Spotted!

It's a rare and shy creature, previously thought mythical. A Lesser Purple Spangled Skirt.

For an extremely simple skirt with two seams, two darts and a zip, it's been a bit of a challenge and I'm still not entirely happy with the fit at the waist but it looks nice with my blue blouse anyway so overall I'm pleased.

I really enjoyed embellishing it with buttons and topstitching thread. It's lined so the inside is nice and neat, although foolishly I didn't finish the bottom edge of the lining so I've got my fingers crossed it won't start unravelling on me! I didn't bother because I intended to zig-zag all round the hem with decorative thread, but now it's done I think I like it best just the way it is.

Hmm Purse Empty...

... Bag full of Yarn. How did that happen?

Hey Fibre East stole my money! They seem to have left some treats in its place though so maybe they're good fibre fairies. Mara and Ann had similar experiences with the fibre fairies. This was my haul...

Some pure silk dk with no label but it's a stunning colour so we can forgive it:

  A purpley-bluey laceweight from Sparkleduck (love the name! very nice lady too):

Two gorgeous skeins of Teeswater wool from Higher Gills Farm, one four ply in shades reminiscent of stormy skies, and one autumnal Aran weight:

And two skeins of super chunky merino in purple shades from Spinning A Yarn which I balled up in the way home in Mara's car.

It was a great day out with plenty for fibre lovers of all shades. Whether you're someone who takes the raw fleece from the full-of-poo stage right through to beautiful garment or, like me, who prefers someone else to have done all the really hard work and just knit. Spinning, weaving, dyeing, felting, crochet and knitting were all well represented. There was a play tent for spinners, sheep shearing with sheep to pet, displays from various organisations, plenty to buy and yummy food. We'll be going back next year.

P.S Sorry about the lack of cute pictures of sheep. I forgot my camera and the ones I took on Mara's blackberry which she kindly emailed me were all fuzzy (user error not camera error).

Awesome Hat!

Yesterday I finally finished the slouchy hat pattern I test knitted for Mara:

I'm really pleased with how it came out and the yarn (Rowan Cocoon) is perfect for the pattern with its sheen and halo. I think Mara should be really proud of herself - an excellent first pattern. I'm willing to bet there'll be more pattern treasures incoming from her direction... Hurrah!

For a little while this hat felt cursed; I had to restart several times, all due to daft knitter sydrome. First I realised 8mm needles for the body of the hat were too small for my extra tight gauge and had to restart on 9mm. Then I forgot to change up needle size after the rim and had to restart again. Then I missed out a couple of rows between the increases. Then the double pointed needles I ordered (as I was on a cable needle and would need the needles for the crown) were wrong. Twice. But now it's done! Yay!

I was a bit unsure about this style of hat on me but I rather like it. I might knit another less slouchy one for variety as it was a quick and straightforward but fun knit which would certainly bear repeating.

***
Post edited to change Mara's link over to her new blog.

Quietly does it

You may or may not have noticed I've been a bit quiet lately*. This is partly because I've been putting lots of time into my gardening blog Sproutling Writes and reading other gardening blogs and consequently somewhat neglecting the crafty/pagan/life blogs I follow. I expect this is a trend which will continue with me posting here every week or so, and more often over at Sproutling. So I'm not going to disappear completely, worry ye not (see you can stop hyperventilating in fear now) but I will be a little less frequent with my posts. I'll try to make up for it by making my posts noisier or more offensive or something.

All this blog wrangling has eaten into crafty time too and while my skirt is nearly there, and the hat coming along nicely after a couple of false starts (full story of both later) they have definitely slowed down, even beyond my normal tortoise like pace. It's like that episode of Red Dwarf with wierd time pockets. Gardening blog life seems to happen at zip speed. Craft life at snail speed.

Look! A cat!

Arthur says my readership is far too intelligent to be bribed into staying with cat pictures. I would suggest intelligence isn't a defence against cat bribery, especially when the cat in question is our lovely Rincewind.


*I think someone stole my brain. It took me several attempts to spell 'quietly'. Some of which didn't involve putting a 'u' after the 'q'. Damn zombies.