a new year, same old me :-)

Hi

Well that was exciting. I spent the New Year break pretty much on my own as my man has a really bad cough and hasn't ventured out of bed since early Friday evening.

I did some housework Saturday morning then decided that I would spend my time chilling and catching up on some craft work as well as having a bit of a turf out in my work room.

The yarn for the next kep is spun and washed, I'm taking past in a Fair Isle Fisherman Kep knit-a-long starting next week just for a bit of fun. I've yet to sort out a design but will have a look at that tomorrow.

so, this is Jacob, Ryland and Manx loaghtan ready to be balled up, I just have to decide which grey to use.

Slow progress on the hat and I'm still choosing the patterns as I knit along. This was going to be a short, normal size hat but I think I will knit it up to kep length as I'm enjoying it so much.

I have some embroidery planned ( in my head) so not much to show but I did spin some silk to use in it, just a small amount spun on a drop spindle.

This is from a silk 'brick' that I bought many years ago at one of the big embroidery shows, I've been chipping away at it over the years but there is still plenty left.

Well, that's about it, the weather is cold wet and damp and I was in bed before the fireworks started last night.

I hope you all had a good New Year xx

an interesting day

ok, sort of boring title just a little short on snappy captions at this time of night! Strange start to the day as after a night of -C temperatures and a heavy frost, an ice cream van parked up outside our house. Methinks that they were being optimistic!!!

I grabbed Ians runaround bus ticket this afternoon and headed off to town to take some library books back and pop into Knitty Gritty to catch up with the gossip from Lizzi and check out the wool in the shop.

Lizzi is currently encouraging people to knit hearts to be sold as brooches with all proceeds to raise money for the people of Haiti, a simple pattern is available and the brooches are being sold on her stall. Hopefully I will make a few to add to the collection :-)

Lizzi also mentioned that Debbie Bryan had a knitting workshop on this afternoon so I headed over to take a look round her shop. Debbie has been encouraging fellow craft workers to use Lace as in inspiration for their work and her shop offers many examples for sale along side other crafts and framed lace designs ( pen and ink designs drawn for use on lace making machines rather than bobbin lace) Very appropriately, Debbie's Studio is in the Lace Market area on Nottingham

I have been plying two recently spindle spun threads,



practising my knitting again



and playing with my laminator, this is throwsters silk waste trapped in the laminated plastic... going to play with this idea a bit more.



oohh, I also found this for £2.29 in a local charity shop!



Have a great weekend :-)

todays title is....

Suspended.


You may recognise these little birds, they seem to still pop up from time to time:-)



handstitched on wool background with embellished silk fibres.

Check out Todays Title is to see what everyone else is doing.

sneaky preview

a sneaky look at a small project on my desk, angora wool (goat)de gummed silk coccoons and wild silk thread.