Yarndale 2016

I think I've finally recovered from my hangover.  I've been bingeing on yarn at Yarndale and it's taken me a few days to get back to normal.  We had a fabulous time at the festival.  It was just as busy as last year and so many lovely stands.  Everywhere you turned there was yarn.  It was heavenly.

Having dieted for so long, it was wonderful to just go and overindulge.  I largely kept to the wish list I had made before we set off but I did slip in quite a few treats.  So here's my collection of loveliness.

Isn't it wonderful.  I didn't spend as much as last year but I feel I spent my money more wisely this year.

Grace went with me again and this is her collection.

I bought some gorgeous skeins for shawls.

I love the colours and patterns of the Cuddlebums yarn, on the left.

This pretty sock yarn had to come home with me.

I also bought this lovely British Wool DK weight yarn for a cardigan.

The yarn colour is called turquoise but it actually looks greener than in the above photo.

I topped up my purchases with other bits and pieces that I can use in Fair Isle and I also bought an undyed skein of yarn that I want to dye up myself, which should be fun.

At Yarndale we met up with Instagram friends for a picnic.  The weather was a bit cool and there was no sign of the sun, but the meet up was fun so that was all that mattered.

I received lots of lovely compliments on my Lily the Pink cardigan which was very pleasing.

So now I'm going to be working my way through my haul.  Plenty to keep me quiet for a long time to come.  I'll also still be busting the stash I already had - that's an ongoing mission.  The day after we got back from Yarndale, I finished this shawl.

It was knitted with the last of the untouched yarn that was bought at Yarndale last year.  I love the colours in the yarn, so I'm currently using the leftovers to make some fingerless mittens.  Details of the shawl project can be found on Ravelry, here.

I hope you all had a lovely weekend and if you were at Yarndale, I hope that you managed to bag yourself some loveliness as well.

Catching Up

The sun is shining, England are winning easily in the cricket and my crafting is all going well.  My husband and I have just come back from a lovely couple of days in St Albans.

The weather was a lot better than when we visited last year in November and Eve got the train out of London to meet up with us - so a perfect time we had.

We had a lovely walk around Verulamium Park, a visit to the cathedral and a relaxing lunch.

It was all over so quickly but such a great time.

This past week I've been busy with my dressmaking.  I'm definitely growing in confidence now and enjoying the process more rather than just finding it stressful all the time.

I made a practice dress for a pattern I had recently acquired- McCall's M7116, using a bedsheet in a lovely aubergine colour - I made view B.

I liked the style of the dress, it's different to the usual dresses I make but there were a number of issues that I wasn't happy with.  The sleeves were rather short, the bodice also too short and the neck too wide.  I think I could probably address these issues without too much difficulty but in the end I went out and bought a new pattern that is more to my taste in style - Newlook 6262.  I particularly like view B with the short sleeves (shown in yellow on the pattern envelope) - all my dresses so far have been sleeveless.

I didn't feel I needed to make a full practice dress but I did want to have a go at fitting the sleeves, so I used some leftover sheet and I'm so glad I did.  The sleeve went in no problem, but the neckline was surprisingly high and uncomfortable.  I altered the pattern to lower the neck and now I have a dress that it very comfortable to wear.

The fabric is from my stash, bought sometime last year and it's so pretty and very summery.

So happy happy happy.  I have three more dress lengths of fabric in my stash so now that I'm on a roll with the sewing I'm hoping to have some lovely additions to my wardrobe.

I could do with knitting up a light coloured cardigan to go with the summery dress, but instead I've just finished a navy coloured cardi.  It's just a plain cropped style - my favourite and it goes well with a number of dresses I wear a lot, which is why I made it.

Please excuse the bad photographs -
they were taken in the hotel room by my husband !!

I don't have enough light coloured wool in my stash to make a plain cardigan and as I'm on a yarn diet, I'm restricted to knitting from stash.  I reckon I have two more cardigans worth of stash knitting to get out of the way and then I'm going to treat myself to some nice cream wool.  Looking forward to that.

As I find it almost impossible to not use up every scrap of yarn, I've made six more little sock yarn sweaters to add to my bunting.

So that's what I've been up to.  I'm planning on spending the rest of the bank holiday weekend working on my Mandala Madness blanket which hasn't been shown any love for some time.  I'll also be catching up on all the sporting events that are happening this weekend on the television.  A nice relaxing few days ahead of me.  I hope plenty of relaxation comes your way too.  Bye for now.

Weekend in London

Well I finally it made it to London for the weekend to see Eve.  And what a wonderful weekend it was.  It's always lovely to meet up with my daughters, I miss them so much.  Eve is very settled now in London and it's good to see her happy and enjoying her life.

We spent most of our time chatting and laughing and just enjoying each other's company, but we did manage to fit in a trip to the V & A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green.

There was a very moving special exhibition on Child Migrants, as well as one on the Clangers and Bagpuss.

There were also cases and cases of toys, games, dolls and teddy bears.

A great afternoon out.

On my way to Eve's on the Friday, I walked via King's Cross Station to see Platfrom 9 & 3/4.  There were plenty of people queuing to have their photo taken.

(I don't know who this person is,
she just happened to be in the queue for the photo!)

I then walked to Angel.  A very interesting area of London with many small and quirky shops.  I loved the angel wings statue at the entrance to the shopping arcade.

My main reason for wanting to visit Angel was the gorgeous knitting shop, Loop.  I have heard so many wonderful things about this shop that I just couldn't resist a visit.  As usual, my photos were all shaky, so these are images I googled.

Picture by Homegirl London

Picture by Wonderwoof

I knew that I would have to exercise extreme self-control when visiting, so I thought in advance what I wanted to buy in terms of yarn and browsed the online shop, so that I wouldn't start impulse buying yarn when I got there.

And I'm pleased to say, as far as yarn is concerned, I was very very disciplined.  I bought the 6 balls of Sheltand Spindrift I wanted for a Fair Isle cardigan and no other YARN !

HOWEVER, I did get a bit carried away with knitting needles and knitting patterns - but they are all so lovely.

Whilst in the shop I was lucky enough to meet the lovely Juju Vail.  She was very chatty and we talked about knitting top-down sweaters, about Fair Isle knitting and she helped me select the colours of yarn I wanted.

It was a really memorable and pleasant visit.  Even if I did spend far more than I should have, I'm glad I visited and maybe one day, I'll make another trip there.

Now I'm back home, I need to clear the backlog of yarn, so that I can cast on for the new Fair Isle cardigan and knit up some of my lovely new patterns.  Have a good week.

Socks, Sun and Shawls

Hello everyone, I hope you're enjoying this lovely spell of warm weather we are having here in the UK.  Makes a nice change.

I've been enjoying knitting up my socks for May.  I used West Yorkshire Spinners Yarn in the Goldfinch colourway and they just flew off the needles.

I just love the colours.  These could be my favourite socks of all time.

I had planned that this month I would try knitting my socks two at a time (I like to try something new each month).  I knit these socks toe up - this is now firmly established as my favourite way to knit socks.  I got as far as part way up the foot, knitting two at a time, before I lost patience and gave up.

I found it was taking me longer to do a round for two at a time than it did for me to knit a round individually on both socks.  I tend to knit my socks simultaneously, so I don't have a problem with second sock syndrome, which seems to be the only reason to knit two at a time.  So at least I gave it a try, in the end, it's all about finding the right sock recipe for me.

You can see full details of this sock project on my Ravelry page, HERE.

As the weather has been so nice, we had an afternoon watching a cricket match.  We watched the last day of the three day match between Lancashire 2nd XI and Derbyshire 2nd XI at Northern Cricket Ground (a lovely small ground with about twenty spectators!)

It's very relaxing, sitting in the Sun and getting on with some knitting!  I worked on my navy cardigan, just to try and make some progress.

It may be sunny but I'm not taking my cardigan off yet!

I'm aiming to have this finished this month, but...

...there's always a but , and it usually means a distraction.  So this week's distraction is a lovely shawl pattern by Helen Stewart called Spindrift.

I received a gorgeous ball of gradient yarn from Grace for Christmas, and I've been agonising ever since over which pattern to use for this special yarn.

So this week I finally decided to go for the Spindrift pattern.  The main reason I chose this one was that I wanted to be able to use the whole ball of yarn.  With some patterns I wasn't sure if I would end up with yarn leftover or actually run out.  With the Spindrift pattern, percentages are given throughout as to how much yarn you have used.  So far I have knit 20% of the pattern and this ties in exactly with the amount of yarn I have used, so I feel very happy.

I can't wait to see how the colour changes progress.  At the moment it's essentially stocking stitch.  Here's how much I did on the first evening of working on it.

It's very addictive.  At 50% the pattern changes to eyelets.

I hope to have this finished over the weekend - but if this lovely weather continues, we might have some days out, which might slow me down a bit.

Then, hopefully it will be back to the cardigan and the other neglected shawl.  With that, I'll say bye for now, and get back to my lovely Spindrift shawl.  Happy days everyone.

Not in London

Thank you all for the lovely comments both here on my blog and on Ravelry about the Fair Isle Hat pattern.  It really is a pleasure to share my patterns and I hope you enjoy them.

As mentioned earlier this week, I had planned to be in London this weekend, catching up with Eve.  Unfortunately, it being a Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK, there are extensive engineering works on the rail line around Stafford.  This means that it would have taken me nearly six hours to get from London to Liverpool on my way home.  So I've postponed the trip for another two weeks, when hopefully the weather might, just might, be a little warmer.

So it's been another quiet week.  My husband has had a bad cold all week, so we haven't even made it out to the pub for a pint this week!  On the plus side, my manic creative activity is still ongoing.  I'm sure I'm going to burn out soon, but I'm making the most of all my energy to just get things done.

This week, I have completed my dress.  It's a beautiful pale green in a light cotton, ideal for summer weather - which we might get one day!  My husband was responsible for taking the photos but out of the many that were taken, this was the only one that wasn't at a strange angle or very blurred!

The pattern is Simplicity 2444 and this is the fourth time I've made the pattern.  I just love it.  It's a perfect fit and so easy to wear.

I have also finished my Leftie, that I had been working on at Grace's last weekend.  This is more of a scarf than a shawl.

The colour is actually dark grey, not blue, and the stripes and leaves are more colourful than the pictures sugest.  It's a very addictive project and I wish I could have continued knitting it but it was big enough, so I sadly had to cast off after 32 leaves.

The pattern is by Martina Behm.  It's not a free pattern but it's an excellent pattern and I'll be knitting it again at some point in the future.  Next time I'll use a softer yarn for the main part, the one I used was from stash and a bit on the rough side.  The gradient yarn was some leftovers that Grace gave me from her own Leftie. You can see full details of this project on my Ravelry page, here.

And now it's May, and I do love the beginning of each month, it's a joyful time.  It's a time to plan the month ahead and think of the possibilities.  I have two projects already in progress, a cardigan and a shawl, that I would like to get finished this month.  I will obviously be casting on for a new pair of socks.  This month I will be knitting with this gorgeous West Yorkshire Spinners yarn in the Goldfinch colourway.

It's all ready to cast on.  I'm going to use the same recipe I used last month because I loved it so much - toe-up, fleegle heel with Vanilla Latte pattern.  But, as you know, I like to try something different each month.  This month I'm going to try knitting my socks two-at-a-time - that's both socks on the same needles, knitted simultaneously.  It should be interesting, and hopefully fun.

Right, that's me up-to-date.  I'm off to cast on my two-at-time socks.  I hope you are having a good weekend.  See you soon.

Happy and Productive

Hello Everybody, I hope you all had a lovely weekend.  I had a wonderful Easter break with both of my daughters coming home to visit.

We visited grandparents, had a lovely meal out, baked brownies and made an apple crumble.

We visited the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery and we watched the recent film Suffragette.

We had a night out at the pub and ate lots of chocolate.

And my lovely girls took me out for a feast of cakes at one of our local cafes.  All in all an absolutely perfect weekend, why did it have to end so soon?

And obviously there was plenty of knitting done.  Over the past week, since finishing Eve's cardigan, I've managed to make excellent progress on other WIPs that were lying around.

First of all, here's a picture of me and Eve in our twin cardigans.

Eve was delighted to receive her own version and wore it most of the weekend.

I completed the grey version of my Olivia cardigan pattern and wore it most of the weekend!

The yarn was recycled from this cardigan which I never wore.  You can see details of the project on my Ravelry page, here.

I also completed my socks for March.  I used a plain coloured sock yarn for a change because I wanted to knit a lacy pattern and felt that self striping sock yarn wouldn't show the pattern up properly.

The pattern for these socks is the Petunia Dursley Double Eyelet Socks by Erica Lueder, a free pattern on Ravelry, and it's so pretty.  I'm entering these in a Harry Potter KAL that's currently running on Ravelry.  Details of my project are here.

I have also caught up with the Block-a-Month Crochet along that I'm following.  Here are my March squares.

Tiptoe Through the Tulips Square

Starburst Square

Tears from Heaven Squares

I now have the equivalent of 8 large squares in total.  The plan is to make 16 squares for a medium sized lap blanket.

All this activity has meant a significant reduction in my stash.  I'm looking forward to totalling it up at the end of the month.  I also managed to off-load over 500g of acrylic DK yarn to Grace for her ripple blanket - although this felt a bit like cheating, but if it gets my stash totals down I shouldn't complain.

I've still got a few other WIPs lurking around but I think I can treat myself this week and cast on a few new ones.

Wow, uploading a blog post and sorting the photos always seems to take more time than you think - as least I'm up to date now.

Enjoy your week and I hope it's a good one.