A Year of Techniques

Today I'm handing the Tangled Yarn blog over to Jen Arnall-Culliford. Jen is a highly respected tech editor in the knitting world, with a wealth of experience and expertise she has worked with some amazing designers such as Kate Davies and Rachel Coopey to name but a few. Along with her husband and business partner Jim, Jen has brought together leading experts in the industry to teach you new techniques to take your knitting to the next level through their book A Year of Techniques. 

Thank you for the kind introduction Rachel! I’m an enthusiastic customer of Tangled Yarn, and I love your range of interesting and unusual UK and international yarns. 

We launched A Year of Techniques as a way to encourage knitters to try something new. I’ve always been a learning junkie - whether it’s in my knitting, the garden, or just generally, I love the sense of achievement of learning a new technique. But not everyone is as gung-ho as I am, and Jim and I realised that between us we had the perfect mix of skills to support knitters in mastering some new tricks in their knitting. 

We knew that it wasn’t going to be enough to write great tutorials or to film some clear videos to show people how to do these techniques, we wanted to encourage knitters to actually use the techniques in their knitting. A pile of swatches just isn’t that fun, is it? So we commissioned our favourite designers to use the techniques in a series of small, useful and beautiful projects. And BOY have our designers done us proud?! We’ve already launched the Brambling Shawl by Bristol Ivy, and Ella Austin’s adorable Alex the Mouse, and still to come we have patterns from Ella Gordon, Jim Arnall-Culliford, Martina Behm, Mary Jane Mucklestone, Rachel Coopey, Romi Hill, Sarah Hatton, Tin Can Knits and Woolly Wormhead. So many beautiful projects still to come!

 

So What is A Year of Techniques?

At its heart, AYoT is a book. The sort of book that you can dip into when you’d like to learn something new. With a technique for each month of the year and an accompanying pattern, we want this to be a book you can refer back to time and again. However, to encourage the spirit of shared endeavour, we are releasing the patterns month by month until September 2017. Then in September, we will reveal the remaining six projects in the book, and we’ll be shipping the print copies.

Twelve projects, from world-class designers, teaching you twelve new techniques that will bring your knitting to a new level. 

Knitalongs

Each month we are running knitalong threads both in our group on Ravelry (Arnall-Culliford Knitwear), as well as in The Lounge over on Mason-Dixon Knitting. Our knitalongs are as inclusive as possible; you just need to be making something that uses the technique, the pattern doesn’t have to be ours (although we do love seeing lots of beautiful AYoT projects too of course!). So far we have covered helical stripes, intarsia and the pinhole cast on - with knitters all over the world chatting about the techniques, and holding hands as some of us jumped into skills we never thought we would acquire. There have been some incredibly beautiful finished projects - you can see all of the projects loaded on Ravelry here: A Year of Techniques   

Techniques

There are still nine new techniques to be shared, including some great colourwork techniques, and many ways to make your knitting 3-dimensional: 

• Afterthought heels and thumbs
• Garter stitch grafting
• Judy's magic cast on (both for starting closed tubes and as a provisional cast on)
• Knitting on a border
• Mastering dominance in Fair Isle knitting
• Reading cables from charts
• Short rows
• Steeks
• Turning a heel

Videos

And is if the book, patterns, tutorials and knitalongs weren’t enough, we’re also releasing a video tutorial a month to accompany the projects! These are hosted over on Mason-Dixon Knitting in their How To section. It has been enormous fun working with Kay and Ann, as well as with all the designers and behind the scenes teams who are bringing A Year of Techniques to life.

So if you fancy joining us for a learning journey, then you can buy a print+ebook combination (£19.99 plus shipping), or ebook only (£19.99) over on our website here.