Making the Jools video!

Today's task is to make a video of the techniques in the Jools Beret, ready for the start of the KAL on April 1st. For hardened YouTubers, this may sound simple, but at the moment for me it seems like a big mountain to climb. We borrowed a tripod from a neighbour so I'm just about to enter the studio (aka the living room) and start rolling. It would have been much better light in my office at the top of the house, but the banging of the roofers is deafening at the moment - a friend over the road took this pic - see what I mean?

Barry and Jim at work

View from an upstairs window

Hard enough dealing with the camera anyway, but coupled with noise distractions... hmmm, we'll see.  Also I'm not fully confident with the editing yet, but will treat this as a trial run and see how it goes. Apparently for simple cuts you can edit in Quick Time, so I'll have a play later and fingers crossed it will all come together.

Both sides of the beret from left to right, small, medium and large.
I was delighted to find that just starting the colour sequence
in a different place produced all these other delicious versions.

So what am I teaching? On the video there will be two cast-ons, a tip for getting rid of the jag when joining work into the round, how to 'make 1' and finally I'll be demonstrating two-handed fairisle knitting. Hopefully this should get rid of the gremlins for any knitters with a fear of fairisle. The two-colour work in Jools is very minimal and as it's worked in the round, the right side of the work is always facing, so the two fairisle rows in the 8-row pattern are a good initiation into the technique.

Close-up of the two rows in the 9-row pattern that involve fairisle

I just can't put this off a moment longer, so be back when it's done, if it all goes to plan I'll be looking back on my misgivings in a couple fo hours time. Don't go away!

Grape hyacinths

I'm back and it wasn't so bad for a dummy run.  I found I could get most of what I wanted to say done in 15 mins and the quality of the picture and the sound both seem to be fine. The main problem is that we now have glorious spring weather here in York, just what we've been waiting for, but I find myself hoping for rain so that the roofers will have a day off and we can shoot it again in my studio for real!

PS Off to see June Tabor at the Early Music Centre tonight, have a listen to her collaboration with Oyster Band on Love Will Tear Us Apart (in the sidebar).