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Knitting is lovely, knitted socks are lovely. What is not lovely is when you have a sock thief in the house......  I tried some unusual punishment but alas it does not seem to work. I think it might be because she can't read!

This last week has been a bit Woolsack orientated for me. A while back, Kate from A Good Yarn  asked me to design a few cushions to give people in the shop some ideas on what to make for Woolsack cushions. A lot of the ladies from Knot Just Knitting group have made some lovely cushions and last Wednesday we had a cushion making day at the shop. The local paper turned up and wrote an article about it. In the paper there was an interview with me too but that's not on the web (thankfully). The wool for the cushions has been donated by A Good Yarn and The Natural Fibre Company . Below is the 2nd cushion I made with some beautiful gold wool from the Natural Fibre Company. We are having a cushion stuffing day at A Good Yarn on Sunday 25th March, so please come along if you have a cushion for Woolsack.

I have a very lovely friend who was having a clear out and she has given me lots of cones of yarn. It was very exciting to go through as she has lovely taste and there is lots of cashmere, silk, wool, cotton and even a bit of angora. Part of the collection is in the photo, it's all cotton of the same weight but different colours. It's quite thin so I thought knitting with it would probably be a bit too much bother. I don't mind crochet but I'm not enamoured on the fabric created with crocheting flat - however, I do like motif crochet - so after many Ravelry searches and swatches later, I decided upon the African Flower Hexagon . Originally I was thinking cushions, which it probably will be but one motif doesn't seem to make much of a dent in the quantity of cotton I have so it might be many cushions or perhaps a blanket really not sure yet. Think I've got a lot of crocheting to do to use this lot up!

Think I'm going slightly mad. I agreed to make a lacy top for my mum-in-law for a ball she's going to. We both thought it was over a month away but it turned out to be next weekend! So we were both thinking that it wouldn't happen but we had a few snow days so 4 knitting days later we have this! Mum-in-law had very specific ideas on what she would like and unfortunately we couldn't find a pattern that would match and would also work with the wool. So I've ended up designing it too. I used measurements from a pattern that was the correct shape and then worked it out with a different stitch pattern and needle size. There was a bit of wool left over so I crocheted a corsage to go with the outfit.

This arrived in the post.... A mini haul of buttons which I bought from Textile Garden . The metal stag's heads on the left are for Moorhouse , the dark floral wooden ones are for my Hudson and the others are for a little friend of mine who loves butterflies - so a few cardigans to be made in her future!

It's something that I've been intending to make for awhile and finally got round to it a few months ago. I'd wanted to make a dpn case because they were stuffed in pencil cases and weren't organised at all.  I'd made the fabric on my Kromski Harp Rigid Heddle Loom intending it to be a table mat but it was so soft it didn't seem to want to stay still on the table; so I reused it into the cover for my needle case. I lined it with some silk left over and added in extra lines so it would fit short and long dpns. The button is a plastic button that I covered in thread - think the technique is called Passementerie. It was something I saw on Create and Craft TV and thought it was really pretty. Didn't follow a pattern for this - just winged it and wish I'd made it a little shorter. Also, i'm sure there was a way to sew it up differently but ended up putting binding on like with a quilt - though it gives it a nice firm edge.

Another lovely gift I was bought by my husband was this beautiful notebook from Kate Bowles , who makes handmade notebooks from recycled material. I absolutely love it and the finish to it is just gorgeous - I especially love the spine. I'm using mine as my little Knitting Bible. There is square, plain and lined paper in so I can add little charts in too.