Crochet
Home sweet home again!
The last few weeks has been busy and I’ve been away quite a bit visiting friends, family (my daughter had her graduation) and yarny shops and festivals. Time seems to have flown by and here we are, the beginning of August already and I’m looking forward to a month spent mainly here at home sweet home.
I’ve never been much of a traveller in the sense that I don’t have wanderlust to go off to exotic places or live abroad but I do enjoy experiencing new places, revisiting favourite haunts and seeing things that I wouldn’t get to see otherwise. I really enjoy travelling by train and I love walking through London rather than taking the tube or bus everywhere as you can find so many hidden places. Its always the same for me though. No matter how much fun its all been, I’m always pleased to get home and settle down into my familiar routines. I’m at my happiest when I’m in deepest Yorkshire and in my lovely old farmhouse surrounded by oodles of crafty bits, yarn and the ‘treasures’ I’ve collected through the years.
Having got back home from London and Kingston at the end of last week I decided to have a weekend just doing what I felt like and so I’ve been having loads of fun dyeing some yarn, catching up on podcasts, spending some time in the garden and, of course, crocheting.
My podcast favourites
More about that in a minute but first I want to do some podcasting talk. Now that I am a podcaster I know both sides but I have to say that other podcasts are still such a pleasure to watch. I have several favourite ones all ready to go when I want to relax and do a bit of hooking. I watch a lot on my ipad, which I can take out in the garden and in my garden room and I find that I’m choosing podcasts to watch in the evening too, on the TV. They are a lot better than most of the programmes that are on either the freeview or catch up channels. I still have the latest episode from Sandra at Cherry Heart to watch but I’m now up to date with Dan and Kay at the Bakery Bears, Jodi and Tracie – the Grocery Girls, and Andie of Andre Sue Knits.
It you haven’t watched Andie, you will have to look that one up as she has been dyeing some amazing sock blanks that are full of stencilled images. Having seen them knitted up, they produce a lovely variegated effect in the gorgeous colours she’s chosen but I have to admit that I think the sock blanks are the works of art – some of them could easily be framed rather than unravelled! Molly from The Homespun House is also back after a couple of months of not podcasting, and Mina of the Expat Knitting Podcast is currently back in the UK and has just published a vlog about Fibre East, which happened this weekend. I haven’t watched it all yet but Claire of BobWilson123 in Australia sent me a message that she had spotted one of my bags in the background at the end. Sure enough, there it is, a gorgeous granny stash bag in lovely shades of blue. If you are the maker of this bag, well done, it looks brilliant!
***Quick update – I just looked at FB and Claire Mackaness who is @artyfarymack on Instagram messaged me to say that’s her in the flowery shirt and her friend Lorraine made the stash bag! Well done Lorraine, your bag is famous!
Getting on with some making
As usual, I have far too many ideas and too much yarn for only one pair of hands, but I am trying to focus on specific projects. The new range of Stylecraft Batik yarn has inspired me to design a new project, something wearable too and its going really well. I want to spend some time later today to see if I can get it finished and weave in the ends so that I can take some photos and feature it on the next podcast.
I’m also working on ideas for the Stylecraft blog tour in October and I’m also finishing a blanket that I started in the spring, which I’m going to feature as a beginner’s blanket CAL starting in September. Its not a huge, big blanket but something more manageable and you will have lots of choice of yarn to use with suggestions for colourways that will work well together. You can even use stash yarn if you want to. It will be suitable for someone fairly new to crochet and I’ll be doing full tutorials to help you along the way.
News on my own podcast and blog updates
Its now two weeks since I recorded last and although I’ve got lots to talk about, my daughter has given me another cold. She was really suffering on her graduation day with streaming eyes and sneezing fits and that’s about where I am today. Not a pretty sight… I’m not feeling at all ill though so I’m hoping that the worst will pass off in a couple of days and I’ll be internet ready again later in the week!
Things are fairly quiet on the work front, as they often are in August, so even though I can’t record a podcast I’m taking some time today to catch up on my blog with posts that are almost ready to go (my visit to WIngham Wool Works the weekend before last) and a luscious one about my visit to Loop in London that really needs to have a health warning attached to it because its so full of yarny pleasure your eyes will pop out! This particular yarny pleasure doesn’t come cheap – as you’ll see and you’ll know if you’ve been there, Loop specialises in hand-dyed yarns and luxury fibres. It doesn’t sell the usual brands of yarn apart from a very small quantity of Debbie Bliss sock yarn and a tiny basket of Scheepjes cotton. Which means that great restraint is needed if you visit. I planned to treat myself to one luxury skein and although it was tough to choose which one, I stuck to my intentions. Now I just need to think about what I’ll make with it…
RIght, I’ll get on with the two yarny posts I’m working on so keep a look out for them over the next couple of days. I always put something on Instagram and Facebook when I publish on my blog but fewer and fewer people see Facebook posts and IG seems to be going the same way now its no longer in date and time order… Another option if you want to follow my blog and get new posts delivered to your email is to subscribe via BlogLovin’. I noticed that the number of subscribers on there has just topped 1000, which is fantastic. I’ll put the link below if you want to sign up. Its a handy app to follow all of your favourite blogs in one place too.
I’ll be back very soon with more posts so have a good week. I’ll be at the British Wool Show in York at some point this weekend so hope to see you there.