Just because I've been to some beautiful, and interesting places, in everything from snow to baking heat in the last month, I'm going to show you a few of my holiday photos.
First is Bletchley Park, which is far too much to see in just one day, so we went back for a second look, and still didn't see everything! On the first day it snowed, on the second day I sat beside this lake in the sunshine, with my crochet for half an hour!
The Long Walk to Windsor Castle, with HRH Queen Elizabeth II in residence. Such a beautiful day, but very tiring, as we drove from Sheffield to Windsor, walked around the castle, watched Stephens brother play cricket against the Royal Household, then drove to Cornwall, all in one day!
St Mawes castle in Cornwall. I know that the views from here are beautiful, because a couple of years ago we visited the sister fortress of Pen Dennis on the other side of Falmouth Harbour. That visit was mostly a lovely clear day. This visit was overcast and misty, so you have a lovely photo of the castle, but the views out to sea were less than spectacular!
Close Knit Yarn Cafe
As well as the places above, and a couple of museums in Bodmin, we also took a trip to Bournemouth to visit a friend who we hadn't seen in far too long, and to visit Bovington Tank Museum. I'd never been to Bournemouth before, so of course I did a little investigating, and found the perfect place to have breakfast!
A cafe that also sells yarn! How perfect is that? And there was a friendly dog who may have helped me eat my toasted teacake. There were proper teapots with hand knitted tea cozies too.
Such beautiful decor. A marvelous mix of paintings of knitters, and vintage patterns. They even offer a small selection of yarn and needles with which you can knit a square for a charity blanket if you find yourself stranded without your own project. If you do happen to find yourself in Bournemouth with time to spare for a cuppa, then I definitely recommend the Close Knit Yarn Cafe.
FOs
OK, back to the regulars!
Not as many FOs as I'd like, given it's been so long since my last knitting update, but we'll talk about that later.
Kelly is almost finished his training to become a qualified massage therapist, and he uses these bolster cushions a lot. Obviously the covers need to be washed between clients, so it's definitely useful to have several. Now he has 3, so I hope that will be enough!
Star cushion 2 of 4. I'm going to have to hurry up and get the other 2 done soon, as I'll be seeing the recipients in just over a week!
As before, this is the Star pattern by Rachel Murray, and the yarn is Rico essentials merino DK, in the colourway Patina.
Socks for me, knitted on teeny tiny circular needles. I'd seen other knitters use them, and I was curious about how effective and easy to use they would be for me. I confess that I'm not really a fan, and I'll probably stick to the magic loop method most of the time. Also, there's only 2 decent ways to photograph socks, and that's either on sock-blockers, or on feet. I'm afraid that I've loaned my sock-blockers to a friend, so you get the excitement of me trying to stick my feet in a light-box.
The pattern is adapted from the Afterthought Heel Socks by Laura Linneman, and the yarn is Rico Design Superba Las Vegas, in colourway 004.
OK, that's actually a pretty boring photo of a beautiful thing, let's try that again shall we?
This is what I made on my holidays, and I'm so proud of it! It looks really complicated, but actually it's a pretty simple and relaxing knit most of the time. Except for 2 rows out of every 12, when "SHUT UP I'M COUNTING!" are the only words that you can say! If I tell you that the stitch "K13togtbl" is involved, you'll get my drift!
The pattern is Cockleshell Scarf, by Elizabeth Lovick, from the book Magical Shetland Lace Shawls to Knit. The yarn is Manos del Uruguay Lace, in colourway 7805.
This is a Fluffy Thing. It has no other name. It has no particular purpose, other than to make my niece happy.
We went on a family day trip to Bakewell, my sister, my childhood best friend, Krissy, my 2 nieces, and 2 of my godchildren. Since Krissy and I are both knitters, we went into the local yarn store, just because. My elder niece found the sample swatch of this yarn knitted up, and proceeded to carry it all around the shop, begging me to buy it for her! Once I'd explained that I couldn't buy it because other knitters needed to be able to see what the yarn was like knitted up, but that she could pick a colour and I'd knit it up for her, she went hunting through the basket in search of pink. There wasn't any, so she chose red and white instead. And a pink sequinned yarn too! The woman running the shop was highly entertained, and thanked my niece for significantly increasing the amount that I bought!
In subsequent days I found myself in my own LYS, where many more colours of this yarn are available, so I bought a few more, including pink of course, and made a big smooshy stripy... err... thing.
It's basically just garter stitch stripes, about 10 rows per stripe, until I got bored, then I crocheted a border using the remaining pink yarn. The yarn elicited several exclamations of "Are you knitting with tinsel?!?" while I was working on this, and indeed I was, but not Christmas tinsel, this is King Cole Tinsel Chunky.
Final finished object(s). Before heading back up to Shetland, Stephens mum gave me 3 balls of pretty baby yarn. Since June is Commit To Knit month, organised by UK Hand Knitting, I thought this was a perfect opportunity for making some premature baby clothes. At first I made the hat far too big to match the jacket, but with advice from some knitter friends with experience of premature babies, I think I've managed to get a hat that matches the jacket, and a spare hat for another baby that's closer to full term.
The jacket pattern is Jack & Jill Premature Baby Jacket by Marianna Mel, and the hat is a basic hat that I don't use a pattern for. The yarn is called Magic double knitting, and is a self-patterning DK acrylic.
WIPs
OK, so I took a look through my project page on Ravelry at the end of last month, and realised that I had 21 active projects, including knitting, crochet, and spinning. It was actually starting to get to me, making me feel somewhat overwhelmed. So I decided that this summer will be a giant WIP-Down. Ideally I'd like to get into single figures, but we'll see how it goes.
I'm not banning myself from casting on new projects, but I am trying to ensure that I finish at least 2 for every 1 that I cast on.
This picture shows just the knitting projects, there's also 3 crochet projects, and 4 spinning projects on the go right now. That's even though I've managed to finish 3 of the projects that I had going when I started!
I've decided that blankets don't need to be finished. The granny square blanket is meant to be a long-term project anyway. But shawls, charity knits, Daves leg wraps, last years Christmas stockings, these all need to be finished! I'd also like to get at least one of the sweaters done before winter this year too.
All of that sadly means that this beauty is on the back burner for a while. I've got 21 squares out of the 100 I plan on making, but I'm going to pack them away until I've finished some smaller projects.
This is my primary challenging project for now. It's the Alberta Shawl that I started back in November in order to help a friend of mine who was attempting to work the same pattern for her wedding day. Once I'd reached the fiddly bit, and Helen was confident enough to finish hers on her own, I put mine on hold so that I could work on Christmas knitting. I've picked it back up again this week, and progress is slow, but steady.
The yarn is Fyberspates Gleem Lace, in the colourway Peacock.
My current brainless, splodge in front of the tv project is the cotton legwraps that I'm making for Dave. I really wanted them to be finished ages ago so that Dave could use them for this summers LARP events, but my stupid fingers have been too recalcitrant, so progress on the second one of those is also slow, but steady.
Stash Acquisition
For some strange reason, this section includes a lot of tinsel this time! There are also a lot more commercial yarns than I'd usually go for, but when hunting for souvenirs, you buy what is available, as well as what you can afford.
First we have a delivery from Brityarn, who stocks all kinds of beautiful British yarn. Before going away I spotted that she had the new West Yorkshire Spinners Cocktail collection in, and I had to have some of that rainbow goodness in my granny square blanket!
So these are 2 from WYS, both Aire Valley DK, in the colourways Purple Haze, and Rum Paradise. Also some lovely local Wendy Ramsdale, in the colourway Malton.
These are my souvenirs of Milton Keynes. Odd place to buy souvenirs perhaps, but it's where we stayed for our weekend at Bletchley Park, and we happened to be there on Love Your Yarn Shop Day, so I had to find a yarn shop!
What I found was The Knitting Basket, which is a beautiful little shop that stocks a wide range of acrylic, and sadly not a lot else. It's also the first LYS I've been in to that didn't feel exuberantly welcoming. There was nothing wrong with it, just not the sort of atmosphere I've come to expect from the Knitting Illuminati.
Here we have Ice Yarns Super Sock, which doesn't give the colourway designation on the ball-band. Stylecraft Cabaret DK, in the colourway Rainforest, Stylecraft Alpaca Tweed DK, in the colourway Cherry, and King Cole Moments, in the eye catching colourway Lipstick.
These are my purchases from the Close Knit Yarn Cafe, well, these, a pot of Earl Grey, and a toasted teacake. I just loved the colours of the sock yarn, and who could turn down sparkly purple for the granny square blanket?
On the left there is DY Choice Sparklz, in the colourway Denim. On the right is Regia Snowflake Color, in the colourway 07708.
These were my gift from Stephens mum. Sorry about the dreadful photo, I took this one with my phone so that I could stash these at Stephens house with my emergency knitting supplies, as they're perfect for little instant gratification weekend projects.
Magic Knitting Yarn in the colourways 404, 406, and 410.
Another fairly abysmal photo, there's a few of these coming up! I wanted to cast these on straight away so that my niece wouldn't have to wait for her fluffy thing, but it means that I didn't get the opportunity to photograph them properly.
These are the other items that I bought at the same time as the red and white tinsel, at least these have a proper photo! These were all bought at Wye Wool in Bakewell, and I suspect that only the Adriafil, and the penguin will be used for me!
Top photo is King Cole Tinsel chunky, in Matador, and white. Bottom Photo is Adriafil Knitcol, shade 049, and King Cole Galaxy, colourway pink.
This months copy of Let's Knit has an advert for new King Cole Tinsel knitting patterns, and one of them is a dragon. I went into my LYS to see if they had any of the patterns in yet, which they don't, but they're ordering them this week. While there I spotted these.
The next day I was meeting my knitting friends Heather and Helen, conveniently they chose to meet in my LYS! I accidentally added these while I was there. I actually started knitting the tinsel into the fluffy thing project while I was still in the shop! The girls in there are so lovely, they always make us a cup of tea and have a lovely natter.
Top photo is King Cole Tinsel chunky in the colourways Argent, and Pink. Bottom photo is the same yarn in the colourway Turquoise, and Rico Designs Baby so soft, in shade 021.
Finally, my touch of luxury for the last 2 months is these beautiful new colourways from Mothy and the Squid. The collection is called "Iced Gems", and they're all this wonderful mix of solid colour, and contrasting speckles. Apparently the sock yarn knits up as thin stripes when knitting socks, I'm looking forward to seeing it for myself. Jillian also sends these sweet stitch markers with your order! If ever she dyes this collection on a sparkle sock yarn then my savings for my next holiday are in serious trouble!
The green yarn is a merino sock yarn, and the colourway is called Malachite. The grey yarn is 100% superwash merino DK, and the colourway is called Agate.
Penguins
I'm positively distraught at how few penguins there are this time. I'm sure I must have missed some, but if I have then I can't find them!
This dude is the most fun ever! You squeeze his belly, and he shoots these foam balls at high speed! It's a miracle that nobody has lost an eye yet! He was my souvenir from the Milton Keynes Museum, which we decided to visit on our way home from the Bletchley Park weekend. It's a crazy, wonderful, hands-on sort of place, well worth a visit.
Strange as it may seem, this gorgeous fellow was my souvenir from the Bovington Tank Museum. Stephen came home with a whole wardrobe full of geeky tank related t-shirts, and I got a baby penguin. No idea why a tank museum also sells cuddly penguins, but I'm not complaining!
LOOK AT THAT!!! How awesome is this? Remember that I said we met up with an old friend in Bournemouth? She's another crafty type, only she sews rather than knits. She saw my project bag, and came up with the idea to make me one with penguins on!!! Even though she has kids, and works, and only just moved house (literally, the kids were sleeping at their grandparents the night we met up because they hadn't built their beds in the new house!) she still found the time and energy to think of me, and make this amazing gift. My friends are the best!
The final penguin of this update was found by the children in the Visitors Centre in Bakewell. They can't agree on which of them found it first, and it was certainly the only one in the entire box of tiny wooden animals, but they made sure I knew about it! He's only an inch tall, but he's fab!
That's all for now folks, I'll be back soon, hopefully with a long list of FOs!
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