Spring Cleaning Surprise...

This morning I awoke to realise that my desk was a disgrace. I was allowing myself to be engulfed by an ever growing pile of books, papers, pens, pencils, folders and portfolio work in progress. To match this state of utter chaos my computer desktop was also suffering, making it damn near impossible to find anything on my laptop anymore. So both got a spring clean today!

In a valiant attempt at procrastination I started with my laptop. 

I was making good headway until, to my surprise (and delight!) I found these beautiful flower photos taken by my little sister last spring.

These photos were taken both at my parents allotments and on a walk through some nearby woods.

I love the colours! 

They are so fresh and bright.

I thought to spruce up my desktop I would use the pink flower above as my background picture, so now I'll have to keep it tidy so I can keep looking at the photo!

Ok enough procrastination, I'm getting back to cleaning and working now.

Before I dash, I also found this rather cheeky one of Charlie, our family dog...

x

So much yarn, so little time...

I've had a lot to be getting on with recently (as you can see from all of those library books), but as ever the cries of a neglected yarn stash are hard to ignore. 

So I stole myself away when everyone else was out of the flat and secretly started a jumper I have longed to start for some time...

I've decided to do a mixture of patterns and inspirations (as always, which is probably why nothing seems to work out the first time around!) so I'm using Glarna for the yoke, and possibly Vormorgan for the shape but i haven't decided yet. Finally, instead of using separate colours to create the colourwork, I am using rowan colourscape to create the colour changes.

Here is a closer photo so you can see it better...

The colourscape is pure lambswool and can be felted, but the cream yarn (sirdar denim) is machine washable. So to make life easy for myself, I decided I would preshrink the lambswool as an experiment before I knit it all up. I haven't preshrunk yarn before so i did a quick rummage around the internet and came up with a method:

Wash your skein in hot soapy water, then rinse in hot water, dunk in cold water, hang it up to dry, wind it into a ball!

Easy, and very fun. I went a bit crazy during the drying process and hung weights from it and flung it around in the garden and all kinds of strange manoeuvres due to various recommendations from the myriad of yarn loving folk on the internet. It must have looked quite strange to all my neighbours but nevermind!

I can't wait to get cracking on this at last! Just a few more essays to write and then I'm free...

x

Spring is here!

Spring has definitely arrived, snow drops, and daffodils are starting to say hello and look at all these flowers that I found growing in my stash!

These lovely ladies are starting to blossom all over my flat at the minute, a new one seems to grow every day! Pearl and Florence have even taken over My Etsy shop, PrettyPorcini

x

Rosario

Remember this?

I decided to name her after my Grandma who gave me the beautiful buttons and who is a pretty crafty lady herself! I don't get to see her very often these days, what with being so far away from home, so it's nice to take some time to rummage through my button pots and remember the stories behind them all.

To make this lovely lady I used the same yarn as i used for my first purl beret. I love this yarn because the merino/silk combination makes every petal shimmer!

The Rosario Brooch is now for sale in my Etsy shop if you'd like to give her a good home.