July 2023 – tracey doxey

_{200 colours to work with during the afternoon session}

I am really excited to share with you that I am finally runing a full day Colour Blending workshop for Fair Isle knitting, here in Sheffield on Saturday 16^th September 2023, 10:30 – 16:30 GMT

The Venue is the lovely Dorothy Fox Centre, Botanical Gardens, Thompson Road, S11 8RB, as pictured below.

On the day, I will provide:-

A morning of tuition on how to blend your colours in your knitting projectes. A collection of over 200 balls of Shetland yarn to choose from to knit with during the afternoon swatch knitting session. Print outs of tuition presentation from the morning colour blending lesson. A printed Sea Urchin Hat pattern to work with after the workshop, to practice your colour blending. Graph paper to practice your colours and coloured pencils. Plus print outs of the motif for you to experiment with colour to knit your swatch.

Experience Level of participants – Anyone who can knit a stitch and purl a stitch can join this session. Anyone who wants to experiment with and understand colours within motifs. This is a morning tuition workshop plus time to experiment using your new found confidence with colour by knitting a swatch such as the examples below, during the afternoon.

This is a skills based, creative, confidence-boosting, fun, experimental, workshop where you will learn the skills to enable you to successfully and confidently choose and blend your own colours for your own projects.

The workshop is based around the tree and star motive in my Sea Urchin Hat pattern., which you will receive on the day.

During the first two hours, I will teach you the principals of colour blending then show examples of different motifs. After lunch, you will be able to experiment with the 200 Shetland yarn colours available in the session to knit a small swatch in your own colour choices.

Afterwards, you will take away your colour blending skills to create your own swatches and choose your own colours for your future projects and you will be able to look at your own stash of yarn with a different eye. On the day, I will bring examples of Shetland and Fair Isle knitting and design pattern books as well as my own swatch books for you to look at.

the session will be £80. If you would like me to send you an overview and booking form, please contact me at traceydoxey@hotmail.com and I will get back to you asap.

Excited? I am.

email me at traceydoxey@hotmail.com if you would like to be sent an overview and booking form.

I also teach online workshops – information in workshop tab on this website – here

Link to Botanical Gardens – On Thompson Road, a turning off Ecclesall Road, Sheffield S11 8RB

https://www.sbg.org.uk/how-to-find-us

2pm, Wednesday afternoon – feeling free.

This, just this very moment after finishing work, is seriously my most blissful happy moment of the week. I’ve finished my admin job, biked home, picked 30 sweet pea flower stems and balanced them in Susan Halcrow’s tiny cut glass jug. Alfie sits beside me, Teep is on my knee, colours are coming together for my next set of motifs in my pullover project (that could end up being a jumper). There are two great passion flowers out in front of me and I’m surrounded by the scent of star jasmine, regular jasmine, and sweet peas. Honestly, these simple things (and a cuppa) signify Freedom. Freedom of mind, creativity and the senses. These simple things are utterly blissful.

Knitting is many things to and for me – today, it is freedom.

I’m looking at my yarn colours, choosing / feeling my way through them so that I sense what will work in the pattern changes so that they both balance as a whole and shine individually.

When I lived in Shetland, my inspiration was taken from my surrounding landscape and the stories of the woman that lived in the house that I had bought from 1876 to 1960. When I teach my colour blending workshops, I show how to feel colours with your heart.

Today, back in the city, this Wednesday afternoon, I feel the joy of the colours of the flowers that I have grown, from their vibrancy and scent. On my tiny slabbed area, in front of my small flat, I have grown an abundant, cascading mass of sweet peas, Star Jasmine, ordinary Jasmine, passion flowers, agapanthus and many other things. It is survival of the fittest in the tiny silly border. All the plants are growing across each other, elbowing with their leaves to reach higher. The sweet peas are so pretty, in shades of purple, fuchsia, pale pink, port, red, lilac, and white. The little jug of flowers sits on the table, the cats join me on cushions that are placed either side of mine on the bench, a cuppa, my swatch book and then the yarn begins to join the table top. The yarn comes alive and colours become inspired by the sensory pleasure of just feeling free, from not having to work again until Monday.

My knitting is not about just choosing colours from a pile of yarn, or shop but the colours come by feeling them through a sensory connection and today, it is a tiny jug of sweet peas that triggered the feeling of being free.