I feel absolutely terrible today. Along with a general feeling of illness I’m not succeeding with the projects that I wanted to work on today. Last year I posted my crayon roll that I’d made. I wasn’t 100% happy with how it turned out because I could see some of the lining fabric outside once the crayon flap was folded so I decided to try a different method. This time, I cut the crayon holding section separately and sewed it as three pieces of fabric instead which was going fine until I turned it inside out. It’s so bulky and it was a nightmare to sew around so my stitches were uneven and I’m just not happy with it at all.

On the plus side, I posted off my friend Emma’s birthday present today. I used the fetching pattern again with some gorgeous RYC cashsoft aran in a dusky pink. I hope she likes them.

I also finally got some photos of the bag I made to send to someone on Craftster. We had agreed a swap way back in January and my package to her appears to have gone awol so I’ve made this bag to send to her. I’m hoping she doesn’t read this blog and therefore won’t see this before I post it. I want to put some stereotypically British things into the bag – any suggestions?

The bag has a zippered centre pocket and a button closure, made with a prym self-cover button.

The design of the blog is likely to change this week, my wonderful husband Bob has been playing with everything for me and we just have a couple of bugs to sort before it can go live which is very exciting. As a reminder, you can follow my twitter for updates and crafty links that I like.

Posted under for the kids, general crafty updates, knitting, sewing

I work with a brilliant graphic designer called Janice, who just makes my day at work go by so much quicker and easier. Last week we went for a walk around the city centre at lunchtime and ended up buying new scarves as Janice had lost hers the week before (actually, she’d left it on a wall in Skye where she was volunteering for the National Trust). As she explained what had happened, she exclaimed, “I need COLOUR in my life! Colour!” and I suddenly decided what I was going to do for her birthday.

Pattern: Fetching from the Summer 2006 edition of Knitty
Needles: 4mm bamboo DPNs
Yarn: This was my very first skein of my very first attempt at dyeing with kool aid. I posted about dyeing on this entry. The yarn I used is the left skein in the bottom picture.
Ravelry project page: Click here
Techniques learned: I discovered whilst checking how to do the cable cast on that I’ve been casting on incorrectly for, well as long as I’ve been able to knit! That was fairly disconcerting but at least now I know how to do it properly.
I also feel that I’ve mastered how to pick up and knit stitches without leaving a gaping hole.

These were really quick to knit up – I cast on late thing on Thursday night and finished them on Saturday night, and I am by no stretch of the imagination a speedy knitter. I had to frog the thumb on the left because I somehow managed to pick up 21 stitches instead of 17 and I completed eight rounds on the thumb instead of the suggested four because the thumb barely covered my knuckle with four repeats. I did use the suggested picot cast off, but I’m not hugely happy with the effect. I think it looks pretty untidy – is it just me? Have any of you who’ve made Fetching before felt the same?

Click any of the pictures to get the bigger size.

The skein I used is the one hanging on the left hand side.


This is the best close-up I could get of the cables. To be honest, they don’t show up quite as sharply in the finished object because the colours are so dense but I like the texture.


Here is one finished wristwarmer


So I gave Janice her birthday present yesterday, something full of colour but which she could also use on her regular trips away and she says she loves them. In fact before I left the office she had her gloves on because she was cold so that’s made me very happy

Posted under dyeing wool, knitting