Love dyeing yarn!

 

No words required :)

Yarn giveaway!

Fancy winning your choice of 100grams of my hand-dyed Perran Yarn (excluding laceweight)? Enter here!

http://madewithloveuk.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/giveaway-sixskeins/

Short-rowing on the Bond

My eldest has been asking me to knit a poncho/cape since Christmas as she couldn't find one in the shops that she liked.

She wants a round rather than rectangular design, in brown.

After much yarn browsing we came up with the one she wanted - from my stash, woohoo! It's Sirdar Richmond Chunky - years old, but still a great yarn. I knew it would come in useful one day.. ;)

I designed a pattern using my Knitware software, which was based around short-row shaping. I've done this in hand-knitting but never on the knitting machine before.

So I got some hints from You Tube videos and made a start yesterday. I should have known - it's easy!

I finished it off today, and now just need to handknit the neck, fronts, & hem edging. Shouldn't take long!

Fertile!!

How many seeds from ONE grapefruit?!

A hairband bonanza!

Right - the crochet spiderweb hairband pattern is now in my Etsy shop as well as on Ravelry.

Now to write up my other 2 crochet hairband patterns - the Lattice Tie and the Trellis Button!

 
Then it's time for a multibuy offer on my patterns I think...

Pattern writing

I'm starting to write up more of my own patterns to sell in my Etsy shop and on Ravelry - it's a time-consuming process!

I have completed the first one this evening, for the crochet spiderweb hairband. I have made this so many times, with and without beads, and it looks great every time!

The pattern will soon be available on Etsy but for now you can purchase it (and instantly download it) on Ravelry.

January sunrise

Beautiful sunrise this morning!

Christmas kitties

As we pack up Christmas for another year, I want to share our Christmas kitties with you.

They are truly amazing - hand-made as a custom order by the very talented Stupidcats on Etsy! I sent her various headshot pics of our kitties, and she painstakingly pieced and felted these little guys together.

I can thoroughly recommend these to any cat-owners who'd like a special representation of their beloved feline family members!

Last Christmas of course we had Tiggy and Poppet, but then we lost Poppet so very sadly to the road last March.

In July we brought home 14-week-old little Prada from our local RSPCA centre, so I had to order another little kittie head!

I just realised that I don't have any pics of Prada on my blog yet (oops!) so here she is now at 9 months old - and getting bigger than Tiggy already!

More festive surprises

And again...

I arrived home from work to find our Christmas decorations had been put up around the house! Just the tree left to adorn, with a note on it that it had been left for us to decorate together as a family. :)

This was such a relief as this year everything has been so busy I was feeling quite stressed about not having time to get the house looking festive.

Apparently it was the Cornish Christmas Fairies who did it this time...!

An early Christmas present!

My daughters came home from their nan's today with an early Christmas present for me and hubby. 

They had both seen busy baking and brought us a box of homemade mince pies! Scrumptious. :)

Teal Dreams

I recently was offered the wonderful opportunity for a custom yarn-dye order. It was very special as the yarn wanted was pure cashmere laceweight to match a dress fabric sample for a wedding shawl.

I've never tried to dye a yarn to match anything specific before, but there was plenty of time so I was more than happy to accept the challenge!

We settled on two laceweight yarns - a pure cashmere and a cashmere-silk blend. They both have their own special qualities - the pure cashmere is sumptuously soft, whereas the cashmere-silk almost glows with a gorgeous sheen.

I settled on three different combinations of two dye colours (teal and turquoise) in the dye bottles and, with a little trepidation, set to work!

I'm so pleased to say that the yarns turned out beautifully. They were both slightly variegated, as intended, and both yarns took up the colours amazingly. The colourway named itself - "Teal Dreams".

The result - one happy customer and one happy yarn-dyer with a little more experience gained!

I'm looking forward to more of these opportunities, so if you'd like some custom-dyed yarn for a specific occasion just let me know!

Teenager in the house!

We had a very busy but lovely weekend - our eldest daughter turned into a teenager!

Happy Birthday Connie - we're so very proud of you.

Marshmallow scarf

She's done it again...

It took my daughter a year to knit her first scarf. The second one has taken just three days!

Just in time to wrap up and stay warm on the way to school.

Check out the Gok-style needle hairdo!

It's addictive...

It seems that knitting is catching on in our household.

Here's my eldest daughter with the gorgeous baby alpaca scarf she finished this evening - her first ever designer knitting project!

I bought the yarn, needles, and pattern for her when we went to the KnitExpo last November, and she's finally finished it.

It's her first experience of ribbing, eyelet increases, casting off, and following a pattern. Quite a learning experience!

Job well done I reckon. Go knitter girl!

Decommissioned

It's time to call it a day for the old mini-greenhouse.

This has been worth every penny - I've lost count how many years we've used it!

I can look forward to treating myself to a new one next Spring.

A late bloom

Look what finally appeared in our garden!

These seeds were potted up in a named brand compost that I bought this spring. I won't be buying that one again. 

Every pot filled with that compost this year was stunted and the plants have barely grown - and there were a selection of different types, so I would have expected something to thrive!

These sunflowers finally started growing when I gave up and planted them directly in the garden, not thinking they would survive the slugs and snails. 

I'm so pleased they did.

Happy sunflowers, happy me!

and finally...

...the third scarf, using the King Cole Twist Aran yarn.

Drop-stitch this time - enough ripples for a while!

I love the way this has turned out. I think the yarn looks so much better knitted up than it did wound into the ball.

It's available to purchase in my Etsy shop - why not start your Christmas shopping?!

Some kinda magic

I used to have a manager at work who though that knitting was some kind of magic - he used to describe it as something along the lines of twiddling about with string and ending up with something you can wear!

Yep, I guess that about sums it up.

So cast your mind back to last month's bits of string i.e. my yarn purchases from St Ives.

I've been twiddling - or more specifically, knitting - and now 2 of the finished scarves are listed in my Etsy shop just in time for the early winter we're forecast to get this year!

The first scarf uses the soft and cosy James C. Brett Passion yarn.

This is so colourful I'm finding it hard to keep it out of both my daughters' grasp!

It's a lovely chunky scarf which shows off both the lace stitch pattern and the colour graduations beautifully.

The second scarf has the most beautiful colours, I just couldn't resist buying this yarn! It's the King Cole Riot, also super soft and non-itchy.

I chose a slightly different stitch pattern, but stayed with the ripple effect. I just love the way it highlights the colour transitions.

The crochet flower button fastening is completely removable. I sewed a long thin button across the back so it can be threaded through the scarf layers wherever you choose - or used on a different scarf altogether.

As for the third scarf - watch this space!

Hubble bubble...

The dye pot's been busy again!

Happy 2nd Birthday Sophie!

Today is my little niece Sophie's birthday - she's 2 years old!

I won't get to see her but we sent a parcel of goodies including

Sophie's present - a sweet little poncho as requested by her mum.

I first knitted one of these for her sister Sara two years ago - she's still wearing it and apparently the girls were arguing over it, with Sophie deciding that she wants it for herself!

Her mum asked for a pink and green combination so it's different to Sara's but still co-ordinates with the vast quantities of pink clothing that Sophie has.

I used a combination of Sirdar Summer Stripes and Stylecraft Special Twirl DK yarns knitted together for the bosy, with Sirdar New Fizz for the edging and the Summer Stripes yarn for the flowers around the neckline.

Full details can be found in Ravelry, but I'll include the pattern here too:

Use Summer Stripes and Special Twirl yarn together throughout on 7mm needles.

1. Cast on 3 sts
2. Inc 1, knit to end
3. Repeat 2 until 80 sts
4. Knit 27, cast off 26, knit 27
5. Knit 27, cast on 26, knit 27
6. K2tog, knit to end
7. Repeat 6 until 3sts remain
8. Cast off
9. Crochet around neck edge with double yarns
10. Crochet around outer edge with New Fizz yarn
11. Crochet flowers with Summer Stripes yarn and sew around neckline

All done!