It's done. The new cowl pattern is complete in all four of its seasonal connotations, and the pattern is HERE. Not that you're likely to wear a cowl all year round, but each of the above palettes has been inspired by a season, so that you can for example bring bold summer cheerfulness to your grey Monday in February as you run for the bus in the rain. I'm sure that those joyful pinks and purples will lift your mood as you watch the bus leave your stop when you're almost there, passing as it Continue Reading
Nearly There
So in this little journey through the four seasons via my new cowl design, I've finally alighted on spring. There's no daffodil-yellow in the Highland Heathers range as yet (hint hint, Stylecraft!) so I couldn't fully convey the blue-yellow-white palette of spring shades. Yeah, yeah, I need to weed this little patio that I built in the photo above. It'll happen soon. But still, I hope you get the hints of optimistic greenery and flowers against a background of endless grey rain and the Continue Reading
Weirdly Wintering In August
I've just completed winter. Not actual winter, since it's August and we're in the northern hemisphere, but the chilliest colourway of the four-season cowl design that I'll be publishing shortly. But as I said in my last post, this is a British winter, so discard any notions of sparkly white snow against a blue sky, and instead embrace the dank and soggy undertones of sludgy reality. They're quite pretty once you get used to them. The yarn is Stylecraft Highland Heathers DK. Next up on my Continue Reading
Colour Me Seasonal
Ah hello, my Fine Fibrous Friends. It's good to see you. Yes, you. A confession: I was worried. My previously unquenchable need to knit and to design went AWOL for a while. Seriously, you could have dumped me beside the most magical motifs that Mother Nature has to offer, and instead of thinking I CAN WORK THE INTRICACIES OF THIS SLIME MOULD INTO THE PATTERN FOR A STRANDED DRESS, I'd have shrugged and taken another sip of green tea... or wine, depending on the time of day. Also, I've been Continue Reading
Blogstars On The Beach: A New Pattern
Oh, hello summer. So that's where you were hiding, you sneaky blighter. It feels as though there was scarcely time to take off a cardigan or two between the l-o-n-g cold grey spring we suffered and the sudden onset of superheated summer. But wa-hey sunny weather, look at the isobars on you! And it's a good thing that the sunshine has finally pitched up, because we Stylecraft Blogstars are thinking about heading to the coast. Today sees the launch of Blogstars At The Beach, a celebration of Continue Reading
Redesigning
Hello, my Fine Fibrous Friends. Perhaps that should include my Fine Furry Friends, too:- Lately I've been working on a design for a Stylecraft Blogstars promotion that'll hit a yarn shop or a screen and perhaps even some knitting needles near you this summer. The knitted version is nearly done, and if possible, I'll create a crocheted version too. I'm not allowed to say much about the work in progress, so in the meantime please can we all just indulge my delusions of genius and assume that Continue Reading
Kittens
November doesn’t have much to commend it, here in the UK. It’s cold, it’s grey, it’s aggressively dark far too soon after lunch, and it’s very, very, soggy. Our wonky old brewery home is reliably cold and damp. Sometimes the Stoic Spouse suggests we put the heating on or light a log fire as he stands there wearing his woolly hat and his two pairs of socks and his hypothermic skin tone (though to be fair, blue as a colour does rather suit him). But if we put the heating on now, who knows what Continue Reading
Bisocial
Thank you, my Fine Fibrous Friends, for your kind words after my last post. I'm doing OK, but part of the boob surgery wound just won't heal, which is irritating ten weeks down the line because it's preventing me from running. Given that my physical and mental health and menopause-resilience are closely correlated with running mileage, this is a problem. I was due to run the Oxford Half Marathon on 16th October, but common sense and a medical note said DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT, LOSER. Colour me Continue Reading
Chopped
Hello, my Fine Fibrous Friends. As so often happens on this page, the story told by the words will likely weave in and out of the story told by the pictures, because different bits of life are best told via different media. At long last, it's done. After several postponements I've had the surgery to even things up bosom-wise post-cancer. (I've always been left-leaning politically, but wasn't keen to match that anatomically.) The surgeon who rocked up super-enthusiastically with his marker Continue Reading
Craft With Style(craft)
Hello again, my Fine Fibrous Friends. Speaking of fibrous, it's been a blissfully yarny time of late. For the first time since covid trampled on everyone's plans with all the malevolent energy of an overtired toddler, we've had a proper face-to-face meet-up of the Stylecraft Blogstars. Stylecraft did their utmost to keep things Zooming along during the pandemic, but... it wasn't the same. Absolutely not Stylecraft's fault at all. They did their very best. Stoopid covid. Anyway, the weekend Continue Reading