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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...

 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. 1. First, using the pen tool, draw a knit stitch like the diagram below. There needs to be a stroke colour but make sure there is no fill. 2. Change the stroke weight to about 5pt. 3. Change the stroke to outline stroke by selecting Object --> Path --> Outline Stroke 4. Make sure the stroke stands out so change it to about 1pt and change the colour to black (or any colour you prefer) and change fill to your desired colour; I picked grey. There does need to be a fill colour otherwise the following...

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!).

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...

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.