What’s a girl to do on the hottest day of the year? Well, besides writing up the pattern for a nice warm, fluffy cowl, I celebrated the road-melting heat on Wednesday by putting on the oven to bake courgette cake and beer bread, before going for a 9-mile (that’s 14.5km) run in the blazing midday sunshine. Stupid? Possibly. But the really stupid thing was being so obsessed with drinking lots of water in the hours pre-run that I forgot to eat. “Oops,” I thought, forced to stop as I waited to Continue Reading
Archives for August 2016
Free Colourful Cowl Pattern!
OK, would you like the free pattern for this fairisle cowl that I designed? You would? Well there's a link to the pattern near the bottom of this post. Enjoy! It's a fairly generous one size, that would fit an adult or teen. The version in the pictures was made using all 16 shades of Stylecraft Batik, but of course you could use fewer colours, or indeed a different DK/light-worsted yarn entirely. The cowl is worked in the round, so although you'll have a fair few ends to weave in, there's Continue Reading
Giveaway Winners? Giveaway Winners!
So, to the Stylecraft giveaway. Do we have some winners? WE HAVE SOME WINNERS, OH YES! Wow, a big fluffy THANK YOU for the 232 entries you submitted here and on the 'Yarn's Facebook page, and for the enthusiastic/kind/funny/interesting comments that you left in your entries. And THANK YOU to Stylecraft for providing the prizes. So at midday on Sunday, the giant gong sounded, signalling the end of the giveaway. Did you hear it? I guess not, given that it's made of yarn - a fatal design flaw Continue Reading
Stylecraft Batik Yarn Review
It's about time I published a review of Batik, Stylecraft's brand new yarn. (Disclaimer: I didn't pay for the yarn, so clearly my fickle head has been turned by this freebie and not a single word of the following is to be trusted.) I wanted to thoroughly road-test the yarn before I wrote this, so I got the knitting needles out and started designing something that incorporated all sixteen shades:- You know what you need in the heat of August? A nice warm, fluffy cowl, that's what. So I Continue Reading
Quick And Easy Hack For Controlling Bobbins In Colourwork
In this post, an easy hack for how to control all those bobbins when you’re doing complex colourwork, especially intarsia. :-) Colourwork is a fantastic thing in knitting and crochet: it’s like painting with yarn – even painting in three dimensions, should you choose to engage in that level of crazy. I love most colourwork - stranded/fairisle especially, but also, slipped stitch work, and stripes. But I do not love intarsia*. Intarsia hurts my sanity. It’s a technique in which even the tiniest Continue Reading
Village Knitting
I love our village. It’s the type of place where you can sit in the pub with knitting and crocheting friends talking about anything, whilst people play cards at the next table and a dog snoozes near the door. There's a fair-to-middling chance of bumping into someone you know when you haul your rear out of the sofa and get up to fetch more drinks. Occasionally there’s even a rival knitting group around. People here talk to you because they’ve seen you around. They usually want to know Continue Reading