I have enjoyed our walks the past few days and I am so grateful that we can get into country lanes quite quickly from our doorstep. These are some of the lovely sights I’ve seen recently on two separate walks. I love watching the clouds in the late afternoon – the light on them is magical, but fleeting.
There’s activity in one of the fields that may be the beginnings of a new housing estate down this lane, so I’m not sure how much longer we’ll have this peaceful route for, but I’m determined to make the most of it while we can.
There are signs of spring in the garden too which is really encouraging. (Yes, I know, I really need to cut those hellebore leaves back, and I will, soon!) There’s lots of work that needs to be done in the garden and I feel a bit guilty that I haven’t been out there much, but now there are increasing hours of daylight, hopefully I should be able to!
Yarn arrived at the end of last week for two new designs and I’m about to get started with one of them later today. I won’t be able to share the designs with you until publication (July and September respectively), so instead, here is the yarn itself. Isn’t it fabulous?!
I can hardly believe that in three days time I will be in the Norfolk Showground Arena, setting up for the East Anglia Yarn Festival! I printed out a few extra copies of patterns today, and have been planning the layout of our space. It’s 2m x 2m and I want to make the best use of it possible.
When we go to Wonderwool Wales next month it will be a very different set-up. The space we have there is 4m x 3m! I had applied for a 3m x 3m space, but they only had a 4m space left and asked if I would be willing to take that. Yes please, and thank you!
I’ve been working on a shawl design this week and it’s coming on really well, despite having had to rip out approx. 100 rows and rejig things a bit. It’s a semi-circular shape, and I was using a standard half-pi shawl construction but, because the fabric is not lace, it doesn’t stretch out in segments in the same way that, for example, my Tiffany shawl does. This has led me to experiment with the spacing of the increase rows and it’s looking SO much better now than it did. Now there are no funny sections where everything is stretched out and then goes all puffy (and there were…) – so I count that a big success!
One of the things I really need to be better at is trusting my gut when it’s telling me that something isn’t working out quite the way I’d thought it would. I was about 20 rows away from the weird puffy increase row when I thought it wasn’t right, but did I stop then? No. I kept knitting, initially telling myself it would block out. When I was coming up to the next increase row and I could tell the fabric was going to do the same thing, but possibly more-so, I had the brainwave of changing the rate and placement of increases. I tried it out and it worked a lot better, but I still kept going, ignoring that earlier section. Why did I do this? Then one evening I sat down to work on it, saw the part I wasn’t happy with and suddenly realised it would be a good idea to use the same tweak to the increases there as well. So, out 100 rows came! The small balls are all ripped out knitting. The large white ball only has the ripped out yarn wrapped around it.
All of these small balls have now been re-knitted and I have to say, this is a great, sturdy yarn. It hasn’t minded a bit! It’s Donegal Rich Tweed 4ply by McIntosh and it’s behaved perfectly well being knitted, ripped out and re-knitted.
I’m really looking forward to showing you this shawl – I love how the three colours and the different slip stitch patterns work together.
Until next Tuesday – when I shall have lots to tell you about EAYF – take care and do stuff that makes you happy. K x