Tuesday 15 October 2013

Deadlines and Christmas Jumper part 1

Hello all,

Hope you are well. I have had a busy week full of deadlines. You will hopefully see some more of my patterns soon (fingers crossed). I am also involved with a volunteer organisation in my area who are intending to yarn bomb a nursery to raise awareness of children's well being. This will be the first bit of yarn bombing that I have done. If there is a piccy, I will post it, My urgent deadlines have been achieved so I am now able to update my blog :)

I have had more orders for minions and I learnt about a new character called 'Totoro'. One of the crocheted minion has been mentioned on a blog (http://williamsandcole.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/one-in-a-minion/) How cool is that !!!!! I am also going to be working on two cowl and baby gifts. In the mists of all of this I have began work on my knitted Christmas jumper.

Phase 1 of selecting a jumper has been successful. Looking through 'Merry Christmas Jumpers to Knit' by Sue Stratford, I have decided that I would like a reindeer jumper :).I think, if I am to a make a Christmas jumper, I may as well go all out.

 The 2nd phase on this knitting adventure is to work out what size I am. I tried to use measuring tape on myself but worked out it is a two person job very quickly. This was after I tripped over it :s However, after speaking to my dad, he came up with the idea to measure a jumper I own and that fits. I have quickly realised my arms are a lot longer than the pattern was written for so i need to remember this when making the sleeves. After much confusion, I have decided to go with a large.

.Phase 3, to buy the yarn. I am a big supporter of natural fibres and like to use them where possible. I referred to a great yarn shopping website (www.woolwarehouse.co.uk) and decided to use Rico Cotton. I have ordered if (with some extra) and can't wait to get started soon :)

If you are at a loss on Friday and are near Coventry, feel free to come along to knit night. It is held in Esquires Coffee House in Coventry and you are able to enjoy free entertainment from a group called Down the Rabbit Hole (@catonthejam). The knit night runs from 7pm to 9pm and all skill levels are welcome. Please bring your own yarn and needles as it cannot be provided on the night.

That's all for now

Happy crafting :)

Sarah

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Friday 11 October 2013

Busy Busy Busy

Hello all,

This has been a very busy week. I have had more minions to make, 4 orders for scarves and a craft table to think about :s

First of all a quick update on my Christmas Jumper, I have yarn :). I ordered it from www.woolwarehouse.co.uk. the prices on this website is great and my order arrived the next day. I would recommend this to anyone. There is the option to buy acrylic and natural yarns. I have worked out as well where I can add rows to make the sleeves fit me better. The next step is to knit a tension square, which will be on hold until next week.

I attended the Wool Party at TOFT on thursday. It was nice as we could see some of the new yarn which is made out of wool as opposed to alpaca fleece. It was a great evening as there was tea and cakes and a great group. We tried to catch up with our UFO's but tea and chatting took over. I would advise you to attend a knit night at TOFT so you can meet the gang and also look at the great range of yarn available.

Knit night at Esquires Coffee shop went well last Friday. I had a lovely group who were knitters and crocheters. I even had someone interested in learning basic Tunisian Crochet. My group is special as we have some Deaf Sign Language users. I am fortunate that I am a signer so communication is not an issue. 

I had two orders where I did not have the correct colours. I was fortunate that I went to Derby and came across a knitting shop called 'Wren's' The staff are friendly and there is a good variety of yarn colours. You can even buy neon colours if you like. However, I was most impressed that they held pretty much every colour available in the Style craft range. I was able to get the colour needed for my bespoke cowl and also I got some acrylic wool to make a scarf that is in the colours of West Brom football club. I would recommend a visit.

I have been working on the West Brom scarf first as I know it will take the longest. I decided that since I have brought DK wool, that I would double it up to make it chunkier. However, this is proving to be difficult as the yarn keeps knotting up. Meaning this project is taking longer that anticipated.aaarrrrggghhh

I have now added to my stall stock winter headbands. They are made out of Rowan Big Wool so are lovely and warm. Speaking of my stall, I have two events this weekend. The first is in Nuneaton and the second is in Rugby. For both of these events I am sharing a stall with my friend Kazam Jewellery (www.kazamjewellery.co.uk) who makes lovely pieces of work. check out her website for more.

The craft fair at Nuneaton is Saturday 10am-3.30pm at the Nuneaton URC Church, Chapel Street, Nuneaton, Warwickshire CV11 5QH. there are about 15 different stalls and entry is free.

On Sunday come to The Rugby Hotel, Sheep Street,  CV21 3BX 11am-2pm. This is again a free event so come on down and support local crafts.

Hopefully I will see you at the weekend at the craft fairs but if not, happy crafting until next time :)

Sarah Coad
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Thursday 10 October 2013

Winter's Coming

This week I have been playing with chunky wool to make scarves :). I have found a great yarn for this to be Rowan Big Wool. I particularly love the orange and purple in this range. I wanted my items to be made with one ball of yarn to keep costs down. 

The first design is a moss stitch scarf. I knitted it on straight needles, which was no problem. As I feel that my sewing is a not a great strength, I attempted to knit this on the round. I did not realise that you do not knit on a knit stitch and it is actually the opposite way round. I kept on making errors and ending up with a rib stitch instead so reverted back to the straight needles.  It is a shorter scarf in size but it is really warm and snug to wear.

After this, I decided to make a scarf that was longer in length. I was missing my crochet hook so though I would crochet one :) I have grown to like a wavy chervon pattern so that is what I have used as the pattern on my scarf :) I think this turned out well and I am happy with it. I have attached pictures of my scarves

I am off on holiday tomorrow to Weymouth with the family. It is apparent that my addiction is still present as I have already begun making a list of the local wool shops to visit :) Hope the family haven't made too many of their own plans :s I may also stop at a shop in Salisbury if I am lucky as my brother lives there and we are collecting him :) I hope I am not the only knitter who does this :s

Whilst away I will hopefully have 3 project. The first a commissioned one the second is knitted spiders and the final is Christmas items ready for my next craft fair. I still can't decided if it is took soon from Christmas good in an October craft fair but we will see. Can't wait to work on them all.

I am sure that I will have a lot to write about when I am back. So until then, happy crafting :)

Sarah 

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Sunday 6 October 2013

Back from my Holiday

Hello all,

I am back from my holiday with the family to Weymouth. It was a great trip and lovely to spend the holiday with my close family members. Whilst away I have still been doing my crafting and visited many local wool shops. 

The first I visited was on the way to Weymouth in Salisbury. It is a beautiful shop called 'Born to Knit'. The shelves are stack high with a lot of beautiful yarn. The shop itself encourages knitters and crocheters to use beautiful natural fibres. There is an excellent range of colours and different weighted yarn available  You can find Rowan, Debbie Bliss and Artesano wool here and many many more. Whatever your project is, you are bound to find gorgeous wool that will really add to it. I have brought some lovely Debbie Bliss cotton from here and have a new project in mind for this already. My brother, James Reed (who has a blog http://jreedguitar.wordpress.com/ by the way), lives in the area so I am sure to visit this shop again. I love the knitted bear present outside the shop. For all the products in this shop please look at their website http://www.borntoknit.co.uk/. The shop even offers one to one tuition, check out their page for more. I have included a picture of the shop below.

Once in Weymouth, I visited their local shop called 'Spin a Yarn' the website is http://www.spinayarnweymouth.co.uk/. This shop has a good range of Acrylic and some natural fibre yarn. The owner is nice and willing to give advice, if needed. Here I found chunky Wendy Cotton yarn, which I had not seen before. As you can guess, I have brought this and have a little project in mind.

The final shop that I had the opportunity to visit was 'Yarn' in Bridport. This is a spacious shop which has a vast range of yarns that are made up of natural and natural with a bit of acrylic fibres. It is a lovely shop to browse around and easy to navigate. They even have a comfortable sofa for the poor non-yarn addict to rest on, this was great as it gave me plenty more time to browse. They stock wool including Rico, Artesano, Rooster to name a few. I had never come across Rooster Almerino until I came to this shop and fell in love with it. It is so soft and the colour range is excellent. The shop owner knows when you want to be left to browse and when to offer advice and guidance. She seemed extremely knowledgeable and friendly.  I wish I lived nearer the shop but it is great to know that they have a website (http://bridportyarn.co.uk/) where I can order from. Also the owner has a friend who lives near Bedworth (my home) so maybe I can get my orders delivered by hand :p The wool I brought can be seen below 

I also browsed the charity shops and picked up a couple of knitting book. One covers Fair Isle knitting so I am hoping to get a few pointers from there and others were stitch guides for inspiration 

 I have now decided to be brave and knit my first jumper. This will be no ordinary jumper but a Christmas one :) I am a proud owner of Sue Stratford's latest book 'Merry Christmas Sweaters to Knit'. I tend to find that my arms do not quite fit regular jumpers, so hopefully if I make it myself, I can adapt the jumper slightly to make it fit. I will be blogging about this project regularly so you can keep up to date with my progress. 

Overall a busy holiday but very enjoyable :)

Until next time happy crafting 

Sarah 

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