Goodbye Wovember...

I'm sneeking in under the wire with this one, I meant to write about it much earlier in the month but time got away from me somewhat.....


This blog has been championing Wool this month - not only for knitting but clothes available on the high street, the Hall of Shame is an eye opening look at misleading labelling.


I visited Frome recently and the lovely Jen took me to her Local Yarn Shop where I picked up these 2 balls of proper woolly wool in natural colours...





I think it will be a hat and I will bedeck with one or more of the fantastic badges made especially for Wovember from this Etsy shop





I also picked up this set of fibre bumps from Hilltop Cloud this month, all natural colours from various breeds, they would be perfect for the Sheepheid hat but I've got the yarn for that already so I'll have to come up with something else, maybe for Wovember 2012.....





Sorry for the plastic covered photo but I want to keep them all labelled and in order - I did give them a sniff (I know I'm not the only one who sniffs fibre and yarn - I've witnessed others do the same!) and it smells so deliciously sheepy!

For The Tree....

The festive season is rapidly approaching and this is my contribution to Christmassy embellishment this year:

 For The Tree...





You can buy the pattern here





They are cute little mini-stockings, knit in the round with little short row heels and each stocking uses approx 5-6g (20-25 meters) of each colour - I used traditional red, green and white but i think they would looks great in other colour combinations - purple, grey and green are my particular favourites at the moment. There are five variations with stranded colourwork, cables and beads.





I'm knitting these as little Christmas presents this year, i might pop in a few chocolates or small girts like nail polishes for my sisters - they are addictive, I had to force myself to stop knitting different variations and get on with some other jobs that need doing!

Coming along nicely...

I'm making good progress with my spindle spinning, when I first decided to learn I had grand ideas of spinning something I could knit socks with. It took me a while to spin a fine enough single so that when it was turned in to a 3-ply yarn it resembled something like a fingering weight, but I can do that now so the next challenge was to find a fibre suitable for socks - I don't want to put in all that effort and then wear a hole in them!





I got a sample batt from HilltopCloud and had a practice, this is the result - it's only a 2ply but it's fine enough to be sock yarn if it was a 3ply. The fibre is British Shetland wool, Merino and Trilobal Nylon, the nylon will help the socks wear well, although I may use a commercial sock yarn for the high wear areas (heels & toes), it depends what yardage I get.





This is the fibre which will eventually be socks! Three different shades of pumpkin orange - 1 for each ply, these are pick n mix batts, 35g each. I'll be spinning them as soon as I've finished what I've got on my spindle at the moment....


Which is this:





Yes, it's a SAL/KAL (Spin-a-long/Knit-a-long) with the Knit Girllls - not content with joining in and committing to knitting something within a specific time frame (and mostly failing), this time I've committed to spinning some fibre AND THEN knitting it in to something within a specific time frame. Deluded. Yes.





Anyway, it's lovely fibre from Cloudlover and it's spinning up beautifully, the colours are stunning. I'm aiming for a light fingering 2ply and all I can do is AIM.....

A Year of Socks....

This is what a year of my life looks like in socks:





That's all 12 pairs of socks from the When Vampires Knit Socks club and I loved every minute of designing and knitting them!





You can get all 12 patterns as an eBook for £20 (which is less than half what the individual patterns cost)



I'm excited to see Breaking Dawn at the cinema this week but I'm also excited for next years sock club which has been announced in the Knitting Goddess group on Ravelry, we're doing books again but this time it's Terry Pratchett's Disc World. These are some of my very favourite books and they contain an absolute wealth of inspirational characters, themes and settings which will make for such a fun club, I think places will open on Friday but if you want the inside track the best thing to do is to sign up to the newsletter.


It's going to be FUN!

Once upon a time.....

The other day I was asked when I started knitting and I remembered the scarf I knitted when I was about 16 and I remembered I still had it somewhere or other so I dug about and found it!





I made the pattern up as I went along, randomly striping the colours and using knit and purl patterns for texture. I have no idea what the yarn was, something inexpensive and quite possibly acrylic but I has worn well - I know it went through the wash several times (probably after I dipped it in my dinner).





Is it perfect? - No. It curls in on itself like only stocking stitch can and it's not as warm and cuddly as a more wool heavy blend yarn might have been but I still quite like it and it will be making appearances around my neck over the rapidly approaching winter months......

Rosaleen Shawl

The Rosaleen Shawl pattern is now available to buy.





It was the first design for the The Knitting Goddess Christmas Club and it was originally knit with their lovely Silk & Alpaca blend in a gorgeous grey called Dove.





The shawl is knitted from the bottom up, starting with the lace border, the body of the shawl is shaped with short rows to make it a crescent shape which can be worn as a traditional shawl or wrapped around like a scarf. When we were at Fibre Flurry we spotted Brenda wearing hers 'in the wild' and very lovely she looked too!





There is also a larger version which needs about 450 yards of yarn - I used 2 skeins of MadelineTosh Tosh merino DK which I've had for a while, the colour is Geode, its a purple with gold undertones, impossible to photograph accurately but stunning in real life!








You can buy the pattern here:


The pattern is also available in the Winter One collection - this will include all the patterns from the Christmas Club as they become available as well as additional co-ordinating patterns, there will be 8 patterns in total, they will be released approximately every 2 weeks for the next 2 months.

Fibre Flurry!

Last weekend I was at Fibre Flurry and I had a fantastic time!

Thanks to the lovely Joy of The Knitting Goddess, I was there with my patterns....





I'm not going to tell you how many times the 'washing line' of socks fell down, it's safe to say A LOT and my language towards it got progressively worse as the day went on.


I met lots of lovely people, some for the first time, some I had met before and really enjoyed catching up with. Topics of conversation included Poirot and Auntie Mabel (recently seen in Doctor Who), it was busy and tiring but lovely at the same time - I can't wait for next year!


I won this lovely prize in the pHop raffle...





It's a bag from Nicsknots, a skein of yarn from Babylonglegs and a stitchmarker from Atomic Knitting - a special collaboration for the show, I love it!





Sarah from the Undercover Owl delivered my new sushi sock bag and I found a skein of Babylonglegs sock yarn called Wasabi - how could I walk away when it was so clearly meant to be??





I also picked up a SACK of grey merino from Hedgehog Equipment, 700g of it, I don't know if my poor little spindle can handle it, I think I need a spinning wheel.....