Underwear
OK, I'll start with the real life bits. As you may know, up until now my day job has been working for the vintage inspired lingerie brand Kiss Me Deadly. Sadly, due to a restructure that sees the warehouse being moved away from Sheffield, I have been made redundant. I've loved working there, not least because the warehouse manager was another knitter, so we could spend our breaks discussing yarn, and patterns, and wondering if we could get away with knitting stockings and calling it work. All good things must come to an end though I suppose.
What concerns me now is that my health is such that I may struggle to find new employment. Don't you worry about that though, I've got some ideas about where to go from here. More on one of those later!
FOs
Despite all of the excitement, I have managed to finish some things:
This is my Mostly Green March KAL from the Stitchnerds Ravelry group. The pattern is Sand Ripples by Susan Ashcroft, and the yarn is Viscount of Spark, in the colouway Pond Scum, by Countess Ablaze. I think this is the first KAL I've actually finished on time since September.
This is crochet! I'm not very good at crochet, but sometimes it's the best way to create the effect you want. In this case, I wanted to make a new flower to fit on the empty stem left over from a chocolate rose I was given for Valentines day. Even better, I made the yarn myself too, spun on the turkish spindle that my dad made for me, from a small sample of Countess Ablaze fibre.
This has to do with something I'm going to talk about later, but for now it's just a simple knitted herb pouch. It contains a selection of herbs known for their moth repellent properties, and I'm going to make a few of them. Some of them will then live amongst my yarn and fibre stash to keep the evil beasties away. I've been told that the pouch is witchcraft, as it has no seams at all, but that's just a cosmetic thing that I'm actually quite proud of.
Sadly, I haven't managed to finish my socks, nearly though! Mostly I've been working on a sort of Easter bunny snood thing for a greyhound over the last few days. I'm not going to post photos until I have some of it being modeled by the lovely lady herself, although I do feel a little guilty at my participation in her humiliation!
Stash Enhancement
Uhm, yeah, so this is two updates in a row that I've felt the need to make this a section of its own. There have even been a few acquisitions that didn't come from the studio of Countess Ablaze believe it or not!
See! The James C. Brett Aztec in grey and pink was bought specifically for the doggie snood, the Rico baby DK is just in case I run out of the leftovers I'm planning on using for a new KAL that starts today, and the King Cole Tinsel chunky is because I saw a pattern in my local craft store that I couldn't resist. You'll see that later too.
This one is super special. After a very long day that involved driving far enough north to get a decent view of the solar eclipse, afternoon tea with my dad and Trish (my step-mum), a trip into Newcastle city centre to buy dog snood yarn, an evening of more chatting and dinner with dad and Trish, then driving home, it was about 20 to one in the morning, I was exhausted, and just filling in the parking slip that allows me to park on my own front street when Stephen came through with a familiar looking parcel to announce that my "crack" had arrived. I pulled a confused face, because I wasn't expecting any deliveries, them opened the parcel to find this Viscount of spark sock blank in "on my merry way" gradient, and a note from the Countess herself saying "Just because." I nearly cried! As if I didn't love that woman enough already!
This is from the latest Odyssey Trail update. Viscount of spark, colourway "A good full portion of trouble". Purple, green, and sparkly, impossible for me not to buy it, even though this is the last month that I'll have a guaranteed pay-check coming in.
Another from the latest Odyssey update, and it's Viscount of spark again (can you tell that this is my favorite yarn base in the world?) The colourway is "Their graceless speech I shrink from". It's another one that I just couldn't get the colours to show true on, but the deep red and bright blue look amazing together.
Etsy
As well as knitting, I love making pretty things with beads. The difference is that there's a limit to how much jewelry one person can wear, but you can never have too many pairs of socks, or shawls, or sweaters. After my first experiments with lace knitting though, I learned just how useful stitch markers can be, so I made some for myself. I was then asked to make some for friends too, and they asked why I didn't sell them.
At the time I felt that I didn't want the pressure of making for other people, but as I no longer have a day job, I now have plenty of time to make things to sell. So I've set up an Etsy stall, and I've called it Knitting and Penguins! It doesn't have much in it just yet, and I'm afraid the quality of the photographs is dreadful, but I'm working on finding a way around the terrible lighting in my house. I'm planning on adding more of the herb pouches to the Etsy shop too, as soon as I've finished making them.
Penguins
Because there has to be penguins!
Cuddly, sparkly penguins! I still have a pattern to knit a sparkly hedgehog for my sister out of this stuff, but when I do, I shall also be making myself a penguin.
At the same time as my Odyssey Trail yarn arrived, another mystery parcel with my name on it came though the door. Kelly had sent me this bit of cuteness!
You know, I'm sure there's more that I've forgotten to say, but I can't think what right now, so that's all for now my dears.
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