The pastries shown in the pic at the top were from Jusrol from the supermarket that I ‘made’ this afternoon. You just unroll the pastry, spread the cinnamon stuff on, roll up again, slice, bake and drizzle with the icing. Very easy and ideal when you want a pastry and don’t have time to make from scratch or get to a bakers that sell vegan ones. These also happen to be vegan friendly! Perfect for what I needed – you can see I didn’t wait long…
Yarndale preparations are nearly complete, after lots and lots of printing and putting kits together and I have one more delivery arriving today that will be very exciting to reveal at the weekend!
Yesterday’s delivery was more mundane, but very important for my stand set-up: two mops. No, I don’t intend to mop out my pen before setting up my stand; the removable handles will be the supports for my business banner! There is a loop at the top of each handle perfect for a cable tie and I will be able to attach the handles to the rails of the pen with either more cable ties or string (or both). There won’t be a mop head in sight (or even present – as the whole thing comes apart into five pieces, so the mop heads will be staying at home)! I’ll photograph it on Friday as we set up in case you aren’t going to Yarndale and can’t quite picture how it will work.
I did consider broom handles, and also did extensive googling for lengths of wood with pre-drilled holes as I didn’t fancy grappling with Dad’s old Black & Decker drill just before a show, but when I discovered that mop handles tend to have hanging loops at the top (presumably so the mop heads can hang and dry out in between uses) that seemed the way to go. It’s amazing the rabbit holes you can end up going down on the internet when you need to find something very specific that hasn’t been invented for the purpose you need. Funnily enough, the company I bought the banner from don’t sell portable things to suspend said banners from. You might have thought that a search of ‘banner stands’ or ‘frames to hang banners from’ would have produced the solution to my needs, but no! The process of working out what might work and what wouldn’t was quite head spinning and I’m very grateful to all the members of the Yarn Show Vendors group on Facebook who answered my cry for help on how on earth I was going to display my banner. Wonderwool was easy as it could just be hung from hooks over the high temporary walls to the stands and at other events I’ve been able to attach it to the marquee frame (Wool @ J13) or string it between my clothes rails (Pop Up Wool Show), but with the layout I would have at Yarndale that wasn’t going to be an option.
Aside from printing lots of patterns and getting my kits and workshop materials in order, I’ve been doing quite a lot of knitting and some crochet this week. And this time it’s stuff I can show you!
The new sample of Elinor is coming along. I’ve got 20 more rows of the border to do before the edging and I will soon break into the second skein.
These skeins are 1200m, so it’s very very fine laceweight yarn – most laceweight is 800m per skein. I’m wondering whether it will pass the wedding ring test once complete. Very fine lace shawls were said to be able to pass through a wedding ring. however, it will be a big shawl (approx 2m across when complete and my current stitch count is nearing 900 stitches per row), so even with such fine yarn that may not work.
As the rows of Elinor are long and it’s very fine yarn, it’s also been useful to have some knitting on the go that’s easier on the eyeballs. My long loved Manu cardigan, twice mended, has gone under the arms again (despite thorough darning in the past) and I’ve started making a new one. I found some DK yarn in the deep stash which is a bit plumper than the yarn I used previously and I’ve gone up a needle size to keep the fabric supple. I’m not entirely sure the colours are working though. The palest colour (it’s like a lime green in real life) stands out far more than the other shades do. And with the yarn being thicker (and a bit shorter) I’m not sure there’ll be enough for the cardigan at the rate I’m getting through it, even if I leave off the pockets. So, here it is, sitting in temporary time-out while I consider its future.
I will use the yarn, even if not for this cardigan. Maybe I’ll do a Lichfield in colour blocks with the stitch pattern sections in the contrasting colours!?
I’ve woven in the ends of my Mystical Lanterns blanket (apart from the ends of the joining yarn) and it looks very respectable on the back as well as the front now. The left hand pic (with the clear white wavy lines from joining the strips of motifs) is the back.
Last Thursday I was at Yarn O’clock, talking with Anne about patterns that would work well with the new DK Chimera she was expecting from RiverKnits – it’s arrived and you can see it on her social media pages. I remembered that Into the Vortex had originally been written for 50g of the 4ply Chimera and 50g of Nene 4ply (another RiverKnits yarn) and we wondered how the pattern might work knitted in DK on larger needles.
I’ve started an experiment, knitting the first couple of sections of Into the Vortex in John Arbon Knit By Numbers and West Yorkshire Spinners Croft, both of which are DK yarns. I’ve done Parts 1 and 2 on 5.5mm needles (the original 4ply was on 4.5mm) and Part 1 on 5mm needles for comparison. This is because I started on 5.5mm, but the lace section in yellow felt much floppier than the first slipped stitch section in teal, so I’m trying again with 5mm to see if that works better.
It’s probably also due to the character of the two yarns being very different, but I want to see which needle size works best. Once I’ve worked that out and confirmed that the small version of the pattern can be made using 100g of each colour of DK yarn, I’ll add that as an option to the pattern. I’d love to knit one in the DK versions of the original RiverKnits yarns too! I’d forgotten how much fun the vortex shape is to knit as well.
Whilst I was at Yarn O’clock I treated myself to a new book.
Now, Tunisian Crochet is not a technique I’ve tried at all, but it looks really interesting. I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to have a play with it soon. I mean, it’s not like I’m busy or anything, is it…?
That’s all from me for today. If you come to Yarndale at the weekend, please come and say hello! We’re on stand L14. If you can’t make it there, I’ll try to remember to take lots of photos and tell you all about it next week.
Take care one and all, K x