Nigel's Parrot

Hello all, 

I hope you are all well and enjoying the summer. I can't believe it's August tomorrow eekkkk. this can only mean one thing.....Christmas is fast approaching us all!!!! panic!!! I guess it's time to get the creative hat on and start making Christmas gifts. I also have a wedding to go to and a friend has a baby on the way. There is so much to do in such little time. 

I am proud to announce that I have recently had my pattern 'Nigel's Parrot' published in  Inside crochet. This pattern was first created last year, when my other half and I went to Bird World. It was just a normal trip until we went to a part where parrots were roaming free on branches. Nigel decided to feed a parrot but then the parrot took a shine to him. The parrot proceeded to crawl on his shoulder and remove a button from Nigel's top shirt. After a while the parrot spat out the button but did not move from Nigel's shoulder. We tried to move the parrot with food and also Nigel stood by a branch to try and encourage it to move. The parrot was having the time of his life and just swapped which of Nigel's shoulder he sat on. After 30 minutes  we had to get a zoo keeper to remove the parrot. I felt  a memento of such a funny event was needed and so I made Nigel a parrot. 

I didn't realize that the parrot had so many colours around it's face, chest and tail. The easiest way to tackle this was to make a flat piece which I sewed onto the main part of the body. I felt it captured the main parts of the parrot. It was fun selecting the colours from Drops Safran yarn. They have a great color pallet to work with so matching it to the parrot was easy. 

I hope you enjoy the pattern as much as I enjoyed them. I have also popped new patterns on Ravelry which are of other animal's I have designed such as a cat, dog and bear. 

Over the weekend I was in Salisbury visiting the family and popped into Born to Knit. It is a very sweet shop based in a craft centre. They had a wide range of colours available to select. There was Rowan, Patron and Debbie Bliss yarn. I have made some good selections and will be playing with a design soon. 

Right....better get on with Christmas patterns......

Until next time

Happy crafting

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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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