Re-FO: A blue Barley Twist cardigan

You may remember that a few weeks ago I showed you a 'finished' powder blue Barley Twist cardigan. And yes, it was finished, in that I needed a sample of the short sleeved version of the cardigan to include in the pattern photos. But this cardigan is going to a friend for her little girl, and she requested that it had long sleeves.

So I took lots of lovely photos of the washed and blocked short sleeved version, then unravelled the sleeves and knitted on longer ones instead. And here it is in all its glory (we finally had some sunshine yesterday so I could get some photos of it).

I love this little cardi, and I hope that its recipient does too. Aren't those little daisy buttons just the cutest (I really need to buy some more, or to delve deeper into my button shash - I have a feeling there are some slightly darker daisy buttons lurking at the bottom)?

If you fancy making your own Barley Twist cardigan (short or long sleeved), the pattern can be purchased from my Ravelry or Love Knitting stores.* If you buy the pattern from my Ravelry store before 11.59pm BST, Monday 31st July 2017, and use the code SCHOOLSOUT you can get 20% off.**

The cardigan is knitted in MillaMia Naturally Soft Aran* in shade 222, Powder Blue. The Ravelry project page for the cardigan can be found here.

*Affiliate link.
**Code and discount not applicable to patterns in my Love Knitting store.

Yarning Along: Round and round we go...

Hello... Is it Wednesday already?! Half a week in to the school holidays and I have lost track of the day of the week!

This week's knitting is almost exclusively stocking stitch in the round. One pair of socks in Knit Picks Felici in the fabulous colourway Captain Nemo, and my Pavement Sweater. Neither requires much attention (I'm knitting the socks with afterthought heels, so I haven't even had to think about the heel yet), and I'm switching between the two depending on the size of needles I fancy working with (2 mm for the socks and 3.25 mm for the jumper). Both are perfect portable projects for taking along to play dates, so I'm making good progress!

Last night I finished reading Running on the Cracks by Julia Donaldson. A well-written and tightly plotted read, whose thiller element was very much at the young adult end of the genre, I enjoyed this book, and throughout was keen to see how it concluded.

I've just started reading The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan (which I came to via Rachel) and four chapters in know that I am going to whizz through it, and love the ride. So far, the central characters have been introduced, and I am finding them all fascinating.

Linking up with Rachel for Yarning Along. If you like crafting and reading, head over there to see what other people are sharing.

School's out for summer

As of this weekend, school is over for the academic year! Obviously the kids are very excited about this...

I am excited about getting to spend a lot of time with the kids; I have all sorts of activities planned, as well as plenty of family time. I'm also looking forward to a bit of a rest, and maybe a little extra sleep! This year has been a rather busy one, and I really enjoyed switching off all the alarms on my phone yesterday!

The holidays do mean that I'm not going to have as much time to work on knitting work, so for the past week I have been trying to get on top of things, making sure I have some patterns ready to have samples knitted, and a couple of test knits in my Ravelry group so that the tests can get underway before I get too busy.

The blog will take a bit of a back seat until September, I will try and check in at least weekly for Yarning Along, and may manage some other posts here and there, but it might be a bit quiet round here. While I'm away I will be working on several new patterns, so am hoping to return energised at the start of September.

To celebrate the arrival of the school holidays, I am having a little sale in my Ravelry store. For the next week you can get 20% off any of my patterns using the code SCHOOLSOUT.* Hope you find something you love.

*The code is valid on patterns purchased from my Ravelry store until 11.59 pm BST, Monday 31st July 2017. The code can be used as many times as you like, so this is an excellent opportunity to stock up. The code is valid on all individual patterns, and the Knit Night Collection and Reach for the Stars ebooks.

Yarning Along: A lot of stocking stitch

The past week has been a long one. Between my two children, there has not been a whole 24 hour period where no one has been ill. Thankfully today they are finally both better, and we have been able to leave the house and get on with life as normal.

I've not felt much like knitting anything complicated for the past week, and have been very grateful to have my Pavement sweater to work on. I have completed the yoke (there was a bit of a panic about it not being long enough, but a lot of the yoke depth is added by the underarm stitches, which I hadn't taken in to account; I have tried it on and it will fit fine), and am now working on a very long stretch of plain stocking stitch. The only complicated bit is that I am alternating skeins to avoid pooling, so the jumper isn't very portable, but I'm quite happy to take it along to knit night or coffee with friends.

Book reading has been slow this week too. I'm still reading the Julia Donaldson book, and it's an easy read. I'm pretty certain I can get it finished by the weekend, provided my kids manage to sleep through every night!

Linking up with Rachel for Yarning Along. What are you knitting and reading this week?

British Wool Show 2017

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the British Wool Show. Longer established than Yarndale or Edinburgh Yarn Festival, but not as well known, this was a yarn show that I stumbled across via Instagram when one of the vendors mentioned it. I looked it up, and this year it was held in Thirsk, which is only an hour from Durham, so I decided that I would pop down for the Sunday.

The show was held in Thirsk Rural Business Centre on the outskirts of Thirsk. The venue had a large enough car park (there was just enough parking for everyone), which made it an easy option (we'll ignore the 8 mile detour I had to make as I missed the entrance to the car park, oops).

The venue was large and spacious, with a good variety of stalls. One distinct advantage of the show being less well known was that there was plenty of space to browse, without having to wrestle my way past people to get to look at things, making it a very laid-back affair. I was there for about 5 hours, and at no point did I feel rushed or overwhelmed (I'll be honest, I find the bigger yarn shows completely overwhelming and exhausting; while I love yarn, I don't love being in large crowds).

One of the things I like to do when I first arrive at a yarn show is to walk methodically round all the stalls and see what's on offer. I really enjoyed my first walk round this event: I saw lots of beautiful fleece (I almost tried spinning, until I remembered that I really don't need another hobby, and that spinning wheels and small children are not a good combination), a wide variety of buttons, lots of wonderful yarn, and myriad other things that were fascinating.

I was really excited about getting to meet a few specific vendors the the show. My very favourite stall was Alice Yarn, whose website I had stumbled across a few weeks ago, and it is an excellent example of a beautiful yarn website (go and look now!); she had a lovely selection of yarn, patterns and stitch markers (which I found hard to resist, more about that later), and pick and mix mini skeins. SkyBluePink Designs had a fantastic array of buttons [I leapt at the stall as (i) I have an obsession with buttons, and (ii) I remembered their stall from Yarndale a couple of years ago]. I finally got to meet Jillian from Mothy and the Squid, whose yarn I have loved for a long time.

A stand out feature of the British Wool Show was the Sheep Show, a live show where a man told the audience all about a selection of sheep, and their uses, and a live shearing (the sheep wasn't all that impressed with that section!).

The venue was a good choice. It had a cheap and cheerful cafe on site - I got a bowl of chips and a Diet Coke for £2, which was pretty much all I needed for lunch - and plenty of picnic benches and grass outside to sit on. I caught up some knitty friends and had a lovely time doing some outdoor knitting in the sun.

So what did I buy? Obviously I couldn't travel to a yarn show without picking up a few souvenirs. I could not resist the yarn from Alice Yarns, and picked up a skein of deep, intense purple merino/silk 4 ply, which will become a crocheted shawl over the summer (I'll be using Alice's Porthcawl Shawl pattern, which I also bought). Alice also had some gin and lemon stitch markers, which also jumped into my basket (I don't even drink gin!). I made two other purchases: a full rainbow of colour-edged wooden-buttons, which I am delighted with. I had bought them with the intention of using them on a garment for my daughter, but by the time I'd got home I had decided they were for me! And the final purchase was a ball of Opal sock yarn in the colourway Cheerful - it is sparkly (!) and comes in amazing pink and grey stripes that remind me of licorice allsorts (which are one of my favourite types of confectionery).

All in all an excellent day out. I wouldn't have travelled further than an hour for it as it wasn't a very big event, but it was just the right level for me and I really enjoyed it.

Summer knitting sorted

You may remember that, last week, while reviewing my ideas for the Best Year Ever CKAL, I posted a photo of some cornflower blue yarn, thinking that it might become a Pavement Sweater. Well, on Wednesday, while at home with a poorly toddler and at a bit of a loose end (looking after an ill child is similar to looking after a new baby - they require a lot of attention, which takes all your mental energy), the idea got stuck in my head and I found myself knitting a swatch.

And when the gauge was a little out, I found myself knitting a second swatch.

Then winding the yarn. And before I knew it I had cast on a jumper.

The pattern is knitted top-down, and in many ways is similar to knitting a sock: the yarn (Araucania Ranco, long since discontinued) is fingering weight, and the vast majorly of the knitting is stocking stitch, with the odd more interesting section (mostly short rows) for variety. This is a perfect project for our and about (or it is until it gets too big to be portable).

The collar called for smaller needles, 3 mm vs. 4.5 mm, but as I had to go down to 3.25 mm needles to get gauge (normal for me!) I've plumped for 2.5 mm needles for that section. I'm hoping that works out, they felt very small while I was knitting it!

In any case, my summer knitting is go, go, go! The only problem is, the summer holidays don't start until the end of the next week, and there are other things I should be working on until then...

No such thing as too much navy?

At the minute my knitting is going though a definite colour phase: last week I cast off a navy blue children's jumper (the gingerbread man jumper - the pattern will be coming at the end of the summer), then promptly cast on... a navy blue children's jumper (a second sample for From Breton with Love, after the first one got damaged by the sun while I was blocking it; the pattern will be available as soon as I can get some photos taken). Which is already quite a lot of navy blue, and next up in the queue are two more navy jumpers and a navy cushion cover, which is starting to feel like navy blue overkill!

Navy blue isn't always the easiest colour yarn to work with. I don't recommend working with navy blue in the evenings in poorly lit rooms: it's really hard to count rows in dark colours unless the lighting is really bright, and as someone who works by reading their knitting rather than taking notes, that's a real issue, and not one I have a way round, especially as I do a lot of basic knitting while sitting with my daughter in semi-darkness while she goes to sleep in the evening (which sometimes takes a long time).

Following on from the last point, mistakes in navy blue are really hard to fix. While knitting the back of From Breton with Love I did several rows of ribbing where I had offset the stitch pattern and didn't notice until a few rows later, but as soon as I did the mistake became glaringly obvious. Dropping back to fix those mistakes would have been a lot easier in a lighter colour!

Navy blue was also the colour of my school uniform for 4 years; I am largely over that, but I know plenty of people who have never overcome their aversion to colours associated with their school days. 

But even taking these things into account, I like navy blue. It's a good dark neutral, goes with everything in my wardrobe, and isn't as harsh as black. So I'll keep on with my list of navy projects, though if you ask me again in a few months I may say that I never want to work with it again!