Been keeping a secret............................

I have been keeping a secret since half way through last year which I can finally show you here.

Back in June 2008 I was asked by Jeni of Fyberspates to knit up a sample for her in her lovely scrumptious yarn. Well the pattern is now available on her website for purchase so do go and have a look. Just click here.

So here are my pictures of the knitting up and the final product.









This colourway is Olive and is the chunkier version of scrumptious. It only took 5 skeins to knit the whole thing in the small size. This yarn goes a long long way. It only took 240grm to knit my Hey Teach.

This is such a lovely yarn and is the same stuff that I knitted up my Hey Teach over christmas. The colours are really vibrant and it is a pleasure to work with. It was the reverse stocking stitch on the fishermans sweater on how good it looked with the scrumptious yarn that inspired me to make the changes to the Hey Teach pattern.

You can find the yarn here.

A little bit of Heaven.............................

Having spent the holidays getting to grip with Gemima my new spinning wheel I finally decided I could start to spin a more luxury fibre and what better way to start than with a little bit of heaven. Better known as Nef the welsh for Heaven.

This fibre came from Jeni at Fyberspates and it is just the softest fibre, it is just fluffy, fluffy clouds. It is a blend of baby alpaca, silk and cashmere, the same fibre that is spun into the angel sock yarn that is available from the Natural dye studio that Bat out Hell kindly knit my swap socks in. I love it.







I bought two plaits both around 70grms and have managed to spin quite a fine yarn so I think I will be able to end up with a lovely 2ply laceweight so I can knit a very pretty neck shawl.





I just love the way these colours have spun up. I can't wait to ply it and wind into a full skein but I think that might have to wait until the weekend as there is quite a lot to ply.

Christmas knitting.................

I had initially just opted to make one knitted gift this year for my Father-in-law for christmas as he had requested some cashmere socks. I went on the hunt for this yarn back in October at Ally Pally and landed on some Seriously Gorgeous Cashmere Silk from Knitwiches.



This has to be one of the softest yarns I have ever knit with and I have to say there were several times when I really wished the socks were for me. The colourway was Forest Moss so I needed to design and appropriately named pattern to go with them. I was also able to apply my newley learned skills of toe-up, magic loop knitting. There was no way I could afford to have one of my usual running out of yarn disasters at the toe again. I very dilegently split my skein into two equal balls and commenced the knitting.

The result was the following pair of Woodland Trail socks, so named to compliment the neat mossy pathways that follow up the socks to the cuff. The cuffs were a 3x3 rib so that they were loose as FIL can't wear anything tight around his ankles.









I also knitted another one of these little cardis that I had done for a friends baby that arrived in July for my brothers daughter. I love the way this knits up and I want to have a go at knitting an adult version of this one.



There was also the hat, handspun and designed especially for Andy, Mr Wool of Bluefaced.com, I am really pleased with this as it is the first time that I actually knit with my own handspun.



Oh and with all that finished well in time for christmas last Saturday I suddenly decided that I wanted to knit up and wear my Hey Teach on Christmas Day. To be fair I was completing the button bands on Christmas morning but I did have it ready to wear in time for lunch at our friends. (This has not yet been blocked.)



The buttons are some cute pewter ones shaped in Celtic Knots that I went around and collected from Robynn of Purlescence on Christmas Eve. I am really pleased with how well it knitted up once I got the hang of how to count the lace repeats from the chart! I also decided to be a little bit different with this being a virral knit and decided that reverse stocking stitch would be better for the plain part of the body. I knitted this up in some Fyberspates Scrumptious DK yarn and it only took 3 skeins to knit, in fact there were 80grms of the third skein left.

I am definately going to knit another one of these. I also wore it over a long sleeve black t-shirt on boxing day along with jeans.

Oh and not to forget of course Carl's christmas present - The Cable Sweater of Doom!



I also had a few knitty and spinny things for christmas too but you will have to wait until the camera has charged up before I can post those!

Open Day at the Natural Dye Studio..................

This weekend was the open weekend at the Natural Dye Studio over in Suffolk.
It was an early start picking up the first contingent in Richmond at 8:15 am ready to circumnavigate the A406, otherwise known as the North Circular. Riding shotgun were, Socktopus, Indieknits, Dianemullholland, Larissa, Froggy and I was driving. First meet up was outside Starbucks so we could make sure we were set up for the day then it was off to find Borders at Brent Cross and then Silver Street Station. The journey up was going to take around three hours.

Well the pick ups went fairly smoothly with only one slight variation to the location of Silver Street Station care of Google maps, for some reason only known to them they chose to locate it in the middle of a housing estate. Anyway without too much trouble we located Larissa and we were off.

We finally arrived at the Natural Dye Studio at around 11:45 to shouts of, "Is the BBQ on yet, I'm starving."

I finally got to meet Andy of Bluefaced.com face to face rather than just through Ravelry and also the lovely Jenni of Fyberspates who had some of the most lucious yarn called scrumptious, it truly was.

So straight into the shop for a look around and some purchases ......










Look at all those lovely socks and yarn, I just stood there staring and druelling, how do you even begin to choose when all the yarn is that delicious.

Well I did manage to find a few things to buy like this little lot......



Yes that is roving in there, and no I don't spin, well not yet anyway, Diane has promised to get me started. It looked so lovely and was so soft I thought it would be a great mini project for summer.


This is the scrumtious that I bought from Jenni and I am going to use it to make Hey Teach from this months Knitty summer surprise patterns. I so adored Sarah's that she is wearing in this picture. It's the little lacey number in red,she's the one standing up.



After some initial purchases, some chatting, knitting and some burgers it was time to pop off to the dyeing room and watch the demo's from Amanda and Jenni. Apologise I forgot to take my camera in for this bit but Indieknits has some great photos on her blog which you can look at here.

I did get one of the dyeing room though......



It was fascintating to watch the process and then see the end resulting yarn.

The yarn hanging out here to dry is the yarn from the dyeing demo which both Alice and I fell in love with and insisted to Amanda that she let us buy it and take it home wet!



Here it is wound up once it was dry.......



And again after I re-skeined it this morning to separate out some of the fibres....



It's a beautiful blend of alpaca, silk and cashmere, all my three favourite yarns in one. That's probably why I also bought a skein in laceweight.



We had a really fantastic day and it was great to go with such a fab bunch of friends, it made the 6 hour round trip worth every minute. I finally arrived home at 10:25pm. Thank you everyone for a great day.

Baby boom........................

Ok there is definately something in the water or someone needs to remove that chair from the staff room as wee little sprogs are popping out left right and centre. Plus there are also family members also about to drop. Having been there, done that, got the t-shirt and had it vomitted on I feel I have some experience to offer, but not today you will be relieved to here. This has put a certain slant on recent knitting projects and knitting purchases. Therefore I have photos to show like this:





and this

I do like to make sure I am organised and have all eventualities covered.

However I did manage to squeeze in this on Saturday at Getknitted.....


.....be it a look a like combination of the above. Maybe it's just baby envy!

I also managed to get one of these...



They are definately not for anything baby at all and are purely selfish and indulgent purchases. I just couldn't resist the softness and the colours of the Fyberspates. Now all I have to do is decide what to knit them into.

Go get knitted..........................................

Well that's what I did on Saturday with a group of other Ravelers. Four of us travelled down by car to Bristol, Robynn, Emma and myself driven by Gabrielle arriving at Get knitted at around 11am where we met up with other Ravelers from around the London and south west area. Some travelled by train and some were lucky enough to have this wonderful Aladins cave as their local yarn shop and hopped on a local bus or even walked around the corner.
On first arriving it was clear that seating may be a bit of an issue. Two sofas were already full and as we arrived so were many others. Ok so we managed to bags the only remaining sofa around the corner from the others. It was later discovered when rummaging at the magazines underneath that we had pitched up at the blokes spot. It is worth pointing out at the furthest point away from this sofa at the other end of the shop was the children's play area! Need I say anymore.
It was great to put so many faces to what up until this point were only Ravelry IDs, these people actually had real names too.

This picture was taken a little later in the afternoon after our lovely lunch but certainly gives a good feel of the day.

So ORK and N0nnah gave Erquesome a little help with colour choice and earned their yarn enablers badges, well done girls.
While this was going on I was raiding the Knitpicks so that I could complete the harmony set that I got for Christmas with some sock needles and some 40cm circulars. These have now been confiscated until my birthday later this week.

Discussions over suitable yarn for something that the Yarnharlot has done were made and colours debated over. This is how some of the yarn ended up here for a decent rummage. I had to confess to not knowing about either this particular yarn or about the pattern - oh well.

And then of course there was lunch.

We trundled off to a lovely little cafe on the same shopping parade called the Dutch pot and I had my first taste of real Carribeann food. We managed to collect Tussahsilk (Jaqui) and Nonnah (Shannon) with us too. Unfortunately the photo I have taken isn't a great one as I didn't quite get everyone in but I did have better luck with Jaqui's camera after I had put half the decorative plant in my mouth so it didn't get in the way! I have to say I hadn't relalised quite how spicy it could be and I was reminded of this on the journey on the way home.
After lunch (quite late I might add) we returned to the shop to munch our way through more of the cake goodies that were on the tables. I can't imagine why I haven't mentioned these before only ever coming second to Yarn! The apple and ginger cake was delicious - thankyou to the baker.
Following a feast of cake Gabirelle indulged in some more enabling where she persuaded Emma to try on one of the knitted samples on display in the store. She then insisted that it be drapped appropriately and although you probably can't quite see her in the picture she is there holding up the pattern book for effective and accurate drapping.

This was an action shot of the drapping, hence the required movements and the small element of blurr.
In addition to my Knitpicks I did make a few further additional purchases which I have not yet had time to photograph. They included some baby yarn that was on sale, blues, pinks and whites depending on what shade the babies turn out. I also picked up two skeins of sock weight yarn aswell as some lovely buttons for my almost finished gloves. Thankyou Emma for your fantastic choice.
All in all it was a fab day and I just want to say thank you again to Gabrielle for driving us all the way there and back, it was greatly appreciated.

A Skirt full of Yarn...............................

Here is my lovely new skirt from Fat face. I love the colours but wanted some accessories and a little shrug to go with it and the tops that I bought (especially as the tops weren't that insiring).
Yarn one.....

Yarn two...

Luckily the Saturday was SnB day so I bought yarn one from the lovely Jenny at Fibrespates and yarn two was already in my stash (a little christmas present last year just waiting for a specail occaision).
Yarn one is going to be a little shrug but as I only bought two skeins (100grms each ) but with a reasonable yardage finding a pattern was going to be a bit of a challenge. I couldn't find anything I really liked without the worry of running out of yarn so I have opted to design my own. I have quite enjoyed the little lace pattern that I have been doing on my socks so I have decided to use that. It is repeated over 8sts so quite easy to follow. I knitted up samlples on both 4mm and then 5mm needles. I think a prefer the 5mm sample as the stitches are more open and it has a fairly good drape to it.
4mm sample

5mm sample


With the stashed yarn I only had one skein available...

.....I decided to go for accessories. I thought I might just get a skinny scarf out of the skien if I was lucky. I used the pattern of the misty alpaca site for their Ribs and Ruffles scarf. Click here and you can download the pattern for free from their site. I adapted it and opted for just 13sts.
Here is the finished article which picks up the colours of the skirt rather well I think.


Other yarn also destined for articles of lovelyness to be worn with this skirt....



I do have a few patterns in mind for these.
For the Debbie Bliss - a collinette Banyan pattern
For the alpaca - Chrysalis by Jean Moss and also Cables and Chains Wrap Jacket from Knit on the net.