Life has got very unbalanced for me over the last couple of years. I am lucky to have a great job that I enjoy, but it is demanding and I have been giving it too much of myself. This has not been good for me and so I am taking action to rebalance myself and my life. Having reduced the hours that I work, I’m using this extra space and time to take a step back, remind myself what really matters to me and start to do more in those areas that have become neglected.

One of the big areas of neglect is my creative life, of which this blog used to play a large part. Which is not to say that I haven’t been making stuff – I have! I’ve been knitting, have finished my first quilt and started another, and have re-started dressmaking.  I have also been writing up knitting patterns for things I designed in the past and for new things that I’m in the process of designing  and making. We are also about to ‘de-modernise’ our house, taking it back to the 1920s when it was built. I’ve been doing a huge amount of research to design and plan this refurbishment and am keen to share these ideas and show how we get on.

Indeed, photographing and sharing all of these things is something that I enjoy hugely and have missed.  So, here I am, back again. I’ve got lots and lots of things I’ve made that I can’t wait to show and share, and am excited about plans to shake things up here.

But for now, Hello (again)! Oh, and if you’d like to keep reading, click the link to follow my blog with Bloglovin.

This is the jumper that I made for Alex last Christmas. It was a particularly busy time last December, and I thought that, if I simply didn’t mention it, my boys might just forget that they normally get something knitted from my at Christmas. I thought it  might just be possible to avoid one of our family Christmas traditions: the one that involves me finishing off a sock or a glove at 3am on Christmas morning while Steve finishes wrapping the presents.

Well, that plan backfired on me rather spectacularly. Somewhere in the middle of last December, Alex asked me if I had started making anything for him for Christmas, and that if I hadn’t, could he have a jumper? At which point Will chimed in saying how much he’d like a jumper too, and could his one be a Fair Isle tank top? Also by Christmas? I didn’t quite manage that, but they both had their jumpers by the middle of February.

Here are the details of this sweater:

Pattern: Fjord, by Marie Wallin, published in Rowan 42.

Yarn: Berocco Peruvia Quick. Gorgeous yarn, just completely lovely. It doesn’t show in the photos, but each colour contains flecks of the other colours in the range.

Notes: Although the jumper turned out pretty well, this is not a pattern I’d recommend. I altered it quite significantly (although unfortunately I can’t remember all the changes). I think it is a salutary lesson, if you are browsing for patterns on Ravelry, to look at the number of people who have already chosen to make that pattern. Anyway, this version is Ravelled here.

This year? This year my boys will both be getting socks. And I’ll start knitting them soon – before they come up with any more ideas of their own!

He is sporting a sweater that I made for him last Christmas, one that is based on an original from a very different era.

This portrait of Edward, Duke of Windsor was painted in 1925. When Will asked me to make him a Fair Isle tank top I used this painting, in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, as the inspiration for Will’s version. You can see more details of the sweater on Ravelry.

Of course, starting new eras necessarily involves ending old ones. Our beautiful baby boy, with the broadest grin and the loudest laugh, has left his childhood behind and grown into an amazing, talented, considerate, handsome, witty and and endlessly interesting young man. I am bursting with pride as I watch him make this this transition and cannot wait to cheer him on as he embraces life as an adult.

But some things never change. Will, this is for you:

“So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.”

AA Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

Pattern: Leaf and Nupp shawl, from Knitted Lace of Estonia by Nancy Bush. I chose this pattern because the leaves in the lace pattern also reminded me of bluebells – a nice combination with the yarn, I thought.

Yarn: Posh Yarn Eva 2 ply cashmere/silk. This is the Bluebell colourway from Posh’s cashmere club. The colour is hard to capture, especially in the full sun in which these photos were taken. But it is a beautiful, utterly bluebell-y blue, with subtle tinges of lavender.

Needles: 3.25 mm

Notes: I spent this weekend at the wonderful Knitnation organised by the awesome Alice and CookieA. I’ll post more on that later, especially with details of my highly uncharacteristic stash acquisition (Wollmeise anyone??). But I also spent a day doing a workshop on Estonian lace making with Nancy Bush. I met some lovely people, and it was incredibly interesting hearing about this region’s history of making lace for the last couple of hundred years.

One of the things that I learned was that the nupps, that you can see in the photo above, work best in white yarn, because apparently light reflects differently on white than on any other colour. Which explains why they are not that prominent in my or other coloured versions, and made me think I’d like to try another nupp-based shawl in a natural coloured Shetland laceweight yarn.

I also wish I’d made the shawl larger, as it is really more of a large scarf size. Nancy Bush had a sample that she had knitted of the same pattern, in a pure Shetland wool, and it was much larger than my version. I hadn’t thought about it before, but once I saw the two together it was obvious that the silk content in my shawl made the yarn much less stretchier, and therefore block much smaller, than the pure wool shawl. Yet another reason to try a Shetland shawl!

And finally, just because a girl  in a sports car (yes, I am still harping on about our recent trip to France!) really ought to wear a headscarf, here’s one of me posing like mad…

Pattern: Featherweight cardigan (rav link), by Hannah Fetig

Yarn: Malabrigo lace, in the colour Natural 63

Needles: 4mm, and 3mm for the ribbing.

I chose to do 1×1 ribbing for the bottom edge of the cardigan, finished off with my favourite tubular cast-off. I worked the front edge and sleeves in stocking stitch with a rolled edge.

As this is for me to wear during the summer, I didn’t mind that the edges rolled back quite a bit, and I like the way the rolled edge looks at the neckline.

Notes: I was happily knitting away on this cardigan when I read Bell’s cautionary tale about laceweight cardigans. She, and many commenters, talked about the problems they had with some laceweight yarns felting and just not being sturdy to last. I looked more closely at my knitting and realised that the yarn was indeed starting to felt a little, even before I had finished working on it.

This is most noticable on the sleeves, where I picked up the stitches that had been knit earlier. Blocking the cardigan helped, as it made the newer stitches also felt slightly, but you can still see a ridge where the two meet:

I am happy with how this cardigan turned out but, given that it started to felt before I even finished it, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out not to have a particularly long shelf-life. On the plus side, it only took me four weeks to knit, so I guess I’ll just enjoy it while I can!

Photos taken here:

To celebrate our anniversary last week we spent a wonderful long weekend staying in a fairytale chateaux near Bordeaux. I couldn’t resist slipping a couple of photos into this post – if you’d like to see some more, the Flickr set is here. Not bad eh?

After what was probably for me an unprecedented 2-month knitting hiatus, I finally caught the bug again. Instrumental in this was the fact that I had signed up for Dee at Posh Yarn’s Cashmere Club last December, which means that every couple of months some delicious hand-dyed cashmere gets dropped through my letterbox. (The fact that I paid for it last year also makes me feel rather like this is free yarn – irrational, I know, but hey, if it makes me happy…)

I started this scarf at the beginning of April, just as we were about to go on holiday to Morocco for a week. I thought that the beautiful, tulip-inspired colours would match that landscape well, and I was right.

It was perfect for getting me back into knitting – a quick, easy knit with many dropped row stitches that meant the scarf grew incredibly quickly, and a nice bit of lace at each end. I am somewhat ambivalent about variegated yarn in general, but I am really happy with how this stitch pattern worked with, rather than against, the yarn.

Although I love the result, these are not really my colours, so this scarf is destined to become a gift for a deserving friend (hope she’s not reading as I haven’t given it to her yet!)

Here are the details:

Pattern: Victorian Ruby (Ravelry link) by Jane Sowerby, from Victorian Lace Today

Yarn: Posh Yarn Eva 4 ply silk/cashmere, in the colourway Tulip Time

Needles: 4.5mm

Ravelled: here