I Can Sing a Rainbow

These past few days I have been SO grateful to work from home. No hot and sticky commute and I can move between rooms as the sun moves round the house. (Yes, I know, technically, the sun stays put, but it’s an easier way to think of it, okay?) It has still been very hot, and doing the ironing yesterday morning just because that’s what I do on a Monday perhaps wasn’t my best choice, but I have been able to cope with it fairly well.

Today has mostly been overcast, warm and rather humid with occasional bits of rain, but definitely more comfortable. The sun is now making its first appearance of the day (at 5.30pm) and I’m writing this a little later than usual because I had a visitor! Yes, a real-life friend came to the house for a cuppa and a natter (hi Liz – thanks for the cosmos!) and before we knew it three hours had flown by.

Since the weekend I’ve been knitting like mad with the RiverKnits rainbow yarn, as my tech editor has a window next week when she can edit the pattern. I’m now on the final section, working with colour no.12 and about to bring back colours 1, 2 & 3 for a last hurrah.

Aren’t these colours just gorgeous? The knitting is deliberately scrumpled up and inside out as I’m not showing you the full design until nearer publication, but I wanted to be able to show you all the colours together.

The pattern is all written up in my bullet journal, which isn’t a lot of help to Deb, so I also need to type it up, but at least I have written it out properly and not just made a few vague notes or used some kind of shorthand that I then can’t translate. A bit of typing I can do.

Since bringing home those embroidery threads from Mum’s, I have been slightly obsessing over storage solutions. As a result of some googling I am now getting emails from Pinterest with suggestions of things I might like. They’re right – many of these cabinets are stunning.

The boxes and tins Mum’s threads were in were not big enough for both her threads and my existing ones, so I did need a coherent solution. There are two brands, DMC and Anchor. The DMC ones now have a rather splendid home:

This is the top drawer of an old small chest (also from Mum) that had been used to keep a random collection of bits and bobs. Now it’s highly organised thread storage! You see those dividers? I made those from an Aldi bran flakes box. That white line on the pic below is where the bottom flaps of the box were glued together.

When I’ve finished the next box of cereal, I’ll do another set of dividers for the next drawer and fill that with the Anchor threads!

My newsletter subscribers have had access to a special sale during the past week that finished yesterday. It gave them 25% off all patterns by using an exclusive-to-them code. I’m really pleased that some took advantage of it. One Australian knitter is clearly planning ahead as they bought SIX patterns at once! Surprise sales like this don’t happen all the time, but they are one of the benefits of being a newsletter subscriber. Other benefits include introductory discounts off new self-published patterns in their first week. If that sounds like something you’d like, why not sign up? You only get one newsletter a month (unless there’s something really exciting I need to tell you that is time sensitive), so I promise not to clog up your inbox.

With it being properly hot and likely to remain so for a little while, you’ll probably want lightweight knitting to do (if you are a knitter). Laceweight yarn is perfect for this season – and good value financially as well. And just because it is really thin does NOT mean it needs tiny thin knitting needles.

What Do Points Make? (the 2020 MKAL with Yarn O’clock) uses laceweight yarn and 4.5mm needles. Only the largest size of four needs more than 100g of yarn, so it’s cost-effective to make and light as a feather to wear. In fact, I’m wearing this one (in size three) as I type.

That’s all for today – I’m going to go and drink my fourth pint of water. Stay hydrated folks and do what makes you happy. K x