countryside · wildlife

Summer days

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)22 Comments

Summer has arrived. Here the month of June has the longest days of the year, and the countryside all around is at it’s most green and pleasant so as there are only 2 more weeks until Toby finishes college for this year, I’ve been making the most of what free time I currently have. I’m getting out and about with my camera as much as possible, because although we’ll walk every day over the long summer break together, walks with Toby are all about his needs rather than my wants, so we’ll be going at the pace he dictates, along the route he chooses and he’s really not keen on me stopping to take pictures of things.

For my solo adventure this last week I headed off to Panshanger Park. Though it’s on the edge of Hertford town it feels like deep countryside, especially midday in the midweek, when there are few people there. Oh my, this place makes my soul sing, there’s so much there to delight in…

wandering along the woodland paths, dappled with sunlight and cool green shade, listening to the small bird chatter in tree canopy overhead.

wading down through the open meadows, past the great gossamer globes of the goat’s beard seed heads, swishing through the long grasses which move like the gentle swell of the sea in the breeze and buzz to the drone of bees, dragonflies and hoverflies and where the longhorn cattle go about their business of meditative munching.

squelching along the marshy margins of the lakes and the meandering river, where coots, ducks, swans and grebe all call out their warnings from nests hidden deep in the reeds and rushes.

The heat of the summer sun has not yet been with us long enough to have bleached the intense green from the leaves and everywhere there are flowers; exquisitely delicate lace of cow parsley, fragrant heads of elderflower, tiny flowers of deep periwinkle blue that glint in the verges along the path, daisies and buttercups and dog roses. I walk with a big smile on my face and a lightness in my heart that has been a little lacking of late.

Back at home I’m making plans for the autumn, which is when I’ll have time to work properly again. I’m drawing up lists of the patterns that I’m planning to work on, and the tutorials that I’d like to share. As always these lists will probably be rather more ambitious than realistic, it’s hard to factor in the limitations that caring for Toby brings and I forget that everything always seems to take twice as long as I’d imagined it would. I do however already have samples made for a blog post on the increases and decreases that I use in my patterns and their relative merits – I’m hoping to write that up and share it soon and as always I’ll keep you posted on news of new patterns later in the year.

Well that’s it until next time. I hope that you’re able to find some of the same kind of joy that Panshanger brings to me sometime in your week ahead and that you’ve enjoyed seeing some of these pictures, thanks as always for visiting with me here, J x

PS: In my 3 hour wander I managed to take 443 photos! So these are the heavily edited highlights 🙂

 

 

crafts & knitting · new patterns

New pattern news

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)22 Comments

Hello again, I still have to edit photos and write a post about how beautiful the bluebells have been this year but today I have news of three new patterns. These have been keeping me very busy all year and I’ve been very indecisive about almost every aspect, which is why they’ve taken me much longer than expected, though cramming my concentration time into the few hours that Toby is at college hasn’t helped with speedy pattern writing progress. Still, they are at last done and as always I’m deeply grateful to my wonderful team of eagle-eyed test knitters who have helped me error check and test these out.

As always there are 2 versions of the animal:

  • There’s a mole with knitted on tights/pantyhose and shoes, who has a removable dress. This pattern has 3 options for the dress, a colour-work design worked in stranded knitting technique with 2 colours and 2 options for a textured dress with a pattern made of small knitted knots.
  • And a mole with a naked body and feet who has removable shorts and a sweater. The pattern has 2 options for the sweater, either a sweater knitted in stocking stitch with 3 bands of colour or a textured sweater with a pattern made of small knitted knots.

There’s also a new pattern for clothing to fit any of my 9 inch (23cm) tall animals and this contains 3 basic cardigan/jacket/coat shapes, a short waist length cardigan/jacket, a short waist length V neck cardigan and a longer length A line coat. The short cardigan/jacket and the longer A line coat can both be made with either a round neckline, a little ribbed collar or a hood. The hood will fit over the head of the animals with smaller ears such as the mole, monkey, cat and bear and for the animals with taller ears it looks nice just folded at the back and I’ve designed it with a curved bottom edge when it’s worn in this way.

As always the patterns are available on Ravelry and Etsy and I’ll be adding them to Lovecrafts shortly. I think Lucylocketland will soon have some of her sweet kits that include yarn and a printed copy of the pattern and if your local yarn shop is signed up to the Ravelry local yarn shop service then you can buy a copy from them and ask them to print it off for you.

Please remember that the above listed places are the only legitimate places that you can obtain copies of my patterns. In the last year pattern piracy has become a lot more common and me and my fellow pattern designers are noticing the impact, please don’t support theft and pattern piracy by either uploading or downloading copies of patterns to/from websites that offer them in exchange for tokens. Thank you so much for supporting independent designers and allowing us to make a small living from our own work  xxx

crafts & knitting

Moley progress

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)42 Comments

Did you know that the collective noun for a group of moles is a labour? Not that there’s any reason why you should, because a group of moles is a rare thing as they are quite solitary little creatures who keep themselves to themselves.

Anyway, there is a labour of moles on my table today and that word is doubly relevant because I have definitely laboured over putting this pattern together. It’s not a difficult pattern, it’s just that I seem to have lost my decision making powers. I have dithered and procrastinated and gone back and forth over almost every aspect for months, fretting over the length of the nose, the size of the hands and exactly which brown, red or mustard colour would be right for the clothing. In the end I’ve had to give myself a stiff talking to. So decisions have now been made and the photos are mostly done, and now I’m just in the process of laying everything out and testing it through. It is coming together however and I’m looking forward to being able to share these new patterns for the moles and a little coat & cardigans pattern too.

Well that’s it from me today, although I have some lovely bluebell pictures to share in my next post, Spring is in full swing here and it is glorious. I hope there’s a little glory going on somewhere in your week too, see you soon, J x