It's All About The TWIST!

Janie's Friday Feature
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Welcome to this week's Friday Feature Newsletter - the Janie Crow equivalent of a Sunday supplement magazine....

The calmer vibe has continued over the two weeks since I was last here and I have settled down into some satisfying design work at last. I have said it before, but I love this time of year when the spring shows are over and there is time to sit down and concentrate on some new inspiration. I already have quite a bit to show for the last fortnight, so have my fingers crossed that the enthusiasm continues into the next few months! I have previously promised you a couple of new crochet along designs and seem to be on track for one of these at least, so I am hoping that both do make it to fruition over the next few months!

We had a lovely celebration for Summer's 21st birthday a few weeks ago and the party theme continues this week as I turned (a rather whopping) 50 years old yesterday! We celebrated by going to see the Van Gogh exhibition at The Tate and by popping into Bonhams on Bond Street to see some of the costumes from the Ballet Russes (from Firebird) that are on display to coincide with a Russian Art sale. It is school half term break so it was really busy in town, but the weather was good and the city had a great vibe, so we had a lovely day!
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I will be teaching a day workshop in Norfolk tomorrow and will be at Black Sheep Wools in Warrington for 2 days next week, so I have been busy prepping some workshop kits. I am thinking of scheduling some day workshops closer to home in the future and hope to have some news of this later on in the year.

As always, if you want to get in touch please hit reply and tell us what is on your mind, but for now, grab a cuppa, put your feet up and spend 5 minutes in my company before the excitement of the weekend ahead starts.....
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'When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.'
- Jimi Hendrix -

What's New?

My crochet along style pattern book Bohemian Blooms is about to head off for a reprint. We have sold almost 3000 copies of the book, which is amazing and far beyond the number we thought we would ever print. I have been working on a new blanket layout using a different yarn brand and I have also had permission from another Stylecraft Blogstar to release her recoloured version of the design, which uses Stylecraft Special DK, as a downloadable document. The information on both of the new colour ways will be available via my web site later on in the summer.
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We have just 20 copies of the Bohemian Blooms book left in stock, so if you want to grab one while we still have them you can follow this link to the shop.
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I will be contacting the winners of the Delft Colouring in Competition over the next few weeks and the winning blanket designs will be revealed later on in June. We had a great response to the competition and I cannot wait to show you the lovely completed blankets. The colour swap documents for the winning entries will all be available as free downloads from my web site and stockists may well have yarn packs for you to purchase, so do look out for more information soon.

As I said in my introduction I have been working on some new CAL designs, one of which is a crochet wrap project that will be featured in Inside Crochet magazine, starting in the July issue. The crochet along will run for 4 months and I have used Stylecraft's Bellissima DK for the project, which has been inspired by the designs of a rather famous historical interior designer. I am really pleased with the design and I am really looking forward to being able to show it to you soon.

Whilst sitting in the hairdresser's last Saturday I stumbled upon a Dolce and Gabbana advert in a magazine that features the crochet bra top and skirt that I (and many of you) feel bear a strong resemblance to a few of my designs. You may remember me telling you about this a few months ago and many of you have been asking about it, so I thought I should update you.....
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I was extremely lucky to be given some free legal advice by some top Fashion IP lawyers and as a result I have decided not to take this copyright infringement any further. I have been advised that Dolce and Gabbana are a huge company who have a reputation not only for copying small designers, but also of counter suing people like me who make an attempt to challenge anything! This is a bit sad and it isn't right, but I feel it is now time to draw a line under this and move on as the last thing I want is to get tangled up in a legal mess!

I have decided that rather than feel bitter and twisted about the copying I should feel flattered and wear it as a badge of approval, after all, how cool is it to see parts of my Frida's Flowers, Lily Pond and Bohemian Blooms CAL designs on the catwalk and in national magazines! Going forwards I will be making sure that all my patterns carry a good copyright notice and of course I will also be keeping a firm eye on D&G designs in the future!

Thank you to all those of you who copied Dolce and Gabbana into tweets, Instagram and Facebook messages. Your support has been incredible.
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Instagram of the Week

My Instagram favourite this week is Bryony aka 'Tickover' whose feed you can find by following this link. Bryony is a hand stitch designer who creates embroidery pieces that are designed to make you think about ethical issues within the fashion and textile industry. This is a subject that I keep coming back to and so I was really drawn to Bryony's clever pieces, which you can find for sale in her Etsy shop.
 

Bryony says:
'I started Tickover to merge my enjoyment of embroidery and my frustration at hidden aspects of the fashion industry. I aim to raise awareness about issues such as human rights and environmental violations, whether the need to eradicate modern slavery or stop making clothing out of plastic.
Some profits from each piece will be donated to charities that help aid these causes such as Labour Behind the Label and Extinction Rebellion.
There is so much that we all have to learn in this field, I invite you to join the conversation, ask questions, demand transparency and take small steps to help make the world a safer place for all.'
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If you are interested in Instagram feeds like Bryony's then you might also want to take a look at the feed called Fashion Revolution, which you can find here.
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Tip of the Week
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I am not really sure if this classifies as a tip or rather some advice.

In my last newsletter I talked about substituting yarn and it has been great to hear how the information has helped many of you. One thing I didn't touch on in my piece was the difference between the twist of yarns. This has been something that has been chatted about quite a lot recently on social media, so I thought it would be good to include a little information about this in in today's newsletter.

So, something that is actually quite important when choosing a yarn for crochet is whether your yarn of choice has been spun with an S twist or a Z twist, but what does that mean? Well, S twist yarn is one that has been spun anti-clockwise, whilst Z twist yarn has been spun in the opposite direction (ie clockwise). The image below should help you see why this is referred to as S or Z twist.

S twist is the most common yarn - in fact I would be be prepeared to say that almost every ball or skein of yarn in your collection is S twist. It is the most readily available 'craft' yarn and it has been designed to be used for knitting, by right handed knitters. Knitting with an S-Twist yarn reinforces the twist and keeps the plies coherent and the strands stable.

Sadly though it seems that the opposite happens in crochet by right handed crocheters as a loosely spun S twist yarn can actually come undone in the crochet process. You may have noticed this already and might well have yarns that you find splitty and difficult to crochet with even though they appear to work fine if knitted.

I found a great piece by Doris Chan that you can also see by following the link.

'....Because the yarn is wrapped around the crochet hook (yarn over) in the opposite direction of the knit yarn over, and because crochet stitches have height and may contain multiple yarn overs each time, crochet tends to un-twist the S-Twist.  Eventually, if this continues throughout the length of a skein (exacerbated by the act of fixing mistakes, frogging and re-crocheting) then that S-Twist yarn will become seriously untwisted, splitty, lose coherence and begin to fall apart.  When the yarn is a loosely S-Twist product to begin with, crocheting it can result in disaster.'

Doris explains about adding twist as you work. This may be negligible in most cases, but if you find a yarn is opening up or splitting as you work, then it might be an idea to draw it from a different end of the ball. I tend to delve into my balls of yarn to find the end from the middle of the ball, rather than drawing from the outside end. I have always done this to prevent the ball from jumping about as I crochet and have never really thought about it in regards to the yarn twist, but I have heard that some yarns advise specifically whether to draw from one end of a ball or the other.

Linda Skuja, the fab crochet designer behind Eleven Handmade talked about S and Z twist yarns a few months ago on her Instagram feed. This is part of what she has said:

'I've seen people saying - there is no difference between knitting and crochet yarns. When in fact - THERE IS! And that difference is called YARN TWIST....
Z-Twisted yarns are more suited for crochet with the right hand because the crochet process itself is Z-twisting the yarn a little bit (but it can make a big difference on larger items). Your crochet piece will simply look better if you choose Z-twisted yarn. However - if you're a lefty - S-twist will be your friend. BUT the problem is - the majority of yarns are S-twisted and are produced with knitting in mind. I rarely see a Z-twisted yarn and what I would love to see is not only more Z-twisted yarns, but also labels that say "This yarn is Z-twisted'.

I hope this information has helped you understand why you might find some yarns more suitable for crochet than others and, if you have come across any Z twist yarns that are commonly available then I would love to have that information to share here for everyone another time, so do get in touch. In the mean time, if you are in the process of choosing an alternative yarn for a project and have a ball of yarn ready to work a tension piece, then it might be a good idea to work a small sample from both ends of the ball so that you can see if there is a difference in the look of the yarn once crocheted and in the feel of it as you work.
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It's nearly the weekend!
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​As I have said already, I am teaching a workshop in Norfolk tomorrow, so I am keeping my fingers crossed for a smooth drive there and some good weather. I think the forecast is pretty good for the whole weekend, so hopefully Sunday will include some time in the garden - the grass is looking like it is in need of a cut yet again!

I will be back on June 14th with the first of my monthly newsletters, but if I have any exciting things to tell you about before then I may well send you a cheeky little email one of the Friday's between now and then, so do keep an eye on your inbox.

I hope that whatever you have planned that you have a fabulous weekend.