This blog has now moved to

Another year at Woolfest and it was just as fantastic. Here are links to previous years 2011 and 2012 . It seemed busier this year.  I went with the intention of buying no spinning fibre at all, as I had a lot bought me at Christmas, but.... Well, hilltopcloud fibre is so gorgeous, it just "had" to be bought. There was a beautiful blue and orange batt and some Southdown dyed in a gradient. Southdown is meant to be a fantastic fibre for socks and I've been wanting to try it for awhile. I love how the fibre was presented it looked like a fluffy octopus! Eden Cottage Yarns and a mini skein set from Natural Dye Studio Cute little sheep from Hestascene . Need to think of an appropriate name for her. Gorgeous buttons from Textile Garden Embroidery silks from Natalie Fergie aka Yarn Yard. The orange 4ply in the top picture is from her too. This is what I got most excited about. It's a Lilly Brush which before the show I thought was only available from the US at super hi...

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...

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.