So I'll go through the regular WIPs, FOs, and stash enhancement first, then I'll tell you about the excitement of relocating my yarn cave, and my new, teeny, tiny, sewing machine!
WIPs
I'm down to just 2 active WIPs right now. One knitting, and one spinning.
This is a Countess Ablaze custom blend fibre called Aristocratic. It's Merino, Shetland, Alpaca, and Tencel. I'm aiming for around a DK to Aran weight, so that I can use it to make a nice warm hat.
This is one of the many birthday presents that I've been working on for the plethora of summer birthdays. It's for Stephens mum, and although her birthday was actually over a week ago, I have until she comes to visit in a week and a half to get this finished. I've done hardly anything with it in the last month, due to a combination of too many other things to do, and a massive pain flare up that seriously curtailed my effective knitting time. You can start to see the shape of the scarf emerging though.
The yarn is Araucania Botany Lace, and the pattern is Hypernova, by Arlene's World of Lace.
FOs
As I've mentioned above, my health has been annoying me for the last couple of weeks. You probably got that idea already when I wrote the big ranty rant about chronic illness. As far as my crafting goes, it has slowed me down a bit, so despite the fact that it's been a whole month since I last showed you what I was working on, I've got less to show you than I'd hoped. Still, there's enough to be getting on with I think.
This is Finns sweater, finally finished. I'm really pleased with it, and yes, I had plenty of yarn in the end. This took me just a few yards over 5 balls of Drops merino DK, to knit the age 4 size. I thoroughly recommend the pattern, which is Abernathy Sweater, by Terri Kruse.
There was drama and distress during the final stages of making this, as I managed to snap one of my favourite needle tips :(
These were my 4mm Knitpro Dreamz. Part of a set of interchangeable needles that Stephen gave me last Christmas. I was already sore, and tired, and annoyed at how hard I was finding it knitting at all, then this happened. It really upset me :( Fortunately I do also own a set of Knitpro Symphonies, which are the same as the Dreamz, except they don't have the really useful identifying colour scheme. I had to hunt them down, as they were still in one of my many hibernating WIPs, and due to events that will be discussed later, locating said WIP wasn't as easy as it might have been! But I did find it, and I did finish the sweater.
I'm hoping to make it up to Newcastle at some point in the next few weeks to deliver this, and Ollies sweater too, as both boys have their birthdays this week.
I couldn't show you these in progress, partly because I hadn't actually cast them on before my last knitting post, but mainly because Kelly does read my blog, and I wanted these to be a surprise. He liked the colourway when he saw the socks I made for myself from this yarn, so I decided I'd make some for him too, but I had only half a skein left, and Kellys feet are somewhat bigger than mine, so I had to be clever to make them work.
I used Artesano Definition for the toes, heels, and cuffs. The main yarn is King Cole zigzag, and the colourway is called 'gorse'. I knit the socks toe-up, and two at a time. If you've never tried this before, you have both socks on a pair of circular needles at the same time. Each row is worked by knitting the front of sock 1, then the front of sock 2, then you turn, and knit the back of sock 2, then the back of sock 1. So both socks grow at the same rate, and if you run out of yarn before you reach the desired leg length, then at least both socks will be the same length! The pattern that I used for these was the Fish Lips Kiss method, by Sox Therapist.
Here's how these socks looked while I was working on them:
I confess that I found working two at a time to be fiddly, and I spent a lot of time untangling the 2 strands of yarn, and trying to prevent a ladder developing at the needle joins, because arranging the cable is a lot trickier with 2 socks on it at the same time. It's a great idea for exactly this scenario, when you may run out of yarn, but want to be sure that both socks match perfectly, but I think I'll stick to one at a time whenever I can!
I'm so sorry for the poor quality of this photo! It's actually a screen capture from Episode 22 of the DancingGeek podcast, because I'm certain I took photos of this before I sent it, but I can't find where I saved them if I did! Anyway, this is one of my moth repellent herb pouches, and the reason that I particularly needed orange cotton yarn when I broke my yarn diet last month. James loves the colour orange, and he's had a tough time this year, so I thought I'd send him a little present to cheer him up, and it was his birthday just a few days after mine too, so it just seemed like a nice thing to do. I also made some stitch markers for him, and I did my best to make them manly, if manly stitch markers can be a thing?
I was so excited when he showed these little gifts on his birthday podcast! You absolutely need to watch his podcasts, he's just so lovely, it's like having an evening in with a knitting friend, but without any of the anxiety that goes with entertaining actual guests!
These are the crochet flowers that I've made for this years Yarndale community display project. The flowers themselves have been ready for about a month, but I only got around to buying safety pins (where do safety pins go? I swear I bought a whole box of them less than a year ago, and I managed to find just 1 of them when I searched the house!) so now they have pins attached to their backs, and they're on their way to the Yarndale team. I won't be at Yarndale this year, it's finally confirmed. I'd be sad about this, except the reason I won't be there is that I will be in Shetland, during Shetland Wool Week! Squee!!!
My final finished object for this update is a spinning project. This is 100g, and 175 yards of chain-plied, roughly DK weight silk, mohair, and nylon. The fibre was from Countess Ablaze, and the colourway is "All Emperors are necessarily wretched".
I am incredibly pleased with this. It still amazes me that I have learned how to take a pile of fluff, and turn it into yarn, which I can then turn into a wearable item. Post-apocalyptic life-skills FTW!
Stash Enhancement
Hmm. So I continue to fail at the yarn diet, but at least I have some good excuses this time!
For reasons that will be explained later, I had to go to Hobbycraft. Hobbycraft have a semi-permanent deal on, where if you buy 2 balls of yarn, you get a 3rd for free. My sister is expecting her second child later this year, and she loves the blankets that I made for my first niece. So does my niece. She still keeps them on her bed now, even the tiny pram blanket! We don't think she'll want to part with them for her new sibling. So I've been asked to make new ones. Obviously, this will need to be easily washable, so I'm not making it from the finest silk and cashmere, but I'd like it to still be soft and smooshy. I'd heard good things about a new line of yarns made by the Womens Institute, that are exclusive to Hobbycraft, so since I was there, I went investigating. I came out with 5 balls of WI Soft and Cuddly, in various shades of white and blue, which will be perfect for the blanket (we don't know the gender of the new baby, and to be honest, none of us care, as long as it's healthy. But I figure that blue on a girl is probably more socially acceptable than pink on a boy). 5 balls will be plenty for a pram blanket, but that 3 for 2 offer meant that I could get a 6th ball for free! So I picked up a single skein of Soft and Silky, in Lilac Mix, just because I liked the look and feel of it really. Then I spotted a sign saying "Reduced to clear", and behind it there were several balls of this Regia sock yarn, in shades of grey. £1.50 per ball! It would have been criminal not to! Obviously the 3 for 2 offer doesn't apply to stuff that's on sale, but I only need 2 balls of this to make a pair of socks anyway.
This doesn't count as breaking my yarn diet, because Kelly bought me this for my birthday. What's even better, is that I already have a skein of this that Stephen bought for me from the last update! So now I have 1000m of Countess of Mohair in the colourway "Dark-Clouded son of Kronos". That's enough to make myself a little t-shirt style top :)
Then there's these. As well as the Countess of Mohair skein, Kelly also gave me a Countess Ablaze gift voucher. I was going to save it until Lyndsey returns from her dying hiatus, but then I had a look at what was still available on the site, and found this gorgeous One-Of-A-Kind colourway of greens and blues, as well as the stunning bright green that would work so well together, and even better, the bright green colourway is called "Oh Kelly!" How perfect is that?!
Sewing?
Sewing isn't really my thing. I've done a fair amount of embroidery, and cross-stitch in my time, and I am capable of sewing, but it's not a thing that really gets my juices flowing, if you know what I mean? I have friends who do the quilting thing, and post photos of fabric the way that I post photos of yarn. I'm not like that about sewing.
However, I did hand stitch this little felt toy as an advertising tool for Kellys latest work project. I'm allowed to tell you what that is now, because it officially launched this week. Kelly and his work mates have made an app called Tengi, it's sort of what would happen if the lottery and Whatsapp had a love-child. A free messaging app that awards you tickets for using it, and every week there's a prize draw. So the more you message your friends, the more likely you are to win a pot of cash.
So word seems to have got around that I can sew, but that I can't work regular hours due to illness, so I could do with a source of income. I've been asked if I might take on other sewing projects, nothing massive, but hopefully something to add to my fledgling pattern designing, and Etsy shop, as a means of making a little cash, so I feel somewhat less like a great big slobby waste of valuable space and oxygen.
I own a sewing machine, but it let the magic smoke out some years ago, and I've never had it repaired. I've considered it many times, and it seemed a sensible thing to do if I might be sewing more often. So I looked at getting it seen to, and balked at the cost. Then I looked at replacing it, and found this:
OMG! How cute is that?! This is a ludicrously small, and inexpensive sewing machine. It's perfect for what I need. It's also the real reason that I had to go to Hobbycraft, as this is made by Hobbycraft, so isn't available anywhere else.
Moving
No, I'm not moving house. I've been moving my Yarn Cave. Remember how not too long ago I said I'd finally got around to tidying up my stash? Well, doing so made me realise that I was actively avoiding going up to my knitting room. That I was slowly developing a 'downstairs stash', because climbing the attic stairs was simply becoming too difficult. It's hard to carry the acquisitions of a fibre festival, or open studio, up to their proper storage place when you have to crawl on your hands and knees to climb the stairs.
It also occurred to me that I was dodging a selection of guitars and guitar flight cases at the top of those stairs every time I did go up, largely because there wasn't enough room for Kelly to store them in his Man Cave.
The solution was obvious - we needed to swap. I only had the bigger room for historical reasons. It used to be my dance studio, back in the days when I was slim, and fit, and active, and my most all-consuming hobby was Bellydancing. I performed with Boomshanka Tribal, and I had to practice a lot. For this, I needed space. So when we claimed hobby rooms, I claimed our large attic room, and Kelly got the box room. When illness took away my ability to dance whenever I wanted to, and made regular practice an impossibility, knitting took over as my primary hobby, my "dance studio" became a combination of yarn storage, and guest bedroom.
So last weekend, Kelly, Stephen, Liz, and I, all worked together to swap the contents of these 2 rooms. I confess that mostly I worked on logistics and planning, then arranging things after they'd been moved. The others did all the heavy lifting. There's still a significant selection of dance paraphernalia and costumes filling the triple wardrobe in Kellys new Man Cave, but the rest of my stuff is now comfortably ensconced in my new Yarn Cave, and I am stupidly happy with it :D
And finally... Penguins!
Yes, I had a birthday! So there are new penguins!
These aren't all new, only the 3 at the front, and they weren't technically a birthday present either. Kelly found them when he was out shopping for something else, and brought them home for me just as a random gift.
This chap wasn't a birthday present either. He was also "Reduced to clear" at Hobbycraft, and I couldn't resist. He's a money box, and he comes in plain white, with a set of paints, so you can paint him yourself. I have little skill with paints, but I'm quite pleased with him :)
This was a gift from one of my oldest friends, a fellow knitter, and the mother of 2 of my 4 amazing godchildren. She bought the fabric used to cover this lovely notebook at Bakewell Wool Gathering last year. Apparently there was some amusement between her and the vendor when I also spotted the same fabric later and went into paroxysms of squee.
Saving the best for last. Kelly also bought me this. I've always wanted to own an erotic bronze statue. Kelly didn't know this, it's not a thing I've really mentioned, because bronze artworks are ludicrously expensive. He knew I'd love this though. When I told him about my dream of owning an erotic bronze he was amused. When I pointed out that the pose of this penguin is one common during the mating dance of the Emperor penguin, so technically I suppose you could call this 'erotic' art, he laughed at me.
Addendum
I've spent a lot of this post singing Kellys praises, and showing you all of the marvelous things he's bought for me, but I don't want you all to think that Stephen forgot about my birthday!
This is thanks to Stephen. He bought me a ball-winder and sunflower swift for my birthday. I always used to hand-wind my balls of yarn, but that too is becoming painful for me. So Stephen has given me the means to create yarn cakes. There is a strong probability that Kellys socks would not have been completed in time for his birthday if Stephen hadn't given me the ball-winder, because I would have used too much precious time hand-winding 4 separate balls, in 2 different colours, and been in too much pain afterwards to cast on until I'd rested. It took hardly any time at all to get everything ready this way!
So this post comes to you all with a great big dose of love, and gratitude to my 2 lovely boys, for all the help you've both given me, and for the perfect presents too :)
Thanks to everyone who reads this too, for taking the time to join me in a little bit of my life. Goodnight my lovelies!
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