Your Knitting Or Crochet Hero :: 3KCBWDAY3 ::

Your Knitting Or Crochet Hero
Blog about someone in the fibre crafts who truly inspires you. There are not too many guidelines for this, it's really about introducing your readers to someone who they might not know who is an inspiration to you. It might be a family member or friend, a specific designer or writer, indie dyer or another blogger. If you are writing about a knitting designer and you have knitted some of their designs, don't forget to show them off. Remember to get permission from the owner if you wish to use another person's pictures.

In truth I’m inspired and influenced by many talented people, but I think the mother of them all, cliched as it may be, has to be Elizabeth Zimmerman.

I come from a very DIY-inspired family. My Dad was a marine engineer and was DIY personified. Although his talents didn’t stretch to actually building our house, a huge proportion of the things in our family home had his mark upon them. He installed and varnished our hardwood flooring and skirting boards, turned our attic into a usable space with plumbing, refit our bathrooms, built our garden sheds… The list is endless. My 16th birthday present from my parents was a complete bedroom refit, and my Dad did every bit of it himself, from the flooring, to the fitted wardrobe, to the walls. B&Q was his second home (or perhaps that was the golf course), and I always felt like his handiness had no bounds. If he didn’t know how to fix or build something, he’d sit down, plan it out, and figure things out until he could.

Similarly my Mum has a totally resourceful, “can do” approach to everything. The number of times I experienced utter exasperation as a child whenever I expressed a longing for something, only to be told “that’s very easy to make, we can do it ourselves!” As exasperated as those words made me as a child, they’ve stood me in good stead, and to this day I’m always keen to have a go at doing things myself. Well, almost, sometimes it’s nice to take a shortcut.

But I think it’s also why Elizabeth Zimmerman’s writing appeals to me so much. She has a very no nonsense, “can do” approach to knitting. It’s empowering. She advocates “unventing”, experimenting, having a go, experimenting some more, and not being afraid of your knitting. If it doesn’t work, rip it back, but don’t be afraid to try. I think out of all crafts, knitting (and crochet) have the most flexibility in terms of experimentation. Most yarns can stand being reknit dozens of times if things don’t quite go to plan. Some yarns can even be re-joined once the ends have been broken, but the same can’t be said of fabric once it’s been cut for sewing, or paper once folded for origami. Other crafts have their perks, but there is a finality about them that is absent from knitting and crochet.

So I look up to Elizabeth Zimmerman for opening my eyes to the woolly possibilities,

but it seems that I also have my parents to thank for giving me an outlook that embraces craftiness so well.

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Photography Challenge Day :: 3KCBWDAY2 ::

Photography Challenge Day!
Today challenges you to be creative with your photography, and get yourself in with the chance to win the photography prize. Taking interesting photographs in this instance isn't about flashy cameras or a great deal of technical know-how, it's about setting up a story or scene in a photograph and capturing something imaginative. Your photograph(s) should feature something related to your craft, so that might be either a knitted or crocheted item, yarn, or one of your craft tools. One example of setting a scene would be to photograph a girl in a knitted red cape walking through the woodlands with a basket of goodies, as in the Red Riding Hood tale, or you might photograph a knitted gnome hiding among the flowers in your garden. Photo editing is permitted for competition photos. Here are a few examples of my own photographs to illustrate an imaginative use of photography, but you can do much better than these...

Oh how I struggled with this topic! I racked my brains all day yesterday, but by the time I got the vaguest semblance of an idea there wasn’t enough light to take any photographs. The light today hasn’t been much better (thanks, rain!) but I did manage a few snaps so I’m putting this up today and hoping that no rules are being broken or bent. Judging by the quality of the entries I’ve seen, this is certainly no prize contender, but I thought a little yarn-evolution picture could be fun. So here it is, from fluff to yarn to ball to needles.

I couldn’t resist another picture, because hand wound balls of handspun yarn are just the prettiest things!

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Colour Lovers ::3KCBWDAY1::

So it’s here at last! Knitting & Crochet Blog Week, Year 3. I love the concept of this event, and every year I start with the best intentions to plan out my posts in advance and schedule everything so that it all pops up on time, and it’s never once happened. Surprise surprise, it still hasn’t happened this year, but let’s see if I do any better than my previous efforts!

Colour Lovers
Colour is one of our greatest expressions of ourselves when we choose to knit or crochet, so how do you choose what colours you buy and crochet or knit with. Have a look through your stash and see if there is a predominance of one colour. Do the same with your finished projects - do they match? Do you love a rainbow of bright hues, or more subdued tones. How much attention do you pay to the original colour that a garment is knit in when you see a pattern? Tell readers about your love or confusion over colour.

I love colour. I love creating it, playing with it, exploring it. The rich, vivid hues of freshly dyed mawata silk hankies drying on the line make my heart sing.

And out of all colours, I’ve always had a weakness for blue.

I just can’t resist those deep, jewel tones and bright, fresh hues, and a glance at my stash definitely reveals my bias towards this end of the colour spectrum.

But as much as I love intense, vivid colours, a lot of the time I seem to gravitate towards neutrals for my knitting. Greys, browns and creams have such a natural, classic beauty to them.

They are simple and timeless. And of course, they go with everything! Which is a great thing when I’m bleary eyed in the morning, and running out of the door with the first scarf that I had to hand…

And out of all the neutrals, grey is my firm favourite.

But a pop of colour is always welcome.

 

I just wanted to give a little shout out before I go. I haven’t been online much for the past week or two because I broke my glasses and the lens coating on my other pair is all scuffed, and going through life with one perma-blurry eye is not fun! I’ve been getting some wicked headaches and eye strain so I’ve been trying not to stare at screens too much, but this week seems as good as any to jump back into things.

During my absence I’ve been lucky enough to have been awarded the Versatile Blogger award again, not once but twice! The first was from Michelle over at Will Knit for Food, whose blog is one that I discovered only recently but is already a firm favourite. She has the most beautiful photographs and her blog is filled with wonderful sewing and knitting projects. I am in so much awe of her sewing skills! The second was from Laura of Sudden Expressions, whose blog I’ve been following for a while. She’s so sweet and friendly, has such a fantastic variety of knitting projects, and she dyes absolutely beautiful yarn! Check out these lovelies! So a huge thank you to those ladies, I’m very flattered and grateful. As I already did a Versatile Blogger post last month I won’t bore you all with another one, but feel free to check it out if you want to.

And also check out all the other Colour Lover blog posts by searching 3KCBWDAY1. Enjoy!

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a prize in the post

Remember the SolidSocks Ravelry group with the bi-monthly KALs that I’m always banging on about? Well, one of the great things about that group is that each of the KALs is sponsored, and if you finish your socks within the two months and post your pic to the group you get entered into a prize draw to win something from the lovely sponsors. Now, I can count the number of times I’ve ever won anything on one hand. The first prize I can ever remember winning was a beautiful doll in a sapphire blue velvet dress that I won after having the closest guess at the number of Smarties in a jar at a school fete when my age was still in single digits. My second prize was a set of paints I won during a colouring in contest one summer in Singapore when I was still of a single digit age. To be honest, I don’t even remember entering, all I remember is sitting at the kitchen table as my Mum placed a set of Bebe branded paints in front of me and told me I’d won them in a colouring in contest. In retrospect, that could well have been one of those parental white lies told to keep me happy and quiet in the midst of a very long summer, but I’ve always believed that I won them so it stands as my prize number two. And last weekend when I logged onto Ravelry, I discovered that my Galileo socks had won me prize number three.

To say I was giddy with glee would be an understatement. If you don’t believe me, the Boy can attest to my bouncing round the kitchen and squealing with joy as I cooked dinner. After calming down (just a tad) and getting in touch with Karen, the sponsor, she graciously told me to visit her shop, choose whichever project bag I liked, and she would pop it in the post for me. I am not decisive at the best of times, and she has sooo many lovelies that it took me quite a while to choose one! For a while I was really torn between this floral print and these really fun, bright birds, but the panda bag just reeled me in the end. The print was just too cute to resist! The bag arrived from the US to the UK in less than a week, and it is so beautifully made and I am so much in love with it that I just had to share it with you!

I’m not much of a seamstress, but I can tell that there has been so much care and attention put into the making of this bag. The seams are flawless and it arrived beautifully pressed and packaged. There’s a clear plastic pocket stitched into one side of the inner lining which would be perfect for holding a pattern or some notes and a few notions. The bag’s a pretty good size too, large enough to comfortably hold the two cones of Colourmart yarn that I’m currently using for my Stripe Study shawl, plus needles and knitting with room to spare, but the fabric is soft enough that a smaller project like a pair of socks would be equally at home inside.

There’s even a cute little stitch marker attached to the tag! I love little details like that, and I love the fact that even though this was a free prize I was still made to feel like a valued customer. As soon as my bank balance isn’t looking quite so pitiful I would love to head straight back to BlueTulips and stock up on a few more of these lovelies. There are some great zippered pouches that look like they might make a good home for my dpns, which are currently amassed in a rather unattractive pile on my floor.

So a huge thank you goes out from me to Karen at BlueTulips and all the other lovely sponsors, and the SolidSocks team for putting these KALs together. I might still only be able to count my wins on one hand, but at least my projects have a pretty bag to live in now!

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WIPs & KALs… acronyms, ahoy!

My current muddle of WIPs. The ever present socks in progress and my current love, the Stripe Study Shawl.

I could have sworn I bought a red with a hint of orange for the contrast stripes, but the more I look at it the more it seems to be just straight up orange. No matter, it all works with my beloved grey.

Although I cast on for Stripe Study a couple of weeks ago I shied away from working on it much as I knew it would consume me and shunt my twisted socks to the background if I let it. However, since we’re all agreed that the foot is the fly-by home stretch, I felt that since I’d turned the heel it was “safe” to finally plough on with some lovely garter stitch. Oh, how I love garter stitch. It has such a rustic, squishy cosiness to it. Delicious. The pattern is a whole lot easier than I thought it was going to be, although it’s been a while since I worked on anything other than socks so the 4mm needles felt awkward and clumsy in my hands at first.

I had a brief dalliance with some other short row methods (shadow wraps and Priscilla Wild) since I’m not usually a fan of a standard wrap & turn, but ended up ripping them out and going back to basics. The wrap & turn method included in the pattern really is the best match for this project. I should have listened to Veera!

Still on the topic of the Stripe Study, Nat over on Misadventures in Craft recently blogged about a Stripe Study KAL that she and Crafts from the Cwtch have organised so I’m going to be joining in with that. There’s an FAQ about the KAL here (far too many acronyms going on in this sentence!), so if you fancy joining in then head on over to find out more! There’s even a discount code for Nimu Yarns for all you bargain hunters out there.

And on a completely non knitting related note, but you all know how I love to flash my nails, here’s what I’m currently sporting. I’m ashamed to say that my last mani only came off the nails at the Easter weekend (yikes, a whole month with the same mani! Gross. I am most definitely ashamed of my slobbish approach to nail grooming). I don’t think it’s a colour I would have normally picked up but it was given to me by my bestie when she was having a clear out during a house move. She said she never wore it because it was too bright for her, and although it doesn’t look too day-glo in the bottle, my goodness was she right. This pink looks a little muted in the photo but in reality it’s almost bordering on neon. I do love it though. It’s a perfect warm weather colour, although there’s very little of that happening in the UK at the moment. Incidentally, my bestie’s 2-year old daughter calls nail polish “nail badges” (although I at first I though she was saying “nail badgers”. Yeah, I can be kind of slow like that.). How adorable?!

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a craft-ful Easter

I hope you’ve all had a lovely Easter! It’s been a bit of a busy April so far, but the long Easter weekend gave me a bit of time to kick back and relax for a bit. I’ve mostly been spending my time eating hot cross buns and baking Simnel cake. For anyone not familiar with Simnel cake, it’s a traditional Easter cake, and is basically a spiced light fruit cake with a layer of marzipan baked into the centre of it, topped with more marzipan and then toasted. And it’s delicious.

The layer of marzipan baked in the middle makes for a lovely moist cake. I’ve been making my own marzipan for a few years now, and I’d definitely encourage you to try it. It tastes sooo much better than shop bought and it’s a cinch to make. Equal quantities (I usually go for 250g grams) of ground almonds and sugar (either castor or icing), almond essence and an egg. Mix together. Done. If it’s too dry add a touch more water, if too wet add more sugar.

I forgot to buy more eggs before the shops shut down for Easter, so after a brief panic and a flap around the kitchen I substituted some water mixed with egg white powder, but if you’re squeamish about eating raw egg or are pregnant, or if you’re just like me and forgot to buy enough eggs to make cake and marzipan, there’s a vegan marzipan recipe here which I’m now dying to try.

I spent Easter Monday playing about with some embroidery and making a stitch sampler of sorts. I had so much fun with it, and my mind is now percolating with ideas.

I managed to do a bit of free form doodle stitching with my new love, the split stitch, and ended up with a little Harry Potter lighting bolt and a “slip slip knit” abbreviation. The free form lettering was trickier than I imagined, but not too shabby for a first effort! I can see an obsession in my future…

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