A knitter's gotta eat, yeah? You need fuel in order to retain your grip on sanity when you get to that part of the pattern. You know, the part that the designer wrote when they were having a really bad day because they'd just accidentally boil-washed their cashmere, so they decided to give free rein to their inner sadist because if they were suffering, then you should sure-as-eggs be suffering too. So instead of the easy, restful garter stitch they'd been suggesting for the body of this Continue Reading
Archives for July 2016
Giveaway? Giveaway!
Shall we have a giveaway? Wa-hey, let's have a giveaway! Start sharpening those typing fingers in order to enter, because details are coming later in this post. This is the third and final part of my triptych* of posts about the exciting Yorkshire/Stylecraft/Blogstars shenanigans. (Previous parts: the mill tour, and the first evening.) But it's very hard to produce an even mildly amusing post when absolutely nothing about the experience was catastrophically disastrous or weird. The closest I Continue Reading
Blogstars
Last weekend I was in West Yorkshire at the invitation of Stylecraft. The occasion was the inaugural meeting of their 'Blogstars' programme, in which a dozen of us yarny bloggers/designers get the chance to work closely with Stylecraft and hear whispers about new yarns that are on their way. (Clue: there are some very interesting and unexpected developments afoot.) They kindly asked me to take part. 'Would you like to come up to the picturesque valleys of West Yorkshire, tour our old woollen Continue Reading
To The Mill!
Evenin’. We all here? Good, good. Do have a seat… NO, NOT THAT ONE! Sorry, didn’t mean to shout, but that’s the chair the twinnage have booby-trapped. What’s that you say? Oh, um, trust me, you don’t want to know, but... you’re not scared of worms, I hope? Help yourself to some wine. You’ve brought yarn? Ha, silly question: of course you’ve brought yarn. Speaking of yarn, would you like to see round an old woollen mill? It’s just that a few of us knit/crochet bloggers* were invited to Continue Reading
And Then Suddenly, Dinner Was Ready.
Gosh, thank you for your kind words on the crocheted garden. I'd best get on with the next section, then... Meanwhile, let's talk about food. Way back in April, I promised you dinner. Yeah, yeah, you've probably worked up quite some appetite by now: sorry for the delay. Well the good news is that dinner has finally finished growing, muchly helped by this mad sun-rain-sun-hail-sun-apocalypse-sun weather we've been a-having. Even the clouds have been a little crazy. Here's a few I snapped during Continue Reading
Garden Variety Crochet
In case you thought my promises of completing that insane project were sounding more hollow with each passing week year, I decided to show you some progress on the garden portion... which happens to be the final section. For those of you who haven't been reading The Yarn since it was hand-copied on parchment by medieval serfs, this project is large, bonkers, furniture-related, mostly crochet, and I'm very excited about showing you what it's eventually going to be. Not long now, my fine fibrous Continue Reading