Something approaching normal

A new month is just around the corner and for me that means a new notebook and some new design projects. I've been rather taken aback over recent weeks in how much my creativity has taken a nose dive. Looking after DH after his operation, keeping the house going, being the sole parent and taxi service has really taken it out of me. Both of us have been surprised at the impact his recovery has had on us as a family. 

In the run up we were solely focussed on the operation and the logistics of it, barely giving a thought to what would happen afterwards. And the resulting adjustments meant I barely had time for anything else - and my design work was very firmly relegated to the back burner. For me, creativity requires that I am calm and peaceful and have space to myself. Chaos, stress and having other people constantly around is the kiss of death and generally means that all I'm capable of doing is knitting garter stitch  (or crocheting, it seems).

But now as we have turned a corner and DH is becoming much more mobile I feel as though for the first time in weeks I can turn my mind to sock knitting and design work. It's a good feeling and I'm excited to get back to it.

Just 1 more cup of coffee though first.

An exciting prospect

Is there anything more exciting than the feeling when you are getting ready to add a pop of new colour to a project. Or in my case, to add some calm and soothing grey to this wonderful vibrant spring green.

I have a busy day of teaching lined up but I have my evening  (and as much of tomorrow as I can manage) planned out. I have Netflix and a hot date with this shawl to look forward to. I am determined to be able to wear it whilst it is still spring.

And to give me some ideas on how to wear it I'm  going to be using a fun Instagram hashtag starting next week. Use the hashtag #springshawlstyle and let's share some inspiration for how we wear our shawls. 

More details to follow but why not use this weekend to sort through your shawls and pick a few of your favourites to show off this spring.

Under your nose.. .

Sometimes the thing you are looking for is right under your nose the whole time.

For the past week or so you may have seen that I have been enjoying working on my corner to corner crochet blanket - some may say this has bordered on obsession - but as I am powering through my sock yarn stash it has to be a good thing.

I have decreed that this blanket shall be full of light, bright colours - think spring garden flowers. Colours that make me think happy seasonal thoughts. Especially if I can eat happy, seasonal chocolate at the same time. The only problem is that my sock yarn stash contains rather a lot of grey. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am a huge fan of grey - just not in this particular blanket.

And so I have spent a rather embarrassing amount of time online this week looking for pretty, pink speckled yarns. Not my usual choice for my design work but yarn which is just the ticket for this ridiculously addictive blanket.

Imagine my surprise then, when a chance rootle through my stash drawers came up with this perfect pink speckled yarn from last years The Golden Skein. At the time I didn’t know what to do with it (other than pet it) and so it was tucked away lovingly into my stash.

And now it’s time has come. The stash has revealed it at just the right time and so within 5 minutes the yarn was wound and I was gleefully adding it into my blanket.

DH has taken to referring to me working on my blanket as my ‘feeding the monster’ - so quickly does yarn disappear into the thing. And I think he is quite heartened at the rate my sock yarn scraps are dwindling. Although he doesn’t realise that the drawers where I keep my stash are a far bigger monster and empty space within it is not to be tolerated - more yarn will need to be purchased and soon, to feed it.

The Fuss Free Festival Shawl

For this new shawl design I was lucky enough to be able to collaborate with Leona of Rusty Ferret yarns and Gem of The Little Grey Girl. Leona created an exclusive Edinburgh colourway of Rusty Ferret and Gem had her exclusive project bag to go with it.

I have created a shawl design especially to compliment this spectacular yarn and with yarn that's such fun garter stitch is the only way to go. The pattern is now available to purchase on Revelry or it is free for a limited time to my newsletter subscribers. 

The Fuss Free Festival Shawl is designed to be the perfect shawl to cast on at a knitting festival. You've snagged that perfect skein of yarn and some obliging soul has wound it into a cake for you. All you want to do is cast on, rest your aching feet and knit on a nice soothing project. Lots of garter stitch and easy to remember increases make this project for festival times. The slipped stitch border gives great structure and drape to the shawl and the finished item has a fabulous, relaxed crescent shape which is eminently wrappable and easy to wear. A picot bind off adds a touch of interest but is easily omitted if you would prefer to leave it plain.

It is easily customisable to suit the yarn you have. I am making a larger size right now by adding a contrast colour as stripes and I'm excited to see how big it can go.

I'd love to see your yarn choices for this. If you do cast it on please let me know or tag me on sick media.

If Knitters Ruled the World

A casual conversation online the other day sparked the idea for this blog post. We were casually chatting about politics, and putting the world to rights in general and one of us commented that "If knitters ruled the world they would make a much better job of it".

That thought has been buzzing around in my head for several days now and I can't help but think that there are many things we take for granted in the knitting community, that if they were routinely practiced in the everyday world, would make it a much better place to be.

For example, with tongue ever so slightly in cheek and in no particular order I give you

1. Posting a picture online of something you had accomplished or were proud of (analogous to posting an FO picture) would elicit supportive comments and genuine praise from those around you. It would be generally accepted by the community you were part of that if they couldn't say anything nice about something, then they would simply refrain from comment. There would be no snarkiness, no attempts to outdo your post with something fabulous they had done and no suggestions about how they would have done it better.
2. The accepted response to someone being in difficulties, depressed or generally feeling down would be to give them a hug, a cup of tea and some cake. Yarn would also be nice. There would be no attempts to solve their problems for them, to tell them how to 'pull themselves together' or to make them feel worse about their situation. There would be tea, sympathy and no judging.
3. It would be perfectly acceptable, indeed positively expected for you to whip out your needles and knit at every available opportunity. There would be no assumptions that simply because your hands were moderately occupied your ears, eyes and brain were not capable of being fully focussed on the task or conversation in hand. This type of multi-skilling would merely be recognised for the efficient use of time that it is.
4. All telephones would automatically have a hands-free option and saucepans would be self-stirring. It would really help if cars were self steering too but having seen some of the news coverage of driverless cars I'm reserving judgement on this.
5. Ice cream vans would be replaced by Yarn on Wheels. Little mobile LYS's on wheels who would regularly rock up in your neighbourhood and have a permanent and inexhaustable supply of needle tips, buttons, tape measures and stitch markers - all the things that you seem to run out of on a regular basis. They could keep the jaunty jingle though.

In general I think that more cake, more tea and more yarn is the solution to more problems that we admit. If we just extended the tolerance, support and friendship of our online community into the wider world I am firmly convinced that knitters really could make the world a better place.

Maths fail

I know it would ordinarily be obvious to anyone who was thinking straight but in my defence I was overcome by yarn fumes and the strong urge of spring startitis.

Crochet, as we all know uses up more yarn than knitting. Which makes it ideal for stashbusting purposes - although careful planning can be needed to ensure you don’t run out of yarn.

When starting my corner to corner crochet blanket I thought briefly about joining up all my scraps into a large magic ball and just letting the colours change as they fell naturally. That was far too easy of course and didn’t quite suit the way my brain works so, after a bit of experimentation I decided to go for two rows of each colour to produce a striped effect.

So far, so good.

The problem is of course, I’m sure you following at the back have already picked this up, is that as the rows get longer I am going to need a lot more yarn. And I mean A Lot more. The average mini skein has 20g yarn (approx 80m) and much of my scrap yarn doesn’t weigh more than this either. My blanket is currently measuring 50cm along the two long sides and I am already using up about 15g yarn per stripe.

It doesn’t take a maths genius to figure this out, but it has taken me two days. Draw your own conclusions. But, as the loveable Baldrick of Blackadder fame would say “I have a cunning plan”.

Short of abandoning my perfectionist scruples and switching to a magic ball philosophy, the next best thing is to make my blanket from 4 panels. I will work the first panel until the stripe takes up 20g yarn and then start the decreases. Based on where I am now I estimate that each panel will be 60cm (24") square - giving me a decent sized lap blanket of 120 x 120cm (47 x 47"). I will end up with lots of small bits of yarn which will be ideal for adding into the other 3 squares - ensuring that the blanket still has a cohesive feel.

This also has the happy accident of keeping the project high on the portability stakes. Rendering a project perfect for ‘sofa knitting only’ is the kiss of death for many of my long term projects, and this way I can still carry it along with me (and it can come on holiday with me too).