Knitting, bags and crochet

It's been another busy weekend and beginning to the new week. It's the girls last day of school today (I could have done with them finishing on Thursday or Friday instead of today) and it's raining. It's foggy, cold and wet. Typical English weather for the start of the summer holidays. Let's hope it improves soon.

A lovely parcel came today with 3 gorgeous bags from Three Bags Full.

 I bought 2 bags in April and love them

. A couple of weeks ago I made the 'mistake' of browsing Three Bags Full's Etsy shop and got tempted to order some more. After all I need them for my holiday to Spain.

This waterproof bag is perfect for knitting on the beach. the pink bag is quite small and i'm thinking about using that as my notions bag on holiday as my normal notions bag is too big and heave to take away.  This is now my collection of bags from Three Bags Full:

Next week is out church's annual Grace Family Bible Week. About 600 people will be camping on our church field. We have people from all over the country coming. Simon and the girls normally camp but this year Emily will be away on a scout trip (she's going on a canal boat holiday on Friday, lucky girl) so it'll just be Simon and Vanessa this year. I go home every night as due to my back pain I need to sleep in a comfy bed and it's such an exhausting week and if I don't get any sleep I won't function. My job for the week is to organise the craft stall which is open for an hour twice a day. I normally arrive at church for hte morning service at 10 am every day and then stay until the craft stall closes at around 10-11pm. It's normallly a great week but very busy and I won't be home much.

I have a deadline end of next week for 6 designs for Artesano. All the samples are knitted up by super fast Pixie. The last sample came back today. I've still got some finishing to do on most of the samples. I've also got a lot of pattern writing to do. I'm intending to get a couple of patterns off to the tech editor today and the rest finished on Thursday and Friday. It's going ot be a busy week.

I've also got a deadline project I'm knitting and I'm hoping to finish today. It will be appearing at Knit Nation next week. Then it's another quick project to try to finish before we go to Spain.

I've sneaked in a few rows on my 'Carmen' Shawl. This was the first shawl I designed and I'm not very happy with the original sample, photos and the pattern itself. i've learnt so much since then. I've decided to knit up another sample and to re-do the pattenr. i've typed up the charts in KnitVisualizer so they look more professional. I'm planning to finish this in Spain. the yarn is YarnAddict Silky Camel which is gorgeous to knit with. I chose to use the undyed colourway as I think it's so beautiful.

I've also managed to fit in a few new hexagons for my crochet hexagon scarf.

This is all the shapes I've got so far. I've decided I no longer like the colour combo. I love the colours separately but not together. I did 2 hexagons mixing the colours and it made me make up my mind.

I'm planning to finish the scarf in the lilac colour first

and i'm wondering about dyeing a darker purple shade to go with it. sorry pics are a bit out of focus. It's dark and dull today and it's difficult to get good pics. The yarn, btw, is YarnAddict Ocean Silk which is an  amazing blend of silk and seacell.

Notice I've not mentioned Tour de Fleece much? Well, there's been no spinning going on whatsoever since day 2 of the tour. We've been watching it every night and I'm enjoying it but with deadline knitting, sadly there's been no time for spinning. I may try to fit some in tonight.

I'm re-doing the pattern section on my website. I woke up very early today and decided to make a start. I've not been happy with it for a while and since I changed my website template recently it's been looking a bit tacky. Not all the patterns are back up yet but Simplicity, Trellis, Blossom, Dazzle and Golitha Falls are all ready. Simplicity and Trellis is part of the new 'Easy Lace' section with more patterns coming soon, including the new 'Carmen' shawl. All my patterns are available on Patternfish and Ravelry too.

Back to some pattern writing.