the days are getting colder, wool is warm :-)

 We have just two more trips planned for this year and we are keeping our fingers crossed that they can still go ahead. So, for the time being, its back to business as usual. Mittens have again been in demand and hopefully I will get all these ends sewn in tomorrow. ( day trip planned, of interest to knitters so watch for next post)

I had a simple 1x1 rib hat as car knitting last weekend and I need to do about 3 more inches before shaping the crown.

Also on the needles is the start of a fair isle beanie.

The lovely Jacob from Modern Folk Embroidery has assigned November as black sampler month, work on any sampler as long as its black. He has some amazing designs and also has a really informative you tube channel . I was lucky enough to have a long zoom conversation with him earlier this year and his knowledge of samplers is astounding. As he is Dutch, some of his collection are different to the standard English/American samplers usually seem.

Anyway, I had a look through the early issues of The Gift of Stitching. This digital magazine, is no longer in exitance but I was able to buy all 70 issues for under £30 as pdf and there are enough patterns that I like for me to justify the purchase ( plus I used birthday monies ) I found a small Quaker inspired sampler perfect for this stitch challenge. Then ,me being me, I started it early !! 

Sshhh, don't tell Jacob that I cheated haha :-)

So now I have two red things and a black thing on the go ! I'm trying to get ahead as November is also Wovember on Instagram with daily photo prompts which I will probably share on here as well. I think that it will be similar to the lace month that I did back in January? My instagram link is here and if you scroll back aways you will find a lot of daily lace photos from the beginning of the year.

Finally, I did some shopping on the Lace suppliers spotlight page again. This time its a pattern for a small piece of lace to fit into a ruler. Pattern by Sally-Anne Smiddy. I will get round to it eventually.

The day we caught the train

 Last weekend we made a quick dash to Cornwall to catch up with friends who we hadn't seen since June 2019. Many arrangements had been made to visit last year but due to the obvious disruption we were never in  or allowed to be in the right place at the right time.

We arrived around tea time on Friday so the evening was spent catching up with the gossip however, with good weather forecast for Saturday, we started to make plans for a day out. Eventually we decided on catching the train to St Ives, a short but scenic journey.

St Ives is a traditional Cornish fishing village full of narrow alleys as the houses hide behind each over seeking cover from winter storms.

You can see from this aerial view how close the buildings are.

The town is a very popular tourist destination with museum, Tate art gallery and many small shops. We sampled the ice creams (excellent ) as well as the odd sausage roll, had a look round the museum and the harbour.

All too soon it was time to catch the train back but we stopped for a coffee first. Stunning view from the coffee shop window, just a shame that someone had already beaten us to the best seats.

I promise that the next post will be back to knitting and spinning xx

A bit of a woolly week

 I had planned to stitch on the other red thing this week but then had a request for some mittens and dyed yarn so I made it a spinny/knitty week instead.

As I had some combed fibre oddments hanging around I spun them together and overdyed in the slow cooker and also dyed a couple of small skeins of Romney whilst I was at it.

Then I cast on some mittens using some oddments left over from knitting hats.

As I now had my knitty head on, I finished the Ryeland hat and the Tam ( Shetland and Texel)

                                                 I'm pleased with the crown design.

The result is that I now have very few little large skeins of spun yarn left so I guess its back to fleece prep and spinning next week.

But I did get to put a stitch or two into the other red thing.

My next task is to cast on an easy hat to knit in the car on our next trip, sort out some yarn for more mittens, sort out fleece stash for some white and dark fleece to blend together as I like the effect of dye on the 'mottled' yarn.

Speak soon xx

Who said that Summer could end ?

 Two days ago I was still wearing my normal cut off trousers and tops and today I'm in long skirt, jumper and (shock horror) socks !! I don't think I've worn socks for at least 3 maybe 4 months and the tan lines on my feet clearly show which sandals I've been wearing. But its raining and its the last day of September.

At the start of the first lockdown I made myself a monthly list of daily , weekly jobs so I could tick them a off and get some sort of routine established. This worked fine last year but I've got a bit lazy in the last few months, haven't picked up the mandolin to practise along with a few small chores.

So I'm back on the list ready for October.

Anyway, on with the craft.

This week I'm mainly stitching and knitting, stitching as I want to get as far as I can with the red thing before starting the black thing ( see blog 30.8 ) even though cross stitch linen and evenweave seems to be in short supply I have found a piece just big enough in my stash. I may lightly overdye with tea first,

Knitting wise I'm just knocking up a plain hat in the Ryeland spun whilst on holiday, Pig of a pattern for me simply as it has a 4x4 rib and my normal is 1x1 or 2x2. This means that I have had to make several corrections with a crochet hook due to forgetting how far to count,

update 2.10

Red thing, I've now stitched the first two pages so I may have to put it away for a week whilst I work on my other red thing :-)

the thread is 'redder' in real life  (or maybe its the screen on my laptop )but you get a sense of where I am with it.

On the subject of stitching, I had my sewing machine out to quickly zigzag the edge of some fabric so I decided to finish the small sampler from earlier this year into another small pillow.

So now I have an autumn themed mini to go with my witch pillows.

The Ryeland hat is coming along nicely now and has been handy to knit during the occasional zoom meeting.

Hopefully this will be finished during the next week. I had the spinning wheel out briefly this morning and managed 60 gm of Texel and will probably spin the same tomorrow. I still have a mountain of fleece to work through plus I want to dye some yarn next week so that I have some basic hat knitting to do on our next car journey,

That's about it for this week, the weather is really wet and dreary so I won't be going far for the next few days,

Speak soon, take care xx