#yarndale

Yarndale....wow! I had a fantastic day. A bus load of us from A Good Yarn went on Sunday and it was amazing. First of all, I booked to do a workshop with Amy Singer, aka the editor of Knitty. The workshop was Making the Next Monkey and for anyone who is a designer or a fledgling like me, then it is fantastic. I learnt lots and lots, plus Amy was wonderful. My head was buzzing with ideas all the way home.

Even though, most of my time there was taken up by the workshop, I did managed a bit of time to supplement my stash. I bought Ply magazine, which had some gorgeous patterns in. Haven't got around to reading it yet, but looking forward to it.

There must be tons of photos of the bunting at Yarndale going around, but there were hundreds of them and the effect en masse was just incredible. Far more incredible in real life, compared to the photos.

Mostly, I bought Garnstudio Drops, 4 balls of Alpaca (in 2 shades of green and 2 balls of cream) and 2 balls of Delight. The top skein is sock yarn from The Knitting Goddess, and I loved the name - "Where There's Muck There's Brass". Mr's favourite colour combination is black/dark grey with burnt orange, so they should be perfect for a pair of socks for him. The grey yarn was the bargain of the day, it was £3 from Artisan Yarns; it was in a bargain bin with no label but it's definitely laceweight and most likely BFL.

I did make one non knitting purchase, which was a Yarndale Sheep kit from Hooked By Design. There was another kit that was stunning, this Reindeer Stocking but I just got one to see how I fair with it, as I've never done any latch hook rugs before. One of the lovely ladies from the knitting group at A Good Yarn, had done the Yarndale Sheep and made it into a bag, which looked so amazing, that it seems to have inspired several of us from A Good Yarn to give it a go ourselves. Here's my progress so far.

My first attempt, so perhaps not quite right but I'm enjoying it. Not sure what I'm going to do with the finished rug. Mr suggested turning it into a beanbag footstool. The rest would be made of leather (which we have plenty of). I like the idea but wonder about the logistics of putting it all together.

Wish Upon a Knit

Last week we had great fun at A Good Yarn, Cleethorpes. It was the Wish Upon a Knit events all week. It was to raise money for When You Wish Upon a Star. 

It was very busy with lots of knitting, laughter and cakes. The last being the most important.....we ate a lot of cake. All the cakes were homemade by several of our lovely knitters and were very, very good. Obviously, I found the cakes to be the standout feature of the week! Maybe, I should tell you about the rest and forget about the exceedingly good cakes. Hold on - how about a piccie of ..... cake.

Every session had different cake too and of course, we had to test it all.

Anyway....

Everyone who took part received a kit with materials for four different jewellery projects.

They involved lots of different skills and hopefully, some new ones for people to have a go at.

The room looked very pretty, with fresh flowers, white tablecloths and vintage china.

The Saturday session was that busy that we had to expand into the shop.

Hopefully, everyone had a fabulous time. We certainly did. A big thank you to everyone who took part.

Oak

I normally share something to do with what I've been doing, but for a change I'm going to show you some of Mr's work. His current crafty obsession (and has been for awhile now) is woodturning with the odd foray into carpentry.

His latest piece is just stunning. He found a gorgeous plank of naturally edged oak. He has routed and shaped it into two racks and turned some identical oak pegs to make two amazing coat racks. With some polish and elbow grease, we now have two very useful coat racks. One has 4 pegs and the other 5. The 5 peg rack has the pegs put in at an angle for coats and the other we'll use for hats and scarves.

Incidentally, I've found it makes a nice prop for photos.

With my well worn colour affection.

Incidental lepidoptery

At a quick glance, it's looks like I'm practising lepidoptery, but I'm not pinning out butterflies but lots of swatches. 

I've had that many, that I've had to do them in batches and each time I've started to run out of blocking pins and have been relegated to using dressmaker's pins.

I still have more to go. Wish me luck....

Puerperium and spots

I've done plenty of knitting lately but for one reason or another they are secret projects, so I've not been able to share them.

I have completed one little project which is a Puerperium Cardigan by Kelly Brooker. I bought some gorgeous Adriafil Duo Plus yarn in the "End of Season Sale" at A Good Yarn - plus lots of other yarn too, which I'm not going to talk about because I think I have a stash addiction and I'm going to ignore the problem and hope no-one will notice.

The yarn in question is absolutely gorgeous, stunningly soft and in beautiful muted colours. So even though there are lots of other projects I should be doing, I had to make a little Puerperium ( which is a welcome to the world gift for a friend's grandchild due in a few weeks ).

I decided on making all the buttons different and trying to match the colours in the yarn, not a perfect match but I quite like the effect.

The other project that I can share is currently languishing on my needles, normally I'm pretty good at starting and finishing but I got a little frustrated. The pattern is Pop Spots and is a relatively simple project (most of it is either stocking stitch or garter stitch).

I originally used the orange hand dyed yarn below for the lace edge, originally thinking it would work well with the brighter spots. I'd done half of the lace edge before eventually deciding it was far too zingy to work with the other colours. 

So I went and bought another ball of the lace that I'd used for the body. The body is done in a strand of Rialto Lace and a strand of Kidsilk Haze. So for the edge I'm using 2 strands of the Rialto Lace and it's working so far but it just seems to be sitting on my needles at the moment. As you can see I've hardly done any at all, maybe putting it on here will push me into finishing it

Pile o' knits

I've been knitting lots recently and have this big pile o' knits. There's lots of different bits in that pile; baby cardigan, baby vest, fingerless mitts, socks, bandana, shawl and a moebius cowl.

A pair of vanilla socks (my pattern)...

And this is what is currently on my needles...

It's a baby vest. It's a sort of a made up pattern, with the inspiration being from a photo of something similar. I do like a bit of stranded knitting! The yarn is Rowan Milk Cotton and is just lovely to knit with but unfortunately has been discontinued by Rowan. The only thing is now I love this so much I want a grown up one for me.

Painted Rocks

I've always had a fascination with painted rocks. My aunt used to paint for Royal Crown Derby and she painted the most beautiful things, including a large stone, which we use as a doorstop. 

With all the trending on Pinterest about painted rocks I had to have a go. This pin in particular inspired me.

A long search of the garden later...

This is what I did:

1. Clean the rocks well with a toothbrush. Remove any sand or dirt
2. I freehanded the pictures but you could draw them on in pencil first
3. I used a fine rigger brush and acrylic paint to paint the design.
4. Finally, I coated them in a thin layer of glossy Mod Podge.

Here's the finished result in the lovely Tulipwood bowl that Mr made for me.

Creative Filofax

I'm not entirely sure why but I dug my Filofax out of the cupboard and have started using it again. I thought I'd try and add a bit of creativity to it and make it more personal.

I bought some washi tape and stickers from Riky and Nina.

Washi tape and stickers

The packs of stickers are great if you just want a little bit for journalling or scrapbooking etc. Each page has four thicker strips, two thin ones and four circles. I bought a pack of plain and some with cool details ( e.g. the sticker has ticket stubs, barcodes, music on them ).

I used the stickers to redo the dividers to something more suitable for my needs. I'll use the rest as I continue to use it.

Remade Filofax dividers

Then I had a little fun with the washi tape. I bought a cute panda one and some pretty yellow flower tape.

Washi tape

 I wanted some sticky notes in my filofax but the official one wasn't quite what I wanted plus I had some nice geometric ones already. So I made my own. I used a page from the Filofax as a template and cut out some thick paper to the correct size and punched in the holes. I don't have a 6 hole punch so I just marked the holes and did each one singularly. Using double sided tape, I added some of my sticky notes.

Of course, I then had to decorate it with washi tape!

Handmade filofax sticky notes

For about the last 15 years, I've kept a list written out on the computer of all the books I've read. The list is in the 1000s at the moment. I can remember a lot but can't always remember if I've read a particular novel in a series so I like to have the list with me. So I don't accidentally buy the same book twice - it has happened!

With that many books, it would take forever to write by hand and probably fill up the Filofax. So I cut out different colours of Filofax sized paper out and with a little trial and error managed to print the list out back to back in a teeny tiny font. I managed to get it down to 10 pages.

Filofax book list

FO: Vitamin D

I have a finished object to show you. My Vitamin D cardigan. The pattern is by Heidi Kirramaier and it was very easy to follow. 

Turned hem - right side

I did make one or two little alterations. The main one is the sleeve hems, which I changed from garter stitch to turned hems. I thought it would give it some weight and stop them from flipping up. I worked the sleeve until the length I wanted then purled one row. I switched to smaller needles and worked 6 rows and cast off. Finally, I sewed them down. I was really thrilled with how neat the sewing on the inside is. I lined up the cast off stitches with the ones  directly above it and used a whip stitch. I made sure the stitch was identical each time and I'm glad I put in that little extra effort.

Turned hem - wrong side

I was really worried when it came off the needles as the garter hem was flipping and wonky. I normally don’t worry but the yarn has a very high proportion of acrylic and I wasn’t sure how well it would block. I'll be brave and show you pictures of me in my Vitamin D.

Before blocking

Before blocking

After blocking

After blocking

I didn't need to worry though as it blocked beautifully. 

The yarn is very unusual. It's Bergere de France Cabourg. The mix of acrylic and hemp makes a different texture - hard to describe but silky and prickly at the same time. I really liked it, it has a subtle sheen to it. 

Pity it’s a little too warm here at the moment to wear.

Zentangling ceramics

I promised to show you my finished teaspoon stand from when we went mug painting. It was awhile ago but it had to be refired and then I started a mug with a similar design so thought I'd show you them together.

Here's before firing: 

And after. The colours become really vivid.

I'm not as pleased with the mug, the shading wasn't dark enough so it doesn't have that 3D effect. If I do it again it will definitely have 3 coats of the grey.

The mug is a Christmas present for a friend and the handle says "Hot and Dark", which is what he calls bad coffee.