St Abbs and New Zealand

First things first :) I'm donating a prize for the raffle to raise funds being run my Helen at Ripples Crafts. You can buy a ticket to help support this excellent fund-raising idea here. The prize I'm donating is a Cold Hands Warm Hearts Mitten Kit - there are some wonderful prizes and the money raised will be matched $ for $ - read all about it on Helen's blog.

Secondly - the shop is temporarily offline whilst I do a quick stock take after a wonderful day at St Abbs. There are more spinners every time and I really need to do a fibre update as I only have 2 braids of fibre left! So to answer Cal's question from a blog post or two ago (waves to Cal) there will be a fibre update towards the end of March, I'll give plenty of notice both here and on Ravelry.com. There hasn't been a fibre update for a while now so I'll try to make it a special one :)

Please excuse the photo free post but as I've been up since 4.30am and it's now half past ten I think if I tried to upload the St Abbs photos now they might come out upside down or something! LOL

Sunglasses Required

I don't do crochet. I used to a long time ago. I can put an edge on a knitted cardi but I've forgotten so much. recently I figured out I was doing it backwards anyway! BUT... I loved the Full o' Sheep Yarn that I used for Katy's jumper. The feel of the fabric was even better after it was soaked and blocked. The colours are vibrant and happy and I wanted more but not as a garment for me. So, a blanket seemed an ideal solution, I bought 1 ball of each colour and I have begun my journey into a ‘wake you up, bright and breezy, better wear your sunglasses’ easy peasy beginner’s crochet blanket :)

PS I am ignoring all those ends, do you think they'll go away if I ignore them hard enough?

Cold Hands, Warm Heart Mittens

Spinning a Yarn proudly announces the launch of a new mitten kit.








Now which colour shall I knit my own mittens in?

I decided at the beginning of the year the Wednesday would be spin day and I've had a few Wednesdays where I even managed to keep to it :)

This fibre by Babylonglegs is called 'Fire in the Sky' and I bought it ages ago and have only just gotten around to using it, it's 200gm of BFL Humbug which I spun as a 2 ply and as singles. I love the colours :) No idea what I'll make with it yet but part of my intention to spin is to also knit with my handspun so hopefully it wont be to long before I have it on my needles.

Finally if you're looking for help with seamless knitting in the round then look no further than any book by Elizabeth Zimmerman. I'd strongly recommend 'The Opinionated Knitter' and 'Knitting Without Tears' but they're all excellent books and you can't go wrong with any of them. EZ rules, if you don't know her already then my friendly advice is to get to know her a.s.a.p. :)