Magic ‘SOAK’ Flatter Spray, Gangstas and the COCO Sweater.

Hello knitting folks & welcome to the Knitting Magpie ( to find out more about the knitting magpie click here: About the knitting magpie.

I hope you have managed to take your needles into the sunshine on at least a couple of occasions ( if you are not based in the UK you may not realise what an event 🌞 😎 is).

I managed to finish my COCO Sweater purchased from the lovely Wool and the Gang this week although I have not quite finished sewing it up. I chose to knit it in magic mint & white and the colours just make me long for a holiday where the sea sparkles turquoise hues – sigh. The yarn is their lovely Shiney Happy Cotton which knits up beautifully. One note of caution it is a very fluid cotton so if you knit loosely you may wish to go up a garment size and down a needle size. I also drop at least 1mm in needle size when completing rib areas as well as using twisted rib as I find it holds the shape better.

I use Flatter spray by SOAK on all of my projects and find I rarely need to fully block. It comes in a couple of fragrances but I stay with the fig, reminiscent of Italian gardens – back to holidays again! A light spray and then a steam press evens up cotton and linen fibres and on wool ( steam only, don’t press) it reduces static and flyaway fibres. I get mine from Loop London as I’ve not come across many UK stockists.

Invisible seaming on stripes is a breeze and I always use my heavy solid silver barley twist needle for sewing up which was a gift many years ago from my mother – thanks mum.

Now to the Gangstas. Those of you familiar with Wool and the Gang will know that their gang includes everyone from the HQ team to their global manufacturing team to those of us who spend more of our salary that we should on their lovely products. Gangsta chat happens on their Facebook #MAKEALONG group page and it is a friendly international forum for the sharing of projects and ideas. Also being international there is always someone around for a woolly chat at stupid o’clock in the morning 😊

I’m off to finish sewing up COCO and will post a pic when complete.

The finished COCO which I love ( although sadly we appear to have returned to winter today – brrrrr.

Next time I’ll tell you a little about the cardigan of doom!

Stay warm and woolly

Love Magpie

XXX