April's Showers Bring May's Flowers

Janie's Quick Update
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Hoping this email finds you all safe and well...

First of all I want to say a really big THANK YOU!

The response to the first set of patterns for the new Fruit Garden CAL has been phenomenal and I would like to thank you all for the huge amount of goodwill that has been sent our way this week. I have been feeling really up and down and emotional this week, perhaps partly because the release of new patterns always makes me really nervous, so seeing such a great response has been a real boost.
 
If you have yet to start on your Forget-Me-Not motifs you can find the first set of patterns by following this link and you can find the accompanying video on my YouTube channel via the link here.

Fruit Garden CAL

 
We have a small number of Fruit Garden CAL kits in both the Life DK/Batik and the Naturals Bamboo + Cotton left in stock and you can find them on the Janie Crow site by following this link.

Unfortunately we have been informed by Stylecraft that they are now out of stock of some of the shades used in Recipe 2 (Bamboo + Cotton) and we already know that Recipe 1 has shades they are waiting for, so for the time being we are unable to restock CAL kits.
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Substituting Yarns
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It is a real shame that yarn kits for the CAL are now out of stock for a while, but you could always have a rummage through your stash and find something that might be suitable, or source other shades. If you fancy doing the Life DK version (Recipe 1) for example, you could substitute Oatmeal in place of Parchment as they are really close colours, or you could use the following info to help guide you through making different yarn sub choices:

Most yarns on the market fall into set categories according to their weight. In the UK we have the following standard weights: 1, 2, 3 & 4ply, DK (double knitting), Aran and Chunky. The yarns used within Recipe 1 of the Fruit Garden CAL are all DK weight, for the Naturals Bamboo + Cotton version they are slightly finer.
 
Yarns sit within the categories to make it easier to ensure that things come up the right size. This is especially handy when substituting yarn, as, in theory, a DK weight yarn should achieve more or less the same tension regardless of brand or yarn content. The ball band on the yarn should give you the suggested tension and also a needle or hook size that this tension is to be achieved on.

For a standard weight DK yarn this is usually a 4mm (US G/6) knitting needle or crochet hook and knitted tension would be 22sts & 30 rows knitted to 10cm. Sadly a lot of yarns do not give a crochet tension.
 
When substituting yarn you need to be sure that you have sourced enough in terms of yarn length. Sounds obvious really but my point is - don’t assume that every 50g ball of yarn has the same length! Each type of fibre comes up a slightly different weight. For example, a 50g ball of cotton yarn is likely to have less length than a wool or acrylic fibre.
 
To work out how much yarn you need you will need to know the length of the yarn used in the design.
 
As a guide for the Fruit Garden CAL:
 
Life DK is 298m (326yds) to 100g
Batik is 138m (151yds) to 50g
Naturals Bamboo + Cotton is 250m (273yds) to 100g
 
You also need to know how many balls of the shade are used in the design.
Lets use Parchment Life DK and the Fruit Garden CAL as an example:
 
4 balls are used in the project, so that is a yarn length of 4 x 298 = 1192 (m)
 
So, we now know that we would need in the region of 1200 metres of yarn in the Parchment shade equivalent. The new yarn choice needs to have the same length regardless of whether it comes in 100g or 50g balls and regardless of the yarn composition.
 
Let’s say you wanted to use Batik in place of the Life DK and want to know how many balls you need.
 
Batik = 138m a 50g ball.
 
You need to divide the total length of yarn needed (1192m) by the length in the Batik ball of yarn, so:
 
1192 divided by 138 = 8.63
 
This means that you would ideally need to source 9 balls of substitution yarn.
 
You can find the yarn list for both versions of the Fruit Garden CAL here if you do want to look at substituting yarn. Alternatively you might want to have a look at working though one of my older CAL projects.

The patterns for Lily Pond and Frida’s Flowers are still both free on the Stylecraft web site. There are kits for Lily Pond on Janie Crow and Just Knots and although the yarn packs for Frida are currently out of stock, you will find packs for the Primavera version (colour subs chosen by the fabulous Lucia Dunn and shown below) on the Just Knots site here.
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Painting the Modern Garden - Monet to Mattisse
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The Lily Pond blanket was the first CAL project I designed for Stylecraft. It was released in 2015, but is still very popular. The project was inspired by the series of famous paintings that Claude Monet painted, of his beautiful garden in Giverny, France.
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I love impressionist art and so I was really excited to receive an email from the Royal Academy this week saying that they have posted a free video on their site:
 
Documentary: Inside ‘Painting the Modern Garden – Monet to Matisse
 
“Originally released in cinemas, this ‘Exhibition on Screen’ film takes us back to our landmark exhibition, ‘Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse’, examining the role gardens played in the evolution of art from the early 1860s through to the 1920s.
 
Back in 2016, we filled our Main Galleries with all the vibrant colours of the garden, as we traced its many forms through a period of great social change and innovation in the arts.
 
Discover the paintings of some of the most important artists of the early twentieth century exploring the theme, including Renoir, Cezanne, Pissarro, Manet, Sargent, Kandinsky, Van Gogh, Matisse, Klimt and Klee’.
 
You can find the feature length video on the Royal Academy site by following this link. I have not had a chance to watch it yet, but hope to do so later on today or tomorrow.

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Looking Forwards
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5 weeks into lock down I have finally managed to find some time to do some forward planning, so it is really nice to have a few new projects to look forward to. We will be releasing the Climbing Rose Wrap pattern as a PDF download and paper brochure in the early Autumn, so Sarah is currently working on putting the pattern back into my writing style and I am really looking forward to being able to show you more of the lovely images of the project, taken at William Morris’s Red House in Kent, as part of the re-launch. Inside Crochet Magazine have been incredibly supportive with this project and we look forward to being able to share the pattern with you again soon.
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Talking of Inside Crochet Magazine – the May issue of the magazine is out now and Andy has 10 copies in stock on his Just Knots web site.
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Feeder - Just A Day
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The band Feeder released the song ‘Just a Day’ in 2001. It is a great song, but it was the awesome video that accompanied it’s release that made the track truly iconic. The video featured film clips that fans had recorded at home of them singling along to the song. You can find the original video here.

The Welsh group say they have been consistently asked over the last 2 decades to remake the video, but they have resisted, even vowing to never remake it – until now!
 

​According to the NME:
 
‘Feeder called on fans to help them remake the video earlier this month, noting that it felt like the right time to recreate it “for a good cause”. The new version features fans in NHS uniform, fancy dress and more…..
 
The new version of the video raises awareness for two fundraising drives – the Scrub + Face Protection Hub and Masks 4 NHS Heroes, which aim to provide NHS staff and key workers with vital Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

In a press release, frontman Grant Nicholas said: “The original video has become a classic, especially being in an era pre-YouTube and TikTok. We have always been against remaking it but after messages from fans in Italy we decided to revisit it again and highlight the plight of our own NHS and key workers.’
 
You can watch the video here.
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Instagram Favourite
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I was contacted by Melani Kline this week - Lace_Princess on Instagram. Melani has produced a fabulous drawing of the Acanthus motif from the Fruit Garden CAL and when she shared it on one of the CAL dedicated Facebook Groups this week it all went a bit bananas! 
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Melani has given me permission to share it here - isn't it fabulous!
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It's the Weekend!
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As I have said many times over the last few weeks we are keeping ourselves very much in a Jane & Andy bubble. We are not venturing out very far and are just making necessary journeys, so it is really odd to realise that things are going on in the ‘outside world’ that we are not massively aware of. I popped out on Friday to pick up a prescription for my mum to find that road of our local high street has been resurfaced and some trees have been planted. As I walked down the main road, which is usually a mad hustle and bustle, it was a lovely surprise to find a dedication to the NHS painted into the tarmac! I stopped to take a quick snap - isn’t this cool!
 

 
I have not had a chance to look at your emails this week – I know they are there in my inbox and I will try and take a look at them over the weekend or early next week – please don’t think I am ignoring you, it is just that the orders on the web site and the launch of the CAL patterns has had to take priority this week.
 
We are in the studio today – hence the Saturday email, but hope to spend some time later on this afternoon baking in the kitchen and then I have a day of crochet planned for tomorrow.
 
It was Andy’s birthday on Thursday. We managed to have a catch up with the family on Zoom and opened a bottle of bubbly and tonight we are going to order from our favourite Indian Take Away to celebrate. Those of you who have met Andy will know what a top-notch kind of guy he is. He has supported me through everything I do and works so hard, so I hope I will be in a position to treat him to something lovely when all this is over – even if that just means a pint in his favourite pub garden!!!
 
The weekend is calling and so I am waving goodbye once again. It really is beginning to feel a bit like Ground Hog Day Monday to Friday so, for us anyway, the weekend still feels a bit different to other days. If you are stuck at home I think it must be worse for you, so I am sending extra big hugs this week!
 
So until next week, keep well, safe and happy!

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A Reminder about Postage
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At Janie Crow and Just Knots Yarns we use Royal Mail as our postal service provider. Royal Mail continues to operate most worldwide postal services and we have not yet been hugely affected by issues with the post. Things can change quickly, so if you are wondering about the mail service to your country, you can check up via the Royal Mail ‘Personal Help’ page here.