So, on Sunday I had the most brill lesson! It was a simple Learn to Knit Two but the key to it was that all of the ladies seemed to get on really well. It was lovely! So much chatting we only just got done what we needed to get done! Two of the ladies ho were both GP's were pregnant, we had one woman who seriously loves kids, another with two kids, one lady who met her husband on a dating website and a couple of users of such dating websites, a woman going on a date with a fireman and a woman that worked for the fire service. It was like a Maeve Binchy novel. My favourite thing to happen in lessons is for people to make friends and arrangements to meet up afterwards and I think this lot are going to set up their own little knitting circle - I'll keep you updated. :)
So, just as the brill lesson was ending we started hearing noises from the Nottingham Carnival and you should know how much I like people parading down my street. LOVE! So we finished up and went outside to watch the parade and dance a bit.
We were waiting for ages! They took their time. We were looking at this for a long while:
But you could hear that they were coming!
Then they got a bit closer:
And then they were upon us!
Nottingham's version of samba dancers. Ha. The girl in blue and yellow at the front of the troupe but the back of this photo really looked like she didn't want to be there, and she was wearing flip flops and no fake tan whilst the rest of them were wearing MASSIVE heels but she was trying. Made us giggle. :)
Then a percussion band who were brill:
And then my fave act of the whole thing:
An older lady working it like she stole it (my new favourite phrase).
A gaggle of kids being encouraged to dance whilst wearing outfits that one of my customers helped to make!!!
And the first of the very. big. things.
The parade was punctuated by these council vans with DJ's with massive sound systems perched on the back. I think it's my dodgy hearing but I couldn't hear the beat of the song until they'd driven past me a bit so there was an awkward moment every time the next set of dancers appeared where I just kind of looked at them and hoped for the best with my jiggling. I'm sure they all thought I was a terrible dancer but that's fine because it's probably right. :)
The next troupe were pirates and so they had a very. big. pirate. ship.
And then an eagle:
Thinking about it, I probably ought to put all of the big things in a collage.
Not sure how well that worked out - I've tried an extra large one because the new format of the blog (what do you think?) might just take it. They were all very big though. Look:
LOOK! There's a man in a big thing pushing another man in a big thing up the hill!
And there's a man not in a big thing pulling a man in a big thing up the hill. Mwahahaha.
Apart from all of this there was a lot of beautiful flesh on show! So refreshing to see a culture where a little wobble (and sometimes a lot of wobble) is just as normal as everybody else. Not even 'celebrated', they were just there doing their thing and having fun like everybody else. (Though, I am reliably informed that Jamaican ladies swap their big bum insecurities with long nail insecurities...) My favourite was this lady here:
who was enjoying herself so much! Seriously, the happiest person I've ever seen in real life.
So all in all Sunday was bloody marvelous for Knit Nottingham and we've even started discussing a singles event for knitters and crocheters and the men and women who love them. What do you think? Ha.
Before I go, I've just about halved my telephone line and electricity rates but not before British Gas sneakily tied me in for a whole 'nother year. I cannot wait to leave those bastards!
Things have calmed down a little now. The press release still needs to go out but it's written (we've decided we're going to aim high and send it to the national press. omg.), the tickets are designed and need to be sent to the printers, I need to carve out a bit of time to take all the bits that I've done to Knitworking and Yarn and then it's just a case of sitting back and crossing my fingers that we at least make the money back for this massive event. But I went to Dee's last night, and she's excited because she can see that I'm excited, but she's not that sure about who Amy Singer is and why this is such a big deal. And it is a big deal! So, let me talk to you - a little more calmly than I have been doing - about why this is brill for all of us!
So, Amy describes herself as a 'writer, editor, ukelelist, fair-weather scooter and fond of rabbits'. I now know her to be funny, friendly and organised too. My favourite combination in a person.
Her most famous endeavour is without doubt knitty.com. I would be totally shocked if you can get onto the internet enough to read this and hadn't come across it in some form even if you hadn't realised how brill it is. It's an online magazine that comes out four times a year and features the most fantastic patterns, reviews, how-to's, knitting history and spinning info. And it's free! Knitty is currently celebrating it's tenth anniversary. Tenth!
That's 10 whole years of free stuff!
Now, there are a lot of places to get free patterns online right? And some of them are truly terrible right? Not Knitty. On Knitty you can get the most fantastic free patterns - properly complicated stuff from properly famous designers. And also properly complicated patterns from properly unfamous designers - giving them a leg up. And properly not complicated designs from properly famous and properly not famous designers. Let me shut up and show you:
And that's just three things that I love because I've made them but look here, that's 43 issues hundreds and hundreds of patterns. What I love about Knitty is that fact that the sizes are inclusive. Mythos for example starts at a 32" chest and finishes at 56". I can't think of another pattern platform that regularly includes that kind of size variety.
Here, I've just picked out a random issue - Spring/Summer 2011 - and there are socks, cardigans, summer tops, a blanket, toys and shawls - lace, cables, textured knits, colourwork and felting - easy stuff, hard stuff and everything in between.
For free.
And, and I can't credit Amy solely for this, because it's on the internet if there are any mistakes (and designers are only human) things can be updated as soon as they're found. Much better than a print magazine (I might have a story to tell you about this one day but not now).
So, this is like a love letter for Amy Singer because she makes this happen and has done for the last decade. As well as designing herself and writing and contributing to lots of books she's provided us this huge resource that everybody can afford (it's free!) and it's for everybody - beginner and old hand, cable master or spinner, little or large alike. Amy knows and loves us knitters and that's why I'm confident that she's the right person for us to spend loads of money on. I'm going to be awestruck when I meet her - such a brilliant woman.
Hey - I got a bit caught up and look what I found:
Hope that helps some of you that were feeling a little lost - Dee?!
Love Eleanor. :)
P.s. Seeing as I've mentioned Dee so much, I ought to point you in the direction of her blog and you won't want to miss that it has the sweetest (kinda) picture of her cat playing with wool. Taking a Yarn Trip.
So I'm on the phone to the Carphone Warehouse trying to sort out some fraud that they've allowed to go on for two whole years and I've been on the phone to them for 50 minutes and counting now. I can't do much work work whilst I'm here because I can't concentrate with the noise that they've got for holding music so I'm doing something productive.
I wrote a blog about my trip to Holmfirth t'other day and in it I described how I made my fairisle cowl and people have been a bit excited about it. I've done another since (can you say obsessed ???) but I can't show you anything to do with that because I know this friend reads the blog. It's a good one though! Truly, it was dead easy and I'm going to describe the method to you roughly... You couldn't call it a pattern...
This is what we're talking about by the way:
But that was before it was blocked.
So, to start with you need four or five colours that you love. The closest thing that we sell to the Cashsoft that I used is the beautiful Cygnet Merino DK. I know I say this about most yarns that we sell at some point, but this is pretty much my favourite yarn in the shop! It's not as soft as the Cashsoft - I don't think much could be - but it has a good yardage, it's got a firm hand, it's a pure wool, it washes like you would not believe and the colours are something else.
I've spent a few minutes putting together what I think would be beautiful combinations in the Cygnet Merino DK:
I reckon you could get some more subtle variations though - I'm a bit in love with BIG colour... you know me. I'm a bit taken by that last version...
The idea is that all of the colours get used with each of the other ones though so if there are any combo's that you don't like together, say red and pink (which I luuuuuurve), then don't use a red and pink in the same combo. So, choose some colours - about 200g-250g altogther should be enough so four or five colours.
You'll also need some circular needs in a size above what you'd normally use so a 4.5mm for a DK and a 5.5mm for an aran. On the whole, fairisle tends to be a little tighter for most people and even if it's not, I'm pretty convinced that a cowl should be pretty floppy - especially a biiiiiiiig one like we're making.
Now, for the cast on. Just get to it. No numbers. HA. That should put a few of you off. I use the long tail cast on because it's my favourite by far and so that I don't run out of yarn before the end (you can't even estimate if you have no idea how many stitches you're doing) I use two different colours and just hold them together rather than knotting at the beginning, once a few stitches are on the needle it doesn't matter that you're working from two different balls but it does make a pretty edging. You need enough stitches to go easily all the way around the needle, no stretching but also you don't want to completely fill up the needle choc-a-block. So I'd say the stitches need to comfortably fit all the way around, including up to the ends of the needles, with a little bit of smooshing up. Bear in mind that once you start knitting the stitches will fall more comfortably.
I would place a stitch marker here (just about the only place I regularly use a stitch marker...) and start knitting. Do a round in one of the colours that you've used to cast on with.
Now into the fairisle. A few things to note:
1). You want to avoid the floats going over more than about five stitches, especially if this is the first fairisle thing that you've done. To start with, something like *two knits in one colour, two knits in another* for a few rows will get you going.
2). Triangles are pretty easy too. Start with *k5a, k1b*, next row: *k1b, k3a, k2b*, next row: *k2b, k1a, k3b*. You could start with a base of seven stitches for the triangle.
3). Take inspiration from other patterns: Oranje, Neville's Sweater and the Waterville Hat all inspired mine. And when I ran out of inspiration I went to my book of fairisle (which is v. obscure and I can't seem to find on the internet...) and it went wrong, but I came up with something at least and it was the same all the way around.
4). Make sure to do some bigger and smaller repeats. So some that are up to say 14/16/18 rows whilst others are completed in four or six. This adds visual interest.
5). If the fairisle is stressing you out, do a two row stripe. It'll still look lovely.
6). If you're about to start a bigger repeat and you're not sure of the stitch counts, don't count! Start it and worry about that when you get 20 or so stitches from the end. At that point you can count the remaining stitches to see how many more or less you'll need to complete a full repeat and then you can increase (m1) or decrease (k2tog) up or down to that amount as you're knitting the repeat. Simple right? Over 150 or so stitches five or six stitches won't matter so increase and decrease with wild abandon! Apart from, keep an eye on whether you're increasing or decreasing a lot, because if, in the next repeat, you have an option to decrease or increase and you know you're already down 20 stitches from the cast on amount then the obvious course of action is to increase rather than decrease. Make sense?
7). About half way through, look at your colours and make a note of which ones haven't been worked together and then make sure that they're worked together. It's an easy way of keeping the balance and doing it at this point means that you should still have plenty of each colour to work with.
8). It's a cheat to repeat a motif. It's not a repeat to have 2 by 2 stripes and also 2 by 2 stripes that move one stitch to the right every row - that's diagonal 2 by 2 strips. :)
9). Try and make sure you use each colour throughout the cowl, don't have lots of yellow at the beginning and never again - it'll just look unbalanced.
10). Finish when you've used most of all of the balls (like two or three metres left). Make sure to save enough yarn to cast off with!
10.5). Block the hell out of it!!!!!
There - I made ten points! Does it make sense? Can you see how easy it is to do? One thing that I've been noticing recently is how much everybody seems to like rules but I promise it is brilliant to do something that's fairly difficult without constraining yourself to rules and patterns - a real confidence boost. A garter stitch scarf is brill for days when you need to be unthinking but doing and this is for the kind of day where you need to think about something other than life and be doing.
I'm really just trying not to cast another one on right now. But I have three projects that need doing now and I can't knit three fairisle cowls in one week... can I?
Right, I may or may not have sorted the Carphone Warehouse thing out and I may or may not be bothered to tell you about it at a later date but it certainly has taken up most of today. Ugh. I'm off to try and get rid of this headache that they've caused. Shall I sue?
So I promised to finish that blog post from yesterday today but also, I need to get the lessons sold so I need to have the sales-y bit at the front so I'm going to copy and paste. Sorry!
I know there are a lot of you who are wanting to move on to designing your own knitted bits and I think this will be perfect for you. Amy's going to talk to you about how to present your work - the best and worst things to do - the slant will be towards Knitty of course but the workshop will enable you to present your work professionally to a knit-related audience.
This is the thing that I'm most excited about actually because it's the thing that most of you will be able to come to. Amy's giving a talk on how she started Knitty and what it's like to be in the business now. There'll be a question and answer session afterwards too. The doors will open at 6pm and there'll be a bar so we can enjoy a glass of wine whilst listening to this fascinating woman. I suspect we'll head over to a pub afterwards too - that's the Knit Nottingham way...
The perfect lesson for you if you want to start making your lace journey (or if you've already started and keep stalling). You'll discuss the process of making a lace shawl from start to finish including blocking. Please be aware that we don't have the right yarn for you (we don't stock silk) but there are plenty of places that do, ask if you want pointing in the right direction. You'll also need the book (I'll check and come back as to whether it's in the library for you).
This is a lesson for people that are already pretty happy with socks - so if you've been on one of my sock lessons you should be good to go. We do have the yarn for this and I love love love love love selling sock yarn so come here and we can have a big talk about it (I promise, if you start me getting excited about sock yarn you won't regret it). The idea is that you leave the lesson with a guide in your head for making socks so that you don't have to follow a pattern word for word, it can be something you pick up and put down with ease.
A brill lesson for people who haven't quite hit the stage of sending patterns off to Knitty.com but maybe want to start thinking about working things out for yourself. Amy will talk you through those basics including different shapes, why they're useful and how to achieve them as well as more designerly things like photography and intellectual property. Should be a proper roller coaster of a lesson!
So, I forgot to put this on the blog and facebook group when I was asking what you might be interested in but I've decided to put it on anyway because I get so much interest in spinning lessons here. Now, Amy's allergic to wool so she ended up spindling silk before anything else and it does have a tricky reputation as a spinning material which is why the class is focused on silk only. By the end of the lesson though you'll be well versed in the techniques for general spinning AND the cost includes a kit that'll take you through the whole of the session and leave you with some leftovers to spin with at home so you're not stuck with an obsession that you can't fulfill! I'm dead excited about this lesson myself - I'll be creeping into the back of the hall no doubt...
Right, now that's out of the way I want to talk more about how it all came about. I've talked about how she e-mailed us out of the blue and how I chose the venue.
The venue ain't cheap though! It's around £150 a day so we've had to include that in the price and we're paying a share towards getting Amy over here and putting her up whilst she's here. And I think we're going to get some tickets printed because that's the professional thing to do... And obviously, we need to make some money for the new shop which is where all of the proceeds from these lessons are going. We've kept the prices in line with what other people are doing them for though so you're not paying over the odds but you are supporting us! Isn't this exciting!!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?
We're also going to be selling the tickets to the Evening With Amy Singer through Knitworking in Gedling and Yarn in Beeston and I've just spoken to the lovely Alison at Yarn and if you do want a yarn with silk for the Tuscany Shawl then she has the appropriate stuff for you. :)
Right, I'm off to write a press release, design the tickets and some posters and then tidy the shop which looks a lot like this:
Also, before I go, last night I started a Christmas present. Stick that in your pipe an smoke it. I am on fire!
So I've been on about this for a while and I will talk you through what's been going on behind the scenes and all of the gossip but I think the most important thing is the actual lessons (especially as I'm pretty sure there'll be lots of out-of-towners who might not be so used to my rabbiting) so business at the front, party at the back (like a mullet).
I know there are a lot of you who are wanting to move on to designing your own knitted bits and I think this will be perfect for you. Amy's going to talk to you about how to present your work - the best and worst things to do - the slant will be towards Knitty of course but the workshop will enable you to present your work professionally to a knit-related audience.
This is the thing that I'm most excited about actually because it's the thing that most of you will be able to come to. Amy's giving a talk on how she started Knitty and what it's like to be in the business now. There'll be a question and answer session afterwards too. The doors will open at 6pm and there'll be a bar so we can enjoy a glass of wine whilst listening to this fascinating woman. I suspect we'll head over to a pub afterwards too - that's the Knit Nottingham way...
The perfect lesson for you if you want to start making your lace journey (or if you've already started and keep stalling). You'll discuss the process of making a lace shawl from start to finish including blocking. Please be aware that we don't have the right yarn for you (we don't stock silk) but there are plenty of places that do, ask if you want pointing in the right direction. You'll also need the book (I'll check and come back as to whether it's in the library for you).
This is a lesson for people that are already pretty happy with socks - so if you've been on one of my sock lessons you should be good to go. We do have the yarn for this and I love love love love love selling sock yarn so come here and we can have a big talk about it (I promise, if you start me getting excited about sock yarn you won't regret it). The idea is that you leave the lesson with a guide in your head for making socks so that you don't have to follow a pattern word for word, it can be something you pick up and put down with ease.
A brill lesson for people who haven't quite hit the stage of sending patterns off to Knitty.com but maybe want to start thinking about working things out for yourself. Amy will talk you through those basics including different shapes, why they're useful and how to achieve them as well as more designerly things like photography and intellectual property. Should be a proper roller coaster of a lesson!
So, I forgot to put this on the blog and facebook group when I was asking what you might be interested in but I've decided to put it on anyway because I get so much interest in spinning lessons here. Now, Amy's allergic to wool so she ended up spindling silk before anything else and it does have a tricky reputation as a spinning material which is why the class is focused on silk only. By the end of the lesson though you'll be well versed in the techniques for general spinning AND the cost includes a kit that'll take you through the whole of the session and leave you with some leftovers to spin with at home so you're not stuck with an obsession that you can't fulfill! I'm dead excited about this lesson myself - I'll be creeping into the back of the hall no doubt...
So that's that! What do you think? :)
I'm so happy and excited that I've felt sick all day and I've eaten loads of food and drunk loads of coffee so I'm on a bit of a hyper!!!!
After my first holiday of the year I had a bout of inspiration about getting a new and bigger shop. Can you remember it? Well, the very next day Amy Singer got in contact with us about potentially hosting some classes here and when I saw her name in my inbox I was actually almost sick. I was on the phone to Cazza at the time and she was telling me something exciting but when I said 'shut up, Amy Singer's just e-mailed me' and she actually did shut up. That's pretty much never happened before.
It became apparent that we couldn't do it at the shop - most of the classes have a limit of 18 people and the shop's limit is... uhhhh... six. Ha. So, I looked all around Nottingham to try and find a suitable place including Wollaton Hall and the Galleries of Justice and Nottingham Castle but I've settled on the Belgrave Rooms. I say settled... IT'S BEAUTIFUL!!! It's somehow part of the Masons but pretty much the less said about that the better. The room that we'll be in is around the back and it has disabled access and its own toilets and it's lovely. I was pretty blown away actually.
It's a bit lovely ain't it?
Right - so I've just had a caffeine crash and Caroline's been on the phone and put me off my stride so I'm a going to finish this tomorrow. Be there or be square.
Apologies in advance because this is going to be photo heavy - even if I have deleted about two thirds of the photos I took...
About a week ago Sarah invited a few of us to the Rowan garment sale in Holmfirth. I didn't think I could make it which was a big disappointment because it's where my dad's from and it's where Last of the Summer Wine was filmed (I didn't watch it, no idea why that's such a positive, but it is). I was also racking my brains trying to work out if I could fit a visit to Caroline and the Stinker's house - I couldn't. I'm going to state here that I'm not a massive fan of Rowan for many reasons (that I'll get into in a bit) but I do respect what they've done for the industry so a visit to the Mill was quite an excitement. Anyway, I wrangled a way to get there, we arranged it at knit club and we were off!
I met Lynsey just down the road from me and we picked up Elaine on route. We listened to Laura Marling to talked about how I'm going to capture my latest husband (I now have a plan!). I tried to take a few photos on the way because the scenery was seriously beautiful and this is all I came up with:
A big long straight road that felt like it could have been in America.
View.
We got to the Mill and it looked dead so we decided it couldn't have been there and drove past. Then Lynsey ended up driving down some rickety, winding, cobbled roads on really steep hills. She's a bloody brill and brave driver because I would have just stopped and refused.
We got in contact with the other carload and it turned out that the sale had only sold out at about nine! It started at half eight and we hadn't set off until about ten past nine so there was no chance! We hung around for a little bit, lots of us have blogs (Lynsey's here, Sarah's here, Jem's facebook page here) so we took loads of photos of more or less the same thing. My favourite version of it is this from Jem's facebook:
I think we look like a band. My mum says we look like a motley crew.
But I particularly liked the emotion shown by Sarah here.
The first thing that we did was head to a cafe. Natch.
We stayed for about an hour and it was truly lovely!
The weather was changeable but the town is seriously gorgeous. I love Yorkshire buildings. I remember going on a trip to Meadowhall with a then boyfriend when I was about 17 and being struck that all of a sudden you can tell when you're in Yorkshire by that very specific colour of stone that's a bit blackened. Lovely Yorkshire.
We already knew that we were going to visit a yarn shop, Up Country in Holmfirth, so we headed there.
I must admit I was a bit taken aback. The shop is lovely. Half a clothes shop and half a wool shop and both sections really busy and lively. The yarn though, it mostly still in plastic bags on the shelf and I couldn't work out if there was a system for storage. They stock up market brands like Rowan, Noro and Debbie Bliss but they weren't necessarily split into brands, or weights, or even colours. Just sort of placed around and about. Now, I do think that a wool shop should be a bit messy so that customers feel comfortable to touch and take out and compare yarns but at some stage it sort of becomes uncomfortable, when you don't know whether the room that you're in is a stock room or part of the shop, for example. Having said that, it's obvious that the owners are passionate about yarn - the fibres and colours available took my breath away. And I did spot some stunning pure silk in a basket on the floor that would have been mine were it not £22 for a 100g. I do like to support LYS's but £22 is about what I pay myself for two days work. Ha. Maybe one day.
I settled (if that's the word when they're so beautiful) for four balls of Rowan Cashsoft DK in a mustard yellow, soft mid-blue, deep maroon-y burgundy and sage green that was on sale. I was going to make something stripey and then the fairisle bug took over. I had to buy some needles too that were £5 (!!!!!!!!) and by the end of the day I had a couple of inches knitted:
More about that later.
We went to a pub for lunch and it was perfect. We sat ourselves in a little snug at the end of the bar that fitted our little group like a glove. I had toad in the hole and almost got some of this:
but it was off. So I got some kind of blond ale instead which was nice but a bit flowery. I do think that you should go for local stuff when you're away.
After lunch we were mighty stuffed so we had a slow walk through town back to the cars. Jem needed some material to make a door curtain to match her curtain curtains so we were going to one of her customers down the road. I took the opportunity to take loads of photos of the little shops and sights:
I've not got much to say about this - just wow.
I have a soft spot for these 'man' type shops. I also really love hardware shops.
A book shop that we should have stopped at. Really heartening to see all the little independents thriving.
The River Holme.
The scale of Yorkshire is just bigger I think. Lots of money around from when we were the backbone of the country. Proud Yorkshire. :)
The fabric shop that we went to was the Holmfirth Mill Shop and it was brill!!!
Look at that!!! It almost made me want to sew! I was convinced that I might find some fabric I've been after for ages (some sort of cotton in red with big teal flowers if you're wondering - I have big plans for that material when I find it). Jem found her perfect fabric and Lynsey, Elaine and Sophie all bought some too. I think he must have been pleased that we turned up just as he closed and forced him to open again - I know I would have been! Really gorgeous shop.
When we'd finished there we all agreed that we were thirsty so we decided to go back into town, get some ice creams and sit in a sort of village green thing that we'd found. Good plan. It was my idea to get there by walking on the riverbank. Good plan. Especially because we found some kisses:
And admired the view:
And then we got to the green where we sat for a good hour chewing the cud and watching a farmer wrestle some sheep into his van:
I was sad to be setting off home but cheered up when we found that the Haribo that I'd bought had melted in the back of the car! I know it's weird but I've always wanted to melt Haribo like you do with marshmallows so I was thrilled!
It's as tasty as you imagine but I thought I might die when it got stuck in my throat. Ha.
And that's that for the trip. When we got home I was convinced I was going to do some accounting type work but actually, I just sat around and knitted - funny that. It does mean that I have a finished object to show you though!
May I introduce you to the Spread Your Legs Cowl. :)
As we left the Mill and were heading into Holmfirth we were talking about why it wasn't such a bad thing that the Mill as closed and because Lynsey's car is new I said 'oh well, it's nice to spread your legs' and what I meant is 'spread your wings' or 'stretch your legs' but nothing ever turns out right for me. Ha.
So, like I said earlier, this was made with four balls of Rowan Cashsoft in beeeeeeeeyootiful colours even if I say so myself. To be fair, I didn't really choose them, I just picked them up and they all seemed to go together and they were in the sale and that was that. Originally the plan was stripes but I've been hankering after fairisle for some time and whilst this isn't the big project that I've had in my head I think it may have been enough to sate the urges until the weather becomes appropriate and I have more than a few minutes to think about myself.
It's my favourite kind of fairisle in that it there was no planning at all. Sometimes, as I was meditatively knitting I thought of some rules, like I'll put a plain row, then a 1 by 1 row then another plain row in between every motif and then I'd get carried away and that went out of the window. Then I started thinking that I wanted at least two motifs in each colour, one with one colour as the main and then vice versa but then that went out of the window because with fairisle, unless you're actually going to plan and think about colours and make some adjustments accordingly, it's near impossible to work out which colour will come out 'on top' in a motif. See the blue and green repeat on the left side of this photo:
That was supposed to be some sort of medallion pattern that I took from my fairisle inspiration book but it's ended up looking a lot like coffee beans and the pattern doesn't actually show that well anyway because the colours are too close.
There are plenty of mistakes too. The yellow and maroon pattern to the right of the centre was supposed to be a version of this:
Oh well.
And I forgot that I was going to try and put a version of the grass kisses in there. Ha.
But it was lovely to 'spread my legs' after a few easy projects and finally get some of this fairisle longing out of my system! It's been too long.
The yarn is lovely and soft. But. And I'm pleased about this 'but'. It's slubby!!!!! You know sometimes you get those bits of fibre in a yarn that haven't managed to be spun properly? Lots of that. I spoke to Jem about it and she said that that's the primary reason that the yarn has been discontinued and that it happens mainly in the blue colourways. I must say, I got it in the yellow and the green too. And the reason that I'm happy? It just proves my point that posh yarn ain't necessarily the best! Posh yarns have their place I think, and making miles and miles of the stuff does mean that there will be imperfections, and they've found a problem and sorted it (by not making it any more) but ha! Every time I succumb to buying Rowan I'm reminded that they're human even if they charge ungodly prices. :)
It's blocking as we speak.
And whilst I'm at it, I've got some pictures of the scarf I made in Araucania yarn from holiday that I talked about here.
I'm actually pretty thrilled with it. It's boring. Totes boring. All I did was chained what I thought would be a good width then I did a row of dc's, a row of htr's, a row of tr's, then dtr's, tr's, htrs and dc's again. Rinse and repeat. It's about as exciting as I could have mustered with the throat, tooth and man problems I was having and now I've put it aside for a week or so I'm less worried about how wishy-washy it seems. I don't think that's the right term actually - the colours are sort of mid-way saturated rather than lightly saturated like I thought. I can't quite put my finger on why I liked it more in the skein than on the ball or worked up but I did. I will live with it quite happily though, it's a brill length for me.
This blog post does have a theme tune by the way:
I should start putting these at the top of the post shouldn't I? And then you can read it whilst listening to the same things as I do when I write it and it'll be almost like you actually are me.
Right, I have prevaricated too long. I'm going to actually get some accounting done. Once I've made myself a cup of tea....
