June

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.

Kokopelli shawl

At last the pattern is ready! From a flicker of an idea, watching the Breaking Bad box set back in January until now it has been a learning curve on so many levels for producing a pattern that is good enough to sell. If you're just knitting an item for yourself you'll  just make minor or major adjustments to extra/ missing stitches and not really worry about it. That's just how I knit, bit of a free spirit, knit and see, oops, no-one will notice kind of thing. You can't do that if you want someone else to be able to understand what you're doing and replicate it. So the challenge was set.

The actual knitting was the easy bit of this, the technical side was a nightmare. You look at it so hard, you can't see the issues after a while. I knitted the pattern through 3 times before I sent it out to my brilliant test knitters and they both came back (as instructed to be brutal) with loads of errors!

 But after much editing it's as good as it can be. There is bound to be a small error in there, I'm only human after all. I was so nervous about releasing it, but some of you so have had enough faith to purchase it and I can't wait to see what colour schemes are going to emerge. 

If you read my blog you'll know I'm a colour junkie so it was important to produce a pattern that could be colour interpreted in any way the knitter sees fit. As seeing what others have created with this pattern and put their own spin on it is the most exciting aspect for me. I can spend hours (as we all can) on Pinterest just soaking up lovely yarns, shawls and colours that bobble about in my brain until they sometimes take form and become something new.

I do always find I need a jumping off spot. For my edge of Harmony scarf it was the colours in Lucy's border for her harmony blanket. They just got lodged in my brain and wouldn't come out until I'd made them into something.

This time it was this lovely artwork above that I found on Pinterest and that's how it all started. I'm sure you can see the design elements and colours in the shawl. Finding a stitch pattern that matched the triangles was difficult. For crochet that was easy but harder to produce from a knit stitch. But I did find one, shell stitch,  not too bad once you understand the concept.

But being a lazy knitter it was designed to look way more complicated than it really is, the colours do most of the work for you. But it is worth putting in the shell (triangle stitch) as it really does add something unusual to the border. 

I think it would look really nice worn like this over a dark Winter coat bringing brightness to Winter days.  Please if you do knit one, remember to add it to the ravelry page where they can all be admired and hopefully inspire some amazing colour combinations.

You can buy it here Ravelry  or here in my Etsy store

May

The world has speeded up on it's axis, I'm sure of it. If I thought April zoomed past I have no idea what happened to May apart from the last 3 days when it went nice and slowly as I made time to indulge myself, you'll see what I was up to later on.

There must be fairies in the woods.

Laika

But it has been mostly blue skies for my daily dog walks. The common is covered in buttercups and clover now and with the skylarks trilling over head it's a welcome break in my day.
Not heard a cuckoo this year though.

The woods are fully in leaf and I love the patterns of light the sun makes, shining through the leaves.

Walking the same patch most days I notice the changes.

April

May

I spotted these guys one day. I had read some caterpillars like this are poisonous so didn't investigate too closely.

It's been a month of blossoms, the hawthorn has been fantastic and the smell reminds me of little school and the tree in the playing field which we used to sit under on sunny days. Amazing how smells can transport you instantly, in fact it is time travel!

I haven't had much time to knit this month due to the volume of orders but I did manage to whip this little jar cover up after being inspired by Carole @gingerbreadgirl on Instagram. She has a lovely cheery bright feed that delights me always.

But I did make time at the end of the month just for me to do what I wanted to and that obviously involved yarn...... but with dye! Oh my, how much fun is yarn dyeing? It appeals to my inner child who whoops and squeals with joy at the sight of those bright little pots of dye and what I can do with them. As I had the long weekend I paced myself and day one was straight in with neon or as Shelagh @craftytyke would say hazmat colours!

Teeny tiny pots of dye

Pip utterly disgusted that his bed has been moved and he has been evicted.

Love, love, love!

Now that was out of my system and I had my colour junkie extreme fix, I thought about slightly more usable colours that other people might like or at least not be scared to use!

Less is more is not a phrase that trips off my tongue easily, so biting my tongue I diluted the dye....a little bit.

I tried kettle dyeing, hand painting and a sort of kettle dyeing you did in the microwave that I made up but sure someone has though of it before me. It really was worth having dyed hands for.

And the above dried to look like this

How pretty is that? So now fueled by the miracle of dilution I set about dyeing some more.

So Purple Paws Yarns has taken its first step into the world. This is not going to be a serious business rather selling a few skeins in my Etsy store just so I can justify playing with colour and not getting moaned at for my stash taking over the house. If they are really pretty they'll never make it to sale as I or friends will no doubt nab them first, but you may get to see a skein or two in the store.

And remember my bluebell fixation, well II think I finally caught them in yarn

This has been ripped back and born again and I'm still not happy with the new pattern. It may yet be frogged a second time.

I also tried to capture the fresh flush of spring leaves in Czech glass beads.

Then there was the Dr Who keeper and markers requested by Jo @dancinggoatcrafts.

200 of you have been kind enough look at my little posts on  Instagram for which I am very grateful. I don't know why it should be but everyone seems very friendly on IG compared to other social media. I like it a lot and love the little chit chats I have with you all on there.

I finally planted the hanging baskets and pots just so I can add an hours watering to my daily chore list! But it is worth it to sit outside on balmy evenings and enjoy the flowers and scents. I do know how lucky I am to be able to work from home and breakfast outside, lunch outside and just take life that little bit slower. It is a dream worth chasing down I can assure you. You notice more, especially how the seasons change and more so the quality of light.

Edward photo bombing again.

 Little Avon river

We had a perfect afternoon walking in the countryside just enjoying being quiet and noticing the small things. I love the landscape so much, its the legacy of a rural upbringing and much treasured. It just fills me with joy looking at natures beauty and how it all works so seamlessly together. It really is a rare jewel our planet and I do love it so.

Finally a round up of the crafty cat nonsense captured during May. I hope June goes a little slower.