I have a new blog!

Hurrah!

Or perhaps it should be ‘Huzzah’, as that’s the cheer I use on the Hufflepuff Pride Socks?

Heartfelt thanks to the wonderful Kristle for all her work setting this up for me (still ongoing – expect some changes in the decor here).  I initially attempted to set up the blog on my own, and ended up drowning in an unfathomable sea of code. Huzzah for the code expert Kristle who swam in to rescue me!

So, it is with great relief and excitement that I can post some pictures to show what’s going on at the moment in my design obsessed life:

Firstly the lace I’m working on. I’m very pleased with this, a variation of the popular beech leaf design in Mary Thomas’s Book of Knitting Pattterns (ancient and invaluable). I wanted a leaf lace insertion that will repeat over 12 rows, not the 10 used in the original, and I wanted it to be fully purled on every alternate row (the original has some knits in the alternate rows). A day or so of playing with charts and swatches resulted in

leaf border

Pretty eh?

And yesterday I enjoyed a trip to Baa Ram Ewe in Leeds, a sweet little yarn shop, where I made a rare impulse buy:

Herdy mug

It’s a Herdy mug, and it is so me! As a lifelong fibre addict I am mad about sheep and sheepy things. In fact, I love learning to identify different sheep breeds by sight when I go tramping about the hills and dales of ‘God’s Country’ (Yorkshire). I even have a sweet little book to help me do so; ‘Know Your Sheep’ is a pocket-sized bible for British sheep enthusiasts.

The mug was designed by a company that is working to preserve the beautiful landscape of the English Lakes, home of the Herdwick sheep from which Herdy take their name. Be warned though before you follow that link – you’ll want to buy everything they make!