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I can't seem to settle with my craft life at the moment. I'm bobbing about all over the place. As well as the usual, knitting, I've been spinning and sewing too! As I mentioned last week, I've been doing some embroidery. My dropcloth sampler arrived this morning; so I've got another project to add to the list. I've got 3 socks finished at the moment, unfortunately none of them match each other! So I'd better get on and do the others. I have got some finished objects to show you. I've been wanting to spin the fibre I got for Christmas, but I'm a starter/finisher so wanted to finish the fibre I already had on the wheel. However, it seemed to be taking forever. I'd intended for the merino to be sock weight but somehow, it ended up thinner than that and in the end I've drafted over 2km and plied it into a 1km 2ply. I've no idea how it ended up being that much and I'll have to find another project for it, as it's too thin for what I i...

Not really sure what started it but I've had the needle, thread and embroidery hoop out this week. I ordered this  sampler to embroider and while waiting for it to arrive; I ransacked my supplies. It was like a very colourful bomb had dropped. I bought the latest Crossstitcher magazine, and wanted to try a little cross stitch. I like the bird cross stitch but didn't have many of the exact colours so after much playing about and matching colours. I found suitable supplies without having to buy anything. This is my progress so far... I'll see how much gets done before the knitting bug bites back.

Finally finished my Rams and Yowes blanket.  It's such a beautiful design  I really enjoyed the centre fair isle section. Having a look at the beautiful blankets others have done, there seemed to be a bit of an issue with wavy borders which I definitely wanted to avoid. So… When I cut the steek, I steam blocked a section of the blanket to get my gauge (I didn’t bother doing a swatch to begin with). My gauge was 28 sts by 32 rows in 4”. I also made a small garter stitch swatch which was 26 sts in 4”. With that sort of gauge difference, then a 1 to 1 pick up would definitely give a wavy edge. On the cast on and cast off edges, I picked up at a rate of 13 in 14 sts and on the steeked edges 13 in 16 sts (pu 4, skip 1, pu5, skip 1, pu4). So in the end I picked up 684 sts instead of 780; which is a huge difference. I don’t have wavy edges, though. Hopefully you can see in the before blocking picture the borders look relatively flat. Before blocking After blocking I did a w&t fo...