Garden Song

Oooooo, pretty knitting goodies. 

Fell in love with this fabric recently and Nicsknots made me some lovely bags with it.

They've already been out and about with me and it's really nice to be able to separate my projects - stops a big jumble of yarn! Thanks Nic.

Miya Miya Bag

Small drawstring bag

Zipped purse

Weekend dyeing

I had a wonderful day at the weekend. I spent the entire day in the back garden with my dyeing gear and my burco. The weather was gorgeous and it was really good to be out in the garden which I haven't done much this year.

It's my first go at handpainting yarns and I made a complete and thorough mess even though I had my gloves and apron I seemed to have more dye on me than the yarn did!

I dyed 3 lots of merino sock yarn (or at least I think it is as it wasn't labelled and from a bargain bin on the bluefaced.com stall)

The yarn turned out like I wanted but I had a few problems with the fleece. I did something wrong somewhere because the pale greeny one was meant to be bright blue so it either needed an extra wash before hand or I didn't put enough citric acid in.

The purple is wensleydale and silk and turned out as intended though.

Delft Inspired

This is my most recent piece from the ceramics studio and I'm decidedly smug about it. It's to replace a Commemorative Birth plate that was broken. The original was a transfer with the details painted in and I'm very happy I've been able to paint fine enough to replicate it. I thoroughly enjoyed painting this one and think it's one of the nicer pieces I've made.

Bluefaced Weekend

The Bluefaced Weekend at Mickle Trafford was fantastic. Lots of lovely knitters and lots and lots of scrummy yarn; even with just a few stalls I found myself bamboozled with choice yet again. 

Bought waaay too much but boy was it fun.

I bought 5 skeins just from Posh yarn

Catherine - Colourway - Sent to Coventry - Heavy Laceweight - 100% Organic Merino

Olivia Lace - Orphan - 100% Mulberry Silk

Megan - Orphan - Sock Weight - 100% Superwash BFL

2 Skeins Gretchen 2ply - House On The Mountain - 55% superwash BFL, 45% silk. Provisionally I'm thinking of making an Oregon Coast Cardigan

Now the rest of the yarn!

Babylonglegs Radiance Sock - 100% Pure Wool - to make a Marin

And two lots from easyknits; I could have bought lots from here. The colours are just so bright and saturated! Right up my street. Finally settled on just these two.

Deeply Wicked - Electric Dreams - 75% Superwash Merino, 25% Nylon 

Deeply Wicked - Midnight Forrage (sic) - 100% Superwash Merino

Restocked my stash which has gone down quite a bit recently. Believe it or not; I've knitted the majority of the yarn I bought at Woolfest.

All the stalls were fantastic; wished I'd been able to support all of them (just not enough pennies - but I did give it a good go!). Though Nicsknots is making me some of her lovely bags in the near future.

I'd definitely go again and the cakes were very scrummy btw and Mr. says the coffee was fantastic too!

Adobe Illustrator How to: Knitting Illustrations

 I've been experimenting recently with Adobe Illustrator. It's an amazing piece of software; there are a few tutorials around on how to make knitting illustrations but I wasn't 100% happy with it as I was sure there was an easier way. I have no experience or training in Illustrator so this is amateur hour. This is what I figured out to produce the illustration below:

I'm assuming you know the basics of illustrator such as how to draw shapes and change the stroke and fill.

Dyeing Find

At Woolfest, I bought a dyeing kit from D & T Crafts and I've been amassing all the equipment I'll need (such as gloves, dye pots etc.) when a lucky find turned up. I'd been planning to do most of it on the stove but a Burco Water Boiler appeared! It's from my parents-in-law, they used to keep turkeys commercially and used the boiler for cleaning up; they've moved on to arable farming so it was looking a little lost and forlorn in one of the barns. 

It's been re-appropriated for dyeing. It's quite big so think I could do a fair amount at once. Not sure which technique to try with it but looking forward to some dyeing. I'd bought some lovely undyed rovings from Wingham's when I was there at the beginning of the week - (a very happy coincidence!).

Sherwood

Major Oak

We had an absolutely wonderful day wandering around the bowyers and archery shops of Nottinghamshire - bow shopping. While we were there we stopped off at Sherwood Forest.  

Next month, Mr. and I have booked in to do a willow basket weaving workshop at The Basket Case. We had a bit of inspiration at the Archery Have-a-Go in Sherwood Forest. They had some beautiful wicker ground quivers.

 Mr. decided to "Have-A-Go" even though he's been an archer for over a decade and already been to three archery shops that day to try out their bows! Boys and their toys!

Spotted Robin Hood while we were there too...

FO Plethora

I've had a mass of finished objects recently. Above are just a few of what I've finished in the last month; there's a scarf and a jumper as well plus two secret projects (I'm going to be writing the patterns up for them). It's nice to get all those unfinished objects done and I can start on some new exciting ones.

Lovely Weekend

We had a lovely weekend with a day trip to Lincoln; where some scrumptious wool was bought and some wool wash. Plus a very large chisel of some sort for Mr. which I'm sure will get plenty of use on the lathe.

I started a new project; as my current one's aren't particularly car friendly.

It's going to be a scarf and it uses King Cole Galaxy DK in a very zingy pink!

Sunday was a full day out in the sunshine at Horncastle for their Family Fun Day. Our archery club ran a Have a Go at archery and we were non-stop all day. Lots of interesting people and nice sunshine.

Photo Shoot

 I had a lot of help with my photoshoot for my DROPS blanket.

M's magic hands arranging the props!

Somebody else decided they wanted to help as well.

Apparently they have aspirations to be a model too!