The Bothered Owl Christmas Yarn Party

Last weekend Sophie of Twist Yarns got a late invite to The Bothered Owl Christmas Yarn Party and wanted some help with her stand, so Monday evening after work I headed into London to give her some support.

It was a fun event with several Indie dyers and a selection of other knit related stalls - oh and lovely mince pies and nibbles.

Twist Yarns were set up just as you came in through the door, and next to Fyberspates - (what temptation). In fact it was a room full of temptation (and I didn't spend a penny!) with luscious yarns in every hue and combination of hues - there was silk, alpaca, merino, bamboo, angora and more - dyed as semi-solids, random dyed, hand painted, kettle dyed, naturally dyed and probably some other methods as well.

There was a lovely hubbub around the room with people chatting, and eating, and buying soft, colourful, wonderful yarns and fun knitty cards and patterns and stitch markers.

HEY I'VE GOT AN ETSY SHOP!

This is one of the reasons for my lack of blogging - I've been working on getting an Etsy shop off the ground - - well it's open and it has 9 items for sale. 

My shop is called The Crafty Heffalump so please go and have a look - I'd be grateful for feedback too :-)

MY SWAP PACKAGE CAME - HOORAH

Yesterday was a good day - the best for a while, in fact - there was an early start as we were getting the house ready for a new arrival (this is nothing to do with textiles or craft) - by 11.15 she'd arrived and was safely ensconced ......

Meet Bumble - she's the 1 year old bunny from a friend at work who could sadly no longer keep her.

We decided to go out for a late (and lazy) breakfast, and just as we were leaving postie arrived and signed that he had something for us - there was a box for me that had travelled all the way from New Zealand - it was my colour swap package I went all round Tescos saying 'I've got a parcel' with a silly grin on my face!

When I got home I could hardly wait to get it open and this is what I found

I'm chuffed to bits with it - can woolly things wear out if you pet them too much?

The fibre and the yarn will, no doubt appear in later posts :-D - I don't yet know what I want to do with them, so I shall just admire them until inspiration strikes. There were also some girly stitch markers, and sweet smelling, hand made soaps and sweeties and all sorts of other goodies. Christmas all over again!

Later in the day we had a friend over to stay and took him to our fave Italian restaurant (his birthday pressy). So all in all a jolly good day.

QUICKY MITTS

Last weekend I finally got around to making something from the Blue Faced Leicester fibre dyed in the workshop at the Middle Essex Guild a few months ago.

I'd spun it during the week and was really pleased with the two balls of yarn I had. (In the picture the two bigger balls are the two ply ones spun to match - the little ball is the leftover singles - navajo plied)

Needless to say I was itching to get going - I actually started knitting in bed when we went to stay with friends! By the time we left I'd done one cuff.

I just measured my wrist (six inches) did a quick swatch and worked out that with size 10 knitting needles my rib was 61/2 stitches per inch. As I was doing K1P1 rib. and needed and even number. I cast on 38 stitches and worked a couple of inches of rib. I then cast off all bar one stitch.

Next I did 2 chain and then picked up along one edge with a 3.5mm crochet hook - I picked up using double crochet stitches - enough to open it up a bit but not so many as to make the edge of the cuff start to flute.

At the end of the first crochet row I joined with a slip stitch, then again did 2 chain and worked in double (american single) crochet increasing every 2 or 3 stitches over this row, once again joining with a slip stitch. I did the same for the next row by which time I had enough stitches. (basically I just tried it on with every row and had a look to see how much I needed to increase) I now carried on in double crochet until I reached the thumb knuckle.

At this point I changed to crocheting back and forth missing the 5 stitches at the end of the row. I worked like this until I passed the web between thumb and forefinger.

I now made three chain at the end of the row and slip stitched to the other side.

Then I carried on working in the round until the work reached just past my knuckles.

Finally I picked up double crochet stitches around the open square around the thumb and worked in the round decreasing several stitches each row and trying every row for fit.