Yarn Along: Edinburgh anticipation

In the past couple of weeks since I wrote my last Yarn Along post, we have had a lot of snow. We don't normally get all that much snow; some winters we get none, but this winter has been an excpetion. The first snow fell in November, and we've had at least a couple of days of snow every month since then. But the snow we had in late February was the heaviest. I lost count of how many days of snow we had, but there was almost a foot at its peak. Our local schools were shut for 3 days, and I had a lovely (if rather tiring) time, entertaining the kids, both in the snow and indoors. I got almost no knitting done, but it was lovely to spend a few extra days with them.

This time next week I will be in Edinburgh for the day for Edinburgh Yarn Festival. If you're also going, say hello to me if you see me. I really need to look through the vendor list and decide what I most want to look at (I already know I will be making a beeline for the Toft stall as I really want one of their highland cow kits; it is too cute). The festival has been extended to three days this year (from two in previous years), so I'm hoping it's a little less busy that it was last year. I'm also looking forward to a few hours uninterupted knitting time on the train, an added bonus!

I am currently working on two downtime projects: Flora the Bunny and a rainbow crochet blanket. I should have finished the bunny last weekend, as I've done all the knitting, and only have the seaming and finishing to go, but I totally forgot to order the safety eyes, and had to ask a local friend if I could borrow a small pom pom maker (yes, I could have made a pom pom without a maker, but it's a lot quicker with a pom pom maker!). I now have both safety eyes and a pom pom maker, so this will be an FO by the end of the weekend, much to my daughter's delight. The crochet blanket is progressing really well; I'm enjoying the somewhat mindless nature of it, and the colours are so cheery. I am a little over half way, but know that I am going to run out of cream yarn before I get to the end of the border (and will have to wait until I have some other things to order, or make it to a local yarn shop, rather than ordering a single ball). It's also a terrible project to take out and about as it requires 8 balls of yarn and a very large bag! I might have to cast on something else and reserve this for sofa crochet.

World Book Day happened during the snow, so the school events were rescheduled to this week, and I sent two happy children off as George from George's Marvellous Medicine and Princess Pearl from  Zog and the Flying Doctors (that happened to coincide with International Women's Day and it made me pretty proud that my daughter chose to go as a princess who is also a doctor, rather than a generic frilly princess; if you have young girls, go out and find a copy!). I am reading Pax by Sara Pennypacker at the minute. It's a children's book about a boy who saved a fox's life when the fox was a baby, and has to give up the fox when his circumstances change. The chapters alternate being written from the perspective of the fox and the boy, and the writing style is perfect. It's turning out to be an interesting and thought-provoking read.

Marvellous medicine! Or chocolate...

What are you reading and crafting on at the minute?

Linking up with Ginny for Yarn Along.

Yarn Along: Hurry up Spring!

The past two weeks have been all about enjoying half term with the kids, and watching way too much of the Winter Olympics! Half term was the week before last and was lovely. We deliberately made it very relaxed, staying local and enjoying walks in the sunshine and family time. Handily the holidays coincided with the Winter Olympics; I never really watch sports, but love both the Olympics and Winter Olympics. The Winter session is my favourite, especially the sliding and snowboarding events. I've really enjoyed watching everything over the past couple of weeks and might be at a bit of a loss for things to watch in the next few days!

The weather this month has been a total mixed bag. We've had glorious sunshine, fog, freezing conditions, sleet, snow and ice. And there's more of the cold stuff to come. I cannot wait for spring to properly take hold. I did make the most of a cold but sunny day this week by photographing a big pile of samples ready for their patterns to be released over the next few months (the pattern shown is my Peter Rabbit cushion, which will be available in my Ravelry store soon. If you want to get notified when it’s released, sign up to my newsletter via the link in the sidebar).

Work has gone from being relatively quiet to very busy suddenly, with a big new batch of exciting commissions, so my current non-work projects are simple ones. The latest issue of Knit Now magazine came with a kit for a cute bunny, which my daughter immediately claimed for herself. I knitted most of it last weekend and hope to finish it tonight.

Yesterday saw a large yarn delivery, so my other current project is a baby blanket for a friend's baby that is due in the summer. I've gone for a crochet pattern I've done before and a seven-colour rainbow, which is proving to be a lovely cheerful project.

I've still not really settled on a good book at the minute. I'm reading The Note, but it's dragging and I want to be done with it soon. It could really have done with a heavy edit to cut out one of the extra story threads... I picked up the latest issue of The Simple Things magazine, which I've been reading when I've been out and about waiting for other things. Sometimes it turns out I only really want to focus on magazine article length reads.

Linking up with Ginny for Yarn Along.

Yarn Along: Goldilock’s syndrome

I seem to be struggling to choose books at the minute. January was great of the reading front - I read three books* and enjoyed them all - but this month isn’t going so well on the book front. I started Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly but it was rather too taxing for my often tired brain (the continued lack of light associated with winter makes me sleepy), so it got put to one side. For something easier I started The Note by Zoe Folbigg, which I had heard about before it was launched at the end of last year and pounced on when it was available in Kindle format for 99p. The premise is simple, and a little preposterous: a girl falls in love with someone on her commute, but is too shy to talk to him, so one day slips him a note telling him how she feels; I’m finding a lot of the characters rather silly - a children’s entertainer who is afraid of stickers - or just rather vacuous. And the parts that go into the man on the train’s relationship with his girlfriend make her sound like the worst person on earth. I will finish it, but it’s not quite the read I was hoping for. 

Both books are on my Kindle, so when I wanted to read in the bath last week, I had to start something new, and picked up Nutshell by Ian McEwan. I love the idea of this book; it’s written from the perspective of a baby in the womb, who is privy to a plot being created by the adults around her. The heavy literary style isn’t quite what I’m looking for at the minute though, so it’s going slowly (yes, I do keep falling asleep while reading it).

There are a couple of books I am really excited about at the minute though: I’m reading The Magic Misfits by Neil Patrick Harris with my son and we are both enjoying it. The book is about an orphan who is looked after by a crime-fighting group of magicians. There are codes to crack and magic tricks to learn within the book, and the writing style is great for reading aloud. I am tempted to read ahead, but am trying my hardest not to so I don’t accidentally spoil any of the surprises! I got Artemis by Andy Weir for Christmas in hardback and it’s firmly at the top of my to-read pile. I really enjoyed The Martian, and suspect this one will be similar (but moon-based rather than set off Mars), but am really excited to get started. I probably ought to finish something first though.

Things are looking much more positive on the knitting front. Yesterday I finished the baby hoodie I’ve been working on for the past few weeks. I know I said I would have it finished at least a fortnight ago, but other things got in the way! Now to decide what the next (baby) project should be... in the meantime I’m back to my Mind the Gap socks. I did the heel last night, but when I compared the two socks I realised I’d done last night’s slightly differently, so I’ll have to do that again this morning. Oops.

Work knitting is also going swimmingly. For a bit of variety, I have been doing a lot of crochet this month, which has been an exciting change. I’ve always enjoyed crochet, but don’t find it as versatile as knitting. I have finally managed to design something that will work well as crochet and cannot wait to unveil it to the world! It definitely won’t be my last crochet design - the next one is already brewing in my head. 

It’s half term this week, and I’m really looking forward to spending some more time with my kids; we’re especially excited about Shrove Tuesday this week: making pancakes is much easier when you don’t have to fit it round the school run!

What have you been reading and crafting on this week?

Linking up with Ginny for Yarn Along.

*Cheer Up Love: Adventures in Depression with the Crab of Hate by Susan Calman; A Very Distant Shore by Jenny Colgan; How to be Champion by Sarah Millican

January ruminations

At the start if January, I had intended posting my New Year's Resolutions. And then, by the time we were back from travels over the festive period and into the new year, the kids had gone back to school, and general business, it somehow didn't happen. This does mean that my New Year's resolutions have distilled themselves into a more manageable list.

So here goes, these are my slightly belated New Year's Resolutions.

1. Read 26 books... and keep a proper list
Several years ago I set myself the target of reading 50 books in a year, and somehow, through a combination of not being able to knit while feeding a baby and being up in the night a lot, I managed it. Since then I haven't read anything like as much. Two children seem to keep me pretty busy, but they're getting bigger, and I am starting to find more time to read again, so 26 books seems like a  realistic target. I've also added the Goodreads app to my iPad, so hopefully I might have more success recording what I'm reading than I have in recent years. I'm on target with this one so far - at the time of writing I have finished reading three books, which is actually ahead of target!

Read more books

2. Keep a record of everything I knit
...or crochet, and any yarn coming in and out of the house. In theory this should be pretty easy. My personal projects are generally up to date on Ravelry, it's the commissions and third party publication projects that fall through the gaps - I have to keep a lot of them out of them private for several months before I'm allowed to share them. A friend gave me a special project notebook for Christmas, so I think I have a fighting chance of keeping up this year.

Project one of the year

3. Don't buy any yarn for personal projects
There is a pretty constant flow of yarn into and out of our house. It's pretty inevitable when my job involves a lot of knitting. But I do also have a huge personal stash, and really have no need to buy any more yarn this year. Obviously I will still have to acquire yarn for many of the patterns I publish (my stash is bad, but I don't generally have a blanket's worth of yarn in one particular brand and weight of yarn, and magazines usually want new patterns in something very specific). I am hoping that by doing this I might be able to reclaim a few of the cupboards in our house for things other than yarn!

4. Only work on personal projects at weekends
I am guilty of spending far too much time working, and not enough time playing with other crafts and non-work knitting. I think these things are important to avoid burn out, and to learn how other people do things. The other thing I'm guilty of it knitting vanilla socks when I should be working on work knitting. So non-work knitting is now consigned to weekends, which should hopefully mean I work more efficiently during the week and get a few more personal projects finished.

5. Make blankets for each of my children
Both my kids are getting to the stage where their baby blankets are a little on the small side, so the time has come to knit each of them their very own special blanket. My daughter's is already planned, I just need to write the pattern and get knitting. My son's might be a little trickier, but I suspect will end up featuring something along the lines of Star Wars characters.

This was one of my daughter's baby blankets, but it's far too small now!*

6. Design and knit an adult-sized garment
You might remember that this was one of my aims for last year, and that while I shared several pictures of a part-knitted Pavement Sweater, I never shared any pictures of the finished garment. Well I did finish it, and I wore it to Yarndale. But since then it has been shoved in a box. It turns out there are too many things I didn't like about it (it's too long, the neckline is too wide, I don't like the looseness of the fabric, and sleeve increases combined with the fit create a weirdly large amount of excess fabric under the arms), so I think I'm going to unravel it and do something else with the yarn. Instead I am going to use some other (heavier) yarn and design and knit myself a jumper. It's going to take a bit of experimentation and quite a lot of learning, but I'm pretty sure I can do it. And if  don't try, I'll never know!

Create a more successful jumper

Do you have any New Year's Resolutions? How are they looking at the end of January?

*Pattern is Fluffy White Clouds.

Yarn Along: Baby knits

Hello! Hope you're having a lovely Sunday.

I have somehow stuck to my resolution of only working on personal projects at the weekends, and both my business crafting and hobby crafting seem to be benefiting.

I am currently working on a lot of baby knits, either on the needles, or just in the back of my mind. In the current academic year (September to August) 7 babies will be making an appearance*; in my experience babies do seem to come in clusters, but this is a pretty extreme one! So a lot of my weekends will be spent knitting baby garments. I love knitting for babies: the garments are so small and cute. They allow a chance to try new things without having to commit to weeks of knitting.

The current baby knit on the needles is a heavily modified Rainbow Child**. I'm knitting it in 6 months size as the baby is already here, and I definitely want it to get some use before it is outgrown! All the blue yarn I'm using is Paintbox Yarns Baby DK,*** while the cream is some long-stashed Sirdar Snuggly DK.**** The yarns are working really well together and I'm enjoying the project. I'm hoping that I might even have the whole thing knitted by the end of the weekend (but it is possible I said that last weekend as well and that clearly didn't happen), but a bit of a mishap knitting the hood means that’s looking less likely!

State of play this morning 

Not the greatest progress for one day!

As for books, I finished the Sarah Millican book before last weekend and loved it. I laughed out loud so many times that my children thought I was mad. I'm now onto Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly (you may have come across the film based on the book; it was out in 2016 and I plan to watch it when I have finished the book) about the role of black American women in the space race. I'm finding the book interesting, but a little slow - this is not one for bedtime as I tend to fall asleep.

What are you working on at the minute? What are your favourite things to knit for babies?

Linking up with Ginny for Yarn Along.

*And that's only the ones close enough that I plan to make a gift for them!

**I have used a different stripe pattern, omitted the i-cord edging, and am not knitting the pockets.

***Supplied by Paintbox Yarns for review purposes. Affiliate link.

****Affiliate link.

Yarn Along: Winter warmers

If anyone knows where the weekend went, can they let me know? I swear the bit between Friday evening and this morning just disappeared. I did do some lovely things with my family - we went for Sunday lunch at a farm shop and went to Shildon Railway Museum to see Tim Peake's space capsule - but otherwise I think we all slept quite a lot!

I do have a bit of knitting to show for my weekend though: I finished my Selbu Mittens, and they're pretty fab. They're currently blocking and will have their own FO post on a Friday, but here's a sneak peak.

I also managed to get a couple more stripes done on my Mind the Gap socks. I hadn't worked on them since New Year, and miss them a bit. The stripes are very motivational! I also cast on a hoodie for a friend's new baby, but 8 rows in I had already cast on twice and got the stripe pattern wrong, so unravelled it and put it back in the bag to look at next weekend.

Today has had plenty of missed knitting opportunities. I went to soft play with my daughter, but failed to take any scissors, which are pretty necessary for intarsia knitting! And I would have knitted while the kids were swimming, but there were no seats (the January effect: New Year's resolutions always make for busier swimming sessions!). I'm going to catch up this evening, assuming I can get the kids to bed before I'm ready to fall asleep - while we're well past the shortest day, the weather has been gloomy for days and it's making me tired!

As for reading, I started Sarah Millican's autobiography last week, and am enjoying it. Part autobiography, part self-help guide, I have laughed out loud while reading this so many times already and I'm only a quarter of the way through. I had requested this for Christmas, but got book tokens instead (not a bad thing, I love book tokens). At my earliest opportunity I popped into town to pick up a copy, only to find that everywhere in town had sold out (Sarah Millican is from Newcastle, which is very close to Durham), so had to wait until I headed south over the Christmas holidays.

What are you crafting on and reading at the minute?

You might have noticed a small change to the title of this post; Ginny has restarted her Yarn Along series of posts, so I'm linking up with that (her posts are now monthly).

Yarning Along: Mitten addict

One of the things I want to do this year is to knit more patterns written by other people: most of my knitting is work knitting, and sometimes I think it's good to look at things from a different perspective and to try out new techniques. With this in mind I've decided that, where possible, weekends will be dedicated to non-work crafting. Late last year, lots of knitting podcasters (Woolenvine, Stranded, Tea and Possibilities to name but a few) were talking about knitting Norwegian style mittens. It wasn't something that had specifically appealed to me before, but after watching so many people talk about them, I started to think it might be something I was interested in. During the Giftalong last year I discovered designer Erica Heusser, who has designed some beautiful colourwork mitts and mittens, and I decided that I really, really wanted to knit her Songbird Mittens. I put in an order to Knit Picks for some of their Palette yarn (which is perfect for colourwork), but when it arrived, I got a little intimidated: stranded mittens in 4 ply yarn at 40 sts to 10 cm, what was I thinking?! So I started looking for something a little simpler.

After a quick search on Ravelry I decided that the Selbu Mittens by Skeindeer Knits might be a good starting point - they're knitted in DK weight yarn, and come with full instructions (so many patterns for Norwegian Mittens are just the charts, which I'm sure I'll be fine with after a little practise, but maybe not for my first mittens!). I had DK weight yarn to hand - Willow and Lark Woodland - but when I sat down yesterday to cast on, I quickly realised that the yarn was much too thin, and that I would need something a little bit thicker.

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to do all non-work knitting from stash, so having decided that the yarn I had to hand wasn't going to work, I stepped away and got on with something else for a bit. It was only later in the evening that I realised I had the perfect yarn in my stash, an odd couple of balls of DK weight Bluefaced Leicester that have probably been in my stash for five years. 

Having found the right yarn, I decided to jump straight in and cast on the mittens (yes, I should have done a gauge swatch, but a stranded swatch in the round isn't far off knitting a mitten, in terms of time and effort). I immediately loved knitting the mittens, the pattern was pretty intuitive and before long I had knitted a decent portion of mitten, and even better, the gauge was perfect for making mittens in my size! This morning at soft play I even managed to get to the tip of the first mitten! I am really excited to get the second mitten knitted and on to my hands!

Another resolution for this year is to read 26 books. I'm doing pretty well so far as I've already finished the Susan Calman book (which was brilliant) and am now reading A Very Distant Shore by Jenny Colgan (it's a short book that is set on the same island as The Summer Seaside Kitchen, which I read last summer). The book is good so far, focusing on the arrival of a new doctor (a refugee, whose medical training is his ticket out of a war torn country) on a Scottish island. I'm sure it's not going to take me more than a couple of days to finish the book, then I might move on to one o of the books I got for Christmas - there's quick a pile!

Linking up with Rachel for Yarning Along.

Yarning Along: Happy New Year!

Hello, and Happy New Year! I hope this finds you well and that you had an enjoyable festive period. 

I'm still in a bit of a festive limbo - Christmas and new year are over but the kids are still off school - I'm spending a lot more time playing board games and eating biscuits than knitting! I have done a bit of knitting, and am starting to step up the business knitting again, but am generally working on slightly more mindless knits that don't require any concentration. One of the things I have had time for over the Christmas break is thinking about how I want to proceed with this blog; over December the blog got a little neglected as other things took priority, so I feel it needs a bit of redirection for the new year. With that in mind, this is going to be the final Yarning Along on a Wednesday. Wednesdays have never worked that well for me as I tend to spend my weekdays working on business knitting, so Yarning Along is moving to a Sunday, which should make the posts a little more relaxed. I'm also considering creating a few more blog regulars, so watch this space!

My current major knitting project is these fabulous Mind the Gap socks, which I cast on as part of Little Bobbins' Christmas Eve cast on. The yarn is from Trailing Clouds is fabulous - the stripes are in the colours of the tube lines on the London Underground tube map and create a 12 stripe repeat. Each dye lot is dyed with the stripes in a different order, which makes each skein even more special. I've done the heels and cuffs with West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4 ply in Milk Bottle, and plan to do the same for the toes. I've also decided that I'm going to knit the second sock with the stripe sequence reversed so I don't waste any yarn between socks. I'm really excited about these socks and can't wait to finish and wear them! 

I'm currently reading Susan Calman's Cheer Up Love: Adventures in Depression with the Crab of Hate. This book is brilliant; it is autobiographical, but frames each of the periods of Calman's life in the context of her relationship with her long-term depression (which she refers to as The Crab of Hate). The book answers a lot of questions about depression, but in a light-hearted way, and I have spent a lot of the book laughing out loud. I would really recommend this book.

As ever, linking up with Rachel for Yarning Along. And I'll be back on Sunday with another Yarning Along! For now, happy knitting.