A colourful knitting day at Toft

Here at Toft Towers colour work (in a selection of natural alpaca colours of course) is something we are really starting to encorporate into our knitting.  Be it intarsia or stripes, fair isle or slip stitches, we love working with colour combinations to create unique patterns.

Jubliee jumper with intarsia diamond.

So Saturday's colour knitting workshop at Toft Studio was an excuse to share this love as we welcomed several workshop regulars, as well as some new faces. 

We covered intarsia - did you know that this term originates from woodwork and the inlaying of different colours of wood to make a pattern, but in knitting it refers to using blocks of colour.  With intarsia knitting is not stranded or carried across the back of the knitting as with fair isle, instead a pattern piece is knitted effectively in columns and therefore bobbins of yarn are used for each column.

Toft's jubliee jumper is a brilliant example of intarsia with swiss darning or duplicate stitch detailing (see our website for our swiss darning help video). The key to tip top intarsia is your tension, in fact the talk of tension was a running theme of the whole day.  Too loose, you'll get holes where the colours join and too tight, joins will be puckered and out of shape. 

Colour work means lots of yarn, not all of it alpaca to practice with.

Stranding or floats behind fair isle work.

The day started with a slightly soggy dash around the farm to meet and greet the newest additions to the herd and then it was back to the comfort of Toft Studio for tea and biscuits before a full day of knitting.  After a warming lunch (it might be June but we needed it on such a rainy day - it felt more like March!) the afternoon was spent tackling fair isle and learning to knit with a strand of yarn in each hand, one continental style and one English style. We chose between the fair isle beanie kit or a brand new Toft design, the houndstooth fair isle wrist warmers kit, which is available to purchase online or at the farm now!

Sneak preview of Toft's new Houndstooth wristwarmers

Toft tips for fair isle are to give continental knitting a practice before tackling fair isle, if you are determined to do it properly that is. Fair isle never uses more than two colours in any one row and knitting using this method of one strand in each hand, rather than picking up and dropping colours as required will give your knitting a better chance of looking tip top. This latter method can play havoc with your tension (I did warn you about the prominence of that t-word!) and also yarn dominance. In brief, yarn dominance means which strand is carried above and which below according to how they held when knitting and this must be consistent because one colour will appear to recede and one will be dominant. 

There is more to fair isle than first meets the eye - it's pretty involved and incredibly interesting!

  

Even the history of fair isle was discussed during the day, did you know for example that sleeves are traditionally knitted from the shoulder down in order that the well worn cuff can be unravelled and re-knitted as necessary. Shetland islanders were also proficient on-the-go circular knittters, many ladies had knitting belts enabling them to knit whilst doing their daily work, probably with a baby on their back at the same time, multi-tasking and portable knitting all in one!  Puts our knitting on the go with knit pros a little in the shade! Those kind of facts are perfect examples of knitting know how providing ingenious solutions to practical problems. Indeed learning intarsia and fair isle, traditional knitting methods for use in modern designs of the like found at Toft give us (and I'm pretty sure all knitters) a warm fuzzy glow.

 

Lots to discuss about colour work.

We haven't got another colour workshop in the diary yet but do let us know if you'd be interested in learning. Helen and Carrie got very excited about lots of new ideas after their first brainstorming session together that the diary until Christmas is chocablock full of new topics. Take a look at the website to book your place on one of our new workshops, some are even in the diary for a Friday afternoon like the lace , aran and giant knitting workshops, should you fancy a cheeky afternoon off in the relaxing surroundings at Toft.

From autumn onwards crochet workshops feature highly alongside spinning, quilted patchwork and firm favourites like the button bag and several seasonal felting workshops. Why not let us know if you have any workshop ideas that you'd like to see at Toft.

Little Cria hiding the grass at Toft.

An update from Charlie: off to the alpaca mill!

Our new team member Charlie gives her first impressions of a trip to the mill.

‘Monday morning saw us - Kerry, me, our new intern Olivia and Pete the Dog - piling into the Toftmobile and heading to Banbury to pick up some of our latest batches of yarn from the mill. 

Cheeky Pete!

Having been at Toft for just under three weeks I’d managed to get a good overview of the way this fantastic organisation is run – since arriving I’d got used to being greeted every morning by a field of friendly alpaca faces, had a whistlestop tutorial in fleece sorting, and spent time in the shop and on the website getting to grips with the gloriously unique products on offer. But something was missing. How does the meticulously sorted fleece come to be spun into the top quality yarn gleaming in rows under our newly installed workbenches? The answer could only be found at the mill!


Laura and Richard met us on arrival, and after the requisite fussing Pete always demands we were taken on a tour. The mill is an impressive centre of traditional engineering – all the machinery has been painstakingly adapted from the equipment used to spin sheep’s wool in order to process the far finer alpaca fleece in which the mill specialises.

A waterfall of fleece

Laura led us past vast flues, rollers and vats, explaining how each particular machine works to soften and refine the fleece flowing constantly through it.

Yarn ready to be spun

 She demonstrated the giant bobbins onto which the refined fleece is rolled before being spun into yarn on long rows of whirring spools.

A school of spools

She talked us through the minute changes that had to be made to ensure particular weights of yarn weren’t over-or under-twisted, and spoke with pride about the difficulties the mill had overcome in this area in order to produce Toft’s unique chunky weight yarn.

And then there we were, at the finished product – all boxed up, freshly returned from being laundered and ready to be loaded and taken home. I’ve still got a lot to learn, but another piece of the puzzle has fallen into place, building up a complete picture of Toft’s field to fashion production ethos.’

Coming LIVE from Toft Studio...

To top off what's been a really BIG week at Toft we've packed our waxy jackets and wellies ready for Wonderwool this weekend.  Despite the weather we will be taking two of our boys with us to meet the crowds and of course lots of fleece and yarn. So here's a quick update (excuse the phone photos!) before we hit the road...

What a week it has been here.  We have successfully now uprooted the whole company from Toft Manor, and we have moved across the yard into the gorgeous Toft Studio.

Following some very late nights we got the yarn store and workshop area unloaded yesterday.  Complete with antique jewellery making benches and tractor seat stools we think it's looking pretty awesome. 

In the entrance to The Studio we are currently in the process of knitting up two sofas and eight tub chairs to create a realizing chatting area to sit and read the latest knitting magazines, and Albert is busy making us some giant button tables to rest our coffee cups on.

Through to the main workshop room and we are still awaiting a few pieces of furniture, but it is really taking shape.  These old sewing benches we perfect- providing a good height to work at and lots of built in storage too.  Next week they will be finished off with steel tops to give them a new lease of life as the 70s surfaces have seen better days.

We've acquired a few singer sewing machine bases along the way and knocked up some side tables- and a draughtsmans board to hold all our latest design collection ideas on.  The space is very light and airy and perfect for enjoying all craft and textile workshops.  The added luxury of underfloor heating means that we can see it being very cosy this winter and we'll be putting workshop dates in the diary very soon.

So next time you come up to Toft for a workshop, or just for your latest yarn fix, you'll be able to hang your coat on the old iron pegs and take a seat for a while to enjoy this fantastic new space.

The big coffee pot is on in the staff kitchen as all our knitters and regular customers drop in to say hi and look at the new building.  Come over to meet the new team soon.