crafts & knitting · magazine features

in my knitting bag

I don't know where the days have gone recently. It seems such a short while since the children went back to school and yet here we are in October already.  All of those long and wonderfully warm sunny days are gone for this year and though autumn is always a favourite time for me I do feel rather melancholy at the moment.

Still there have been plenty of cheery things in the last month and October brings two special birthdays – Amy has turned 14 and Toby's 12th birthday is this
friday. And I've of course have been knitting, which always brings pleasure and peace. I was also really pleased to be asked about the contents of my knitting bag by Jennifer at Let's get Crafting magazine. I do love collecting knitting bits and trying out new yarns so I had plenty of things for a show and tell. The article is just out in the October issue (no 55). I did have to tidy up my knitting bag first though because as you can see in the picture below it is not usually terribly tidy. I even found some notes and drawings from Amy in the pockets which must date back at least 5 years!

 

In my bag

 

Here is the shot for the magazine, when it looked tidier.

Knit bag2

The Little Grey Sheep Stein Fine yarn snuggled in the corner of the bag there is my current favourite. It is beautiful in every way from the label to the multi-tonal hand-dyeing. It's worth popping over to their website for a visit to see all of the wonderful colourways and reading about how the yarn comes into being. I love that it is a completely homegrown British yarn, shorn by Susie from the sheep living on Well Manor Farm in Hampshire, washed in Yorkshire, spun in the West Country and then hand-dyed back on the farm by Emma. It is proper wool.

 

Lgsheep

Inspired by my friends Elaine and Esther I've started on a shawl (South Bay Shawlette) with the bluest colourway at the top which is called 'Cresswell Quay' and I really like the way it is working up. I expect I'll work in the other colourways too as I would like quite a big snuggly shawl.

 

South bay

There is always a little bunny knitting going on here too but in truth I need a little break from pattern writing so I'm enjoying playing around with other woolly things for a while. I'm still working on the projects in the previous post and almost have the mittens finished. This week they were featured on the lovely Knitted Bliss blog's Modification Monday post, thanks so much to Julie for the lovely write up.

Well, I'm off to make some oat cookies because another recent happy thing is that Toby has started loving my home baking instead of those hugely sugary custard creams. Though he is loving the oat cookies a little too much and getting quite portly so I will be hiding most of this batch before he gets home and rationing them!

Thanks as always for popping in, J x

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PS: This is not a sponsored post, I don't do those. I just write about the things that I like ๐Ÿ™‚

crafts & knitting · general stuff · magazine features

In print

Thanks so much for all of the feedback on the pouch pattern. I've drawn the two winners and have posted the details at the end of the previous post. As promised I am planning another little giveaway (of a knitted animal) to celebrate the start of my 7th year of blogging but I've not quite finished the batch that I'm working on, so they're not quite ready for their close-ups yet.

 

Waiting

I'm really hoping to finish them next week, so I'll post about the giveaway then.

In the meantime I am sitting here feeling rather happy because I have the latest copy of Crafts Beautiful next to my cup of tea and it has a feature about my knitting in it (thanks to Natalie for the lovely write up). It's the Christmas special issue and it's full of great ideas and some fab freebies too, so I'm off to have a read in the last hour of peace before the start of a busy weekend.

 

Crafts beautiful

Hope you have a great weekend, see you next week with news of that giveaway.

 

crafts & knitting · magazine features

just a bit excited!

These days it's not often that I feel feel full of childish excitement but today as I walked out of the newsagents I had to resist skipping back to the car, because clutched in my hand was a copy of Let's Knit magazine and it has a little bit about me and my knitting in it.

 

Mag4

Thanks to Adrienne for the lovely write up and to H for taking a half decent picture of me – I truly hate having my picture taken!

Happy weekend all. I shall be trying to finish up some christmas knitting and snuggling by the fire as it's a cold one here!