Beginner's Knitting

Looking forward to today's lesson in the The Wool Garden. Firstly I know there will be egg sandwiches, which I find go very well with a bit of knitting. Then of course my lovely student. Holiday time means lessons are less crowded and dear old Katherine will be getting a private knitting lesson for four hours - let's just hope she can stand all the attention!

The last lesson we did together was painting our own glorious wool. I wonder if she will bring that as hers were particularly lovely loads of blues and great combinations. Now all she has to do is learn how to knit them up.

Stayed up too late as ever knitting my great new yarn from Noro - OBI. A chunky version of Silk Garden give or take a percentage of angora. Lovely - I decided to knit a beret and the colours are amazing. All good practice for my fairisle tams for Christmas presents. One ball is one beret - so great for kits and pressies for knitters.

Ah well - off to the sarnies right now.

Knit Knit

Bank Holiday

Just loaded some new yarn onto the website (Debbie Bliss's newest yarn called Milano) - then I am going to spend the rest of the day catching up on my knitting tasks but mainly spinning some alpaca blanket - lovely to work with. So what do I do with all this fab fibre I am making fro myself? Well I have recently knitted some socks from hand spun wool and here they are:

These are made from Blue Faced Leicester and I am a proud mummy of these little babies!

I spun the colours and then plied with a light blue - so they have a marled look to them. My photo does not really do the colours justice but they are bright blue and orange - such a good colour combination and one which all those Michaelmas Daisies just opening up seem to have understood for years.

Autumn Folks

Hey all

Just letting you know that all the lovely Autumn yarns have come in. These include a great faux fur yarn which is like the posh version of all that eyelash stuff - far nicer but a lot more pricey - mind you it looks it too. Then there's Debbie Bliss with her newest Milano - this is a vintage yarn all bobbly and I can remember my wool shop working grandmother in just the same sort of stuff - the full monty - jacket skirt and waistcoat! All in vogue patterns of course.
The Sami Mirasol and Paqa Pura have made up into  some great hats and - despite the sudden reemergence of the heatwave - thoughts are turning to curling up for those long dark nights with the newest and latest trends on the needles. So much wool and so little time . . .

Finishing Off

Just letting you know we have a Finishing school course tomorrow - where our lovely students are coming for  a brush up on their knitting know how. We will go over mattress stitch; buttons holes; sewing shoulder seams (always a bit annoying) and ways to avoid doing this at all. We will also cover blocking and finishing; joining; knitting in the round and a bit of Continental knitting for good measure. How is it I am such an expert? making mistakes, of course!

Ah yes - and then there is the lunch . . .