Every single yarn shop owner that I’ve ever met had their own passion for knitting as the main reason for starting their business adventure – and then they, like me, were struck by the bitter sweet realisation that although you spend every day surrounded by the most beautiful woolly temptations there never is any time left for you to knit! What happens then, is that your knitting time becomes very precious to you and you become very picky – and so it is only the projects that you love the most of all the amazing projects that are out there – those that you simply can’t live without – that are the ones that will finally find their way onto your needles.

If you follow our instagram (knitwithattitude) or any of the marvellous people that work here in the shop – Natalie (leeleetea) and George (georgeacullen) – you would have noticed  that we’ve had a Brioche craze happening between us. No surprise maybe – it seems like the whole knitting world is struck by this alluring technique these days – and I’m no exception.

The last year we’ve had some amazing publications delivered to the shop, by Nancy Marchant (Leafy Brioche) and Stephen West (Westknits Bestknits – Number 1 Shawls), to mention a few. And it was while flickering through the ‘Bestknits’ I fell in love – I fell hard – just look at this!

So this Christmas I actually managed to knit – and finish – something, my very own Askews Me Shawl!!! For my version I chose to use the Hedgehog Fibres Merino DK in Genie as my light colour, and John Arbon’s Knit by Numbers in 02 as my dark colour, I found that they were the perfect match – my shawl is so squishy, soft and comfy I would practically sleep in it.

Now, if you’d seen all those gorgeous projects popping up across the knitting community’s social medias and have thought you might want to try the Brioche yourself but at the same time felt intimidated by approaching this technique – let me encourage you to give it a go! I highly recommend Stephen’s patterns – they are so well written. All though I’ve dabbled in Brioche before (more on that in a blog post to come), when doing the Askews Me, I found myself encountering a few new techniques that I haven’t tried before – like the Two-colour cast on – but his instructions are so detailed and easy to follow it went like a breeze. Come on – give it a go!