What happened?

 I hadn't planned to go AWOL this week and if you follow my Twitter feed you'll know why I never got around to blogging again and why the shop update never happened. When we got home from woolfes knew I had a deadline next week and but I didn't realise the garment had to be in Germany by Monday. I cast on on Monday and  knitted 1/3 of the back and then thought it looked a bit big. I measured and yes it was at least one size too big. This is a yarn I have knitted with on lots of occasions in stocking stitch so instead of knitting another swatch I took the tension of a previous garment I'd designed using the same yarn and same needles. For some reason this time my tension was different. so I cast on again Monday night and the garment finally went in the post this afternoon. It probably won't arrive in Germany by Monday but hopefully it'll arrive by Tuesday.

On the way home from woolfest I had a sore throat which was the start of stinking cold. I could have done with a week of early nights and relaxing days. Instead it's been frantic knitting and very late nights, between 11pm and 1 am - I'm normally in bed by 10pm. As a result my cold is worse and now i'm shattered but the design is done which is a huge relief and I did enjoy knitting it.

Back to Woolfest. We were incredibly busy but I did manage to escape a couple of times for a spot of shopping.  I had studied the programme carefully to decide if there were any stalls I absolutely had to check out. I knew Textile Garden would be there and I love their buttons. I could have bought a lot more but I did choose this lot:

 Excuse the blurry, slightly off colour pic. I don't have any plans for most of the buttons but they were all shapes and colours I love and I like having a button stash so that when I have a garment needing buttons I have some to choose from. Cool buttons are hard to come by in Liskeard.

I also picked up some Injabalo buttons. Aren't these little sheep cute?

And i love the butterflies too.

I also found a lovely new shop called Cocoon. they specialise in Japanese yarns and stock Habu. I've seen Habu yarns at shows before but  their stall is normally very, very busy. they do some very unusual yarns and I'd read about their stainless steel yarns and was keen to try them. At the show they were only selling them as kits which included one cone of stainless steel and one cone of merino and a scarf pattern.

 The lilac is the stainless steel. I don't actually like the merino colour but I was mainly after the stainless steel. It feels much softer than I thought it would and I can't wait to experiment with it. Here is a pic of the pattern which comes with the kit. I do like this scarf and I may knit it at some point.

All weekend I saw people in my stall with these gorgeous sparkly batts in their bags. I asked them where they  had bought them from and it was Felt Studio UK. I love Daniela's work. She has the most amazing batts and art yarns. I was tempted by a couple of the art yarns but settled for this gorgeous sparkly batt:

I can't remember quite what's in it now but I love it. It's also a little bit more green than the photo. I'm planning to save this until after my Knit Nation spinning workshop.

When I came home from woolfest there was a treat waiting for me too. I'd been tempted by a couple of braids of Optim form The Thylacine.  Optim is merino that has been stretched apparently. It's incredibly soft and silky and I'm really looking forward to spinning it.There are some gorgeous Optim braids on their website. I'm soo tempted but i have so much gorgeous fibre to spin up already. Anyway, these colours are gorgeous and I'm thinking about starting the pink this weekend:

Although I do love the blue too:

I have just finished spinning some blue fibre though. On sunday night after our drive home from Woolfest I finished the second bobbin of my Sweet Georgia March fibre club singles. I'm planning to ply them this weekend. Hopefullly the yarn will be a new hat for Emily. She's still wearing the last handspun hat I knitted her 2 years ago but it's getting a bit small. I promised her i may knit it while we're in London in two weeks. The last one was pretty quick to knit so I hope this one will be too.

I didn't get too much knitting done while we were in cumbria. In the car on the way up I slept most of the time but on the way home I decided to knit and I finished the second wrist warmer from my Easy Lace cowl/wrist warmer set. I'd done a couple of pattern reps before we started and knitted the rest on the way home. They were done by the time we got to Bristol. They still need blocking which I'll do this weekend.

The Easy Lace collection is progressing again. I'm planning to send out the remaining patterns for test knitting this weekend and then next week I'll be writing and photographing the techniques section.  Then its photos and lay out. I'm determined to get this done by the end of July.

After an incredibly busy week, we're having a family day out tomorrow in West Cornwall. We have to drop Ness off at a youth camping trip and then we'll go on to one of the National Trust gardens down there, or maybe St Michaels Mount. We've had sunny weather all week so I'm hopeful it'll last all weekend.

Have a lovely weekend whatever you're doing.