Blankets and Beads

Knitted Blanket

My current project is a blanket, I'm using patterns from Jan Eatons 'Knitted Blocks'. I pulled back a cardigan that I had almost finished knitting in Rohan Calmer because I found a couple of mistakes way back. I had knitted/pulled back so many times that I couldn't face knitting it up again.

The yarn is cream coloured and I thought it wouldn't make a blanked on it's own but being cream could easily be the main colour.

Here are 3 block patterns I've been using.

My friend Paula has a hotel in Blackpool where she runs regular knitting holidays. Last week was a knitting holiday week, there were 5 ladies there, all of whom had come on their own and didn't know each other at all. The holiday ran from Monday to Friday. I went along on the Tuesday evening to tell them a little about my bags and to provide them with an opportunity to have look at and buy if they wanted. They certainly liked my bags - I sold 7 sock bags and one Cool Cats Knitting Bag!

Paula also arranges for the Wild Fire Fibre lady to to visit with bags of hand dyed wool some of which is handspun too. Absolutely gorgeous yarn - too gorgeous for me to resist, I bought two skeins of organic merino - so soft you just want to snuggle up to it. I bought it to make some squares for my blanket.

What struck me about the knitters on holiday was that by the time I arrived on Tuesday - you would have thought they had all known each other for years, there was a super atmosphere.

There is a Knitting Holiday 'Finishing Techniques' in October - already booked up - I may take some photos to show just what they get up to.

Information about Paula's Knitting holidays at Westcliffe Hotel

Beads by Laura

Laura recently bought a bag from me and at the bottom of her email was a website address - being very nosy I had to take a look. Laura makes glass beads and as you can see, they are breathtakingly exquisite. Laura's website is Beads by Laura

Laura explains how she started in making glass beads and and even offers a 10 page guide to getting started in lampwork for only £2.99.

Back Again

What's Been Happening

When I signed off last time I never realised just how long it would be before I came back!

During the time I've been away, my son Ben, broke down in Germany and it took me two days of constant phone calls to him and to recovery people to bring both him and the bike home (separately). When he came home he decided to stay with us for the rest of the summer holidays. Why would he want to stay with his parents? Well, I think it may have had something to do with a young lady round the corner!

On top of that, my husband Paul, came home from a sailing weekend (about 6 weeks ago) with a sore knee and not feeling very well - within days he was in hospital with a massively inflamed leg, raging temperature, hooked up to an intravenous drip of antibiotics - not well at all. It didn't help that the Doctors had no idea what caused it and no idea how to put it right.

After 7 days in hospital the infection had continued to spread - down towards the ankle and up to - well you know where Eventually, they managed to find the right antibiotic to start working and the inflamation stopped spreading. Although he's on the mend, it' will be months before it will be back to normal (was he ever).

Last week was spent getting Ben back to college in Nottingham (last year of classical guitar building), sorting accommodation, crockery, food etc etc and then actually taking all the stuff there. Ben of course had to go on his motorbike.

New Toy

We bought a couple of kayaks 3 years ago and enjoyed the odd trip up to the Lake District paddling accross the lakes, thenI was persuaded to try moving water ie fast running river. Well, the upshot was I had a bit of a near death experience (well that's what I think it was) and have been reluctant ever since to get in it. So we decided to sell them and get a open canoe. We particularly fancied one of these so we could take the tent and have a multi-day trip. So we bought one last week and took it up to Coniston this Monday for it's maiden voyage.

It may not look like it but I really enjoyed our trip.

Roseland Bags

Whilst I've been having all this fun, I confess I did find time to sew and knit.

I'd been thinking about making some sock project bags. I started by looking at the what people seemed to like. Most bags available were the circular sort with either a drawer string or elasticated cord at the neck. I decided to make one, but I didn't really enjoy making it and thought I could come up with a a more functional design.

So I thought I would like one that could stand up on it's own, that had a nice handle to carry it around by, somewhere to keep the needles and also act as a yarn keeper to keep yarn untangled and i the bag while knitting.

So these are some of what I came up with.

I've had great feedback and I now have them in other fabrics and after this week even more.

You can take a look at them here (shameless plug).

I have started a new knitting project - I pulled back my Rohan Calmer cardigan I was knitting - had made a couple of mistakes way down and couldn't face re-knitting all over again and because I tend to knit in short spurts I wanted a bit of quick gratification (as you do sometimes) so I decided to make a blanket from knitted squares. So my friend Paula who has the Westcliffe Hotel and does knitting holidays (another shameless plug) let me borrow her ''Jan Eatons Knitting Blocks" and I'm hooked. Of course I had to buy the book off Amazon and failed again to stick to my 'economy drive'.

Well I'm off to make a sausage sandwich now because I have as much success with diets as I do with economy drives.