Frosty!

It's cold and I've got a terrible cold and sore throat. I can barely talk and I'm teaching a workshop tomorrow at Spin A Yarn and one on Friday at The Cornwall Yarn Shop. Not a good week to loose my voice.

We had a lovely walk yesterday around Sibleyback Lake on Bodmin Moor, about 10 mins drive away. This is why we live in Cornwall! the white stuff is frost, not snow. I'll let the photos do the talking:

 And the choice is 'through the woods' or...'through the woods', unless you fancy a swim!

And here's the woods, sorry for the blurry pic:

Some cows:

And some sheep:

Look at how still the water is:

This is the handspun merino/bamboo hat I knitted Emily 2 years ago from my handspun. My most successful handspun project and my most successful hat too.

 I'm not very good at hats. Emily bought her wintercoat after I knitted the hat and it matched perfectly. she know needs a new winter coat and i hope we can find one that matches again.

Knitting this weekend has been mainly secret stuff and involves a lot of lace and beads.

Have a good week x

A Bead Stash

Yes, i've got a bead stash. Don't you? I love adding beads to my lace and yesterday I searched through my studio to get all my beads together. I had to choose several colours for a new design. I must admit I didn't quite realise how many beads I had.

I've got these cute tubes of beads from my favorite bead supplier, The Bead Room in Totnes.

It's a fabolous shop with a huge selection.

I cast on for my next secret project. I'm a little late getting started with this one so I need to get on with it and got quite a bit done tonight while watching 'Strictly Come Dancing' (I hope Anne Widdecombe goes out by the way, it's not funny anymore!)

You won't see this again until sometime next year when it appears in a magazine.

Over the last couple of days I've done a few more rows on my Carmen shawl. Where the orange marker is is where I ripped back to.

And I wound some yarn:

I wanted to use some of this for swatching on the knitting machine. I've got various designs planned for the knitting machine. First, I need to finish the sleeves for Simon's Super Merino sweater. I'd love to finish it this weekend. He could do with it as it's freezing.  i started swatching on the machine but I was struggling today. I've no idea why. In the end I gave up and started Simon's sleeve. Again, I just couldn't do it. Some days I just don't get on with the machine at all. So I gave up and did some lace knitting instead.

I spent most of the morning packing up Lace Variety Club parcels. I was desperate to get to the post office before it closed but I didn't make it. The lace club is big right now and I just didn't have enough time. So it'll go out on Monday. At least it's all packed up now and ready.

I've just done a shop update. Some brand new Bamboozle Sock which is a blend of superwash Bluefaced Leicester and Bamboo. BFL is not my favorite sheep's wool, I must admit, but I do love Bamboozle. I've got my eyes on a couple of skeins. I need some socks and I'm planning to spend my Christmas hoilday in Norway knitting socks and i'll definitely pack a skein or two of Bamboozle, unless it all sells out first.

If you're on the newsletter list, I'm sending one out in a few minutes with some fab offers. If you're not on the list yet, sign up in the sidebar.

Here's a taster of tonight's update:

Enjoy the rest of your weekend. We've got the fire roaring here as it's the coldest day of this winter so far.

A rescue mission!

Sometimes as knitters we make some really silly or downrigh stupid mistakes, which we really should know better. Now, I've had knitters who've just started knitting lace made this same mistake and it's an easy mistake to make, but I should have known better. Why? 1. It's my design. 2. I've knitted tons of this kind of shawl shapes before. So what is this stupid mistake I made?

I'm knitting a new version of my Carmen shawl, which was one of my first triangular shawl designs, it may have been THE first. Can't remember if I did Carmen first or Ocean Waves. I started this version in Silky Camel ages ago and lately I've been on a mission to get it finished. Last night I weighed the yarn and had only 30 gr left. Then I looked at my knitting and saw this;

Can you see it?See how there is a central 'spine' with yarn overs either side? Then suddenly it stops and the section above is knitted in the stitch pattern. I would have drawn a circle to mark it out but I can't work out how to do it on Paintshop Pro. At some point when I was knitting this, probably last weekend when I was knitting on this rather a lot, I forgot to work the yarn overs in the centre and carried on working the stitch pattern all the way across. If I'd carried on like this I would loose the triangular shape and the shawl would obviously look wrong.

I took a deep breat and decided I could unravel the centre section only and knit it up row by row. I've done it before successfully. So  I did this (all these pics were taken in the dark yesterday evening, which is why they're so dark):

Then I thought some more. And realised that I would be increasing 2 stitches on every right side row which means that I would use more and more yarn per row and as I'd noly unravelled the centre section I only had a limited amount of yarn at my disposal for each row. I also struggled to work out which pattern row to start on. So i did this:

I pulled the needles out and started unravelling. It now looks like this:

And i'm gutted. I'd really hoped to finish this very soon. I'm about to start on a secret project which will take up most of my time for the next 3 weeks so I won't have time to do much else. I've got  about 3 projects that I'm keen to finish before Christmas and also 2 secret projects to finish. I've not weighed the yarn as I'd rather not know how much I've got left to knit. I'm not sure whether to knit on it this morning or whether I should put it in time out for naughty behaviour, which is a bit unfair as i'm the one who was naughty. Or at least not concentrating like I should have.

On to better news. I've just opened sign ups for the next Easy Lace Club due to start in January.  This club will teach you how to knit lace with  different lace scarf or shawlette each month and a skein of luxury sock yarn. Sign ups will remain open until 2nd January or until it's full which may happen before. If you'd like to buy it as a present for someone let me know and i'll send them a card to inform them that they have been given a gift subscription to the club and when their membership will start. This applies to all clubs by the way. The November installment of the Easy Lace club will be posted today.

I was dyeing the Lace Variety Club yarn yesterday and then got  phone call saying Emily was ill. I never managed to get back to dyeing so got to finish it this morning. I'm desperately hoping to be posting the Lace Variety Club tomorrow, if the yarn is dry. I did dry nearly half yesterday and that's nearly dry. I'm drying it in front of the radiators which have been on a lot as it's cold here. in fact about 10 mins ago we had some snow flurries.

I finally finished a machine knit cardigan I've been working on for the past few weeks. The yarn is my Bambino Sock which is so soft and gorgeous and lovely to knit with on the machine. I'm not 100% happy with the finished result as i'm still very much a novice at machine knitting. The rib front bands and collar was knitted separately and sew on and one of my needles didn't work very well and I did the rib several times and in the end gave up so it's not perfect. I'm also not very happy with my sleeves.  I wanted wider sleeves and had planned to do elbow length sleeves with no shaping, so that it would have been the same width at the top and bottom, then at the last minute I changed my mind. I wish I hadn't. I may re-knit the sleeves. I'ven ot managed to get anyone to take a photo of me wearing the cardigan so I used my size 8/10 dress form. I'm twice the size, at least, of my dress form which is why it looks rather huge.

I'll be doing a shop update tomorrow with the brand new Bamboozle Sock which is a blend of BFL/bamboo. It's gorgeous. I'll also have some Bambino Lace. If you're a newsletter subscriper, look out for your newsletter tomorrow for a special offer. If you've not signed up, sign up in the side bar of the blog now.

A few things have not gone to plan here lately. Our boiler is not working properly and we desperately need a new one. We've had a quote and it's rather a lot more than we thought. it is working at the moment and we've decided to try to nurse it along until the summer if we can as we may get a better deal on a new boiler in the summer. Last week my washing machine died. it's only 5 years old and has been working perfectly. No problems at all and last Wednesday when I went to put a load on it clicked 3 times and started beeping at me. It doens't normally do that. I called out a local engineer and he said it was probably the printed circuit board which will cost around £200 to fix. As the machine was only about £300 it's not worth it and we've ordered a new machine which will be here tomorrow. A big unexpected expense like that a month before Christmas was not good.

We've all got colds here. Emily was sent home yesterday and is still home today. Vanessa was sent home on Monday but went back on Tuesday. I'm coming down with it as well and I'm not feeling good.

Lots of stuff

A lady, Penny, who attended my sock knitting class at Spin A Yarn  last week brought this fab Old English Sheepdog she'd knitted from a book called 'Best in show' to show us. I'm not a fan of knitted toys and animals but this dog is gorgeous. I just had to share it.

I was in The Cornwall Yarn Shop on Friday and Rebecca has copies of this book, 'Best In Show', for sale and it is full of gorgeous, very good looking dogs.

I've also not gotten around to blogging about my trip to London the week before last. I went up on the Thursday with a friend, Marianne. We had a lovely train journey with lots of chat and knitting. When we got to London we met my parents at the hotel in Islington. and went out for lunch. My Dad had business meetings so Marianne, my Mum and I walked to Loop, which is a gorgeous little yarn boutique. They stock some yarns not that easily available in the UK like Tili Thomas, Madeline Tosh and Wollmeise. I've been wondering what all the hype about Wollmeise was all about and i'm assuming it's all about the colours, which are amazing. It took me ages to decide which shade to get and i could easily have gotten several more shades. I ended up with this one:

I was also keen to pick up a skein of Tosh Sock from Madeline Tosh, having read about this yarn on lots of American blogs. The choice of colours was small and I ended up with this 'vintage pink' which i like but wasn't 'in love with':

I nearly got some Tili thomas too but managed to resist temptation. Loop was a really gorgeous shop but being rather spoiled with the brilliant Spin A Yarn nearby, which has a huge choice of yarn, I was a little bit disappointed. Loop is about the same size as Spin A Yarn but didn't have anywhere near the same choice of yarn but they did have some rather gorgeous, 'hard to get in the UK' brands.

We then  headed to the Marble Arch branch of M&S. We didn't stay long there and then walked on to Carnaby Street as Marianne was keen to visit a vintage denim shop, which turned out to be a big disappointment. We ended up going to several denim shops but none of them were any good. I was keen to visit 'All the Fun of the fair' which was much smaller than I'd imagined. They have  small yarn range and some gorgeous buttons. I bought this set of 'love hearts' buttons which i'm desperate to use on a cardi for myself, i think they're so cute.

I also bought this gorgeous paper clip.

Sorry about the out of focus photos.

 After a drink at a bar with very poor service we went to Liberty. The Rowan range there was fantasic. Seeing this wall of the full range of Rowan yarns in lots of colours was amazing. They also had some Regia sock yarn and my Mum bought a ball. After Liberty our legs were aching and we were getting tired so we decided to head back to Islington to find a restaurant. We walked to Oxford Circus tube station were one entrance was closed and hte others had huge queues to even get down the steps to the station so we walked to Bond Street instead. The tube in the rush hour is a nightmare and makes me so relieved I don't have to tackle that every day.

Back in Islington we found a Pizza Express and had to wait for a table. We had a lovely relaxing meal in a rather noisy, very busy restaurant. We headed back to the hotel for an early night.

The next day it was time for the Country Living Christmas Fair. I've never been before. Marianne used to go the Country Living Fairs regularly but stopped going a few years ago as she thought they'd gone downhill, so was a bit worried about how good this years fair would be. We were not disappointed, in fact it was fantastic. Lots of good quality arts and crafts on sale, including lots of designers/makers from the Orkneys. We did spend rather a long time in their section and Marianne bought quite a few pieces.

I had a long chat with Sue Blacker of Blacker Designs who runs a yarn mill in our neighbouring town. We've been to a couple of the same shows and her mill is 30 mins away from me but I've never spoken to Sue before.  It was lovely meeting her properly and chatting about yarn. Another local company, John Arbon, was there too. And Toft Alpacas had a stall. There were lots of knit wear designers there selling machine knitted designs. Cashmere was the 'in' fibre this year.

I didn't buy much at the Country Living Fair but I couldn't resist this cute box from Rose Cottage Boxes. I bought a small one and so did my Mum. Marianne got one of the big ones. It was hard choosing from theri gorgeous designs and I ended up with this one.

I'm planning to keep my buttons in it:

I also bought something for Em for christmas but I won't share a photo of that just in case she reads my blog. My Mum bought a few things but Marianne had the most successful day and came home with several bags. In fact it was a bit of a struggle to get them all back on the tube to Paddinton. She suggested getting a taxi but I was too worried about being stuck in traffic. The train ride home was relaxing and we all knitted a lot. My Mum came back from London with me. my Dad had left London in the morning to drive down to Southampton for a meeting and then drove on to Cornwall and spent the evening with Simon and the girls. My Dad was here for the weekend and my Mum was here for all of last week and left on Saturday.

On thursday we went to a fashion show organised by Spin A Yarn at the Devon Guild of Master Craftsmen in Bovey Tracy. Debbie Bliss was there and introduced some designs from her autumn/winter range. I didn't get to speak to Debbie (i was too shy to go up and introduce myself) but Alison Crowther-Smith who has written 'Little Luxury Knits', Claire Crompton (who's written The Knitters Bible and several other books) and Belinda from Knit Expo were all there and I talked to all of them as well as lots of knitters. it was a great evening with gorgeous food and lovely company. So nice to see so many knitters gathered. And I didn't take my camera, so no photos.

Front Covers

I've got TWO front covers this month. The Christmas issue of Let's Knit arrived last week, the day before I left for a couple of days in London. it featured my Bergere de France 'Gabrielle' - a pretty cardigan with eyelet rows and a tie front detail. (Ravelry link) Perfect to wear with your Christmas outfit. I'm sure I took some pics before I sent it off but I can't find them. So here's the pics from the mag:

And then today, Yarn Forward arrived with this on the front cover:

 This was the design I finished on the way to Iknit Weekender in September and handed over to Anna (the editor) at the show. I'm thrilled with the styled ohotos.  The yarn is Handmaiden  Great Big Sea Silk which is the dk version of Seasilk and is a blend of silk and seacell.

 The jacket is worked in one piece with a circular yoke and because of the stitch pattern, it grows very quickly.

 I love this design. It was so luxurious and slinky. I wish I could wear it.

The Ravelry link is here.

I had a great time in London last week and will blog more about that next time. I met my parents in London and they came home with me. My Dad stayed for the weekend and left on Monday and my Mum is leaving on Saturday. We've had a busy week but enjoyed ourselves. I had a deadline I missed last week so I've been working flat out on that as much as possible and it's just finished. Phew! I hate being late, especially several days late. I should be getting on with the next design but I need to dye the yarn first which I'm hoping to do this Friday. So until then I've got a couple of small shawls I want to try to finish off and I may treat myself to some spinning tonight.

Re Easy Lace Club and Lace Variety Club. I'm late again I'm afraid. My plans had been to get all hte dyeing done before I went to London last week but because of the sickness bug we all had I got behind on everything. So the yarn will be dyed tomorrow and Friday and posted as soon as it's dry which will probably be Monday/Tuesday next week.

Amore Shawlette - Pattern is ready

The Amore Shawlette is now finally ready for release. I've just listed the pattern in my  Ravelry pattern shop (you don't have to be a member to purchase the pattern) and it will go up on my website later today hopefully. I'm also listing it on Patternfish. Or you can purchase it here:

 

I know I've shown a lot of pics of this shawl recently but let's see them again.

The shawl takes one skein (400m) of sock yarn and 3.75mm/US5 needles. It measures147cm/58in wide and 54cm/21 in long (down the centre) after blocking. And the lace pattern is knitted from charts.

And guess who is ill now? yes, yesterday it was Simon's turn spending the day being sick. He's still in bed today. I'm finally starting to feel okay. I'm still not 100% but much better. I still felt quite rough yesterday and got very little done. Today I need to get some jobs done as my parents are coming on Friday and I'm off to London on Thursday and Friday (will be meeting my parents there) and I'm teaching a halfday Basic sock workshop at Spin A Yarn tomorrow. Let's hope it doesn't end like Friday's workshop (scroll down to previous post if you wonder what happened).

So I've got tons of housework to do, tons of knitting to do, I'm behind on a deadline due before I go to London, e-mails to deal with and a post office run to make. And I can't get enough water inside me. I've been drinking continously since saturday and I'm still always thirsty. It's horrible. Off to get another glass of water and do some more knitting (and ironing and .....)

And then it was my turn....

Last Friday, in the early hours of the morning, just after midnight to be exact, Emily started being sick. Monday evening it was Vanessa's turn. I'd escaped catching the dreaded bug from Em, as I quickly abandoned her to go to Fibre Flurry (nasty Mum that I am! LOL). I quarantined Vanessa in her room on Monday night and Tuesday and franticaly washed my hands every time I'd been anywhere near her. I HATE sickness bugs!!! According my my calculations, if I'd caught it from Vanessa, I would start on friday, which would be bad news as I was teaching at The Cornwall Yarn shop. I woke up and felt fine. I left home and felt fine. I arrived at the yarn shop and felt fine. We started the class and felt fine. It got to 11am and I started feeling unwell. I thought I might just be hungry and had a Twix. Just before noon, I went to the toilet and was sick. The class was quicly aborted, which I felt awful and embarassed about, with promises to re-arrange the workshop at a new time to suit the participants. Rebecca gave me a pile of carrier bags and I headed back to the car, feeling really ill. I rang Simon from the car to tell him what was happening. Wondering how I was going to get through the 30 min drive home on winding, narrow Cornish lanes. The quickest road between Liskeard and Launceston is very windy and narrow. I had to stop twice and the carrier bags came in useful. Enough said. i made it home eventually and crawled into bed with a bucket. I won't go into details but it was BAD! One of the most violent bugs I've had for a long time.

I had an awful night, the sickness had stopped but I felt really ill and was in agony. The painkillers I took yesterday didn't stay down for long and staying in bed for hours is not good for my back. I slept really badly and woke up in agony. I got up for a few hours this morning but only to try to give my back a rest and because I was in too much pain to stay in bed. Then headed back to bed for a sleep, at least my pankillers are staying down now. I've spent the afternoon catching up on some programmes online and I'm just considering having a shower and getting up to watch Strictly Come Dancing.

I'd hoped to have this pattern published this week but I'm a bit behind but hopefully it'll be ready to go by tomorrow or Monday at the latest. The pattern just needs a final edit and check and I think I'll wait till my head is slightly clearer. here's a preview:

Fairytale!

I've got a new shawlette but I'm not publishing the pattern yet.  I may save this one for my book proposal. I'll still share some photos though cause i'm desperate to show it off. It's been hanging on my dress form for 2 days waiting for some decent weather so I can get some decent photos but for 2 days it's been dull, dark and miserable. I took some photos yesterday but they're not good and some of them were very out of focus.

This is a one skein size and it's perfect scarf size for a large lady like me. I'm thinking of doing a bigger version too but not quite yet. Got some other stuff I need to do first.

I've cast on for my secret project and it's going well after a false start. I swatched again before I started and worked out my tension. Calculated my pattern and cast on. After a couple of inches I thought it looked a bit big and measures it and it was about 3 inches too wide. So re-calculated and cast on again and it looks much better now. I'm probably halfway up to the armhole. I should really be finished with either the front or the back by now. The deadline is next week and i'm worried about getting it done on time. I'm off to London on Thursday morning for 2 days and I'd really, really like to finish it before I go. I've got some other knitting I want to do on the trip.

Although I should be focusing 100% on my secret project, I did cast on for another little shawlette yesterday. I had a skein of Twinkletoes in Passion staring at me and once I'd wound it into a ball I had no chance. I had an idea but wasn't quite sure how to execute it. I had a couple of tries but it didn't work. I put it down for a few hours then tried again and LOVE IT! I'm not sharing photos yet as i'm thinking about keeping it for something. It's a shawlette but it's not lace but I love it. It's easy to knit but not boring. Perfect train knitting for going to London next Thursday.

I've had lots of parcels this week, most of it has been samples being returned but yesterday i had a very exciting parcel. It was the second installment from the Painted Tiger Fiber Club. I haven't spun last month's fibre yet. The idea of joining a club was to encourage me to get spinning again and last month was Polwarth which I've never spun and I'm keen to spin it but although I like the colours, they're not the colours I would choose.

This months colour is not what I would choose either but I do like it. It's black and red. I'm thinking it would look good navajo plied but my last attempt at navajo plying was a disaster so maybe not. I've got some merino/kid mohair on the wheel right now but once that's spun I may try this. It's Bluefaced leicester by the way. the thing with clubs is that sometimes you get colours you don't like or fibers you don't like but it does encourage you to go outside your comform zone and try somethign different.

I want to spin now but I need to print off my stuff for my sock workshop at The Cornwall Yarn Shop tomorrow. I think  I will do that quickly so I can do some spinning before I go to bed. The Cornwall Yarn Shop is a fabolous little shop. Rebecca has a good selection of yarn and lots of books and patterns and some other fun accessories. I bought some nice stuff last time I was there. Wonder what I'll bring home tomorrow.This is a bit of a sock month for me as next week and the week after it's sock knitting ( 2 half days) at Spin A Yarn and then it's sock knitting at Hulu Crafts. I've got some workshops booked at the Cornwall Yarn Shop in January too. An Easy Lace knitting workshop and beginners knitting. Find the details here.