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Sponsor

This episode of the Shinybees podcast is sponsored by Yarn in the City. Yarn in the City creates experiential yarn-centric events for knitters and makers, designed to bring people together through a shared love of craft. Yarn in the City organises the annual Great London Yarn Crawl taking place this year on Saturday, 5th September.

This year’s Yarn Crawl will also feature the addition of a one-day Pop-Up Marketplace taking place at Chelsea Old Town Hall, featuring over 30 vendors from London and around the UK. To top off the weekend, on Sunday, 6th September, Yarn in the City will be hosting pattern designer and technical editor Kate Atherley for two workshops in central London.

To book your tickets for this fantastic event, head over to www.yarninthecity.com.

Intro

I know. I’ve been banging on about this for the past few episodes.

Well I have good news!

Thanks to all of you being kind enough to vote and support the podcast, it’s been nominated in not one, but TWO categories!

Games and Hobbies

Most Engaged Audience (Go knitters! That’s you guys!!!)

Now it’s down to the final three I need to ask you all another favour.

Please could you go and vote for the podcast in both categories.

You’ll be able to scroll downwards to Games and Hobbies after voting in Most Engaged Audience (shakes pompoms) and you can vote anonymously if you don’t want to login.

If you’d consider sharing your vote on social media afterwards, I would be super grateful.

A HUGE thank you to all of you for making this happen. I am so blown away to even be a finalist and to be one in the main category for audience engagement can only be down to your efforts.

Brenda and Caerthan aka Thelma and Louise. Image Copyright Brenda Dayne.

Interview

This week I’m delighted to welcome podcasting legend Brenda Dayne to the show. Voice of the Cast On podcast, Brenda has taught throughout the UK and US in venues large and small, as well as at festivals across the US. Cast On has been downloaded over 2.5 million times since it started in 2005. Brenda lives in rural Wales with her partner, Tonia, and drives fast cars with her knitty partner in crime, Caerthan Wrack. When they’re not cooking up indigo dyed mischief, Brenda also organises the Gwlana Retreats in West Wales.

If you’ve listened to Cast On, you’ll know Brenda is fascinated by the more philosophical side of craft. She was particularly interested in the idea that when you picked up a certain project, you immediately began to remember what you were doing and the events at the time of creating it. She began to research this in depth and discovered there was indeed a link between the physical act of creating with the hands and memories.

Image Copyright Brenda Dayne.

Spurred by this, in 2012, Brenda undertook the Memorable Yarn Project, which asked knitters to take some special yarn and knit it into a small ‘memory bags’, which would be filled with a note describing a particular memory. These were collected at events where she spoke about her research across the US. She laughed, she cried and she marvelled at the wonder of humanity contained within these notes.

Brenda’a latest venture is the Gwlana Wool Retreats in Wales, the next of which is in October 2015, with a larger scale event planned for May 2016. You can join the mailing list for early bird notification of all events here.

You can find Brenda on at Cast On and Gwlana.

Wrap-Up

That’s all from me this week. As always, thank you for listening. Feedback is always appreciated, and you can email me or message me via Ravelry or social media. If you enjoyed listening today, please consider leaving an iTunes review, to help others find the podcast too. Happy crafting!