We had a lovely few days with my sister-in-law and niece last week. Exhausting, but lovely! I hadn’t done so much socialising or being out in the world for 18 months and it was quite a shock to the system. Chester Zoo was the busiest place we visited, but we still managed to keep our distance from other people on the whole and didn’t go into many of the indoor spaces (and, of course, wore masks when we did).
The day before we had been to Llandudno, driving up and around the Great Orme (all praise my automatic Yaris) where the weather was lovely, followed by a visit to Swallow Falls at Betws-y-Coed where we got very wet in the rain! True Welsh weather.
On the way home we had a 10-mile detour, but it did mean that we got to see Ruthin as well and beautiful rainbow as we came down towards Mold. Ronnie came on all the outings and had lots of fun – he assures me he wasn’t scared seeing the other rhino at the zoo, he was just surprised at how big and wrinkly it really was!
I’m starting to see people’s finished Into the Vortex projects and it’s a joy to hear that they have enjoyed taking part in the MKAL with Yarn O’clock. I’ll show you some of them next week when I’ve got a few more pics.
The final part was released last Friday and comes with options to accommodate the amount of yarn you may have left. If you remember, I was asked to design something that used as much of the yarn as possible and that is exactly what I did!, Therefore there was always the possibility some knitters might have fractionally looser tension or be using yarn that had slightly less meterage. As it happened, I needed to use one of the “I’m running out of Yarn B” options in one of my versions! I was half a row short of the full amount. Can you tell in the pictures below which one has fewer stripes?
I finished two of my Into the Vortex shawls (for yes, dear reader, that is what we have been making!) at the weekend. Yesterday was supposed to be end-weaving day, but I got distracted by my spinning wheel instead, so once I’ve written this (and finished making dinner) I shall knuckle down and get them done.
And here’s how the shape will change once it’s blocked! With the prototype I didn’t weave the ends in until after blocking, but I think the stability of the side with the joins is better if you do weave them first.
Once I’ve done the ends of those two and blocked them, I can allow myself to return to the large version. Obviously yarn running out in Part Seven won’t be an issue there, but the question is, do I use Part Seven as it is (without the cast off) or do I save that for the actual finish? Or use it in both places? And how many more sections will I get out of another 100g yarn? It’s not quite as easy to predict as you might think, since every other row the stitch count increase by one, having cast on five at the beginning, there are approx 150 sts by the time Part Seven is complete.
Some exciting new things have been added to my Payhip store! At the weekend I was playing with my rubber stamps and inks and some really nice gift tag blanks and I’ve put a whole range of different sheep and knitting themed gift tags up there.
They aren’t on my website yet, but they are on Payhip which is where you can actually buy them; 50p each or sets of six for £3. They will all come with jute twine or 3mm ribbon to attach them to gifts/gift bags as well. I have more designs to put up later this week as well.
In the kitchen today two homemade sourdough pizza bases are on their second prove. The recipe serves four, so we get vegan pizza today AND tomorrow! The other two balls of dough are patiently waiting in the fridge in clingfilm for their moment of glory. That’s one of the things I’m learning about sourdough – it really doesn’t mind waiting.
Well, that’s all from me today. I’m not going to write about what’s going on in the outside world, because I just don’t know where to start. Doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about it, of course.
Take care, stay as safe as you can and knit on, K x