Rambluary and a hat… Podcast 63

Hello there and welcome to Episode 63 of the Crafternoon Treats Podcast. Please subscribe to my channel and click the little bell to get notifications of all my new videos and episodes.

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Podcast notes for Episode 63

Another good title for this podcast would have been ‘One thousand things that can go wrong with a podcast’… Hahaha. When I was about to record, I went to plug my microphone into my new phone only to find it didn’t have a headphone socket…

So, thanks to watching a Bakery Bears podcast ages ago, I managed to record the audio on my laptop but then had to stitch it all together with the video so I didn’t look I had been dubbed and was all out of sync.

Then the podcast took over 10 hours to load (why, who knows) and finally, when I went into my blog to write the notes the interface has updated completely and is so different, its taken me ages to write anything.

But its all good because I am ultra chilled out after the Christmas break and I hope you are too. I do ramble on a bit but I hope you enjoy my musings about my word for the year and my intentions for 2019.

Getting my crochet mojo back

I did lose all my interest in crochet projects at the end of last year because I had been doing so much for a magazine project. It was nice to just relax at Christmas and do not very much at all.

Since then I have been working on feeling a bit more creative and my Christmas books have certainly helped.

These are the books I mention on the podcast:

• Curious Creativity by Philippa Stanton who is @5ftinf on Instagram and who also has a website here
• Knitting Tips, Techniques and Trade Secrets by Betty Barnden
• Bound by Rachel Hazell
• The things you can see only when you slow down by Haemin Sunim

Surprises and a hat

I decided to just have a go at making a basic ribbed rectangle using back loop only crochet to try out the natural dyed DK yarn I did at the end of last year using a plant stew. This was a complete experiment but putting loads of plant material including elderberries, tea bags, cherry leaves, eucalyptus, onion skins, avocado skins and avocado stones onto yarn in a dyepot produced a variegated yarn with some really interesting colours.

When I worked it up it held another surprise. It looks like planned colour pooling! I’ve no idea how that happened – its a happy accidental combination of the way the yarn was dyed in bands and the stitch count I chose. I bet I could never do it again!

I had in mind I wanted to make a hat and after recording the podcast I finished the rectangle and then did the seam and top and pom pom and it worked out really well. In the next podcast I’ll show you a pic of me wearing it!

Playing around with watercolour ecoetching

I’ve been playing with an etching press that I’ve had for years and was inspired to ‘just have a go’ by Philippa’s book Conscious Creativity. I was totally gobsmacked by the results and these images may well be finding their way onto the ball bands and labels for my naturally dyed yarn in the future.

Word for the year 2019

The word I’ve chosen this year is REPLENISH. I’m going to try to pace myself better so that I can achieve a lot but still make time to have some downtime and do things that replenish my energy. If you want to find out more about choosing a word for the year, visit Susannah Conway’s website. She has a couple of really useful resources, one on unravelling last year and making plans for 2019 and one for choosing a word for the year.

These resources were introduced to me by Emma of Potter and Bloom who sent all her Patreon subscribers a little gift and I thought the message in this card was perfect for me in December last year.

Winner of the Sock book 2

Fiona who is Peafizz on Ravelry won a signed copy of Christine Perry’s sock book 2.

Giveaway winners that aren’t in the podcast!

I realised that I hadn’t added them once the episode was uploaded and didn’t fancy waiting another 10 hours so here they are on my blog (I’ll message the winners on Ravelry.

• Everyday Wearables – the new book by The Crochet Project – ArtsyPescatarian
• Yarndale goodies – BlueCherub
• Lynne Rowe’s mandala book Twenty to make – Robin6862
• Three Twenty to Make books: Crochet flowers, crochet purses and crochet hearts – NinaCamilleri

Thank you so much for watching and I’ll be back very soon xxx Kathryn

In between podcasts you can follow me on Instagram – I’m Crafternoon Treats on there and on Ravelry although I’m being a bit of a Ravelry failure at the moment :0 xxx