linda is that she has worked hard to create colourways that she can repeat and thus dye a number of skeins in the same colour which in turns makes it possible for you to knit a large piece such as a sweater using skeins from the same dye lot or if not the same dye lot at least of an identical colour. I need to think more like Linda and take her as an example and come up with my own repeatable colourways because at the moment I’m all in the “inspiration of the moment” phase which means my yarns are more for small projects such as mittens, socks, hats, cowls, shawls and not so much for larger projects like  sweaters (unless you place a private order for X number of skeins for your project).

You can visit Linda’s website/shop/blog here

Like I said above, Linda had a helper in her booth, her friend Renée Callahan which you may know as the designer behind East London Knits. Here she is in Linda’s booth (Kettle Yarn Co)

  Many of the designs displayed in the Kettle Yarn Co booth were designs by Renée knit with yarns from Kettle Yarn Co. Renée has a background in fashion studies and works as an independent knitwear designer. She self publishes her own patterns and also does patterns for third party publications. One of the things that differentiates her from many designers of hand knits, is the fact that she is also a skilled machine knitter. On her website/blog you can see some of her work as she does commission designs as well as her own projects. I don’t know if the machine knitting skill adds to her performance as a hand knit designer but I do know that it does not subtract from it:) You can buy Renées patterns on Ravelry and if you click here you’ll be taken directly to her Ravelry pattern shop.

As a fan of her designs I own a few of her patterns myself such as:

 Beetlebum shawl

 Frost and Flame shawl

 Rhombolution double knit scarf

The first picture is of a shawl called Beetlebum which was actually gifted to me by Renée herself! Thank you soooo much Renée 🙂

Here are some pictures from her Ravelry page:

 I love the combination of patterns and how the diamond shapes are “hugged” with a “stripey” lace pattern on each side.

Renée gave me this pattern last week and I immediately went about casting on. I cast on twice, once using a lace weight yarn and once using a fingering weight yarn. The pattern calls for lace but when looking at the pictures I thought the yarn looked a bit heavier than the lace yarn I had on hand so I decided to try both fingering and lace.

  You can clearly see the different results here. I like both. The fingering gives this a “sturdier” look and is maybe a more “everyday” look whereas the lace version is “ethereal”, delicate and lightweight. After sharing my little test knits on Instagram I decided to go for the lace version which was getting more likes than the fingering version (but I just may cast on for the fingering version anyway after this one is done). And so I undid everything and cast on FOR REAL.

Like I said before, this weekend I did not get much knitting done but I did knit a bit in the car on my way to our family event and before going to bed. After all a day with no knitting at all is just not an option 🙂 So here is where I’m at today:

 Looking good so far I think.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about these two young and talented ladies and encourage you to visit their websites and support their work by sharing what you like and why not purchase a pattern/skein or two:)

That’s all for today. More fun stuff to discover tomorrow, until then take care and have a lovely day.