Mammoth crafty update part III

Hello everyone, I hope 2014 is going well for you so far!

This post just about completes my update of crafty goings on in December. I managed to finish two other projects at the end of 2013.

Firstly this Kim Hargreaves sweater, called Longing, from the book Enchanted.

Sorry about the slightly rubbish quality of the photo - this was a really difficult garment to photograph. Perhaps it's because its cream, or perhaps it just the really awful lack of daylight here at this time of year!

Anyway, I hope you can see the picture well enough to be able to make out the stitch work and overall idea. I'm quite pleased with how this came out. I tried to make this sweater last winter, but had trouble because the sleeves on the finished garment were waaay waaaay too long! This time around, I decided to shorten the sleeves from the length specified in the pattern by about 5cm. It was a little nerve wracking as this was a bit of a guess based on other things I have made where the sleeve length has been ok, but I seem to have guessed well because the sleeve length is perfect this time around!

The other make I completed, on the very last day of the year was this little scarf.

Again, I'm sorry for the awful light in these pictures - it was really overcast when I took these, so the colours are all wrong.

The yarn I used for this was Madeline Tosh sock yarn, in shade Olivia. I used a basic leaf lace pattern that you can find in most stitch dictionaries of knitted lace. This post, from when I started this scarf waaay back in June last year will give you a better idea of the actual colour of the yarn! Now that I've looked back through this blog to find when I started this project, I can't believe that it was so long ago and that six months has gone so fast!

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Well, I'll be back to normal posting with my next post, we're pretty well caught up now! I have to share one very exciting thing though, which I'll go into more detail on in my next post. I think I have mentioned before, one of my very favourite independent yarn and haberdashery shops is called Mrs Moon, in St Margarets, near Richmond upon Thames. Well, Mrs Moon have an annual Christmas prize draw, and guess who won this year! Yes, it was me! I am such a lucky, lucky girl, and prize is an absolutely amazing haul of yarn-y goodies! I will share full details in my next post!

Communication breakdown

Annoyingly my internet connection is temporarily out of action while our service provider "upgrades" our broadband.  Not sure why upgrade should necessitate broadband outage for nearly a week! Seems counterintuitive to me - surely upgrade should result in improved service rather than no service! 

Well anyway,  the lack of connection is the reason for my lack of blogging this week.  I'm posting this from my phone so please excuse typos! 

I had a nice time visiting London's Loop yesterday and bought some skeins of Madeleine Tosh sock yarn.

I'm working on turning some of this into a lovely scarf ready for autumn

Well that's all for now, I'll be back when my internet connection permits!

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Lonely tree shawl

Hello everyone! I'm back from a lovely week of holiday with S. We were lucky with the weather and had some lovely days out. What more could you ask for from a holiday in England in the summer!

Well, I'm not going to share my holiday snaps just yet. Instead I wanted to tell you about the fun I have had making the lovely Lonely Tree Shawl, a pattern for a triangular shawl by SoftSweater, aka Silvia Bo Bilvia. The pattern is available from SoftSweater's Ravely store for those of you who are interested.

This was my first triangular shawl, well my first attempt to knit any kind of shawl actually!

I really enjoyed the process of knitting this - in fact I think it has me hooked on shawl knitting! I've discovered that there are many gorgeous knitted shawl patterns available online, so I already have my next pattern lined up - all I need is the yarn (and oh, it's such a hardship for me to go and buy yarn!!).

The shawl came out a little smaller than intended in the pattern I think - the pattern calls for worsted weight yarn, and I used a sport weight (Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk). I worked a few extra rows, and I'm pretty happy with the size my shawl finished up at. It's not massive, but it still goes comfortably round my neck and will make a sweet summer accesory to keep the chill off!

If you like the look of this lovely pattern, you might be interested to check out some other shawl patterns - I've been trawling the web all week looking for the prettiest that I can find. I've collected them on Pinterest - stop by and have a look if you have time, there are some lovely patterns out there!

Next time I'll try and post a catch up on my various crochet projects...also maybe a post with some holiday snaps soon!

Take care until then.

xx xxx xx xxx xx xxx xx xxx xx xxx xx