A little bit of sillyness never goes astray on a Sunday night. So please enjoy this cute little film – “My Knitted Boyfriend” by Noortje de Keijzer
Blogging Apathy
Oh my poor little blog! It’s been so neglected for about nine months! I know what happened – I got distracted by other stuff.
It started with last year’s Bendigo Wool Show. I had a stall there and was really excited about it - this was meant to be the first big event for my tiny little yarn company. Unfortunately I was incredibly sick the whole time. I’m amazed I was able to get out of bed and go to the show each day but I think I just got on with it because I didn’t have any other options. I couldn’t exactly go home to bed and give up. So I did the whole show with the flu in the middle of winter. I do not recommend sitting in that freezing pavillion in the middle of winter when you feel like death.
When I got home I didn’t have the energy to unpack things – I just plonked the boxes in my craft room and went to bed for a week. Even when I dragged myself back to work, it was a month before I could walk down the street without being sent into a coughing fit from the effort.
About two months later – boxes still not entirely unpackeed – we moved house for the second time in six months. I’m so glad we moved, the house we were in just wasn’t working out at all and now we are in a house we love and paying a lot less rent. The cat is happy too - very happy. He has a huge back yard full of willy-wagtails to stalk without success.
I started to knit again – nothing too serious, just worked on a few little projects. Christmas came around, Geoff and I decided to get hitched and I spent time procrastinating about wedding stuff.
Now it’s May. We were married last week, I’ve sorted out a bunch of UFOs and I feel like I have my mojo back. Well, I certainly hope I do.
To celebrate my return to the world of yarn, I’ve released a pattern on Ravelry. It’s called the Plus One Shawl and is priced at AU$5.00.
This easy shawl pattern is ideal for using up leftover yarn from your stash.
Simply select five balls of any 8ply yarn—four in one colour and one in a contrast colour.
Knit the first three according to the pattern and finish up by alternating the last two balls in contrasting colours. It doesn’t matter how many stitches you have before starting on the contrast colour – just count your stitches and refer to a handy table that tells you which row of the edging pattern to start on. No yarn is wasted.
You can use a different yarn weight, or more balls of yarn. The pattern is flexible enough to work with what you have.
So there you have it. Not only am I back to blogging, I’ve even released a new pattern. Next step it to update the yarn shop again which is very empty indeed at the moment.
Before I sign off, here is a bonus picture from the wedding. No knitting I’m afraid, but we had a lot of fun.
The New, Old Website
I decided to get off my bum and start blogging again but a lot of the pages for additional info looked quite weird – I need some technical support beyond “switch it off then switch it on again” (which I tried). So I’ve reverted to the old website design until I can sort out my technical issues.
I’m back, so stay tuned for regular posts and some yarn in the online shop.
Wedding Knits
If you read Marelle’s rather cryptic comment in the previous post, you may suspect something is afoot. Ha ha ha. Afoot get it, shoes …. foot? Damn I’m hilarious.
What the lovely Marelle is referring to are my wedding shoes.
Yup – the fella and I are gettin’ hitched in April! Lucky I haven’t finished reknitting his ill fated big brown jumper (which is back in my possession waiting for me to try steeking). You know what they say about knitting for men. Don’t make them a jumper until you have a ring on your finger or they might leave and take all your hard work with them to wear for another girl. Something like that anyway.
So firstly, for Marelle, here are my incredibly beautiful wedding shoes (well, one of them). Italian suede mesh – not practical but sooooooo beautiful.
Sorry about the lack of glamour in the photo. Poor thing, just sitting on the kitchen table slightly out of focus like that. But there you go. Wedding shoes.
So now I have the worlds most beautiful shoes, I naturally need to turn my mind to knitwear. No bride with her own Ravelry password can get married without a hand knitted item. It’s just wrong.
Given I’m not a white dress “here comes the bride” sort of gal, I’ve got a lot of scope. My dress is a 1950s shape, bright coloured, tea length dress(and no, I’m not telling you what colour it is – it’s a surprise). It goes really well with the chartreuse shoes. So whatever I knit will be chartreuse.
Luckily Morris and Sons have the perfect shade of chartreuse in their Empire yarn – so I can choose between 2, 4, 8 and 14 ply.
But what to knit? Here are some pictures with links to the pattern pages on Ravelry. I’d better get cracking because I’ve only got 12 weeks to go.
Firstly Angel Capelet by Brooke Nico.
I actually like most of the projects better than this picture from the pattern. In the pattern, a few stitches are put under each arm to form a kind of sleeve. I prefer it left as a cape. I have some Grignasco Kid Seta in chartreuse which would look great.
Most of the knitters on Ravelry who made this have said that the lack of a chart for the pattern is a really big pain, so I’ve started charting the whole pattern.
Another option is to make the Razor Cardi. A quick knit in 8ply – what could be easier. I have some tiny chartreuse glass beads which I could add to the ribbing to snazz it up a bit too. A serious contender here.
How about Ysolda Teague’s Emily Capelet? It looks great in laceweight and is a very easy knit. I’ve actually started this in some white Filatura di Crosa Superior yarn but that was before I decided chartreuse was the way to go. I’m not sure if I’ll finish it or frog it.
And finally, the lovely and incredibly popular Aeolian Shawl. This would be a chance to use beads and lace and it is very beautiful. I’m just not sure if a traditional triangular shawl is the way to go.
So what do you think? I’d like to make them all at some point, but I really do need to decide on just one for now. The wedding is in late April in northern NSW so it will be warm but I’ll still need some sort of wrap.
Let me know what you think or if you know of another pattern that could make a good topper for a wedding, let me know.
(Note, all pictures in this post remain the property of the copyright owners.
They all link back to the original source, but if you are the copyright owner and would prefer I not use your photo,
please contact me and I'll take it down).