Blogtober 2024 : Day 24 – Meet Lynne Rowe

I was out for lunch with a friend earlier this week, and as she lives a distance away from me, we meet up in a town called Knutsford which is about half way between us.  Knutsford is a very old and picturesque town close to Tatton Park, a large stately home with acres of grounds, and it’s a mix of narrow streets and bow-fronted shop windows, and more modern buildings – it’s a pretty place to meet up and I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow.  Today, however, I wanted to introduce you to one of my friends!

This is where my friend Lynne and I meet up …

It’s a terrible photo – I snapped it as we were on our way out and I hadn’t realised that the sun was quite where it was!  Anyway, hopefully you can see that it’s an old single storey brick building with a conservatory on the back and tables and chairs outside.  We’ve been coming here for years now, and even though we only meet up once a month, the cafe owner always remembers us and we feel very welcome.

It’s called the Courtyard Coffee House and at one point was the first Penny Farthing bicycle museum (now there’s an experience – eating your lunch surrounded by antique bicycles!) but they have been moved now and it is a warm and welcoming cafe with very good food and cake.

Sometimes, Lynne and I have a piece of cake each but this week we decided to share.  There’s something very sociable about sharing a piece of cake, I think, and we enjoyed this slice of gluten-free orange and almond cake very much!

I’ve realised that I’ve spoken about my bloggy yarny friends many times – Lucy of Attic24 and Emma Varnam certainly – but only in passing because we’ve been doing something together.  I am immensely proud of them and their contributions to the yarn community, and I know I have made the assumption that you will know who they are as well, but if you’re new to my blog or new to creating with yarn then you may not have come across them before, and I feel that I am doing them and you a disservice!

So, I thought I would tell you a bit more about what they do and my lunch companion this week was Lynne Rowe.  I’ve known Lynne for a good few years now since I went on one of her pattern-writing workshops at Black Sheep Wools way back when I was quite new to pattern-writing myself and needed to learn more.  I can’t quite remember how or when exactly we became friends but sometimes friendships happen like that, don’t they?  You don’t need to over-think how they start, they just do!

Source: www.knitcrochetcreate.com

Lynne is one of those people who can seem to turn their hand to anything yarny.  She’s a knitter, a crocheter, a pattern designer for both knit and crochet, she tech edits so has one of those amazing brains that can make sense of all the numbers, she’s written numerous books, worked as the knitting editor for Woman’s Weekly magazine, has run her own tech editing and mentoring programs and workshops, and also writes a blog – phew!  There’s not much that Lynne doesn’t know about yarn or knitting and crochet techniques and I consider myself very fortunate that she can fit me in for lunch once a month! 🙂

You have probably picked up one or two of her books to look at in a yarn store, or come across them in an Amazon search.  You might even have knitted or crocheted some of her patterns as she regularly used to produce them for magazines, especially those collections of a number of little things in a theme – three quick Hallowe’en knits or four baby gifts, that sort of thing.  She’s also designed for West Yorkshire Spinners – once you start looking, you realise that Lynne’s patterns are everywhere!

I have no idea how she is able to produce these patterns at all, never mind as quickly as she does, as it seems that she mentions a design one day and it’s created the next.  I wouldn’t know where to start with designing a tea cosy or a coin purse (clearly, I am a one trick sock pony!) but isn’t it good that we’re not all the same?  I think the world would be a far less joyful place without patterns for knitted pumpkins …

or knitted carrots …

or crocheted strawberries …

or star baby blankets …

and all of these patterns are free as Lynne’s website is a lovely mix of free and paid-for patterns.

So when Lynne and I get together, you can imagine that our conversations flow from knitting and crochet to writing blog posts to the latest in social media to website maintenance.  Like me, Lynne enjoys getting inside the workings of her blog rather than just writing the posts – for me, spending more time on this was something that happened when I left Blogger (which only allowed minimal changes to what you could do with your blog) in 2020 and moved to WordPress (where you can build your own site) so it wasn’t an intentional thing, but I did used to work for a software company and I do love that kind of tech!  We also chat about families, holidays and the usual sort of stuff that friends talk about, but having someone who is in the same yarn industry and community as me to talk to is very important.  It’s why I cherish my yarny friends!

I’ll chat more about my other yarny friends in a day or so, but in the meantime, if you’re looking for a pattern for pretty much anything, there’s a good chance that Lynne has written one!  She is still updating her website but you can find them all on Ravelry here.