This blog has now moved to

Since Mr's Birthday has passed now, I can show you his surprise funny Birthday present. He has always been a big fan of Lego and as soon as I saw this guy, I knew where he was destined to go. The pattern is Some Assembly Required , and was a very clearly written pattern. It was a little fiddly to make but not too much sewing up like some toys. The majority of the pattern was made in the round on DPNs. The arms have safety eyes as joints, so his arms are poseable. He can be completely separated just like a real lego guy. Suffice to say, he went down rather well!

There are some SPOILER photos here; so don't continue if you want the hat to be a surprise. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've taken part in the Woolly Wormhead Mystery KAL 2012 . This is the first time I've done this and I really enjoyed it. I normally steam through projects and I was kind of nice to be able to do a project in small portions; made me appreciate the experience more! Also, I'm not 100% sure I would have picked the hat had I seen it first. It's lovely but probably not something I would normally do. It's good to try different things. It took an awful lot of effort to finally choose some yarn; I kept finding that everything I wanted to do would just go into a 2nd ball to fit the size I wanted. I finally found a yarn that would work with just 1 ball which is Louisa Harding, Amitola which is quite an unusual yarn. It's sold as a DK but it has 250m/50g which is an immense amount of yardage for a DK. It's a single ply yarn with long stripes. M...

I've some finished objects to show you. I bought a new winter coat last week and thought it needed a new scarf to go with it. I chose a bright yellow to match the brass fittings on the coat. The pattern is Hana Shawl  by Kristina Vilimaite. The yarn is King Cole Bamboo Cotton. It's quite a different construction to other scarves and shawls I've made and I enjoyed the change. It's cast on a large number of stitches along the patterned edge and after the pattern, there is a section of short row shaping to give it a curved shape. The suggested cast off is a Fake Tubular Cast Off which I've never used before and must say I'm enamoured with it. Very simple to do, not much more complicated than a regular knitted cast off and it gives an interesting edge. The instructions for it are from TECHknitter . Also, I've finished my Yak hat. It's made from handspun yak/silk which I blogged about here . I just improvised a 2x2 ribbed hat. It's to fit a size 22" ...

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 seem to have been really busy this last week or two but not a lot to show for it. I've been sucked into the enthusiasm of the 2012 Woolly Wormhead KAL . I really enjoyed the Orchid Thief KAL. I've been very good recently and there has been an embargo on stash acquisition, which accidently came to an end yesterday when I bought this: I've a feeling one ball won't be enough as I've got rather a large head. There is 250m on the ball so I'm crossing fingers. There's plenty of knitting going on but nothing finished. Here's a sneak peak of my Rams and Yowes blanket: Hopefully it'll be finished shortly but I had a minor disaster with it last night. I'd sewn the border down to the inside and blindly did the whole thing without checking the tension of the sewing. When I'd finished I did my usual thing of pulling it into shape and proceeded to snap all the sewing that I'd done. I'd done it way too taut so I'm patching it back up at a much...

I've spent a few days recently on my spinning wheel. Here are my latest yarn-like creations: Remember this? It was some of the Wensleydale/Silk roving I dyed recently - blogged here It's changed into a 2 ply, 15 w.p.i., 157m/100g - sport weight. I finished the Faux Cashmere I mentioned last week. It's 18 w.p.i., 268m/100g. I've finished the mate to the Teal Shetland - so it's all ready for some fair isle mittens. It's a very pale green, BFL, 161m, 17 w.p.i. Not identical to it's mate but close enough for the mittens. I've also made a couple of mini skeins. The sparkle will hopefully become a Christmas tree decoration;  and the other two are the start of a larger lot of yarns for another fair isle project. The original idea was for some Bandelier socks, so the colours I have are similar but think I might use the same pattern and improvise something else. Don't think I really want make a pair of socks I have to handwash at the moment!

Among lots of other things, I've managed to fit in a little time for spinning. Happened to drive past Wingham Woolworks a little while back (it was a 50 mile detour really!). Bought a few bits and on the way to the counter saw this gorgeous shiny fluff and it went into the basket. It's 50% yak, 50% silk and it really shines. It changed from this to this... It's  a 2ply, 178m, 12 w.p.i. DK. It's going to become a "Yak Hat"! This is Shetland from Wheeldale and there's only 50g, 175m, 2ply and 18 w.p.i. So it's on the edge of being a fingering weight. I have another 50g in a light green in BFL to go with it and once that's spun, it'll be some handspun stranded mittens. This is my first attempt at corespinning and I loved it. 141m, 10 w.p.i., Worsted Weight. Fibre mix: merino, BFL, sari silk, bamboo, baby alpaca and sparkle. My thinking at the moment it would make a lovely drawstring bag but don't really need one of those so not sure what to ...