Manos Serena Giveaway!

To make up for my long silence spent at the bottom of the Well of Spreadsheets (I tech edit everything), I'm giving some stuff away. Well, some yarn, actually. And a pattern!

What we're giving away:

Artesano is very kindly offering three 50g skeins of the lovely, silky Manos del Uruguay Serena in a colour or the winner's choosing.

Three skeins of Manos Serena also just happens to be enough to make...

Hele! My lovely lace shawl with nupps (or beads, if you'd prefer) and a feathered edging. The pattern will also go free to the winner (or, if the winner already has it, another of my shawl patterns of their choice).

All you have to do is comment on this post by 23:59 GMT, Friday 7th December and tell me your favourite fibre for Autumn (I know - it may feel like Winter, but that doesn't start for another three weeks!). On December 8th, one lucky winner will be chosen and notified by e-mail, so please be sure to include it in the e-mail field when commenting, or by PM on Ravelry, if preferred.

Only one entry per person, please, and feel free to comment no matter where you live!

Elsie Schematic

There are a lot of sizes available for my new cardigan pattern, Elsie. Enough sizes where it gets a bit difficult to explain them in just a sentence on the Ravelry pattern page. And I'm a firm believer that you should be able to see the schematic before you buy, so click here to be taken to a two-page PDF with full schematic information.

September is now available!

With just enough time to be appropriately named, my new mini-collection, put together in partnership with Artesano Yarns, is now available! Get it on Ravelry for £6.50*.

Elsie

Aada

Hele

 *Already purchased one of the patterns but want to buy the collection? Don't worry! If you bought Hele or Aada before release, the purchase price of the pattern you already bought will be automatically deducted at check out.

Early Autumn Pattern Preview

Here are a few teasers of the collection I have coming out next month…enjoy!

(Hint: there may be a giveaway, as well. Stay tuned!)

Summer weather, Winter knitting

After three months of miserable, constant rain, the sun has finally reached Britain. My garden is flourishing, people are walking around without clothes on, and our complaints turn to another subject besides the rain: how bloody hot it is.

This is also the time of year that I usually (erm, and belatedly) start speed-knitting my samples for Winter in warm, cozy, swelteringly thick wool. Here's a sneak peek of a few of those. And my garden. And my cat.

My garden:

Apparently, one becomes an obsessive waiting for sunflowers to bloom.

I am going to eat all of them. All of them.

Cornflowers - a pretty weed

 Requsite cat picture:

Dobby

And some knitting:

A Victory over Asparagus

I'm fairly new to this whole gardening thing. While for most of my younger life I resigned myself to the nickname of "Black Thumb," our current flat came with the bonus of a South-facing sheltered courtyard, perfect for lining with potted plants.

Knowing how expensive and sometimes-rare fresh blueberries are to find here in the UK, my first purchase was a Bluecrop blueberry bush.

This was closely followed by a Jersey, and I'm sure there will be a number of others once I, erm, get some more space.

I careened into gardening with a very blissful ignorance of what would grow in pots. As a result, I am now growing two very large containers of asparagus. The funny thing is, if I were a real, knowledgeable gardener, I probably would have started new seedlings after these ones got legs long enough to make it in Hollywood (badaboom):

But I planted them out anyway. In pots. I'd pretty much given up on them and was just going to let them run their course and curl up and die, but when I was checking up on them today, I found this:

Now just to keep myself from eating the shoots for  a few years.

I think I might actually be okay at this gardening thing after all.

Though the sun probably helps, too.

New Pattern: Grasslands

Spring always arrives with a herald of lace. Though England has lately been cool enough to have me in wool year-round, to do so feels like a curse on the poor new leaves and flowers struggling into existence amid the cold.

My first design of Spring 2012, Grasslands, attempts to bring around the lush green Spring I want...if only in knitted form.

On this stole, a patchwork of lines and paths shoot diagonally and across. A single-ply yarn with bias (shown here in one skein of the scrumptious Madelinetosh Prairie, colour Moorland) is used to great effect in a suspended bead edging, hanging in delicate twists from each end.

The pattern is now available for purchase on Ravelry.

Introducing Hill Town Wools

I've been working on another project over the past few months, and yesterday I finally unveiled it: my new Etsy shop, Hill Town Wools.

Kelmscott Lace

Hill Town Wools is a selection of some of my favourite natural fibre blends (such as Kelmscott, a BFL, Baby Alpaca, and Mulberry Silk blend) handspun into light, shimmery yarn, made right here in my home in Oxfordshire, England. Stock is limited at the moment, but there will be more added all the time, so check back regularly!

May Day

It's been a hard but wonderful week, involving the death of my grandfather (who lived to a well-aged 93, and led a very full life. RIP Grandpa W), a new volunteer job as the dog and cat photographer at my local animal shelter, and lots of opportunities from new dwellings to developing new aspects of my business.

Some of the best hours of my week were spent with my camera at the shelter, helping my friends find homes. A few of my favourites:


Tommy is 18 months old and lost a front leg to a car accident. It doesn't stop him from acting just like a regular cat, though.

Cassie likes to smile when she's happy, which can sometimes look quite alarming! I was proud of getting this smiling-without-the-teeth shot.

Jess is my favourite dog I have met in years, and I would take her home in a second if I could.

Thank you for working the camera for me, guys!

Spring 2012 in Pictures

I'm having what my family would call one continuous love affair with the British countryside. My photo albums on Facebook are so long that most people who even attempt to look at them must give up after the third scroll-and-load (but maybe that's being generous?). But the thing is, how can you not live here and see that certain times must be captured? How can you not want to immortalize the fragile young growth of English Spring?