Booty Call!

Now this first pair have happily arrived safely in Wyandotte, I can show you them! The pattern is easy to follow, adapt and memorise! They appear in Ravelry twice, almost identical patterns, one is Jane's Baby Booties, the other is Christine's Stay On Baby Booties. Such an easy knit I'm knitting up a couple of pairs with left-over sock wool. The yarn for these is Posh Emily, I think the colourway was Chortle, but I'm not certain, everytime I cast on socks for me with this yarn it pooled more than I could stand, not a problem with booties, and being a squooshy blend of wool, angora and cashmere, just perfect for baby tootsies!

Here we have Clare, modelling a fabulous Finished Object made by a lady called Betty Saunders, a member of the Kent Guild of Spinners Weavers and Dyers!

I'm showing you this fabulous lace stole, well apart from the fact that it is absolutely gorgeous, but Betty spun the yarn and plied with a silk thread, and then knitted it but it started life in my kitchen dyebath! Yep, I dyed the merino, and when I saw this last month at our meeting I had to get some photographs before it found its way to its new home! (It was sold to another member for £38!). I'm slowly gathering a collection of finished objects made with my yarns and fibres, so I'm going to start a Limegreenjelly Gallery group over at Flickr, where people can share their projects!

Special thanks to Clare for modelling, she's got some great new colorways and yarns up in her etsy shop too, I'm lusting after Parakeet at the moment, I just love turquoise, red and black!

Berry Gummy Box!

It's been a rather dull week, I'm busy with more felted rock, and knitting samples for my first sweater design.
I've also frogged Aprés Surf Hoodie, I was plodding along with it, but thought it looked a little small, only to discover that maybe my gauge was out (I had checked it) I was working on 3mm needles, instead of the recommended 3.25mm) but I think I actually should have been on the 3.25mm after all! I did go out Monday and buy myself the addi circ in the 3.25mm, but when I started to cast it on, I don't know I don't feel like starting it again, maybe I've fallen a little out of love with it, I'm actually thinking maybe I could do something else with the yarn, possibly even design something else, so we'll see!


Just to brighten the week up this came this morning! My first secret pal parcel!

Infact the photo really doesn't do this package justice, but it is a very grey day today, anyway it's a very Berry Gummy Box!
We have some bags of cranberries and blueberries, some gorgeous purple sock yarn, gummy bear needle huggers, gummy bears, a huge bar of berry milk chocolate (which won't last long round here), 2 heart shaped chocolates (Neo and I saw those off soon after the photos!) and 2 large bags of Grey Finn (which is a very rare sheep breed) and really squooshy, it's got the most fabulous crinkly crimp to it too, I'm really looking forward to spinning with this!

Thankyou very much SP, it's a great package, I'm going to head over to ravelry right away and see if I can find a sock pattern for that lovely purple yarn!

I is For.....

INTARSIA....Ugly intarsia at that, one down and one to go, last months knitting homework!



I thought this cardigan that I knitted about 10 years ago was a brighter more fun example, but spot the deliberate mistake, yup, no intarsia involved. Still fun none the less. The pattern was free in a British Magazine called Essentials, they used to publish sewing and knitting patterns every month. Although the magazine is still produced they stopped doing patterns many years ago, which is when I stopped buying their magazine! 'I don't suppose there's much call for that kind of thing these days'-Little do they know!

I knitted it for my neice, she will be 12 this year, and her brother who is 10 also wore it. The yarn was some kind of crépe acrylic, and I've just been to have a look at the pattern in my archives, it was featured in a Sirdar Booklet called Knitting With Care for Save The Children!

Handspun, this was actually done at the same time as my coil yarn from the same batts, therefore the same colours.

Its quite randomly plied in places as I was plying with 2 threads simultaneously, I'm hoping there is enough for a scarf, using the coil yarn as an edging!

This is SP12 Question of the Week,:

The “perfect sized” stash was a tough question for many of you to answer. Maybe these stash related questions will be easier: 1) What yarn (that you don’t have/haven’t used) would make your stash “complete”? 2) What yarn do you never want to be without?**

In answer to question one, well actually there are alot of yarns that I haven't tried that would make my stash complete, so this is a difficult one!

The yarn I would never want to be without though, to me is an easy one, I wouldn't want to be without my own handspun yarn, imagine no fibre, no spinning, might aswell cut my arms off!Although Noro yarns, and Habu are two of my favourite brands that I wouldn't want to be without either. Infact to be perfectly honest I couldn't imagine life without any yarn at all!

Racing

I love random, over on Caroline's blog, are some links to random things....like a random lottery ticket, and a random wikipedia article, and finally, my favourite the random word generator.

Racing was my random word for today, I have been racing through June, and here we are on the brink of July.

Also on the topic of Racing I did consider signing up for the Tour de Fleece or the Tour de France Knitalong, but time is conspiring against me at the moment, and although I may find the time to knit every day, it is quite disjointed at the moment. Spinning everyday is a fantasy! Aprés Surf is waiting for me to look up which increases I need to use, because I want to make sure they're leaning the right way. Edited to add, finally looked up the increases and am plodding up the body of Seafoam Hoodie!

Yes the braids, all new colours, most of the top photo have gone to the Kent Show to decorate the Guild's stand with my bunting, but the others will be on etsy later this week!

This weeks SP12 Question is quite an interesting one:

What would you consider the perfect amount of stash?

I guess in some respects I do think I've got quite a good selection of stash, I've got some little habu gems, handspun I haven't decided to de-stash yet, a good selection of different weights, special gifted yarns from special people and I don't tend to buy new yarn unless it's for a specific purpose, because that's how some of the yarn I have bought in the past is still languishing in my stash waiting for the perfect project to come along!

I do lust over yarn, and I do check out people's stash on Ravelry and occasionally I do suffer from a bout of stash envy, but in the main I have enough yarn to keep me busy and the means to buy more if I need it, and enough fibre to keep me busy too, so I think that's perfect for me!

Rock Star

Recently I was commissioned to make some felted sticks of Rock as a novelty for a local Gallery/Café/Cake shop that will hopefully be opening soon.

For those of you that don't really know what 'Rock' is, there is a great explanation here

The photograph I chose for my labels is St Leonards Pier, unfortunately the Pier was cut in half during the Second World War as protection against invasion and the remains were removed in 1951.

Our SP12 Hostess has asked us a question for week 2:

For week two the question is: As a kid, what did you look forward to most about summer vacation/break/holiday?

As a child our family holiday every year was spent at Butlins Holiday Camp in Clacton. As toddlers we were left in the nursery, and as soon as we were old enough we joined the Beaver Club, and enjoyed all the various activities laid on.

One of my favourite activities was rollerskating and as soon as I was old enough to roam free on my own I would be waiting for the Rollerskating Rink to open. If I went through my box of photographs I know I would find a picture of me skating, but you will have to make do with this one of me in some kind of Beauty Contest (number 16) for the time being.

The swimming pool always sticks in my mind as a novelty, it had windows along one side so you could see people swimming from the street, this wasn't a main road, just a street within the camp!

Aprés Surf has slowed a little while I concentrate on college homework, although I have caught the Moebious bug and cast on for one earlier, I was a little scared it was going to be too small so frogged it and will re-cast on with a few more stitches, and see what happens!

I also recieved a lovely card and fridge magnet from my secret pal this week (waves!) Hello Secret Pal! Thankyou!

Tingle Tangle Tingle

It's been quite a busy week! Last Saturday night we went to see the Foo Fighters at Wembley. On Sunday it was my City and Guilds knitting class, and I've finally got a couple of garment ideas on paper, and am working out the pattern, but I'm having trouble picking out the yarn. I know I want it to be dark in colour and a 4ply weight, but I keep changing my mind. This morning while browsing yarns online I changed my mind again and thought maybe a cotton yarn would be better, the first samples I have made were knitted in cotton. So I'm going to hold off on the yarn purchase until I've knitted a few more samples. I'm just feeling a bit panicked because I've spent 5 months thinking about this idea instead of actually doing anything.

Yes oops! I've also been doing a little detangling, this is a skein of laceweight cashmere that my friend Clare (Nimu on Etsy) gave to me, it was a small skein and when I untied it to make it into a ball it just turned into a huge tangle, but I'm almost untangled now. The irony is I wasn't really thinking of casting on anything in particular, but just decided I wanted to make it into a ball ready, when the right project presents itself, I just love these colours!


I love these colours too, did I mention I've been trying out some new dyes? This is difficult to photograph but it's a dark mix of Jade and plum with a dash of purple, handspun superwash. The true colour is somewhere between the two photos! (Yes Sandra I know you want me to dye you some, I will be back at the dyepots this week!)

Our SP12 hostess has asked about our favourite Summer Tipple, I tend to be quite set in my ways in that I drink the same drinks all year round, strong tea, hot chocolate and orange squash (cordial), not all at the same time! Although another favourite Summer drink would have to be Kool Aid, I wouldn't want to drink it though!

I've signed up for Secret pal 12, had to go back to Feb 2007 to find my questionnaire and I've just re-jiggled it!

1. What is/are your favorite yarn/s to knit with? What fibers do you absolutely *not* like?
I love natural fibres, wool, cotton, linen, I don't like acrylic or eyelash yarnsalthough they do have there place in the grand scheme of things .

2. What do you use to store your needles/hooks in?
I did make my straight needles a roll, and am planning to make a customroll for double points, hooks and circulars. (ok my circs are still in a plastic bag, I've also got 2 sets of bamboo double points in padded envelope! so very professional!)

3. How long have you been knitting & how did you learn? Would you consider yourskill level to be beginner, intermediate or advanced?
I first learnt to knit in the Brownies, I did my first sweater aged 12, anddidn't really get into it again until I was 23, I did alot of knitting for 5years but then explored other crafts until last year. I wouldconsider my skill level to be somewhere between intermediate and advanced...Ilike a challenge!

4. Do you have an Amazon or other online wish list?
I do have an Amazon wish list here

5. What's your favorite scent?
I don't like anything too overpowering... although I'm quite partial to the smell of chocolate and vanilla and I had a completely yummy body lotion once called icing sugar. I don't like lavender, makes me sneeze!

6. Do you have a sweet tooth? Favorite candy?
I do have a sweet tooth, I like milk chocolate and I like soft centres, strawberry creams, orange creams and peppermint creams, doesn't matter if they come wrapped in dark chocolate if they are this kind of chocolate andgummy bears...I do not like the taste of nuts or dark chocolate on its own.

7. What other crafts or Do-It-Yourself things do you like to do? Do you spin?
I LOVE to spin, I spin as much as I can, and dye my own fibre. I also do a bit of collage, painting, needlepoint and sewing.

8. What kind of music do you like? Can your computer/stereo play MP3s? (if yourbuddy wants to make you a CD)
I like an eclectic mix from Marilyn Manson to Doris Day, favourites at the momentare The Chemical Brothers, Hot Chip and Placebo.

9. What's your favorite color(s)? Any colors you just can't stand?
I love most colours....at the moment I love purples, greens, turquoise, and deep colours like aubergine and black! Not so fond of pastels and pinks.

10. What is your family situation? Do you have any pets?
There's myself, my partner and our son, Neo who is 4 and our cat Willow.

11. Do you wear scarves, hats, mittens or ponchos?
I wear scarves, hats and mittens...I haven't worn a poncho since 1975. Although you never know!

12. What is/are your favorite item/s to knit?
I'll knit anthing that takes my fancy, I like socks and gloves or mittens for smaller portable projects but I love to work on garments too!I'm working on developing my ideas into patterns and studying on a C & GHandknitting course.

13. What are you knitting right now?
I'm knitting the Aprés Surf Hoodie at the moment, I would normally have a small project on the needles but havent got around to winding the wool into balls yet!

14. Do you like to receive handmade gifts?
Yes of course!

15. Do you prefer straight or circular needles? Bamboo, aluminum, plastic?
I like to use needles appropriate to the project, most of my needles are all aluminium and plastic inherited from little old ladies, although I have a couple of addi turbo circs which are great and have some bamboo double points which I really love.

16. Do you own a yarn winder and/or swift?
Yes I have both.

17. How old is your oldest UFO?
I don't have any!

18. What is your favorite holiday?
I'm not really a holiday person.

19. Is there anything that you collect?
Loads of things...Yarn and fibre of course! I have a collection of Rubics cube puzzles, I have a collection of colourful paper bags which I have been collecting since I was 18, I've also got a small collection of Vintage Vogue knitting magazines.

20. Any books, yarns, needles or patterns out there you are dying to get your handson? What knitting magazine subscriptions do you have?
I have a subcription to Vogue Knitting, my Interweave is coming to an end and I'm wondering whether to have Knit 1 or Knitscene for a change! Nothing in particular I'm dying to get my hands on as such, but I'm a huge fan of Etsy (I'm a seller there), anything from handmade needle cases to bracelets made from knitting needles, or handpainted yarns, and interesting batts, I just believe in supporting the Indie sellers as much as possible.

21. Are there any new techniques you'd like to learn?
I would like to try entrelac, I will have to knit samples for my course so I will get there at some point! I'd also like to find the time to do some thrummed mittens!

22. Are you a sock knitter? What are your foot measurements?
I am a sock knitter, I am a UK size 5, US 6

23. When is your birthday?
It's April 30th!

24. My Ravelry ID is freestylefibre

H is for....

HOODIE!

My Summer copy of Interweave Knits arrived on a Saturday morning in May, I started browsing sites for RYC Cashcotton to have a look at the colours Saturday night, and Sunday morning I ordered the yarn. I've never really made such a swift decision over a garment before, maybe it was my restlessness at spending the first 5 months of the year making small (what are to me) insignificant items, that spurred me into action, but I am indeed knitting the Aprés Surf Hoodie, the colour is Seafoam, I'm using 3mm addis, and I love this yarn it's so snuggly and soft!

H is also for Heather, we are both doing the City and Guilds course in handknitting, and we also share a birthday, although Heather is younger than me, Heather has also tagged me for the 5 things Meme so here it is:

The Rules Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

1. What I was doing 10 years ago:

I was 28, I'd recently started a new job with LG Phillips Displays in Newport, South Wales, which I really enjoyed, and I continued working there until they closed down in August 2003, which was fine because I was already halfway through my pregnancy, and ready to put my feet up!

2. What 5 things are on on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):
Upload a little fibre to etsy (done)
Update the blog (done)
Finish my C & G homework
Do some design drawings for my first C & G garment (this has been on the to do list for quite some time)
Clean the car (this has been on my list for a couple of weeks!)

3. Snacks I enjoy:
this is easy, mini jammy dodger biscuits, milk chocolate (buttons are the current favourite), iced gems, strawberry pencils and mini jelly babies.

4. Things I would do if I was a billionaire:
Buy some nice houses, make sure all my friends had everything they needed, travel the world (with bigsock in a private jet) until it's complete and n the record books, think this is enough to keep me busy!

5. Places I have lived:
Shotley
Ipswich
Newport
Cardiff
St Leonards-on-Sea

I shall tag Marianne,Hedgewitch,Mrs Woman, Kim and anyone else who wants to play along!

Finis!

Another finished object! These are Sulafaye's Swirl Socks, modified over 60 sts. the yarn is Socks That Rock Lightweight in Highway 30. It's a lovely colourway which I was lucky enough to win over at Jill's a while ago. I love the classic lines of this sock, with a twist! They are actually the same length, the left sock must have been pushed down a little in the photo!




Have just finished weighing, braiding and labelling this lot, ready for Saturday's Guild meeting, and what's left will be up on Etsy nexy week.

G is for....

Garter Stitch

Garter stitch triangles! These are going to be made into bunting to decorate the Kent Guilds stand at the Kent show. We were given a small bag of fibre with three colours in, I also added some extra colours from my stash and spun a fine 2ply yarn, I actually got 85metres from 20g which just made four triangles although I did have to spin a couple more yards to finish the last triangle.

Greens

I am quite behind with my ABC, but still hoping to get there in the end the restriction I have imposed upon myself to keeping it craft themed has held me up a little, I have got some ideas for H so I better get knitting!

Again apologies for the delay in drawing the Ashes of Roses Contest, there were 5 correct entries, the book (and following mini series) I was referring to was (of course) The Thorn Birds by Colleen Mc Cullough, when I set the contest I went over to YouTube and found a few clips, oh how the music just catches me and gets me blubbing all over again!

Anyway without further ado the winner as drawn from the bucket by Neo today was Ikkinlala, now I can't find a bloglink for you so I do hope you pop back and check, please e-mail me and we can have a chat about what sort of prize you would like.

Talking of contests, I must show you these socks, the fibre was a superwash bluefaced leicester, dyed by me and won by Peri in the last contest I held, aren't they fabulous!

Colours

I was attempting to copy and paste the lyrics to a favourite Hotchip song called Colours here, but I'll link to it instead as the words would not stay where I put them!

I recently invested in Pluckfluff's new book Intertwined, there's alot more information about how to go about making some of the yarns that appeared in the first book, and it also goes on to show examples, and ideas of projects for those 'art' yarns. This is my first attempt at a supercoil yarn.

This is the second 100g of a fibre that I dyed and spun last weekend, I just wanted to show you the 'before' and 'after' shots! I might get the second one spun this weekend!

It's still only half as fine as I intended, but pretty just the same I guess! I also wonder if you can see the similarity in colours, this is a pure co-incidence, the coil yarn was a bunch of colours and textures I randomly carded with the drum carder, but I realised after I'd spun the 1st hank of fibre how similar the colours were.

I will get around to drawing that competition next time!

Fibre Friday!

New colours I've hand painted this week, this last one is my favourite, the greens, turquoise, yellow and aubergine!

Time for Tea?

I've finally got some FO's atlast! Here are the cakes I've been knitting!

I've also been dyeing again and actually got my arse in gear to upload them all to my etsy shop for once!

I've called this pink colourway Ashes of Roses, like the colours of rose petals as they start to dry out and turn brown. I've decided to hold a little birthday contest, if you know the book where I have taken this colourway from then leave a comment with your answer and I will do a drawing from the correct entries at the end of the month, in the event of no correct answers I will do a drawing from all comments on this post, so say something, make a guess, whatever you like!

You could win a choice of handspun yarn or fibre from my etsy store, or a special skein of yarn from my stash!

Edited to add: ok I googled to see what would come up, and yes there is a book with that title, but the book I'm thinking of was published in 1977!

F is for....

Fibery Frolics!

Yes I know I've done F, but being a fibre fiend I knew F would be never-ending!

I dyed 800g last week! Ok only 600g to show you as I only took photos of the top two for Fiber Friday, last weeks theme was Rainforest and I dyed these top two with that in mind!

I sold all but these last 2 pink Shetland at the Guild on Saturday!

So these will be uploaded to etsy later!

I just finished spinning this last week. This is a handspun wool/silk/angora blend which was custom dyed for me by Freyalyn who I met at Woolfest last year! I want to knit it into something, which is why one skein is already balled, I have been swatching, unfortunately I thought I was going to do a Swiss Cheese scarf, but (doh) I don't have enough, I really need double this. I have 50g, 200m which is enough to make some kind of lace pattern, I just want something simple, classic, but quirky!

F is for....

Fair Isle Meanderings!

Remember the Endpaper Mitten of Doom, I did look at creating my own fair isle pattern, but felt the drawings were too contrived. These Fair Isle swatches are knitting homework from the City and Guilds course I'm doing. The original design source was a stencil I made from a simplified drawing of seaweed. We then had a look at turning the stencils into repeat patterns and I found that isolating a part of the stencil into a shape of a triangle changed it into something more abstract and interesting. This month we transferred the image onto knitters squared paper.

These first two are the image transferred to small squares, the pattern itself is actually 19 stitches by 25 rows so not very practical in reality, but the exercise is really looking at how the original image can change by using different scale knitters graph paper, and knitting it at the same gauge!

This second photo is the same drawing onto larger squares, the actual repeat is 14sts by 14 rows, possibly more manageable.

This final swatch is a slight tweaking of the 14 sts x 14 rows pattern, into a 12 sts by 16 rows repeat, having 12 sts means that I can repeat the design by stacking repeats directly above each other or by offsetting the design by 6 sts on alternate rows which is how I've knitted this final swatch!

They may not grow up into anything yet, it could be an edging or a mitten, but what's important at the moment is the journey, and the discovery, not the final 'product'.

Batty's Box!

So exciting! My UK Swap package arrived this week, Batty has been one of the names my secret swap pal has been known as, and it's been such fun reading the comments on my blog and the regular e-mails she has been sending, and getting to know her but not knowing who she is!

This is a perfectly gorgeous box of delights, I can't believe I actually managed to get it all in one photo! So I'll just talk you through everything, and leave you to ooh and ahh at your leisure!

From bottom left we have a sheepie tape measure a ball of 4ply wool (from Wingham Wool Work), Vanilla soap from l'Occitane (almost good enough to eat), Sheep post it notes (genious!), a selection of Thorntons chocolate bars (yummy), I love this butterfly postcard, (it's a special card that if you move it one way it's a butterfly and if you move it the other way it's a caterpillar, so cool!). Then there's the fibre.... LOOK, Merino Silk Angora Cashmere, it's gorgeously soft, and as if that's not enough a bag of Pure Beige Cashmere too, I am well and truly spoilt!

Alongside this is a fabulous crochet felted pot that my special pal made just for me, and in there are some Quills, which I have never heard of before and some Clover Bamboo needles too! Last up we have another ball of 4ply from Wighams and a fantastic retro fair isle mitten pattern.

It really is the most well thought out fibery themed package you could possibly imagine so with no further ado I shall reveal the Batty Behind the Box is none other than Rosie, thankyou so very much Rosie, you've made my week!!

Watch Out Humphrey's About

Sorry to my overseas readers, the title of this post is referring to an advert for milk from my childhood, although this post has nothing to do with milk!

If any of you subscribe to Berocco Knitbits you may have already seen Humphrey, but what you may not realise is I am one of the designer's that Norah Gaughin met on Ravelry.

Basically I joined the Norah Gaughin fans group in Ravelry, and since Norah was a member there I decided to add her to my friends. When Norah added me to her friends I sent her a message thanking her, and telling her how much I love her work, and next thing you know I'm crocheting another little bear, like the one I made last year, and I'm writing up the pattern for Berocco, all thanks to Ravelry!

Actually that reminds me I didn't get around to stitching that second bear up, that would be another FO for this year!
There is a little knitting going on, I am knitting cakes for a window display for an Art Gallery and Cake Shop opening early May. I am desperate to start 'something' but that something eludes me at the moment, and I'm feeling a little lost.

There is also a little dyeing going on (pictured), I had a small order to supply a local Crafts Website with some handpainted fibre in 5 colourways, these are 50g bundles for feltmaking!

And there's been a little spinning going on!

I was attempting to spin a 3 ply sock yarn, although it's a little on the thick side, and wouldn't do a pair of socks. This is my first 3ply, and it needs a little work, I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I'll keep practicing!