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Many Yorlin knitters have completed the bodies of their cardigans, knitted both the sleeves, and are now approaching the garment s finishing lines aka its button bands. I m going to share a few button-band related thoughts with you today, and I ll begin with a top tip I learned from the inimitable Hazel Tindall: when picking [ ]
Good morning, people, it s your happy-go-lucky labrador-friend BOB here. All of us have our favourite summer activities, and BEACH is a great place to enjoy them. Would you like to come with BOB and see? BEACH is BOB s happy place, as it is, I think, for many humans who live here in Kintyre. Kintyre humans [ ]
How are you Yorlin knitters getting along? While a few lovely cardigans have already appeared as finished projects, many of you are knitting at an appropriately leisurely summer pace, familiarising yourself with the lace panel while working the upper body. A couple of knitter s questions regarding the raglans have prompted me to tell you about [ ]
Some more rose poetry for you today. These verses are taken from William Carlos Williams famous collection Spring and All (1923) and it is fascinating to me that all of the poetry I ve included in these posts date from the first couple of decades of the twentieth century. In poetry, this was a time when [ ]
In spring and summer, the lanes and field margins of South Kintyre are awash with flowers: primroses and bluebells, cow parsley and campion. Each is lovely, and each has its season: midsummer being the time for nodding ox eye daisies and fragrant roses. Because I m thinking a lot about roses at the moment, I ve noticed [ ]
Perhaps for no poet did the rose serve as a more powerful motif than Rainer Maria Rilke. As he lay dying in 1926, he composed the epitaph which was later inscribed on his gravestone: rose, oh reiner widerspruch, lust,niemandes schlaf zu sein unter soviel lider rose, o pure contradiction, desireto be no one s sleep beneath [ ]
We inherited several roses in the mill garden and, never having grown them before, I ve been trying to identify and learn about roses and their needs. In some cases this is quite simple. Rhapsody in Blue , for example, is an immediately recognisable cultivar, not only because of its its open blooms of a most unusual [ ]
I really enjoyed the discussion of yesterday s rose / pink post. In the comments, we heard about different words for this colour in Dutch (Titia), Armenian (Annie), Finnish (Helen) and Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati (Deepa). Rebecca told us about how she d been instructed that the liturgical vestments worn on Gaudete Sunday are definitely rose, and [ ]
It is rose season here in the mill garden, and I have the colour of roses on my mind. Because it is so loved, and because it has been so widely cultivated for such a very long time, perhaps no flower has the ability to soak up cultural meaning quite as much as the rose. [ ]
I find our responses to colour endlessly fascinating. It s amazing how, by simply looking at an object, we can so immediately use its palette to visualise another object that might share the same distinctive colouring. And there s much more to this process than the brain simply using colour to awaken a neural association between two [ ]
Those of you who enjoyed seeing the emergence of my Himalayan blue poppy in 2025 may be interested to know how it has fared this year. The poppy began flowering on May 18th (almost exactly the same day as 2025) and is still doing so today, June 9th (carrying its final bloom alongside six healthy [ ]
We have one final lovely Yorlin to show you today. This cardigan was made by top-notch knitter, Sarah, who has helped us in the development phase of many patterns, and who always finds a lovely landscape in her home county of Norfolk in which to photograph her knits. Today is no exception. Here s what Sarah [ ]
Over the past few months, behind the scenes, the KDD team has been busy with Yorlin knitting. The four cardigans we have shared with you so far have all been rather subdued in tone, but Claire definitely brightened up our mini-KAL by selecting a bold, hot pink shade of Milarrochy Tweed in which to knit [ ]
Good morning, we have another lovely Yorlin, in a rather different hue, to inspire you today. Here s Maylin, in her natural habitat on a Cumbrian fellside (by Angle Tarn), wearing her Gloamin Yorlin. Maylin says: I don t wear a lot of purple, but I chose the Gloamin shade of Milarrochy Tweed for my Yorlin as [ ]
Your responses to yesterday s piece in which I introduced KC s fabulous Chingly Yorlin really interested me. In both the Ravelry group and newsletter comments, many of you suggested that you do not see Chingly as I do as a greenish-grey but as very definitely green. Others described Chingly as sludgy, brown, [ ]
Good morning! It s time to show you another lovely Yorlin. This one has been knitted by KC, in Milarrochy Tweed shade Chingly. Chingly is an interesting shade, and one with which I m slightly obsessed. We introduced it into the Milarrochy Tweed palette in 2023, and it is one of a handful of shades that we [ ]
Good morning, and welcome back to the mill garden! Here I am to show you another Yorlin, which has been knitted in a rather different yarn to the Milarrochy Tweed Ardlui version I was wearing yesterday. This cardigan has been knitted in our Ooskit 4 ply. The yarn s name is Ooskit 4 ply to distinguish [ ]
Good morning! Welcome to all knitters who are joining the Yorlin KAL! And a very warm welcome to all readers to my home, here in Kintyre. Today I ll be showing you some of my garden, while introducing my brand new Ardlui Yorlin. If I had to pick one, single shade of Milarrochy Tweed from the [ ]
It s time to announce the KDD summer KAL! Will you join us and knit yourself a Yorlin? Knitted in 4ply (or equivalent) at a gauge of 28 stitches to 4 inches, Yorlin is a lightweight, airy cardigan. Knitted from the top down, Yorlin features raglan shaping through the upper body, twisted-stitch trims, and two beautiful [ ]
I am currently reading Anne Goldgar s excellent Tulipmania: Money, Honor and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age (2007), a book which is perhaps less about tulips themselves than about what they represented in the seventeenth-century Dutch republic. Much like the balloon-o-mania of the 1780s, for this era s moral commentators, tulips were emblematic of what they [ ]
As I was looking for images of broken tulips in historic collections the other day, I happened across a series of watercolour studies in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which were the work of Mary Moser. Moser was an interesting eighteenth-century artist, who, because she specialised in botanical subjects, has often been dismissed in the [ ]
Come quickly, I said to Tom, and bring the camera. We ve got a broken tulip. a broken tulip? Yes! A broken one! Just check it out! Hmm. It certainly looks like a freaky tulip It is freaky! In fact, a tulip that has broken in this particular colour combination is actually known as a bizarre. [ ]
My theme today is Knitting Bullshit and before I begin, I had better explain to you what I understand bullshit to be. In what follows, “bullshit” is used very much in the sense that Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt describes in his seminal essay, On Bullshit (1986; 2005). For Frankfurt, bullshit is an utterance with “a [ ]
The book is out, all pre-ordered copies have been shipped (thank you, Kate C and Kendall) and club members can access the full e-book in your Ravelry libraries. Knitting Wester Ross is now available to purchase in the KDD shop and by way of celebration, I thought I d reproduce the book s introduction here today. This [ ]
Tulip season has arrived hurrah! I anticipate several happy weeks, in which I savour and enjoy every variety that I carefully chose and planted last November. I have several lasagne-style tulip pots at the front of the house, as well as a sizeable display round the back . . . . . . and [ ]
We are anticipating the publication of Knitting Wester Ross today, and the team is ready (and waiting) in the KDD warehouse to begin the process of shipping the book out to club members, before putting it on general sale. This interim between the completion of a book and its publication is often a [ ]
Hello! We are home after a short break in south-east Cornwall: a beautiful part of the world which neither Tom nor I had visited before. We enjoyed some lovely spring weather and several long days of great walking, along different sections of the south-west coastal path. I became slightly obsessed with Cornish Hedges the [ ]
It s time to reveal the final pattern from Knitting Wester Ross: I m still sad that I was ill at the point in the schedule when this particular design landed, but it s better late than never. Club members will have already read my essay about Kay Matheson who, with three of her student friends on Christmas [ ]
The clocks have gone forward and we have made it through the winter (feeble yay). All over rural Scotland, this seasonal transition is marked by the movement of cattle to summer pastures, a tradition which is inscribed in the landscape with the old names of many fields and hills. Ten minutes walk from my front [ ]
Following on from yesterday s missive about my Òran Eile / Another Song design, here s a pattern closely related to it: Brèid: Brèid (pronounced like beige, with a rolled r in it) is a Scottish Gaelic word for a kerchief. In Gaelic, brèid is a term applied to many different kinds of cloth or flappy things [ ]
Good news this morning: our work is done and the Wester Ross book is away to the printers in Glasgow, which means we should be able to publish it around the middle of next month. I m sure that in time, with the benefit of distance, I ll be able to feel proud of this book [ ]
Warning: this missive contains more helle-boring content! After learning about hellebores and their nectaries I was left wondering at what point, in the history of science, the crucial role these structures played in pollination had been understood. How had early botanists looked at hellebores? How had hellebores been represented in botanical art and illustration? Some [ ]
One of the things I love about gardening is the experience it enables of what Buddhists refer to as Beginner’s Mind: I am very much a beginner gardener, and the fact that I inherited my garden means that, over the past two years, I’ve often found myself in a state of confused un-knowing, having to [ ]
Hello! It s been a while. As you may have gathered, I have not been well. Some of you will know that I have bipolar disorder and that winter can often be a tricky time. I am aware of this, am used to this, and have a range of strategies in place which (usually) help me [ ]
our brand new yarn!
Hello all, it s Tom here and I m writing to let you know that Kate is very unwell at the moment. She will be taking time away from her work in order to rest and focus on her health and recuperation. I m sure you ll join me in wishing her well in her recovery. For those in [ ]
a playful experiment with scale and proportion
what we need more of this January
a beautiful wrap by Lucy Hague, inspired by a Pictish symbol stone
upcoming in person workshops in Campbeltown!