Teaching at Alston Hall

After teaching at Made I went on to Alston Hall as I was booked to teach a one day workshop on 'Introduction to Crochet' and then a residential weekend on 'New fibres, eco friendly yarns and traditional stitches'.



Alston Hall is a lovely old manor house that is owned by Lancashire Adult Learing. They run a huge range of courses throughout the year both during the week and over weekends. I have taught a one day and residential weekend course there for the last 3 years of so.

Both the crochet and the weekend course where fully booked so it was a busy weekend. The atmosphere at the hall is very relaxed and fully catered so all the students have to do is enjoy their course.


The 'Introduction to crochet' went very well and all the students could crochet by the end of the day. The centre will be offering this course again but not until next November 2009. Next November we will also be offering a follow on crochet day workshop to develop basic skills, read patterns and understand how to shape garments.

Some of the students on the crochet workshop stayed on for the weekend course on new fibres etc. Having given the students an overview of where many of these new fibres come from and how they are made on the Friday night we moved on to trying out these different yarns in a range of fibres.


I provided yarn packs for each student which included samples of bamboo, hemp, linen, cotton/soya mix, ramie, milk fibre, milk fibre/wool mix, corn fibre and wool/seaweed mix. We started looking at knit and purl patterns and I explained how a traditional Gansey is knitted including demonstrating the knotted (Channel Island) cast on. Later in the day we moved on to cables, travelling and twisted stitches and on the Sunday we looked at lace.

I also arranged for a friend, Bev from Knitting4fun, to bring some of her yarns, kits and other bits and pieces to the hall. I should apologies to the students for tempting them to spend money or more nice yarns!

Although it was tiring I enjoyed teaching the course and hope the students enjoyed it as well.

Teaching in The Wirrel

Last week I was invited to teach a one day workshop at 'Made' in Wallasey. I arrived on Tuesday evening to teach Wednesday. Val, the owner of the shop was booked to demonstrate the 'Knifty Knitter' to a ladies club so arranged for the knit and knatter group to look after me at Weatherspoons. we had a very enjoyable evening and I would like to thank the ladies for looking after me.

The workshop was Fair Isle knitting. After introducing the subject and showing everyone samples of how different ways of combining colour can completely change the look of a pattern they all got stuck in to knitting a beret (the pattern I designed for The Inside Loop). I demonstrated knitting Fair Isle in the round with a yarn in each hand and most of the ladies had a go and found it wasn't as difficult s they first thought it would be.

I have asked Val to send me some pictures of the completed berets so hope to be able to post them at a later date.

I enjoyed my day teaching very much and hope the ladies who attended also enjoyed the day.

Back in the swing of things

After having a bit of a break over Christmas I am now back into teaching knitting workshops and doing talks to groups and guilds.

On Monday I was at The InterKnit Cafe in Farnham teaching a workshop on felted knitting and needles felting. The photos show people busy knitting during the workshop. The workshops are held on a Monday as the shop is normally closed on a Monday except in the autumn run up to Christmas. As the shop was closed it was possible to have the tables in the main part of the shop so everyone can sit and drool over the yarn while they are knitting!

Tomorrow I am off to Belfast to give a talk to the Machine Knitting Guild of Northern Ireland on Saturday and teach a machine knitting workshop on Sunday. This is my first visit to Northern Ireland so hopefully on Monday I may be able to see something of Belfast before flying home again.

I have been booked to teach a number of hand knitting workshops over the next few months. For details of where I'm teaching go to the Events page on my website.