A lovely surprise gift!

I’m a member of a group on Ravelry called the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup. The purpose of the group is to inspire all the members to knit, crochet, weave etc at least one thing each month. Each project you submit gets you points for your ‘house’. I’ve been a member for nearly three years now, and the people there are so friendly. They’re really supportive in good times and bad. As a fabulous example, look what I got a couple of weeks ago;

The blanket is made up ( as you can see) of nine squares, made by five other members of the group and then pieced together and sent to me by one of them as well. What a lovely gift to get! These people have never met me, and in all likelihood never will other than on the internet and yet they took the time and trouble to make this for my new baby. She’s a very lucky little girl! It’s been in use every day, and I can see that it’ll be useful for a long time to come, either as a playmat or to keep her warm whilst she’s sleeping. One of my friends suggested that it might become her snuggle blanket which would comfort her when she’s off colour. However it’s used, I’m sure it will be well used and well loved!

 

Slightly random, but cool!

OK, a deviation from recent topics (can only be a good thing, IMHO!) but I’ve just discovered this blog, and you have to go and look at it if you like crochet, cardmaking, amigurumi etc! She’s been making ‘crobots’ (aren’t you intrigued??), and they really made me smile! The only amigurumi I managed before my hands became too knackered to crochet any more were my tortoise for my dad, elephant for my mum and the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) for me! Incidentally, I just went and searched my blog for a picture of my Tenth Doctor Amigurumi and was surprised to find that David Tennant is mentioned in nine of my blog posts! I’m not sure why I’m surprised, as he’s so brilliant, but there we are!

I went off topic again, didn’t I? Well, the point was that CraftGirl78’s crobots are fab, and deserve some more attention! So go! Comment and love!

p.s. Here’s my Tenth Doctor Amigurumi, for those of you who missed him the first time round!

A real live shop!

This morning, I took some of mine and Ellie’s Jelliebean Yarns to Big Knitters yarn shop on Wellfield Road in Cardiff! It was very exciting! Anna, who runs the shop, had already made a space in the shelving for our yarns, and let me put it out myself! (I know that made me sound like a five year old, but I was THAT excited!)

Anyway, I took some photos (of course!) so that I could show you how beautiful our yarns look in the shop setting!

This is the shop that we are stocked in (oooh, even typing that makes me squeal inside with excitement!), right on the corner of a lovely, busy shopping street in Cardiff. Doesn’t it look lovely?!

There’s our yarn, on the middle shelf below King Becky’s yarn. It’s a great position in the shop, right opposite the door as you enter and next to the checkout. Don’t all the colours look beautiful together!

I’ll be going back in next week after my next dyeing session. I’m glad Anna’s so friendly and understanding about my need to go and say ‘hello’ to them now and again! Now, hopefully, the yarn shop’s customers will love them enough to buy them!

Exciting new venture (again!)

It’s not long since I told you about my Etsy shop selling jewelry, www.jennieworldcrafts.com. And yet there is another venture which I’ve not yet shared with you. Since the summer, Ellie and I have been dyeing yarn, and we also have an Etsy shop set up for that at www.jelliebeanyarns.etsy.com. I’m so enjoying doing this. It’s so close to my most loved craft; knitting. And yet it’s so different that I can flit from one thing to the other without getting bored!

Another thing about it that I love is that if I feel like knitting, say, a shawl in purple, I know that I can now go and dye that yarn myself rather than waiting to get to a yarn shop or wool festival before I find my perfect colour.

Anyway, I’ll share some pictures of my yarns with you in a minute, but first off, we had very good news at the weekend! As soon as we choose which yarns to take, we will have our yarn stocked in ‘Big Knitters’ yarn shop in Roath, Cardiff! This is tremendously exciting news, especially as we are such a new little enterprise. We’ve only been dyeing for a few months, but we’ve had such a gratifying response both from people we know and those we’ve only just met. Many of our friends at the local knitting groups have been kind enough to buy some of our yarn. We’ve also been fortunate enough to sell to crafters visiting from the United States as well as, via our Etsy store, to the US and Finland! And every skein I hand over or send off brings little shivers of excitement! It’s thrilling to think that, sometime in the future, this could be a viable, profit-making, income-bringing business for us!

Anyway, here are some of my yarns so far:

Firstly, those which will be listed in the shop in the coming few days;

Witching Hour

Midnight Jade

Autumn Days

And next, those which are already listed in the shop, or have already sold;

Acid Hiss

Blackberry Blueberry

Gryffie Roar

Ocean Swell

I am loving the opportunity to play with all the different colours and see how they all meld together so beautifully. My only problem at the moment is that I want to knit with them all! I have reserved a skein of the ‘Midnight Jade’ for myself (there have to be some perks to this job!!) and I’m designing a shawl with it at the moment. To my credit, I think I’ve only held back four or five skeins for myself so far, all to use to design new knitting patterns, so I think that’s pretty restrained!

This yarn is all British wool, from Blue Faced Leicester sheep in a 4ply or sock weight. The wool is yummy because it takes the colour so well, but it also has a sheen about it which really accentuates your work. We’ve also got new yarn bases in to try, so I’m looking forward to sharing some of them with you soon, just as soon as I’ve planned which colours to use for which bases!

2010 Winter Olympics – Yarn Addicts, unite!

So, the torch is lit, the athletes are off and skating/skiiing/sledding etc etc, and the yarnies are knitting and crocheting! What am I talking about? Yarn Harlot’s Knitting Olympics and Ravelry’s Ravelympics. Both events are similar in that yarnies are invited to attempt a challenging project during the seventeen days of games. In the main, the projects must be started and finished within the time that the Olympic flame is lit. I’ll be taking part in the Ravelympics, as I heard of that one first, in Team Gryffindor (from the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup)- ROAR, Gryffindor! (I’m a yarn geek and proud!) I’ve got my project lined up to do, it’s by my side now and I’ll make a start just as soon as I can post this and get my Grey’s Anatomy DVD started!

I have knitting and crochet as the two wordpress tags I follow on the tagsurfer, and when I looked at it last night, more than half of the yarnies were taking part in one or other of the winter olympic tribute events – it’ll be great to see what people come out with after the seventeen days!

I thought I’d list some of the other WordPress participants in either event, so that you can go and wish them luck. Plus, the Olympics are supposed to bring countries together – maybe I’ll make some new friends!

• Rogue Tess is knitting some pink ribbon socks; I really need to make time to knit my first pair of socks as well! Oh, and flame throwing tap shoes?? I’m intrigued – I need to find coverage of the opening ceremonies on iPlayer!
• Lina has started a Hammamelis shawl in a beautiful bronze colour, and has the cutest pictures of her dogs in the snow!
•  Ms. Knit-It-All has started a project for herself, a cottage lace cardigan in another lovely rich brown yarn.
• ndscribbler has begun a lace vest – I’m in admiration of people who can knit lace whilst watching the tv – my lace project is strictly for silent time only!
• mtmom has cast on an inishturk tam – a lionbrand pattern which has a matching sweater which I hope will be a future project of mine. I’ll look forward to seeing how the tam turns out.
• Angelvista is knitting a pair of socks for her event – I’ve heard that sock knitting can become addictive once you’ve successfully completed your first pair. Is that true?
• Saltymomma is also knitting socks, and having seen the variegated yarn she’s using, I can’t wait to see how it knits up. Black and purple and turquoise and white – I’m intrigued!
• Jessica Lynn is taking part in the aerial unwind event – is that what I think it is?
• Yogageekfreak has cast on a project in pale blue, which looking at previous posts of hers will become a Rockefeller sweater – that looks lovely. Hmm, I can see that on me in the future!
• Hoc Age is aiming to knit an Icarus shawl in an effort to work on the ‘citus’ (faster) element of the Olympic motto of Citus, Altius,Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger). I’m sure Icarus is in my queue of things to knit as well, and her goal is a good one. I hope that the next sixteen and a half days make me a bit ‘citus’ at lace knitting!

Good luck everyone, and here’s to the successful completion of our events!

A quiet hour, on a quiet day

GG has taken the kids out for a walk, making the most of the sunshine. I, on the other hand, decided to stay home as I really want to work on my cowl today. I’m hoping to make lots of progress so that I can feel, this evening, that I can start something new. And not knitting or crochet related either. For a change!

I’ve had a germ of an idea of something to do in preparation for having a stall at a craft fair (after Welshpurpletree did so well with her stall last year). There’s no point in my knitting or crocheting items for sale as, on the whole, they’d take far too long and I’d not be able to charge proportionately to the work gone into each item. It breaks my heart now, seeing people selling hand knitted items for just a couple of pounds when I know that hours and hours of work have gone into each piece. Anyway, I digress.

I’m not going to say too much about my newest ideas yet (in case it all goes horribly wrong and I humiliate myself!). You can just wish me luck with the whatever! I’m off to put on a Sunday movie now and get on with knitting my cowl.

p.s. Go over and have a look at this beautiful baby girl! I love her thick black hair! Welcome to the world, Annabel Violet Spohr.

Gorgeous yarn for you to buy

My friend Machelle has recently started dying and selling yarn, and I wanted to tell you about it. I saw some skeins on Thursday at knitting club, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. She has both 85% wool/15% cashmere laceweight yarns and 100% pure cashmere in lots of gorgeous colourways and very reasonably priced. Visit her Etsy shop here. Also, if you’d like a chance to win a skein of her wool/cashmere blend, she’s running a competition to find a name for the base yarn. I’ve entered (twice, but other people have had better ideas!). There’s still plenty of time, as the closing date for entries is next Wednesday, the 20th January, and a winner will be announced on Thursday.

I’ve got three skeins of laceweight in my cupboard which I need to use up first, but as soon as they’re knitted up I’ll be buying some of Machelle’s yarn! That’s a good incentive to use up some more of my stash!

Gloves are done!

Thanks to a Cardiff Knitters meeting last night and lots of hot chocolate, I managed to stay focussed long enough to finish Handsome’s Gryffindor Gloves. He very proudly and happily wore them to school this morning. I just hope that the cheap acrylic yarn (remember, using yarn from my stash rather than buying new!) will keep his little hands warm enough. They certainly inspired him to fly on his broomstick most of the way to school, so I must have done something right!

And while I was at the meeting, I got bored by knitting so I switched to crochet for a while and made this;

You can see how small it is when you look at the size of the pins which I’m using to block it. (Blocking is the process by which you get lacey items to achieve the shape you want after you’ve made them. I used spray starch on this ornament so that, once it has dried, it should stay fairly firm unless it gets damp again.) I love these little lace projects – they fulfil my instant gratification thing, and are pretty to look at! Plus, this is item nunber one done for Christmas 2010!

More Christmas presents

So, another picturey post tonight. I’m not in much of a mood for words, so pictures will have to suffice.

I made a few crocheted animals (or amigurumi) as presents. This first one was for my Dad, and is called Joshie. If you look at my Dad’s blog, you’ll see that he owns a tortoise called Henry. Joshie was made to be a substitute for Henry whilst he’s in hibernation!

Next up is Lavender, the baby elephant. She was made for my mother, who is something of an Elephant lover. I also put dried lavender in her feet. Lavender is now living with my mother’s collection of elephants in her living room.

Finally is Tubby. Tubby is a bath frog, with a sponge in his tummy, so he’s also an exfoliating frog!

They were all great fun to make, and the recipients were suitably impressed!

I should probably add that Joshie and Tubby were both named by my younger son, leaving the originally named Lavender to me!

First completed project of 2010!

I actually finished this on Saturday evening, but I was too lazy to photograph it at the time and so it’s only coming on the blog today!

Here is (only ten days late!) my Mum’s Christmas present. She had new furniture in her living room recently, and so I though a nice lap blanket to go with the new sofa and armchairs would be ideal.

It’s about a metre square (or a square yard if you still work in imperial), and backed with fleece fabric to maximise the cosiness quota! She has already seen it in it’s nearly finished state, but I will be taking it to her tomorrow to use through this cold snap we’re experiencing at the moment.

I’ve finished two of my other projects, but I’m waiting for a vital bit to dry before I take photos. Hopefully I’ll be able to post about them tomorrow.