3KCBWDAY4 - Raining in my art

A Knitter or Crocheter For All Seasons?
As spring is in the air in the northern hemisphere and those in the southern hemisphere start setting their sights for the arrival of winter, a lot of crocheters and knitters find that their crafting changes along with their wardrobe. Have a look through your finished projects and explain the seasonality of your craft to your readers. Do you make warm woollens the whole year through in preparation for the colder months, or do you live somewhere that never feels the chill and so invest your time in beautiful homewares and delicate lace items. How does your local seasonal weather affect your craft?

The UK is famed for its wet weather. I am always cold, even in the summer. Conversely I also over-heat easily! My thermostat is broken...

I love to knit wool and wool mix items because I never manage to perfectly time the completion of a summery cotton project so that it coincides with the month or two of true summer we get in England. I've found that I don't like knitting with cotton very much so that could be the other reason!

Scarves and shawls are awesome for layering but I don't like a big thick lump of wool round my neck so I like to make them in fingering weight yarn.

I made my Colonnade in Bessie fingering weight yarn from SuperKnits. If you haven't checked out the shop, you really should! Her colours and especially her teals are amazing. I wore my Colonnade pretty much every day over the autumn and winter but I recently left it at a friend's house by mistake. She smokes (yeuch!) so when little Bessie Colonnade got home she was most stinky so she had a bath in some Soak and a re-block for good measure :)

This year I hope to make many more items in fingering weight or lighter weights such as Whisper Cardigan by Hannah Fettig and Rubbish Mojitos by Woolly Wormhead because I just love the look of knitted fabric at this gauge. And because wool is so warm and light it's perfect for our changeable weather and my broken thermostat!

3KCBWDAY4

3KCBWDAY3 - My crafting hero

I greatly admire many designers, knitters and podcasters. Veera Valimaki, my Ravelry friends and greentrianglegirl of A Playful Day podcast and blog spring to mind.

My ultimate crafting hero is my paternal Grandmother who is sadly no longer with us. My Grandmother, Joan was a prolific crafter and artist. As far as I know she did not sell any of her work, though much of it was of an amazing quality. She inspires me to craft every day.

Tapestry rug handmade by Joan

When she passed away, we were shocked to discover how many of her clothes she had handmade. She had made all of the curtains in the house, all of the cushion and chair covers, all of the quilts and had even beautifully repaired some of her cane and wicker furniture.

The sheer amount of sewing, knitting, quilting, cooking, painting, gardening and crafting she did in her lifetime is definitely impressive. But she is my hero because of her fearlessness when it came to trying new skills and crafts. She was never ashamed of her mistakes because they always taught her something.

She taught me to hand-sew and showed me her latest projects whenever I visited her. She always involved me in all she did, be it gardening or needlepoint. When I was small, she sewed me pretty smocked dresses and knitted me jerseys and my very own Paddington Bear. She made me a huge, beautiful quilted dressing gown when I was 8 which I used every day and which still fit me until it finally fell apart when I was 15.

Her knitting needle gauge

Joan was born in 1922. The Second World War began when she was only 16. Growing up in such a uncertain time meant that she was very thrifty and never threw anything useful away. It always astounded me that her house was clutter-free and spotless until I realised that she was always on the go, hardly watched any television and cooked every meal from scratch. She only sat down to rest at about 4pm when everyone had a cup of tea and a slice of cake.

When she passed away in May 2011, it was a huge shock. She had always been so active and healthy.

I inherited her craft books and sewing machine which inspired me to learn to sew. It helped me grieve as I felt closer to her when I was sewing or reading her books. My Grandfather had been a bookseller so books have always played a big part in our family life!

I hope to continue learning new skills and crafts for the rest of my life, and to instil a respect for crafts in future generations just as my Grandmother did.

My Grandmother and I on Easter Sunday last year

3KCBWDAY2 - Photography Phail

My camera has decided to pack up today, hopefully I can get my pic up tomorrow morning.

3KCBWDAY2

3KCBWDAY1 - Brown In Town......

Colour is one of our greatest expressions of ourselves when we choose to knit or crochet, so how do you choose what colours you buy and crochet or knit with. Have a look through your stash and see if there is a predominance of one colour. Do the same with your finished projects - do they match? Do you love a rainbow of bright hues, or more subdued tones. How much attention do you pay to the original colour that a garment is knit in when you see a pattern? Tell readers about your love or confusion over colour.

I love colour! I think all knitters and crafters do! 


I like strong, saturated colours. Being pale-skinned, pastels just seem to wash me out and I'm never attracted to them.

Over the years I have noticed that I'm always attracted to blues and greens and teals. Sometimes a pink or orange or sunny yellow yarn will catch my eye and make me smile. But my first instinct is to go for oceanic tones! 

Mmmmm teal.......

The fact that colours do not have to match and do not have to be tonal has been a big lesson for me. I love an eclectic mix of colours together. This has led to some rather disastrous striped 'stash-busting' projects.....


The colour that a garment is knit can be important, I try to pay attention but sometimes I just want to jump in and use what I have to see how it looks. I have decided that I will never knit a garment in black yarn because it does not show detail well and attracts all the fluff and lint present within a 5 mile radius! Having two cats has helped in this decision :)


I do not like brown, my father always told me never to wear brown in town, and since we lived in town, I never wore it! But I've recently found that I quite like brown-toned rather than silver-toned greys. The greys are richer for their slight earthiness and I'm really liking how it's working with the orange in my stripe study. So I think grey-browns may be the way forward!

Stripe study in Zettl Treviso

To read all about other peoples' love of colour from those taking part in Knitting and crochet blog week, simply perform a Google search for the tag 3KCBWDAY1.

3rd Annual Knitting and Crochet Blog Week starts tomorrow!

I will be taking part because I love blogging and reading other people's blogs. But sometimes I think no-one is reading and no-one is interested so I stop. Self-fulfilling prophecy or what?!

So I've decided to give blogging another chance, and this seems like a really good way to get involved :)

Are you taking part?

Resolutions - How did I do last year?

2126 in first half of year + 1536 in last half of year = 3662g (7006m) knitted last year.

I wanted to lose 7 pounds from my stash, which is 3178g. So I smashed it!!

2012 - The year of the purposeful loss

2011 was the year of sad losses. I lost my beloved Grandmother very suddenly in May. I lost my good mental health as a result, but an amazing counsellor and being kind to myself brought me back.

But I gained a fabric stash and a sewing machine from my talented Grandmother. My sewing skills went from non-existent to being able to make my own project bags and purses :) Thus I gained a new skill and a new stash to buy things for :)

2012 will be the year of intentional, purposeful losses.

I have the old cliche of losing weight. Bad mental health equalled mass comfort eating!

My knitting stash has grown and needs reducing a little.

I have no focussed knitting goals, I just want to make what I want to make. But I would like to make myself a pair of socks at some point :)

On an unrelated note, I also want to buy less cheap clothes (Primark has been my best friend) and start investing in more expensive, classic pieces which are hopefully more ethical, while saving me wardrobe space!