I've left my review of June until now as it ended on such a strange note with the referendum result that shocked us all no matter which way you voted. It has truly shaken British politics to the core, with people resigning, leadership changes and whether this is good or ill to upset the apple cart remains yet to be seen.
I know quite a few of us immersed ourselves in our crafts whilst we tried to make sense of it all and find our places once again amidst so much disruption. I went yarn dyeing
and dived into colour, more colour, with some extra colour!
Now for lots of lovely pictures of yarn........
These two flew off over the Atlantic to their new home.
Fabulous book, lots of useful hints and tips and explains about how colour works, which actually is quite important.
Another new arrival was my swift. How did I ever manage before this? David has been utilised and was worried about imminent redundancy. But instead of that I told him I had just partly mechanised him and his winding would now go a lot faster. In fact I have to stop him winding all skeins into cakes! The ball winder is a true delight also.
Love these two, sugar rush, which is every colour and Lara's bouquet which is inspired by Manor farm cottage flowers in Somerset of sweet williams, cornflowers and alchemilla.
I tried speckle dyeing and the above is the result and the more solid is using the same dyes but in a bath instead.
Do unicorns dream of rainbow sheep
Sugar rush in and out the pot or cauldron of doom as David calls it.
Unusual perspective wound on the niddy noddy.
At Wonderwool I bought 800g of some very coarse DK yarn, solely for the purpose of practicing dyeing and not ruining loads of merino. It is far too rough to wear in any shape but will make really good bags. So my latest stitch obsession is with linen stitch and I've started knitting a small messenger bag.
Cast on a multiples of 2
Row 1: *K1, wyif, sl 1, wyib; Rep from * to end
Row 2: *P1, wyib, sl 1, wyif; Rep from * to end.
Repeat rows 1 – 2 until you have reached your desired length.
Badger 'helping' with reading the yarn book.
To get my confidence up ads to understand about dye take up I hand painted quite a few skeins. This rather bold affair is currently being made into a mesh shopping bag as it that rough yarn again.
Lovely washing day!
The Gloucestershire Mermaid
OK, I may have to stop until I've sold some, but doesn't it all look pretty? I mustn't let my inner dragon take over and hoard it all..well, maybe just for a little while!
I treated myself to some lovely things from Anita from Sugar and sloth. Lots of lovely cards, badges and mugs in her Etsy store. She's also fairly local to me so its nice to support another local business.
Pip thought the badges were just pawfect!
She even helped me get my own purple cat onto a badge.
I had knitted a sampler shawl last winter but it was too long a rectangle and was being used as a cat bed more than a shawl. So I sat down and patiently frogged it all and started again. I found a fabulous website from Holly Chayes with lots of tips for designing basic shawl shapes. Her directions are very clear and show you the maths without being scary.
I'm very pleased with how it has turned out. Not sure that knitting with chunky yarn was sensible at this time of the year but I'm ready for the colder months when they arrive. I shall hopefully be putting the pattern up on ravelry soon as it's just simple variations on stitches, with all the increases done on single rows.
I suppose the big news of the month was the release of the Kokopelli shawl pattern as per my previous post so I won't go back over it here.
Love affair with linen stitch and it shows off the Cuddlebums yarn beautifully. This wonderful merino is a dream to knit with and so, so soft.
Strawberry and fresh cream cake for Julia my sister birthday. We always bake each other a cake for birthdays. I always have one with pink icing and she always gets this! We had a lovely afternoon sat in her garden eating cake and chatting.
Her cutting garden is full of blooms and her new summerhouse/ potting shed/ she shed is painted.
Borage
Clary sage
Moushka photo bombing.
And I came home with this beautiful hand tied bouquet.
I had an unexpected happy mail day from Helen at Yantantethera yarns. I immediately cast on the green and started my first boomerang scarf. It's knitting up like a dream , super squidgy!
So there was June just about published before July ended! I'm all behind like the donkeys tail as my dear mum used to say.
