Construction Tools and Sydney Design

My lucky friend Anna received a very awesome birthday gift this week, a set of 25mm (massive!) ebony needles and enough yarn to make a super chunky hooded scarf, by Nikki Gabriel. Here are a couple of rather dodgy iphone photos of Anna knitting at work.

Anna let me knit a row and I did find it a bit of a challenge to hold such large and heavy needles, but the bespoke yarn is gorgeous and I love the chunky designs. I especially like the idea of being able to knit up a quick garment like Nikki Gabriel's vest.


When I looked up the website i discovered that Nikki Gabriel is actually giving a workshop at the Powerhouse Museum in a couple of weeks as part of Sydney Design. There will be six workshops over 3 days (Fri 13-Sun 15 August), and for the $80 entry fee you get the workshop, pattern, needles, and 2 balls of yarn. I am definitely thinking of attending and maybe dropping by the Wild for Tea Cosies talk by tea cosy queen Loani Prior while I'm there.

A Pretty New Needle Roll

I decided it was time to do away with the dodgy old knitting needle bag with the broken zipper and jumble of miss-matched hand-me-down needles. Surely a serious knitter needs a pretty needle roll!

I found the pattern for this one on the lupinbunny blog and used an off cut of the Missoni Home fabric Haiti that I got during my Spence & Lyda days.


It looks pretty and is much more functional than my old bag, but I did have a few issues sewing the heavy linen fabric. If I were to make it again I would only use the linen fabric on the outside of roll, I'd sew the ribbon into the seam and I would make it wider to fit more needles.