Check out the brand new RUCraft website! It's got a growing collection of books and accessories covering crafts from knitting to card making and beading to cross stitch.

What you need to know:

• Free book when you place your first order.
• Order any book and get £15 off a set of bamboo needles.
  
• Lots of books at below RRP – save on your favourite hobby!
• Tips and interviews from top authors.
  
• Order online or by calling 0844 880 5852.
  

If you'd rather have a paper catalogue to curl up with then you can sign up for the RUCraft catalogue online or call 0844 5852 to request your copy.

Why we love it

There's a growing collection of knitting books at great prices – for example, 100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet by Lesley Stanfield is just £8.20 (RRP £11.99) and it's really interesting to find out a bit more about some of the authors and experts behind the books. Did you know that knitting designer Clare Crompton also wrote Picture Your Pet in Cross Stitch?

Like any frugal knitter, we do love a freebie. You can choose between four craft titles for your free book, but our favourite has to be The Knitter's Bible: Knitted Accessories, also by Clare Crompton – we're better with two needles than one and it's packed with over 30 patterns for bags, scarves, wraps and mitts and lots of hands-on advice to help you create a unique and personal knit.

Pam, the knitter and designer behind Flint Knits is probably best known for one of her free patterns – the February Lady Sweater, based on an Elizabeth Zimmerman baby cardigan. It's an absolutely gorgeous design and really easy to knit design so it's no surprise that it's been knit up over 4,000 times according to Ravelry!

As well as her clever designs, Pam regularly updates the blog with her own handknits, making it a great place to visit for inspiration when you're wondering what to knit next.

A chatty, open style and plenty of detail about the knits makes this an inspiring and entertaining blog.

Read a great blog? Write a great blog? Tell us what it is and why you like it, and you might see it here next Friday. 

The May issue of Simply Knitting hits the shelves in shops around the UK today – and it contains part one of Alan Dart's Medieval Mice. The basic mouse pattern will not be repeated so make sure you get a copy of issue 53 if you want to knit the mice.


Click for a larger image.

Spring is in the air and we're getting ready for the warmer weather with some fabulous knits. We've got three lovely cardigans to keep you cosy this spring. Our chic cover project is a versatile tweed effect jacket. It looks great and the slip-stitch pattern is really easy! We've also got a stylish, striped cardigan in pure wool and a fab plus-size waistcoat in bust sizes 38-56in (97-142cm).

We've not forgotten the rest of the family, either. Our smart man's jumper can be worn over a shirt for the office or dressed down with a pair of jeans for a casual weekend. For the fashionistas in your life, we've got three floral spring bags – they're super-stylish and a great first project for teen knitters. For the newest members of your family, we've got a beautiful baby blanket by Amanda Jones.

And for the kids? Alan Dart's Medieval Mice, of course!


Click for a larger image.

In issue 53 you'll get the basic mouse pattern which will not be reprinted in issue 54 and all the information you'll need to make your first four mice. The rest of the court will follow in issue 54 (on sale 26 April).

The first mice in the court are the royal family. In issue 53 you'll have all the instructions you need to knit the King and Queen, Prince and Princess.



Make sure you don't miss issue 54 which will have details for the rest of the mice, including a fab jester, knights and more!

We've got two great gifts for you with your magazine this month. We've chosen one of our favourite patterns from the Rowan back catalogue for you to knit and we've also created an exclusive Knitter's Checker to help you read your tension more easily – after all, as every knitter knows the correct tension can make the difference between a knit you wear every day and a knit you throw out!



Other great things to look out for in issue 53 include:   

• Knitting on the net – Anna Tobin learns to knit online.
• Rachael Matthews discovers the joys of wet felting – with her feet!
  
• A Coat for a Boat – an unusual kntitting project casts off.
  

And don't miss any of your usual favourites: we've got gorgeous new spring yarns for you to try, Kirstie McLeod has tried and tested six of our favourite sock yarns and we've got loads of great book, pattern and website reviews for you.

Get ready for Easter – or just celebrate the joys of spring – with these adorable chicks.

Designed by Alan Dart, the Chick and Egg pattern is free to download from his website.

Each chick takes just a small amount of the colours shown so they're a great way to use up small amounts of stash – or a really economical way to make lovely gifts! They'll last longer than a chocolate egg, too...

The chicks would also make excellent and unusual name-card holders and party favours at a child's birthday – with or without the eggs. Or why not host an egg decorating party and let each child embellish their own egg with scraps of yarn, beads and sequins?

Deb, Liz the Art Ed, Kirstie and I were all at S&C 2009 at Olympia yesterday, manning the knitting clinic. It was great fun, and we met lots of readers – all lovely! The tricky questions went to Kirstie, but I was able to help a few people with sock knitting. It feels great to be able to help.

If you're planning to go over the next couple of days, Elizabeth will be there tomorrow along with knitwear designer Amanda Jones, and Jen from The Knitter will be there on Sunday with Rhian and Elle, who both come to our Tuesday lunchtime stitching group. Do drop by and say 'Hello' to them, and take your knitting problems if you have any.

If you like sock knitting and puzzles and haven't heard of the Unicorn Quest, there's still time to sign up for it. It's best described as 'a sock club with a twist'. It's being run by Fyberspates and the Natural Dye Studio, and over nine months you need to buy 4 skeins of yarn from one firm and 5 from the other. Each month there's a riddle on the ball band, and if you solve all nine riddles and find the name of the unicorn you can enter a prize draw to win all sorts of yarn-related goodness.

I've already signed up, and have made my first purchase. (My husband thinks I have enough yarn already, so when I told him I'd planned to buy a skein of sock yarn every month for nine months he came close to hysterical laughter.) The yarn is being shipped out to Unicorn questers on 1 April – but a skein has been sent to Simply Knitting*. We're the first UK mag to receive any. I'll be putting it in Ideas, but it's great to get a scoop, so I thought I'd share it with you. The magazine skein doesn't have the riddle, so I don't have an unfair advantage. I have to wait until my personal skein arrives like all the other questers.

The yarn's composition is a secret, as it's been spun especially for the Natural Dye Studio and Fyberspates. Jen (The Knitter's tech ed) and I are the only ones in the Simply Knitting/ The Knitter office today, but we've given it a good rub and think there must be alpaca in there, and possibly silk as it has a slight sheen. It really is incredibly soft; rub-it-on-your-cheek soft. It has a fuzziness that reminds me of Du Store Alpakka's Babysilk, and I suspect it will drape in a similar way. I shall have to ask friends with babies to give it a rub and see if they think it's nipper-friendly, because when my skein arrives I may try knitting a baby garment with it if it is. I'm glad I'm buying my own; I suspect office wars could start over this one!

Knitting seems to fly off the needles at the Brainy Lady blog, turning this corner of the internet into a tempting parade of knits – your 'must knit' queue will definitely grow!

Alison, the Brainy Lady in question, also writes in-depth reviews of the books which cross her path and enjoys experimenting with new techniques and challenges, from lace to dyeing, making this a really inspiring blog.

Although this is mostly a kntting (and crochet) blog, Alison is a keen poly-crafter and her blog showcases her other projects and thrift store finds from quilts to a home-made hollow book. With descriptions of how she created each item or links to the pattern, gorgeous photos of the places she visits and yarn she finds along the way, Brainy Lady is a great blog to get your imagination working and your knitting needles clicking!

Read a great blog? Write a great blog? Tell us what it is and why you like it, and you might see it here next Friday. 

Simply Knitting issue 53 hits the shops on Thursday 26 March. Enter our great giveaways and competitions by using the links below.

All the Fun of the Fair voucher giveaway, page 6
Lana Pura's Rowan Learn To Knit kits giveaway, page 10
Chilterns Craft Show tickets giveaway, page 12
Prize crossword, page 94
NEW! Prize sudoku, page 94

If sheep did ballet, it would look something like this. An amazing display of shepherding skills (and a little movie magic).

Put the kettle on – all your kettles on – because we've a big project for you!

Communi-tea week, which uses tea to raise awareness of the problems of loneliness and isolation for older people. Simply sharing a cup of tea with an older person can give them more conversation and human contact than they have in an ordinary day. (Communi-tea week is a joint project between Community Connections, which is healthcare provider Bupa's community fundraising and volunteering department, and Bupa Care Services.)

This year Bupa Care Homes plan to knit the world's largest teacosy as part of the campaign, and needs knitters to send in knitted strips 15cm wide by 15, 30 or 45cm long. Strips must be handed in to your local Bupa Care Home or posted to Tea Cosy Challenge, Bridge House, Outwood Lane, Horsforth, Leeds, LS18 4UP by the end of March. The finished cosy will be revealed in London on the 9th April 2009.

Shamrock-inspired knits are a great way to celebrate St Paddy's Day, and we've got two super quick treats for you, courtesy of Vicki Howell, author of Knit Aid.

Vicki has designed a bejewelled shamrock and adorable shamrock baby bootees and posted both free shamrock knitting patterns on her blog, making it a little easier to be green today.

Have you seen the Owls jumper? No? Click through and have a look. We'll wait.

Isn't it gorgeous? Designed by Kate Davies, who blogs at Needled, the Owls sweatshirt pattern is free to download and is becoming something of a phenomenon and – we hope – driving more readers to this lovely blog.

Kate has just unveiled her next design – you'll have to pay for this one, but as you can see in the image above, it's gorgeous too – so it seems like the perfect moment to talk about the rest of her work.

Influenced by her a day job as a writer and academic, Kate's blog often approaches knitting, textiles and making from a different angle than other blogs – perhaps with a broader view, perhaps with a sense of the history of an item or technique, and always with her own joy in research and the juxtaposition of different ideas shining through.

To a lot of people the word 'academic' conjures up dusty rooms and dull texts but as Kate's blog shows, in this day and age you can have a passion for 18th century textiles and a sense of fun.

All in all, this is a fun and informative blog and we look forward to seeing what designs Kate comes up with next.

Read a great blog? Write a great blog? Tell us what it is and why you like it, and you might see it here next Friday. 

Colour and texture. Colinette yarns are big on both. If you've ever walked past a stand at a show and stopped, dazzled by a wall of colour, there's a good chance it was Colinette that you were looking at. Of course, the company does many subtler things too: pure cotton Banyan and pure wool Cadenza yarns, simple colourways like Moss and Oyster Blush. Muted or exuberant, all the colours are lovely.

I've been a big fan of Colinette ever since I started knitting - my first jumper was a simple slash-neck in Colinette Firecracker - so it was a real treat to visit their Banwy workshops yesterday. All the yarns are dyed at the workshop, and the small firm has a real 'family' feel. Several ladies were winding skeins in one room, another was mailing out orders from online customers, and in a room pungent with chemicals, two men were hard at work dyeing yarns. The dyeing isn't a huge industrial process. The dyeing room feels like a large kitchen, with a series of hobs on which large stockpots stand, a small amount of yarn 'cooking' in each. The 'recipes' for each colourway are bound into books, adding to the kitchen feel. The firm is currently working on new colourways to add to the dozens they already produce.

There are currently four free patterns available at the firm's website; you need to register to get them. You'll also find yarns in particular colours on discount.

We're thrilled to be able to show you these gorgeous stockings – particularly as we're between World Women's Day (8th) and Mother's Day (22nd in the UK). March is all about mums and the other strong women who shaped the world so it's the perfect time to raise awareness and funding for cancers which affect women particularly.

Designer Erssie Major has created these beautiful stockings using Lorna's Laces Pink Flamingo Stripe, chosen because 20% of the proceeds from this particular yarn go to fun breast cancer research.

"I named them Ann Marie Stockings, after my own mother who died at a young age from ovarian cancer," she explains. "Her mother, my grandmother, also died at a young age of breast cancer, so I felt designing the stockings would be a good way to raise awareness."

Don't fancy knitting thigh-highs? This clever toe-up pattern can be cast off at several points, allowing you to make ankle socks, regular socks or knee-highs, as well as the full length version. There's no shaping to worry about either: the close fit comes from the elastic properties of the lacy rib and is widened by changing needle size.



As you can imagine, this is a cause close to Erssie's heart and she's already planning her next knit. "Later in the year, I hope to make a trainer sock version of this stocking, for a Race for Life volunteer to wear in a fun run to raise funds for women's cancer charities," she says. If you enjoy knitting this free pattern, you may like to make a donation to Cancer Research UK or a similar charity. Don't forget – every penny helps!

Ready to cast on? You can download the Ann Marie Stockings pattern (PDF), visit Erssie's website for more information or find the pattern in the pattern library on Ravelry (you will need to be logged in to Ravelry to access this link).

If you love to knit socks – and, let's face it, once you've started knitting socks, it's impossible to stop – you'll already have heard about Cookie A's super sock designs. Her book, Sock Innovation, is due out, and London yarn supplier Loop will be hosting the book launch on Sunday 5 April from 4-6pm. You'll be able to meet Cookie A and buy copies of Sock Innovation, and if you don't fancy ordering individual patterns from the US, Loop also stocks Cookie A patterns here in the UK.

Entry to the book launch is free, but if you want to go please call Loop on 0207 288 1160 to let them know you'd like to attend as space in the shop is not unlimited.

Knit socks, meet a well-loved celebrity!



There's a story to this picture: Test Match Special is what got me into cricket (I enjoyed listening to TMS before I started watching the sport). Traditionally, fans send cakes up to the commentary box. However, my husband and I, after two long and very tedious years of saving, were going to Barbados to watch England versus West Indies and I knew that if a cake was even allowed through customs, it would still have to survive a long flight and several days in a hotel room. The only cake I could think of that would go through all that and not poison people at the end was Indestructible Wedding Cake, and I wasn't about to inflict that on anyone. (Honestly, six months after the wedding we finally admitted we never wanted to eat another slice and threw the rest of ours out. It's lurking in landfill somewhere, waiting for the day an archaeologist digs it up. It'll probably be as (in)edible then.)

Last summer the England team ditched their traditional cricket jumpers in favour of far less sexy fleecy things, so I decided to design and make a pair of 'cricket socks' to give to Jonathan Agnew instead of a cake. England may have ditched the jumpers, but cricket knits will never die! As anyone who's knitted to a deadline knows, it took right up until the last minute, and the other guests at the hotel asked what I was knitting. By a sheer stroke of luck one of them was a lovely lady who works for BBC Radio, and she took my husband and me into the media centre at the Kensington Oval to give them to Aggers in person.

He seemed really pleased with the socks, and not at all taken aback by having some chubby, sweaty woman giving him handknits. Aggers is every bit as gentlemanly in person as he is on the air. If I was a bit of a TMS fan before, I'm a dedicated one now!

I wonder what I'd have to knit to gain admittance to the England dressing room...

Our sister magazine, The Knitter, has been helping Rowan to design this sweet little knitted red nose corsage to raise money for Comic Relief’s annual Red Nose Day, held this year on Friday 13 March 2009. The pattern is free to download from www.knitrowan.com but please think about the amount of pleasure you get from knitting this pattern and stop by our Red Nose Donation Page to make a donation – don't forget, every penny helps! All the money raised will go straight into the Red Nose Day pot and help to make a difference to the lives of people in need both here in the UK and Africa. So what are you waiting for? Get knitting!

Sackboy's bold black eyes are actually fairly prosaic 20mm shank buttons. If you're having trouble finding them in your local haberdashery, try www.sewessential.co.uk and look under 'Elegant Buttons'.

Not knitted a Sackboy yet? Get the pattern for free!

The pattern is not being hosted by Simply Knitting so we can't say how much longer it will be available. If you have problems downloading it, please contact the webmaster of the The Sun's site.

If you emailed us about the pattern for the blankets for Sands' memory boxes, I'm now back off my holiday and am posting the patterns out today. We weren't ignoring you!

If you missed the news story in issue 52, Sands, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity, supports people affected by the death of a baby during pregnancy or shortly after their birth, and as part of the support they offer, they supply memory boxes to maternity units across the UK. A hand-knitted blanket is an important component in these boxes. If you'd like a pattern plus the address to send your completed blanket to, email us at simplyknitting@futurenet.com

Quirky knits, fun photoshoots and lots of finished objects make pieKnits a great blog to keep up with.

Written by Jennifer Tallapaneni from Dallas, Texas, pieKnits is mostly about yarn, which is how we like it, and a little bit about life in Texas. Jennifer is a talented designer and has a number of patterns posted on her blog, both for sale and for free. With a background in both the creative arts and maths, knitting patterns are an obvious way to combine her interests. As Jennifer says, "I love the combination of creativity and technical details. I'm a dual-minded kind of gal."

There's plenty to read and more to oggle as Jennifer has a great knack of photographing her knits well, letting you see all the important details. Add that to her stunning patterns and the occasional recipe for a sweet treat and you've got a lovely blog that will keep you wanting more.

Read a great blog? Write a great blog? Tell us what it is and why you like it, and you might see it here next Friday.