Blocked and ready for take-off!

Here's Multnomah washed, blocked and ready to face the spring breezes.

I am pleased with this and think the shades in it will complement lots of different colours and look great against good old black.

Down in Galloway for the long weekend for Spring Fling

http://www.spring-fling.co.uk/

Ready to face what the weather holds as we check out some studios, some old favourites, and no doubt some new to us. Enjoy the Bank Holiday if you're getting it. x K

I'm going to come right out and say it...

...I miss the snow!!!

No, I don't miss the travel chaos and the frozen and burst pipes and other hardships people have had to endure, but I do miss the beautiful diamante white stuff itself.

Not so much on the streets of Glasgow, but definitely on the rolling hills and old woods of Galloway.

Sparkly crystalline pristine snow.

I miss the snow!

He he, that's as controversial as I get in this blog ;-) x K

Tempting new patterns

While we've been out discovering the historical sites of Galloway like the Chambered Cairn at Cairn Holy, the folks at Knitty have been cooking up a new issue called First Fall so we can get more goodies per year.
Some of the patterns are lovely, and a lacy scarf named Lamina is calling my name really loudly. Very pretty indeed. x K

Off for a swim to England BRB

Or maybe to the island.
Or maybe to the buoy.
Anyway, be right back.


I make more of a wake than the QE2, hee hee.
x K

Hello sailor!

When stylist Gok Wan said the sailor look was going to be big this summer and every summer, I doubt this is what he had in mind!

This is my latest headscarf. (I know, I don't what the addiction is, I'm also hooking one at the moment.)

It's made from white, tomato and navy Patons 100% 4ply coton, which is the same stuff as the Adamas.

There's a little crochet shell border which isn't too well-seen in the pictures.

I needed it today to keep the sun from frying my hair in scorchio Galloway. xK

It's Hip Knits, Jim, but not as we know it!

Firstly thank-you for the kind comments about the Adamas headscarf.

Ok, now, a knitting-related excursion.
Last week we paid a visit to Shambellie House in New Galloway , which is hosting a temporary exhibition called Hip Knits but which has nothing to do with what we think of when we hear the expression HipKnits. They were also very liberal with the expression "Get Knitted" too, both of which I thought would stir up legal connotations, but anyway, to the exhibition.

Well, it was quite nice. Damned by faint praise? Yeah. I knew it would be a small exhibition because I had visited the museum before and new which room the temporary items are housed in, so it wasn't that. It was that the only two pieces of hand-knitting in the room were 1) a stringy very avant-garde Vivienne Westwood drapey thingy and 2) the jumper I was wearing.

Granted, it didn't spell out in the publicity blurb there would be hand-knitting, but I (wrongly) assumed so, particularly with them bandying words like Hip Knits and Get Knitted on their pamphlets and posters etc. Ah, the power of language!

So, it was virtually all machine knits, some of which were very nice, but left me feeling a bit meh. I wouldn't say, don't go to the exhibition, but I would say,"Don't travel long distances and/ or come with high expectations!"

I look some pictures, but as flash was not allowed they didn't turn out well enough to blog. Just picture a generic-looking Pringle Argyle in baby-pink and black in a size 8. Ah, the power of the mind, I'm sure you're "looking" at the exact same picture as me! x K

World-Wide Frog in Public Day

Okay, June 14th was meant to be World-Wide Knit in Public Day linky but when you have an Icarus shawl which you have neglected for months and months because deep in your heart you know your yarn is too fuzzy to show off the lace-edging and it doesn't look delicate and fragile like everyone else's Icarus, you can choose to take decisive action. Icarus link for Ravelry punters
Non-Ravellers * can always get it under Interweave Knits Summer 2006.
The shawl is getting some major doctoring, it's being ripped back to the beginning of the lacy charts and I'm just going to continue with the first chart, the one with the eyelet leaf spines radiating from the central spine. I feel a sense of relief already, knowing it's just an eyelet triangular shawl now, rather than a failed Icarus. Talk about re-framing, he he.

Anyway, the site of my public frogging was at the wishing well in
Threave Gardens Castle Douglas
where I spent a lovely afternoon with my honey strolling about admiring the flowers and playing on the Galloway cows. These are an artist's impression of the local Belted Galloway Cattle native to these parts. Yes, you are allowed to touch the sculptures, hell, you're even allowed to walk on the grass in this garden, although you do pay a pretty penny to enter.

Anyway, a good WWKIP day was had by all. x K

* Yes, I really did apply British spelling conventions to this word, so sue me.

And the winner is...

... the weasel!

J has seen a weasel running about the garden down in Dumfries and Galloway and making its way into its little home in a hole in the wall, or his alternative residence, which is a hole in the ground.

Unfortunately the weasel itself is too fast to photograph, we'd need a team from the BBC to have a 24/7 cam up, but we can show you its little dwelling places.

Imagine our surprise when we can see a flattened path leading up to the rowing boat.

J starts chuckling and I ask him what's up. He says, "don't get a fright if this guy shoots out when I lift this up." Well no guy but a pile of warehoused crab apples from the tree in the garden! So I fall about laughing, remembering how it has been obvious that some creature or other has been plundering the compost bin, where I put the rotten windfalls.

So, to cut a long story short, although we haven't seen him or her with our own eyes, all the signs point to a weasel using the rowing boat as a shelter for a heap of mouldering crab apples. Bon appetit, buddy!

Manly Ribbed Scarf

I've been tagged by TangledFrog and I'll need some time to think it over.
In the meantime I can show you some photos of a scarf I finished for J in January.
It has been finished for a couple of weeks but the weather has been a bit too wild to try to photograph it in the daylight. Even in these shots you can see it has been anchored down by some pretty hefty stones.
This was a nice easy knit and the colour-changes made it just interesting enough. 20 rows Twilleys Freedom Spirit, 18 Sirdar Peru, 16 Twilleys etc.
The whole middle third was done in the Twilleys 513 which is a variegated turquoise colour.
I don't think I'll be rushing to use the Sirdar Peru again, but I've continued to enjoy the Twilleys on this project.


In other news, I've been trying to do a major clear-out and tidy up. I've got lots of lovely things at home and I want to be able to reach them to enjoy them, so if I don't know it to be useful or believe it to be beautiful (includes sentimental appeal) it has to go. Five bin bags to charity this weekend and still plenty ahead to tackle.

Happy Knitting. x K

October Holiday

Specks on the landscape!


Can you DH in silhouette at the top of the hill, looking for an ideal picnic spot?

Can you see me making my way up the hill in my pumpkin jumper?

I had just stopped to look at the sea birds, good move if you're out of breath.

Can you see DH's shadow as he waits at the top for me?

We often find the weather during the October week and at Easter better than during the actual summer holidays, for some reason.

Happy Knitting! x K

Balcary Bay

Quite often on this blog I give you a view from Balcary Bay. I don't think I've ever given you a view OF Balcary Bay before because of its location.
Well, here is a rare view of good old Balcary Bay!
Last weekend we went out in a boat (glorified rowing boat really, don't be picturing me on a luxury yacht) to Hestan Island and this is the view looking back. If you can see a yellowish beach on the left, that's where I usually stand posing with shawls etc, it's strange for me to see it from this perspective. The water is the Solway Firth at high tide.

Ok, craft content. Knitting? Check. Interminable ribbing on a Twilley's Freedom Spirit Cardigan. Crochet? Check. Making a bag from Sirdar Indigo, one side complete. Patchwork? Check. Have made four "Shoo-Fly" blocks from the leftovers from the blue and white quilt top. Dress-making? Not this week, does buying fabric count?

I hope to show you some nice FO pix soon. I am really quite uncharacteristically stressed at work at the moment and haven't had a chance to really get tore* into my projects this week.

I know get torn is grammatical, but get tore in is the idiom.

Have a good crafty week. x K

Galloway days

Having a lovely holiday during a mini-heatwave!
Been out visiting Scotland's most southerly point

Mull of Galloway

Knitting away on my adapted Swallowtail Shawl, may even cast off tonight!

A travelling knit 3 purl 3 pattern in a sumptuous yarn.

I love the swirly decreases, I look like one of those sea urchin things, which is always a good look, I feel.

More success with the kite here at Port Mary than I got last month at Sandgreen! 

Jonathan feeling the bracing air at Port Mary. 

Siesta Throw

I've finished the I-cord edging so now I can show you my lap blanket, or Siesta Throw, as it shall henceforth be known. It had to have a Spanish name because it reminds me of a gaucho poncho (for want of a better picture) and I can see myself snuggling up on the couch with this having a nap, so SIESTA it is.





This is my (first?) contribution to Norovember and it took 4 balls of Noro Kureyon in shade #154 (the bright one), 4 balls of shade #159 (the subdued one) and part of a ball of Kilcarra Donegal Tweed. There are some colours in common between the two Kureyon shades, although one is far more acid than the other. For example, both shades have an identical green and an identical burgundy.
As you can see I did two rows from one ball, two rows from the other. I generally let the yarn do the talking but once or twice I stopped and started using the other end of one of the balls if the colours were continuing to be too close for too long.
I used the Kilcarra Donegal Tweed to make an applied I-cord edging. I shopped the stash for this one and it was ideal because it is very close in texture and spin to the Kureyon. You know the course/ rustic feel to the Kureyon? I got mine in Dublin in 2000, but I see you can get it on the net from Lavender Yarns in Ireland . The Noro was from getknitted (see sidebar).

It was one of those addictive things where you have to keep going even though it's way past your bedtime, just to see how the next two colours will behave with one another.
I originally got the idea for this when I fell in love with a pair of socks I saw over at roxyknits.








I've included this last picture because I have a funny, borderline ecstatic, look on my face as I rushed outside to catch a brief moment of natural sunlight in between the horizontal rain. Some of the other pictures we took gave you a better view of the colours in the throw, but this is the one which captured the bliss, the doo doo doo doo doo , I'm lovin' it!