news catch-up....

With the bad weather keeping many of us close to home, here are a few things we hope might motivate you to venture further afield if you get the chance.

Woman's Hour Craft Prize exhibition at the V&A, London; now until the 5th February 2018, celebrates the most innovative and exciting craft practioners and designer-makers resident in the UK today.  We particularly like the work of "patcher", Celia Pym (who led a workshop for us in 2016), and Laura Youngson Coll, whose extraordinary and beautiful work is designed to provoke curiosity and articulates the often overlooked details of the environments we inhabit.

Les Soeurs Anglaises' knitting guru, Åsa Söderman of ÅsaTricosa, will be teaching a few short, sharp classes at the prestigious New York Live Knitting Exhibition in, you guessed it, New York between the 12th and 14th January.  Most knitting workshop places have already been booked, but there are still a few available if you're quick for Åsa as well as other prolific knit designers such as Melissa Leapman, Annie Rowden, Amy Herzog and Melanie Berg. Wish we could be there....

Boquete is a small town on the Caldera River, in western Panama. The surrounding Chiriquí Highlands are home to coffee plantations and the Barú Volcano National Park, to the west. At the end of February every year, there is a Jazz Festival unlike any other!  Organised by our very own Deanna Bogart (who will be leading a Jazz Lab for us at the end of July this year) and featuring great local and international jazz talent, it's a must for lovers of jazz who are prepared to travel a little off the beaten path to experience something special.

If you're nowhere near any of the above, make yourself a hot drink, sit back and be charmed for a few moments with this award winning animated film, The Last Knit which neatly illustrates the obsession some of us have with knitting (at least during the winter months down here).