Episode 156 features a special guest: Lucy Neatby. She’s a former Naval Officer turned master knitting technician, designer, and educator. With the mind of an engineer & inventor, Lucy has become a leading expert, especially in double knitting and finishing techniques, inspiring countless knitters around the world through her teaching materials. We also have a mini interview with Rachel Atkinson of Daughter of a Shepherd who gathers sheep fleeces from British farmers to turn them into beautiful, undyed yarns. And finally, we share three new works-in-progress in Under Construction!
Lucy Neatby - Knitting Technician, Designer & Educator
Above, Lucy explains her concept of “Happy Stitches” and differentiates between perfect and imperfect joins when grafting two rows of knitting together. We also learn various methods of creating pockets without breaking the yarn!
Finding Lucy Neatby
- Ravelry: Lucy Neatby
- Instagram: @lucyknit
- Website: happystitches.wordpress.com
Patron Discount - Lucy Neatby
Lucy Neatby is generously offering Fruity Knitting Patrons a 25% discount on all her video tutorials and ebooks. These cover a wide range of topics, including deep dives into sock knitting, intarsia, various finishing techniques, how to fix mistakes, mastering short rows and so much more.
Lucy is also offering 25% on all her patterns. In addition, The Little Barn Studio, which sells Lucy’s tutorials and patterns online, is offering a 15% discount on all their yarn, spinning fibers, and buttons in their online store.
This is an extensive discount, so we encourage our patrons to browse through the Little Barn Studio online shop: That’s littlebarnstudio.ca . Thank you to Lucy and to The Little Barn Studio for these great discounts! All discount details can be found on our Patreon page.
Daughter of A Shepherd - British Heritage Yarns
We recently travelled to the UK where we interviewed John Arbon Textiles woollen mill. At the time, they were also hosting their annual Open Mill Weekend which is like a mini fibre festival with vendors, workshops and talks! So, we took the opportunity to speak with Rachel Atkinson from the yarn company Daughter of a Shepherd.
Coming from a family of shepherds, Rachel saw firsthand how little farmers like her father earned for their fleeces. Determined to make a difference, she used her mortgage deposit to partner with the small artisan mill, John Arbon Textiles, to turn her father’s undervalued Hebridean fleeces into beautiful, undyed yarns.
Finding Daughter of a Shepherd
- Website: daughterofashepherd.com
- Instagram: @daughterofashepherd
- Ravelry: Rachel Atkinson
- Ravelry: Daughter of a Shepherd Volume 1: Beginnings
Patron Discount - Daughter of a Shepherd
Rachel from Daughter of a Shepherd is generously offering a 20% discount on all full price items in her online store. That includes her three yarn ranges: Ram Jam, Drover Sock and Heritage which come in all natural colours, including chocolate brown, creamy white and a variety of in between shades. Her online shop also includes various Haberdashery items, books, stationary and knitting patterns. Thank you, Rachel, for this wonderful discount! Fruity Knitting Patrons can find all discount details here.
Support the show - Become a Patron
Become a Fruity Knitting Patron for just 5 USD a month to support our YouTube channel.
To support this show, please visit patreon.com/fruityknitting to make a small, monthly contribution. You can chose between three levels of membership: Hebridean, Merino or Shetland Patron. Your donation helps compensate us for the time, work, and money we invest to bring each new episode to life.
Under Construction
The Hills are Alive With the Sound of Knitters - Austrian Alps Retreat Design - Stone Knits
This coming October, we’re hosting two knitting retreats on the banks of Lake Achen in the Austrian Alps. And for the second retreat, the workshops will be led by Charlotte Stone from Stone Knits. As part of the gift bag, Charlotte has designed a special colourwork hat featuring the mountainous landscape surrounding the resort where we will stay. The pattern is called “The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Knitting.” And our participants will receive both the pattern and the yarn to knit it!
Stay up to date on future retreats
Website: artisan-retreats.com
Olive Top
Madeleine has made progress on her Olive Top by Knitting For Olive. It is knitted on 3mm needles and is designed to fit with a negative ease of 4–14 cm so that it will hug the body.
Madeleine’s bust circumference is 85 cm, so size S would give her 8 cm of negative ease, while size XS would give her 14 cm. Looking at Ravelry, she noticed that many Olive Tops sat fairly loose on the knitters’ bodies (which also looks good) and that suggests that the top knits up slightly larger than expected. She might be wrong, but that is why she has decided to go ahead with size XS.
Madeleine’s final thought is that the section under the armholes could look sloppy if knitted too large. So, it may be better to go for the smaller size around the bus, even if you increase further down. All of this is speculation, so we’ll see how it turns out in the end 🙂
Tutorial - Three Ways to knit3tog
The stitch pattern resembles tiny leaves rowed up next to each other. To knit a leaf, you first increase across multiple rows, then knit straight, and finally decrease again. As the leaves are supposed to look symmetrical, the pattern calls for a centred knit3tog. Madeleine demonstrates this technique, and compares it to the right and left leaning knit3tog in a short tutorial!
Jean Cardigan - Kolibri by Johanna
I’m using it to knit the Jean Cardigan by Kolibri by Johanna. It’s a classic raglan cardigan, worked from the top down in one piece. The pattern has wavy stripes made by alternating garter stitch and lace stripes. I think it looks both cozy and elegant. I like the V-neckline (I’m really into V-necks right now), and the romantic balloon sleeves are beautiful too.
What we are wearing
Andrea is wearing the Ariel Pullover by Claudia Quintanilla in the interview with Lucy Neatby and her Joni by Natasja Hornby on the couch. Madeleine is wearing the Skipwith cardigan by Rachel Atkinson in the interview with Daughter of a Shepherd.
Credits
- J. S. Bach, The Well Tempered Klavier, Prelude No. 3 in C-Sharp major, BWV 848, performed by Kimiko Ishizaka, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
- Sláinte, Album: Cup of Tea, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, Lark in the Morning. The Atholl Highlanders
Episode 155-156, the Olive top.
It so happened that my daughter asked me to knit the Olive top shortly after I finally got time to see episode 155. I happened to have yarn in my stash that she liked, så I started right away.
I knit very tightly, which is strains on my fingers both by double decreasing and by increasing, especially right-slanted inscreasing. After having knitted 1 repeat after starting knitting in the round, I have now begun making yarn overs on the round before the increase round. This makes finishing the increases much less hard on my fingers, and it makes the “stems” of the leaves look much nicer too with the stictches having the same size on both the increas round and the round between increases.
Thank you for a good podcast – I also can’t wait to see Madeleine’s wedding look! 🙂
Regards Johanne Bjerregaard, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Oh adding yarn overs is an interesting idea. Would love to see the result 🙂
Andrea and Madeleine, Loved this episode; well, I love them all but don’t usually comment. Your interview with Lucy Neatby was enlightening! I love the way she thinks about knitting and how she generously shared some of her knowledge and techniques. So good for us to keep learning! I am fascinated with the many applications of double knitting and have already started a pair of double-soled socks. I also love neat and innovative finishing techniques, so am following up on Lucy’s classes.
I am probably too late, but Madeleine I wish you all the best for your wedding. If it has already been, I hope the day was all that you hoped for, and best wishes for a wonderful future together. (Like many viewers, I feel like I’ve watched you grow up.)
On a side note; I now follow and watch quite a few knitting video podcasts, but Fruity Knitting was my first and for a long time, my only, and still my favourite. Thanks for your professional and polished presentation and interesting, educational and inspirational content. I hope it’s something you still enjoy doing, and if so, please keep it coming. Tanya, South Gippsland, Vic, Australia.
Dear Tanya,
Thank you for your very sweet message and for your well-wishes! We’re honored to be your favourit podcast. It’s good to hear that you’re learning some valuable new skills from Lucy and have fun following up on her classes. She is a true gem to the knitting community.
Warm regards from Germany!
Madeleine