Yarn along

Joining Ginny in sharing what we are reading and knitting/crocheting


After finishing my socks on Sunday I have started b my handbag kit I got from my parents for Christmas, I have already made one of these bags, in purple and I use it as my every day bag.

It works up surprisingly quickly. I am also reading Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind by Hayo Miyazaki. The film was based on the book of the same name. It has to be one of my favourite films and the manga follow the same story but goes into much more depth.

Finished another pair of socks!

Yay! These have taken me just over a month to finish and here they are in all their rainbow-y noro goodness!

The weather

As many of you know the UK has been battered by storms and rain and wind. It's all starting to feel much like normal life and spring will never come. I also think the lack of sunshine is making me feel well a bit ugh I guess. There is so many things I should be doing (like writing my New Years Resolution update), but instead I have been snuggling up on the sofa watching tv and knitting. Nearly completed my noro socks now. 

I love the colours, lovely and cheery on these terrible winter storms. I just turned the heel yesterday so I am hoping I can get it done today, fueled by copious amounts if tea. 

This is the view from the living room window, with added rain too! Those eagle eyed of you may notice the neighbours are having their windows changed. What a time to have that done!

Just a quick note at the end; to all those living in the South West, my heart goes out to you. I spent my younger years growing up there, and whilst it flooded regularly, it was never to that scale. I hope for your sake, it will end soon. 

Woodland Knits Book Reivew

I have been meaning to talk to you about this book for a while. But with being sick and the weather being terrible (I didn't have any decent light to take photos) it's taken me a long time. So here goes!

Woodland Knits by the wonderful Stephanie Dosen, aka Tiny Owl Knits. I have admired her work from a distance and loved the whimsical theme of her patterns, but never took the chance to buy one. When I learned she was going to be publishing a book I jumped straight on it. 

Inside it looks so beautiful. The layout and the photos are all imcredible. There is a little story to go with each pattern which is fantastic. Everything is clear and consise (although I haven't had the opportunity to work on any of them yet. 

Here I have picked out my favourite pattern; The Free Rapunzel hat to look at in bit more detail.

On the right page we have a lovely picture of it and on the left we have the title, description/story, difficulty level, requirements and stitch definitions. I love the the typography and style, it just screams Stephanie so much!

Moving on to the next few pages are next section of instructions, some notes and another picture.

Overall I love this book, the patterns are great, the photography is great although some of the patterns are a little to whimsical, even for me, I still totally recommend it to add to your collection!

What are your favourite recent craft book(s) additions?

The Bee Keeper's Quilt

I have been working on the Bee Keeper's Quilt project of a while now. It's the kind of project that has lots of little components that are joined together, known has "hexipuffs", super cute and very easy to master. The pattern is available here from the wonderful Tiny Owl Knits. Her videos are wonderful to watch. Almost like a kindred spirit to me, I love her whinsy patterns too. She is a little crazy and all kinds of cute. And her cat, so so so cute!

So here is my version so far. It's worked in DK on 3.5mm DPNs in the round. It needs to be worked quite tight, so the stuffing doesn't come poke out. Guage doesn't really matter either. The methods I used to make them is a long tail cast on, KFB as an increase, K2tog as a decrease and I use three needle bind off to finish. But the pattern describes many, many methods of making them yourself. I like to leave long tails on the work too, that way if you line them up correctly you can use them to join the hexipuffs together.


I don't really have any plans for colour schemes, just using up all my left over scraps and trying to use up all the icky colours that have been given to me. Here is a bunch of herxipuffs I have knitted up this week.

 

Here are all the other hexipuffs joined together. Nice and "clashy clashy" as my Mum would say. Nice hodgepodge (I love that word) of random colours.

 

Gratitude Sunday

 Joining Taryn in this heartfelt tradition. A time to slow down, to reflect and be grateful.


This week I have been grateful for: 

...my feathery ladies laying two eggs a day for me 

...Which allowed me to have pancakes for breakfast...

... Having the time to finish the pair of socks I have been working on

...Finally finding a shampoo that keeps my hair clean and doesn't irritate my dermatitis
... Some quiet time to catch up on rest
...The end of British Summer Time which meant I had an extra hour before work

Quiet time

The past couple of days, since Friday I suppose I have spent with my boyfriend. We watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 which I really enjoyed, went out for dinner twice, it has been lovely. We have had some pretty nasty weather too.

Just last night we had a very wild storm, thunder, lightning, winds, rain, the works.

Our veg man also delivered the first pumpkin of the season. Now I just need to work out what to do with it. Any ideas or favourite recipes?

I have also been churning out mini hats for the Big Knit.

Hopefully the weather is supposed to calm down this afternoon so I am hoping to go and pop them in the post.

The last photo is my first fair isle knit. I always thought colour work looked scary, but I have been watching a programme on the BBC iPlayer about the Scottish Islands. I love the history and the culture of them and would one day like to visit at least one of them for myself. 

In the one about Shetland and the surrounding islands, they had a brief section on Fair Isle and it's knitting heritage. There was a clip about it being passed down the generations and made me smile when it showed the grandmother knitting a jumper at a million miles an hour and the grand daughter with the extreme concentration of every stitch. 

They were also discussing they can knit a jumper in about ten hours which blew me away. So far it has taken me two weeks to knit a pair of socks. So I looked into the methods of fair isle knitting and discovered a few tricks along the way to help me knit faster.