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
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
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
The Wrong Ystradowen
We all make mistakes, right? Errors such as thinking, "I can finish knitting this jumper before my friend's birthday." Or deciding that of course you'll remember what size hook you were using to crochet that half-done afghan. The Stoic Spouse has a foolproof method for avoiding knitting and crochet mistakes... which is to never once in his life attempt either knitting or crochet. He has thus maintained a laudable 0% failure rate in all things yarny, unlike the rest of us fallible mortals. Continue Reading
In Which The Universe Laughs Heartily At My Expense
Hello my Fine Fibrous Friends, and thank you for your kindness in response to my last post. Your words have been a comfort. Seriously. Meanwhile, this week's life lesson has been, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR. Also, WHEN YOU'RE IN A HOLE, YOU SHOULD PROBABLY RECONSIDER YOUR URGE TO DIG. With a side order of, TRUST THE DILIGENT WORK YOU'VE PUT INTO DESIGNING AND DON'T MAKE STUPID IMPULSIVE DECISIONS LATE AT NIGHT. Would you like to see details of my humiliation? Of course you would. This blog Continue Reading
Blue And Yellow
Hello, my Fine, Fibrous Friends. Please note that this post is illustrated with photos of all sorts of things that just happened to float to the forefront of my mind as I wrote. Many of them are a bit out-of-season right now, but you'll forgive that I hope? We are not living in funny times, but it's OK to seek solace in humour (and art, and nature, and literature, and sport) on even the darkest of days. Laughter was my coping strategy when I had cancer, for example... that and growing Continue Reading
Doodling
Just occasionally, life runs smoothly. Traffic lights turn respectfully green as I approach (am I the only person who has good-traffic-light days and bad-traffic-light days?) and the twinnage clean their teeth on something less than the seventeenth time of asking. Other days, the roof springs a new leak, next door's cat poos on my veg beds, and I go to work in the day-job unaware that there are dinosaur stickers attached to the back of my jumper until a patient or a colleague points it Continue Reading
On The Weighty Matter Of Orange
The reworking of the Falling Leaves cowl is going medium-well, but it's been temporarily stalled because the orange I was using was just a bit too exuberantly orange (think irradiated mega-pumpkins on steroids), so I've ordered an alternative yarn, and am drumming my fingers on the kitchen table, impatient for its arrival. Chris-the-postman will doubtless deliver it soon, with his usual unnerving ability to know exactly what's in any given parcel/letter he pushes through the letterbox. "Looks Continue Reading
Pausing
We've reached that post-summer pre-autumn jitter that can't decide whether to roast us, freeze us, soak us, drop spheres of ice on our heads, or blow us over - so it swings wildly between all of these things. Permacultural food-grower Liz Zorab refers to this sub-season as The Pause, which describes it admirably, in my arrogant opinion. (Actually we've moved past that stage into proper-autumn if I'm honest, but it takes me so long to finish drafting a blog post that I'll probably be scraping ice Continue Reading