Christmas is around the corner

Hello all,

I seem to have lost the month of November due to my rapid Christmas knitting for family. I love having a skill which means that I can provide truly unique gifts for my family members. I often look to Ravelry for knitspiration and find projects that suits everyone perfectly. Last year I was able to find a pattern for a toy Starship Enterprise and made that up for my dad as he was a Star Trek fan. He loved it and it is proudly hung on the Christmas tree.

You'll be happy to know that I have almost completed all of the required items and I can start focusing on designing and knitting for myself again :) I am really into cable knitting at the moment. I love the effects that can be achieved using this technique and I am hoping to be the proud owner of some new fingerless mittens soon as mine are pretty done for.

I will be displaying my handmade Christmas bunting in my home in preparation for the big day. Inspiration came in the middle of summer (bit odd but there we go). I started to thing about my holiday projects and dreaming about advent calendars. I thought about how I would love to have bigger chocolates each day as opposed to the tiny ones found in the shop brought ones and the only way around this would be to make my own advent calender. I didn't have a stocking as a child and I felt to make it up to myself I would make 24 mini ones as a bunting. 

I found the gorgeous Milla Mia yarn and a beautiful bunting was born. The pattern was in last months Inside Crochet and I really like this piece. I will be putting it up very soon........I don't want to wait for 12 days before Christmas 

I hope all of your festive projects are going well. I will be going to TOFT's open day on the 20th December with the family. It looks great as there are many demonstrations and also the opportunity to halter walk alpaca's (how exciting). The Cornflower Cafe is also amazing and well worth a visit too. I am hoping to be there with a lovely cream tea or a salted caramel cake..............perhaps by that point I wont care and I'll have both. 

Right...back to these mittens!!!!!!!

Until next time

Happy crafting

Sarah

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Lounge Around Socks

Hello all

As you are all aware I have the curse of the freezing cold feet. I do love a pair of socks to chill out it and to keep my toes toasty. 

I felt that I had understood the basics of knitting socks that I wanted to challenge myself further. I had never crocheted a sock until I created this pattern. I very quickly found that the knitted and crocheted sock rules differed. For a start, with a knitted sock you tend to need to use smaller needles. If a smaller hook is used, the sock would become so tight that you cannot get it over your ankle!............which I sadly discovered by experience when I managed to cut the circulation from my foot. The only solution seemed to be to use a much larger hook size than recommended with the yarn. 

When crocheting, the pattern forms a spiral which was apparent in the yarn that I used. I absolutely love West Yorkshire Spinner's yarn and wanted to make a pair of socks in the bull finch colour. The way to compensate for this was to make the first sock starting with the hook on the inside and then have the hook on the outside for the second sock. That way the decreases and the stripes were on opposite sides so that they looked like a pair. 

I love the pattern as it combines working in the rounds with working straight which makes it really interesting. Hopefully, it will avoid second sock syndrome. 

The socks are really comfy and I was chuffed with the end result. I want to thank Inside Crochet for publishing the pattern in their latest magazine. 

I am truly in the knitting festive spirit. I have ordered some of my family members yarn and began the Christmas projects. Hopefully I can get them all dome before the big day :s

Until next time

Happy Crafting

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Holiday socks

Hello all,

I love summer holidays! Enjoying the sun and wearing all your favourite summer accessories. However, when I go away with my family it is never in the summer. Cost is always a factor and so our holidays tend to be towards the end of September. Not only do we go when it's colder...but we also like to stay in a freezing cold caravan. However, there is a positive spin to it all....it makes the time leading up to the break brilliant for a knitter. 

Most people going on holiday will shop for new clothes or accessories. I on the other hand find lovely things that I would like to make. I have a long list of things and I hope my poor hands can endure then endless projects I want to knit. 

I am happy to announce that my freezing feet will not suffer in the caravan as I have knitted a new pair of socks. The gorgeous yarn was from West Yorkshire Spinners and it is the in the Country Bird range. My particular socks are 'pheasant' as apparently the colours seen are similar to this bird. The magical yarn stripes itself creating a great false fair isle effect. I used a basic pattern provided from Rachel Coopey at a brilliant sock workshop I attended at Guthrie and Ghani. I have booked myself onto their knitting in colours in the round workshop which I am really excitted about by the way. 

It was not all plain sailing. I completed the first sock and noticed I was 2 stitches short. After I had grafted the end........disaster struck!!!!! I could see the 2 dropped stitches quite early on in the piece. This brought much sadness as I had to frog (unpick) my work back to this point to repair. Most knitters have second sock syndrome. In this case...........I had third sock syndrome.

I worked on these socks at the Toft knit night and at another knitting group I attend called Sip and Stitch. This is on a Saturday 11am-1pm at Stitch Solihull. This is a gorgeous shop which is even open on a Sunday!!!!!!. It stocks high quality yarn and knitting supplies. Check out their website for more details and look at the workshops too. I am hoping to go to a more advance Tunisian crochet workshop soon. Eventually I had made my beautiful socks. I now need to meet with my sister to find a new set of pyjamas that will match them. 

As it will only be slightly colder it's too soon to wear my Super Moss stitch cowl...................maybe I need to make another cowl before my holiday. Now I did attend that hyacinth cowl workshop at Toft and I do have the luxurious extra fine yarn to make it up with. Check out the end result next time. 

Until then

Happy crafting

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