In the Making...

I've been a bit quiet for the last couple of weeks because I've been on holiday in Yorkshire. We were really lucky with the weather and had a lovely time. Here is the view from our cabin -  I've never seen so many varieties of mushroom in one place We visited Whitby, York and Rievaulx Abbey. The abbey was amazing but I didn't take my camera that day, so sorry no pictures. I did take it when we went to Whitby and the abbey there though. Whitby Abbey Whitby Abbey Here's a couple of my favourites photos -  Morning Dew Whitby Beach I took lots and lots of photos so Mr occupied himself balancing stones on the beach. He'd seen Adrian Gray  on BBC's Coast programme doing this and it was absolutely incredible. Pop over and look because they really are incredible. Seemed to defy gravity, so he had a go in miniature.

Yarndale....wow! I had a fantastic day. A bus load of us from  A Good Yarn went on Sunday and it was amazing. First of all, I booked to do a workshop with Amy Singer , aka the editor of Knitty. The workshop was Making the Next Monkey and for anyone who is a designer or a fledgling like me, then it is fantastic. I learnt lots and lots, plus Amy was wonderful. My head was buzzing with ideas all the way home. Even though, most of my time there was taken up by the workshop, I did managed a bit of time to supplement my stash. I bought Ply magazine , which had some gorgeous patterns in. Haven't got around to reading it yet, but looking forward to it. There must be tons of photos of the bunting at Yarndale going around, but there were hundreds of them and the effect en masse was just incredible. Far more incredible in real life, compared to the photos. Mostly, I bought Garnstudio Drops , 4 balls of Alpaca (in 2 shades of green and 2 balls of cream) and 2 balls ...

Last week we had great fun at A Good Yarn , Cleethorpes. It was the Wish Upon a Knit events all week. It was to raise money for When You Wish Upon a Star.  It was very busy with lots of knitting, laughter and cakes. The last being the most important.....we ate a lot of cake. All the cakes were homemade by several of our lovely knitters and were very, very good. Obviously, I found the cakes to be the standout feature of the week! Maybe, I should tell you about the rest and forget about the exceedingly good cakes. Hold on - how about a piccie of ..... cake. Every session had different cake too and of course, we had to test it all. Anyway.... Everyone who took part received a kit with materials for four different jewellery projects. They involved lots of different skills and hopefully, some new ones for people to have a go at. The room looked very pretty, with fresh flowers, white tablecloths and vintage china. The Saturday session was that...

I normally share something to do with what I've been doing, but for a change I'm going to show you some of Mr's work. His current crafty obsession (and has been for awhile now) is woodturning with the odd foray into carpentry. His latest piece is just stunning. He found a gorgeous plank of naturally edged oak. He has routed and shaped it into two racks and turned some identical oak pegs to make two amazing coat racks. With some polish and elbow grease, we now have two very useful coat racks. One has 4 pegs and the other 5. The 5 peg rack has the pegs put in at an angle for coats and the other we'll use for hats and scarves. Incidentally, I've found it makes a nice prop for photos. With my well worn colour affection.

At a quick glance, it's looks like I'm practising lepidoptery, but I'm not pinning out butterflies but lots of swatches.  I've had that many, that I've had to do them in batches and each time I've started to run out of blocking pins and have been relegated to using dressmaker's pins. I still have more to go. Wish me luck....

I've done plenty of knitting lately but for one reason or another they are secret projects, so I've not been able to share them. I have completed one little project which is a Puerperium Cardigan by Kelly Brooker . I bought some gorgeous Adriafil Duo Plus yarn in the "End of Season Sale" at A Good Yarn  - plus lots of other yarn too, which I'm not going to talk about because I think I have a stash addiction and I'm going to ignore the problem and hope no-one will notice. The yarn in question is absolutely gorgeous, stunningly soft and in beautiful muted colours. So even though there are lots of other projects I should be doing, I had to make a little Puerperium ( which is a welcome to the world gift for a friend's grandchild due in a few weeks ). I decided on making all the buttons different and trying to match the colours in the yarn, not a perfect match but I quite like the effect. The other project that I can share is currently langui...

I've been knitting lots recently and have this big pile o' knits. There's lots of different bits in that pile; baby cardigan, baby vest, fingerless mitts, socks, bandana, shawl and a moebius cowl. A pair of vanilla socks (my pattern)... And this is what is currently on my needles... It's a baby vest. It's a sort of a made up pattern, with the inspiration being from a photo of something similar. I do like a bit of stranded knitting! The yarn is Rowan Milk Cotton and is just lovely to knit with but unfortunately has been discontinued by Rowan. The only thing is now I love this so much I want a grown up one for me.