Category: crafts & knitting

crafts & knitting · garden stuff · summer

High summer

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)50 Comments

The last few days have been bathed in the kinds of temperatures that we don’t often see here, 32c by day and hot sweaty nights of 24c. I know that’s nothing to many of you living in warmer climes but it’s a notably rare occurrence for those of us living in a land of cool mists and plentiful rain 🙂

It’s been a bit too hot for my liking if I’m honest. I like it in the low to mid 20’s when I still feel like I can comfortably knit – working with wool when you’re all hot and sweaty and swollen fingered from the heat is not a relaxing activity. I have however managed to take pictures of the shawl I finished a week or so ago.

It definitely benefited from blocking and is the perfect summer shawl in that wonderful yarn ‘rose garden’ luxury sock yarn by Maya at The Wool Barn. I had the perfect amount for Helen Stewart’s Spindrift shawl, working the picot cast off row in Oakworth 4ply ‘Geum’ a beautiful pale peony pink by Victoria at Eden Cottage Yarns and now the temperatures are set to return to a summer norm I expect I’ll be throwing it around my shoulders come evening time.

The weather has been great for the garden and the herbs have really taken over everything. I’ve had to give up on home grown beetroot this year as the poor plants have been crowded out but the beans, peas, raspberries, broccoli and kale are all now harvesting well. I’ve been building muscles by ferrying the watering can to and from the water butt to keep everything from wilting in the heat. I love growing herbs as they’re such a magnet to bees and butterflies and they’re good for cooking too.

To stop myself from wilting on the hottest day I spent time under the tree in our garden with plenty of cool water and a good book. Meadowland by John Lewis-Stempel is a lovely gentle read, a homage to the small and intimate delights of an English country field and well worth a read if you like that kind of thing, which I do.

Well, summer is racing by and the start of the long school break is here. We’ll be spending it close to home having decided once again that a holiday away is just too complicated for Toby, but hopefully we’ll have lots of days out and I hope to share some of our small adventures here. ‘Til then keep well and happy x

PS: Thanks so very much for all of the kind comments on the previous post. I am planning to sit down tomorrow and reply to each of them properly but wanted to say a general thank you now. x

crafts & knitting · magazine features

knitting constancy

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)47 Comments

Throughout all the ups and downs that life can bring, knitting is always there as a comforting part of my days. Though I might have temporarily misplaced my blog voice I can always find something knitted to share with you, so I thought I’d pop in and show you what has been occupying my needles lately.

 

As always there have been bunnies. This pair are mostly knitted from a discontinued ball of Rowan Scottish Tweed in ‘porridge’ that I had stashed. I love the little brown neps peppered throughout and am feeling rather sad that this is now all used up. Here I paired it with a strand of cream Rowan Kidsilk Haze for fuzziness and used a brown alpaca yarn for contrast.

Yarns do come and go and it’s always a bit disappointing when a favourite is discontinued. My favourite yarn for knitting animal clothing has always been Rowan 4ply cotton (which was discontinued years ago) and although I still have a fair amount of it stashed I have been hunting around for a good replacement ever since. Happily I’ve now found it in BC Garn’s Alba. This is a soft, matt, organic cotton yarn (not mercerised) and comes in a beautiful range of colours, some and bright and jewel-like and some muted, subtle tones (which are the ones I like the best). The knitted fabric drapes beautifully and I’m having fun playing with ideas for new dresses in this lovely palette of colours (the blue swatch below is a discontinued Rowan 4ply).

 

I bought the colours above from Loop and Love knitting stock some of the colour range.

 

There’s also been excitement recently at the arrival of the morning post which in the last two weeks has brought me two wonderful magazines kindly mentioning my work. The first was the June edition of Australian Homespun which had a lovely write up about the cat patterns and the sweaters.

 

The second is the current Issue 148 of Simply Knitting which has an interesting article on blogging, featuring interviews with 4 knitting bloggers (of which I was one). It’s always a lovely feeling (and a little surreal) to see yourself in print and I’m hugely flattered to have been included in both of these publications.

Well, I’m off to make some breakfast and rouse the rest of the family, who are all still snoozing. See you soon and until then best wishes for a very happy 4th July to all my friends in the USA x

crafts & knitting · garden stuff · summer · wildlife

June days

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)52 Comments

There’s been a fair bit of wet and stormy weather around lately but that’s been good news for the garden where everything now has that early summer vibrancy and is growing vigorously. In some cases a little to vigorously as my little veg patch is getting swamped by the herb edging. This year I’m growing beetroot, broccoli, kale, french beans, peas, courgettes and lettuce and I’m looking forward to a green feast in another month or so.

Happily we’ve had a taste of summer too with a few days that have been warm and sunny enough to sit outside. There’s something so very calming and relaxing about an afternoon outside with something nice to eat and drink, a little knitting and a good book (Knitlandia by Clara Parkes is a great read if you are a knitter, though my copy has already lost it’s pretty dust-jacket to Toby’s paper tearing obsession). Hopefully there are more sun-filled summer days to come.

My knitting has been very influenced by the colours of a summer garden too. I was so thrilled when I managed to buy this wonderful skein from Maya at The Wool Barn. Her yarns are exquisitely hand dyed so it’s not surprising that they sell out so very quickly. This colour-way is called Rose Garden and I’m knitting a crescent shawl from it, Helen Stewart’s Spindrift Shawl. I’m almost finished now and just need to choose between pink and green for the edge, as I fancy a contrasting border.

There have been some happy days working on this in the summer sunshine and it’s been lovely to escape some of the stresses of exam time (Amy’s GCSE’s have spanned most of the last month) with a little gentle and undemanding knitting. We’re all looking forward to next Tuesday when Amy has her last exam. She will be so relieved and it will be nice to have a more relaxed atmosphere here. It’s been a bit exhausting trying to keep Toby quiet in his middle-of-the-night-awake periods but essential in order to make sure that Amy has had the sleep she needs to do well in her exams.

Sorry that I’ve not been around much recently, I’ve not felt like I’ve had much of interest to say or to share. Life has been full of ordinary family stuff with it’s ups and downs and we live day to day, which is the best way to approach life with Toby, but so often the day seems to whizz by without much getting done. I do try to take photos when something interesting presents itself (like this wonderfully tender swan family encountered on a walk a few weeks back), but I seem to have lost my blog voice a little. Hopefully I’m just a little hoarse rather than completely voice-less and I’ll be back soon with more words. ‘Til then thanks for visiting x