Gypsy bag

Here is the lovely Gypsy bag!
Thanks for all the comments so far.

It was a bit of an unknown quantity as I was making it up as I went along. I had decided that if it turned out average I would keep it for myself, but if it turned out lovely I would give it away as a Christmas present. I was thinking of someone in particular when I came up with those colours. I'll definitely be saying goodbye to this little beauty! One thing I was particularly pleased about was that I got the density of fabric I wanted, but without too much colour drainage during the felting.

If you would like to find out how I made this bag, then please email me at this address
KEDkrafty@hotmail.co.uk
Please note the capital letters and the UK suffix. Bye for now x K.

Straps threaded through button-holes. Left on the outside to hold the weight. 

Plastic canvas sewn into the inside of the base to strengthen. 

Pre-felt pre-view

Here's a preview of a bag I have been working on in Rowan Kid Classic.
I have enjoyed knitting it, especially as it's a great stash buster. I can assure you that knitting a whole 140m ball of the pink colour over 12 stitches for the strap was not much fun, but at least it was made better by using my Lantern Moon needles given to me by my very generous Rowanette Home and Hearth donor, Sarah . They are lovely to knit with and I have included them here for scale.

The bag is now safely out of the machine and is awaiting a bit of finishing before I can show you on here.
I'll give you all the specs next time. x K

Me attempting to fly a kite at Sandgreen. Nice beach, shame about the kite. 

Did we have sun all week? Don't make me laugh! This is me on the beach at Sandyhills, where we had a very British picnic ie. flasks of hot soup in the car! Had a great holiday all round though. :-) 

Hold the front page...

#1 ...Kathleen seen in company of livestock!

Those of you who know me well in real life know that I do not do pets.
Well, feast your eyes on me going for a walk with my sister-in-law's dog "Gypsy Boss" by Carlingwark Loch!
This is the first time I have taken a dog for a walk since my ill-fated attempt to take Rubber with me when I went to Hardgate Co-op in 1994. This time I brought reinforcements with me just in case.
There has been a slight rapprochement between myself and Chips (Gypsy Boss) recently, but if you look closely you can see I am clinging onto the lead handle for dear life; not quite the animal expert yet.

#2 Kathleen seen knitting with "King Cole" brand yarn.

The Gem Shop in Castle Douglas is running a week long event in aid of the Red Cross on the back of National Knitting Week.
I don't greatly buy into this because it's just an invention by one knitting magazine, but I was still happy to knit my 6" x 6" square for blankets for the Red Cross.
My square is the orangey moss stitchy one in front of the teddy.
I think the shop must have been given some free samples or rejects to use up because in the length of yarn it took me to knit 15 cm square, I had three knots. Anyway, hope the Red Cross can use it. Wouldn't fancy being the sewer-upper on that project. Happy Knitting!

Great if you just have one ball of yarn

I've discovered a few things in the last week. I don't know whether to laugh or cry about one of them. One of the newish members at our Glasgow knitting meetup has put me onto a yarn shop in Hamilton.

As in Hamilton where I have been working for twelve years without knowing this place existed.

I'd get over this quite easily if they only stocked Wendy and Patons, but they have Rowan, RYC, Jaeger, DB, Lana Grossa, Lanartus, Sublime, Twilleys, Jamieson and Smith, Artesano Alpaca, Noro, Louisa Harding, GGH, Addi, Brittany, and of course Wendy and Patons, to name the ones that spring to mind.

Probably best to just be grateful that I have discovered it rather than bitter about all those lost purchases over a dozen years. It's called Stitching Time, and is near Hamilton central train station if anyone needs the details. The shop assistant asked me if I was magnetically drawn to the dearest yarns in the shop! "Welcome to my world," I thought.

Bought a few different things including two balls of Lanartus Da Masi in 10450, Plum Delight. (You can get this from Angel Yarns if you're not often in Hamilton.) This forms the basis of my next discovery, which is that with a Gedifra Scarf Net (I got mine from Get Knitted) and one ball of something chunky or fancy or a combination of oddments, you can get a nice scarf. Ideal for Christmas pressies in my book.

The last couple of pix are of how I'm spending my October week holiday.
Livin' it up in Dumfries and Galloway walkin' cyclin' knittin' and suppin' Champagne with my honey. Life is sweet. x K

Kiri Thank-You

Thank you for all your kind comments about Kiri. I am really happy with it (the perky colour really cheers you up) and glad you approve. I hope to get to the Knitting Meetup on Tuesday to show a few folk in person.

This week I've been finishing off the fingerless mittens for the Charity Sale (in aid of Childline) being organized over at K1 yarns. I knitted a pair in Rowan Kid Classic in Spruce, with a wee oddment of Lilac Ice used too. I enjoyed knitting them but I would observe that if I ever knitted them again I would go down a needle size for the rib, as common sense would dictate, and that I only used about two thirds or so of one 50g ball of Kid Classic. This first time around I followed the pattern provided to the letter. I hope the sale goes really well, but I won't be around to see it myself.

I wanted Kiri to have pride of place in the last post so I didn't say anything about my latest baking. In between posing on beaches and clearing out the stock of the Gem Shop (which has a great but tiny yarn department) I rustled up some honey and lemon cookies. They sound a bit medicinal, but they were yummy. They were from the same book again, Cookies Galore. There were far more than you can see in this picture but I wanted to leave some space to show my lovely Bavarian plate which belonged to m-i-l.

Thank you again for the comments and compliments. x K

£10,000 per day

Didn't you know us top models don't get out of our beds for anything less than £10,000 a day?

The wingspan shot. (There are four more pix after the text.)

Ok, here's the lowdown on Kiri. Thanks for the comments and inquisitiveness so far.
I got the pattern from the sidebar of Polly's blog All Tangled Up . Thank you so much Polly.

I used just short of three balls of Orkney Angora St. Magnus D.K., which is a blend of 50% angora 50% lambswool and is as soft as a baby's bottom. Each ball has 200m of yarn and I purchased mine from K1 yarns which now does mail order, although I bought mine in person. I am really happy with the yarn and have cast on all two stitches for the Flowerbasket Shawl in the olive green shade. This shawl here was done in shade #20, Magenta, which is a very KEDkrafty blog template colour.

I used a 5mm circ for detail hounds and my shawl ended up as 174cm wingspan (just lightly stretched), 75cm from neck to point and 393 stitches total along the diagonals.

I can't imagine that I have missed any relevant details, but no doubt you will surprise me. Fire away.....

It is very snugtastic and although I had a couple of tedious days around the 300 st mark,
I LOVE IT!

A nice sandy shot of the edging. When I did my headscarf/ swatch I decided to change the edging when I got to the full scale version. I wasn't crazy about starting the edging on a half-open leaf, so this time for the last rep I used make one to increase in each leaf rather than y/o. I continued by basically keeping the stitch count correct by doing y/o between each rep and a double dec in the middle. I reasoned that this edging could be longer or shorter depending on how much yarn I could eke from the ball. In the end the ball decided for me because there was a knot near the end and I took the hint to finish there, although I had a few rows' worth of yarn left. The edge wants to scallop like this, even before blocking. 

Instead of the usual hedge shot, here is a rock shot requiring feats of great courage and agility to get the vertical view. All of these pictures can be enlarged by clicking. 

Kiri, Kathleen and Hawthorn. 

Wistfully looking out towards Balcary Tower and Hestan Island, trying to look as if wearing a shawl is second nature to me. Lovely snuggly size and beautifully snuggly yarn. 

A sneak preview....

....of a forthcoming attraction!
This is Kiri in Orkney Angora! I've been threatening people at my knitting group that I've been "nearly finished" for centuries, and here at last, she is. I changed the edging a bit. I'll tell you about that and the pattern specs after my countryside modelling shoot this weekend. x K 

The dye is not entirely evenly saturated, that is a feature of the yarn.  

The easy way to five-a-day!

If you want to give yourself a head-start on your healthy living regime by kicking off your morning with a massive fruity injection to your Five-a-day plan then follow these simple steps:

A) Arrange a local bank holiday.
B) Head to a countryside location.
C) Go bramble picking, just like scarybez .
D) Collect a good couple of handfuls, but leave some for the birdies.
E) Blitz them in the blender/ smoothie maker, with other fruity delights.
F) ENJOY! aaaaah.
You can almost smell the antioxidants.

















As a complement why not try something not quite as healthy, but equally yummy. Socherry always inspires with her home-baked cakes from Cupcakes Galore so I followed her lead and bought that and its sister publication Cookies Galore . My first recipe was Citrus Cream Clouds, or in my case, Citrus Cream Stars. Yummy! If the others turn out that well, we'll be laughing.



In knitting, I have decided to join in the Charity Mitt Knit in aid of Childline, as seen over at K1 yarns. I am following the pattern for medium sized ladies' fingerless mitts, and I'm using Rowan Kid Classic in an olive colour. A nice fast knit, and I don't think I'll need anything like the full 100g recommended. Yes the backpack and boots are mine, I AM knitting on a picnic mid hillwalk!

And in yarn bargains, Twilley's Freedom Spirit is only £2.79 per ball in Galloway Gems, Castle Douglas, AND they have a new yarn range called Sublime. Bought 14 of the former, none of the latter. Yet. (Laughs demonically.)

Lucky me!

Hee hee, I did really well at the Swap Shop yesterday!
As you may have noticed I'm on quite a lace kick at the moment so I was delighted to bag some purple 1ply Cashmere yarn which the donor (Gloria, no blog) used to use for machine knitting. I'll try a wee swatch of it as is, and then try doubling it up on the ball winder, as Glo suggested. I traded some books and four balls of sock yarn for this and some cornflower blue Merino yarn, which is very fine too, although not in the same scale as the Cashmere, which is apparently 2/30 for those in the know.

I also got two balls of Rowan All Seasons Cotton which I swapped for some Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran with Mhairi, who I'm still trying to talk into getting a blog. She also took some of that red stuff off my hands, for which I will be eternally grateful.
Clever clogs has managed to put it away before photographing it, but I can tell you it is shade 195. Similarly I can't show you the Debbie Bliss Maya Karen gave me but it is shade 16, the fiery orangey mix. Too organised for my own good. Oh well, at least there's a good chance of you knowing what ASC and DB Maya look like anyway without a specific photo. I didn't have anything on me yesterday that Karen fancied so she let me off with an IOU for a future deal!

Didn't she do well? x K

Spot the difference!

The first picture is my stash April 2006, before the yarn diet. The second one was the stash this morning. Not a mega amount of visible difference except there is now one more box and even less daylight getting in through the spare room window, but no overspill sitting on top. The great difference unseen to the naked eye is that if you open a box labelled say "Rowan cotton and cotton blends", you will find exactly that, nothing more, nothing less. What I'm trying to say is that it now does what it says on the tin rather than fighting my way through random extras stuffed in each box out of the way. I've been through my stash over the last couple of days because the Glasgow Knitting Meetup is having a SWAP SHOP today!!!!! Wonder who's superb idea that was?

My contribution to today's swap shop at the Glasgow Knitting Meetup. A mixture of project ends, impulse sale buys, misjudged ebays and finished-with books and mags. The object is to swap this for something exquisite and TINY or nothing at all. I'll update you later to see if I managed to bring back a lot less than I took.