Yarning Along: Coffee and cake

There's a theme to this week's Yarning Along, and that theme is coffee and cake.

I'm writing this post in a cafe while I wait for the garage to finish with my car (it's having something replaced under warranty), and making the most of a couple of hours peace, relaxing with a coffee (black, no sugar, thank you) and the latest issue of The Simple Things magazine, which is always lovely (and I am clearly the target demographic as there are often adverts for yarn shops in there, even though it's not a yarn magazine). Some knitting may also happen, or not, I'll see where the mood takes me!

This weekend I spent a lovely evening at Lucy Locket Land for her Macmillan Coffee Morning, which was actually a 12 hour knitathon with coffee, cake and a grand raffle. The evening was perfect, with excellent company, raffle excitement (I didn't win anything), and I picked up a beautiful sock blank in shades of pink and purple that will one day become socks, but for now can be admired, or, at a push, used as a scarf!

The beautiful prize table at Lucy Locket Land

October is officially Socktober for all the social-media-knitters out there, and while I am focusing on commissions this month, I hope to get a couple of pairs off the needles. The Pairfect socks from last week have made a little progress, and I have some Halloween-striped yarn waiting to be knitted up.

Halloween self-striping yarn from Strawberry Fields Yarn

I have now finished reading Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and while I found the ending pretty much perfect, the book as a whole felt a bit predictable and I did find myself getting bored in places as not much happened. But it was nicely written, and I got through it quite quickly, which I think marks it as a reasonable read. I've moved on to Autumn by Ali Smith, which I selected purely because it's been nominated for The Man Booker Prize (one year I managed to read the whole shortlist before the winner was announced!). I am finding the writing style tricky in places - it is very literary - but the plot and characters are intriguing enough that I am persevering. 

What are you reading and knitting this week? As ever, I'm linking up with Rachel for Yarning Along - head to her blog to see what other people are reading and crafting.

Lucy Locket Land

I meet a lot of people via social media, and some of them become friends in real life too. One of these friends, Lucy, announced earlier in the year that she would be opening her very own yarn shop.

So last month, I went to the grand opening of Lucy Locket Land.

Lucy has been running craft workshops and crafting groups in her house since the start of the year, and the shop is clearly designed with this purpose in mind. There is a large table for groups to work at and around, and lots of comfy sofas to make yourself at home. The shop is decked-out in a vintage style, and the whole shop is warm and welcoming.

Lucy has sourced items for sale from a wide variety of local artisans, and you can buy jewellery, bags, cards, felted items, ceramics, etc., as well as locally-sourced yarn, including yarn dyed by Lucy herself and her daughter, Penny. Lucy also stocks plenty of yarn from West Yorkshire Spinners, which is a favourite of mine.

The event was held in the evening, and while the shop is a bit of a drive from Durham (it's a little under an hour's drive), it was definitely worth it. I spent a lovely couple of hours sat on the sofas knitting on a pair of socks and chatting with fellow crafters. Of course I did a little bit of shopping too, and came away with a few beautiful items: a skein of yarn dyed by Penny (which you might recognise from the Lynda socks I shared last week), a couple of balls of Bergere de France Gloomy 50 (perfect for a pair of socks), a gorgeous little project bag with a rabbit on it, some mini skeins and a card. I also signed up to do courses on lino cutting and printing, and dyeing mini skeins (much easier to do in someone else's space than my kitchen!), and can't wait to go back!

If you'd like to visit Lucy Locket Land, full details about how to get there and opening times can be found on Lucy's website. I highly recommend it!

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This post is the second of my Blog Every Day in May posts, head here to see them all.

Yarning along: Stop the bus, I'd like to get off

Rachell over at The Little Room of Rachell has started up Yarning Along to replace the Yarn Along that was run by Ginny until a few weeks ago; every week Rachelle will be sharing her current work in progress and whatever she is reading, and I thought I'd join in.

This week has been racing by. The Easter holidays are over, and the kids are back to their usual routine, but I still seem to have far too much to do. Most of my knitting is for deadlines (which are looming - May starts next week, and I am absolutely not ready for that), so I can't share it here, and my pleasure knitting is largely being limited to Sundays, so progress is rather slow. As a result, today's WIP I'm going to share is a bit of a halfway house: my Lynda socks for the Knit Night Collection KAL that I'm running in my Ravelry group*. The socks are being knitted in yarn I picked up at the opening of Lucy Locket Land a few weeks ago (which I will eventually write a blog post about); it's a Bluefaced Leicester/Nylon blend and is dyed by Lucy's daughter Penny. The colours are wonderful and the yarn is really soft. I wasn't totally sure about knitting the pattern in a variegated yarn, but the variegation is really subtle and well blended, so I'm happy with the socks so far.

Having finished Me Before You (which I thoroughly recommend; I came to the book via the film, and the book has subtleties that vanished entirely when condensed into a film. The basic plot is that Louisa is employed on a six month contract as a carer for a quadriplegic, but soon realises her role is much more significant. While she tries to change his life, he manages to change hers), I have moved on to the sequel, After You, and while I'm only a few chapters in I think I should get through this pretty quickly (for me, so it'll probably take a month!).

What are you reading and crafting on at the minute?

*Ravelry link: you must be logged into Ravelry for this link to work; membership is free.