I’d started to write this post in mid December when I ordered the new shades in Stylecraft’s Swift Knit and Senses yarns. Unfortunately, there were some issues with obtaining the digital images at the time and I’ve only just received them and I thought you might still like to have a quick look at them.
There are 3 new shades in the Swift Knit and a few new patterns to tempt you too ♥
Dina has already put in a request for the hat 😯
In the Senses I chose two of the new shades for the shop to compliment the colours we already have. Again there have been some lovely patterns released too.
I wouldn’t mind at least one of the hats and the cowl/neck warmer myself if I could find the time to knit them.
Thinking about it the Swift and the Senses are two extremes when it comes to yarns. The Swift is very much a super chunky yarn whilst the Senses has been designed to be used as a laceweight. (I find it knits perfectly to a 4 ply too)
The Swift is €4.99 per 100g whilst the Senses is €4.20 per 50g.
The run up to Christmas was a bit mental here (even more so than usual), but I was organised enough to ask Liz from the East Cork Rapid Response team to draw the winner of the Stocking of the Week.
Excuse the terrible writing but Jackie Smyth is the winner 🙂
Yesterday Jackie popped into the shop to pick her prize of €100 worth of knitting goodies.
Jackie picked a couple of projects to work up for herself in beautiful merino and tweed double knit and then lots of odd balls to knit hats and scarves to donate to The Chernobyl Children’s Trust 😀
There have barely been two weeks pass in January and I feel like I’m flying with the knitting and crochet 😎
I’m currently working on the sleeves of the jumper Cobblestone for my son Du. The pattern is worked bottom up in the round and I’ve reached the part where the sleeves are joined. I had promised to concentrate solely on the jumper, but I just can’t do it. I need the satisfaction little projects bring 😉 So I’ve set my deadline to the end of January instead.
So… I’ve also managed to get a quick hat for Kye, my youngest knitted up in the specified burgundy colour as requested.
Using my latest hat pattern Toasty & Textured, I whipped up another hat, this time in Twilley’s Freedom Wool.
Feeling inspired by the yarn I put in the sale I quickly (and it was, even for me) crocheted a half granny square shawl in Rico Creative Galaxy Chunky yarn using a 7mm hook and 3 balls and I l♥ve it!
Drum roll please…
I’m also happy to announce that I’ve completed my first pair of socks for 2015. To be fair, I’d all but knitted one of them before the end of 2014 but it still counts towards my goal of 6 pairs for the year 😉
I’ve also started working on my next pair too, that’s what the pretty piece of knitting is at the beginning of this post ♥
I feel like I’ve wasted so much time this week trying to post here, Ravelry and Facebook without any success because our internet has been so poor 😡 So the first thing I did when I arrived at the shop this morning was upload lots of photos to store in my various media libraries, ready for the next few posts. I also managed to get the pattern for my latest hat Toasty & Textured up on Ravelry at last too ⭐
The hat is knitted in 1×1 moss stitch with Rico Essentials Big on 7mm needles. I’ve also knitted up a couple with Rico Flame and will try and persuade Dina, to let me take a photo or two 😉 at the weekend to post here.
January can be a difficult month for some after the extravagances and the build up of the festive season, even the most positive among us can feel like the wind has been knocked out of us a little. I’m fortunate in that Dina’s birthday is on the 16th, which gives us something to enjoy and this year she’ll be 25!!! So to ♥celebrate♥ I’ve made the pattern for Toasty & Textured free to download until the end of the month with the coupon code 25.
Be sure to enter 25 before you checkout and remember to share you’re projects so we can see. The hat is super speedy to knit and will work for both men and women. I’m hoping to find a couple of sneaky hours to have a play with combining some of my stash yarns and will post photos of the results here if they work.
By the madness I mean the build up to Christmas Day, which I convince myself every year that I’m not going to buy into, only to find on Christmas Day that I have 😞 Maybe though, that’s part of the fun?
Unlike previous years I really didn’t manage to get as many presents knitted or even generally handmade as I would have liked to. The year seemed to rush by faster than a speeding car and before I realised it it was the end of November and I’d only knitted the one gift, a Hitchhiker for a friend of mine. Of course I’d forgotten to take a proper picture of it before I’d mailed it, so this is one I’d posted on Instagram whilst I was knitting it.
I used a ball of Rico Poem Superba in green and a ball of King Cole Merino 4ply. The Poems Superba is variegated, so the greens change as the scarf grows. I found it a really lovely pattern to follow, with only 8 rows and by using 2 colours, the stripe effect meant I really didn’t have to concentrate on which of the rows I was on. A lovely happy accident.
Nearly everyone that would wear one received a knitted hat of some kind, mostly these ones though. The pattern is very basic and I should be able to get it up on here over the next couple of days.
Nostrils shouldn’t be that big should they? It’s obscene 😬
I liked them so much that I’ve even made one for me.
Tate looks rather fetching in Leann’s one too, bless him.
Some friends including my Secret Santa recipient received my crochet baubles, which I loved making once I’d figured out what to do. I used several resources to help me, but the circles kept getting bigger because of the trebles. After trying a few different things I decided double crochet was the way to go. A couple of you have asked for a pattern already, but I’m not sure if I can write it up as a ‘proper’ crochet pattern, so it might end up being more of an instruction sheet?
Last but not least was the jumper I’d been making for my hubby Con in secret. Many of you will have seen me trying to get a few rows done in the shop; especially if you popped in the few days before Christmas when I was frantically trying to get the sleeves finished. I’ll write up a separate post to tell you all about it and I might even be able to get a photo of the man himself wearing it 👨
Since finishing the jumper I’ve cast on and started knitting Cobblestone by Jared Flood for Durahn my son. I’ve also been sticking to my morning walk everyday, regardless of how cold it is and both Kye and myself have been going a bit photography mad with our phones. This morning’s walk produced some beautiful snaps, all with no filter too 📷
He pinched my hat.
2 of my dogs trying to drink from one of the frozen troughs. The black one usually dunks her head in, but even she’s not daft enough to do it when it’s this cold, right?
No wait…. She really is that daft.
I’ve also been watching far too many cheesy movies including the must see Guardians of the Galaxy which inspired me to make my own mix tape on Spotify. If you fancy having a look at what tracks I’ve included my profile is lmillar72. More mix tapes to come me thinks 🖭
Following on from my Ophelia post, a good few of you asked about the pattern for the hat Dina was wearing. Ever organised 😕 I obviously had the pattern written up. To be fair I did, but it was on Post-it Notes rather than on the computer and it was no where near ready for anyone else to have a look at.
Since then it’s been typed up, test knitted and corrected and is now up on Ravelry Here for €2 but it’s free to download on Ravelry until Midnight on Christmas Day with the checkout code Ophelia. (Enter it before you checkout.)
It only took the one ball and a couple of hours to knit up and should work with most chunky yarns or even 2 strands of double knit yarn held together like this one.
I thought I’d quickly share this knit with you before I wrap it and send it off to it’s new owner.
You might have seen the photo of the blanket I started for our friends new baby in my last post. The pattern is from James C. Brett, number 173 and uses their Flutterby yarn which looks really pretty but (confession time) I’m not so fond of knitting with.
I’ve used Hayfield Baby Chunky and the blanket which is pram size only used 2 x 100g balls. The garter stitch border adds definition and there are only 4 rows to the lace pattern which becomes very memorable after a few repeats. This really was a quick knit and I can see it being a pattern I’ll use again and again, great for last minute knitting.
The blanket dimensions are approximately 30″ x 20″
Best of all the colour (406) is almost identical to the rosy pink I used in the Gidday Baby Cardigan and the hat. Lets hope the baby’s parents aren’t allergic to pink.
I’m not the best at crochet, in fact I can’t actually hold my hook and tension my yarn correctly, instead I choose to knit my crochet. This means I hold the hook and the yarn in my right hand and work as if I’m knitting with one pin. It achieves pretty much the same results, although apparently a crochet professional can tell the difference?
Anyway, undeterred it is my goal in life to cover everything in glorious multicolour granny crochet, trebles to the initiated. This book was made for just that and much to my delight Granny Square Crochet by Catherine Hirst has come in with May’s samples from The Book People. Even better their selling copies of it for just €8 at the moment.
Ok, so there is a ‘Useful Information’ chapter at the back of the book, full of stitches, abbreviations and pictures of how to hold your hook (gulp!). Can you hear this section being closed as I go straight back to the pretty pictures?
35 projects are in this book, yes I did say 35 – lets look at some of my favourites.
I love the Granny Round Cushion Cover to pieces and can see a beautiful round table cloth in the making. Actually, more of a centrepiece thingy to be precise.
What’s not to like about the Stripes lampshade Cover? Great way to transform those cheapy lamps from Dunnes and Heatons and make them more personalised. I’m sure I picked up a job lot in the Dunnes Sale for €2 each and they’d make a great gift for friends.
I could definitely be persuaded to use a teapot more often if it looked as pretty as this, what about you?
The Colourful Granny Stripes Scarf is beautiful and if you made it a little wider and slightly longer it would make a great summer evening shawl to wrap round your shoulders. Or perhaps you have a friend in hospital that would love the cheery colours and welcome the extra warmth?
The riot of colour in the Granny Square Cushion Cover is created using 7 complimentary colours and would be a great way of using up your ends although I”m duty bound to mention that knitting a few Knit Happens stockings is another great way too (cheeky!)
Lastly and only because I want to leave a little mystery, look at these beautiful little shoes. The Mini Granny Square Booties are so adorable I’d happily use them as a decoration in my house just so I could look at them.
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m rather in love with this book – power project finishing here I come because it wouldn’t do to start yet another project would it…..?
So for those of you that missed it Saturday 3rd of May was Yarn Shop Day. It was great to see so many of you out to support us and good fun was had by all (I hope) despite the rain 😦
After all the fun and games I have some competition and raffle winners to announce.
The raffle winners are as follows –
Sock Yarn – Mary Healy
Scrumptious Lace Weight Yarn – Fiona Ryan
Snuggly Dk & Pattern – Deidre McArdle
Bambeanies by Woolly Wormhead – Edwina Cole
Erika Knight – Molly McSweeny
Lucy Neatby, The Brand New Knitter DVD – Sadie Foley
Knitpro Symphonie Interchangeable Starter Set – Susan Macfarlane
We also had a ‘Guess the Number of Buttons in the Jar’ for our younger visitors on the day. The winner receives a €5 gift voucher for Auntie Nellies Sweet Shop and a woolly goody bag donated by the good folks over at Stylecraft Yarns, for the knitter in their life.
Can you guess?????
252
None of the children guessed correctly, but the nearest was Jasmine Jennings with 258. Well done Jasmine the Auntie Nellies Gift Voucher is yours and I’m guessing your mum or your sister might like to receive the goody bag.
Last but not least.
There was the competition to find our fastest Knit Happens stocking knitter.
The stocking had to be knitted in two colours and this mind blowing time was achieved by Mary Murphy, who wins 4 balls of Sirdar Bonus Dk for her effort, which she whipped up with smoke rising from her needles in a little over 10 minutes..
The second fastest stocking knitter was Mary O’Donovan with a little over 12 minutes. Mary wins a ball of King Cole Splash for her speedy needles.
Those of you that didn’t make it won’t have had a chance to see our yarnbombed rocking chair, which definitely helped entice passers by in. We’ll be taking it with us, along with lots of our Knit happens stockings to the Midleton Mid May Festival on Sunday 18th at The Square (near The Granary). Why not come and see it and lend your support to this new festival
You can find out more about what’s happening over the weekend here
So Yarn Shop Day is very nearly upon us, 1 more sleep until the fun begins.
As promised here’s a little peek at some of the goodies on offer tomorrow on our market stall outside the shop.
They’ll be all of these books and more all down to €5 each with some going for as little as €3.
All of the packs of yarn on the stall will be €20 each, including the multi packs.
There will be other yarn in the special bins for €3 a ball and the day will be full of on the spot give-aways. Not to mention the raffle and the competition to find the fastest Knit Happens stocking knitter.
Confessions of a Fibre Strumpet 