Jubilee Cakes

For a Jubilee Bring & Share lunch today. Yum. 

Mar Menor

My visit to Wonderwool Wales resulted in meeting the lovely Anniken Allis on her stand, and buying the Mar Menor Shawlette pattern after asking advice on a first beaded shawl to knit. I loved the one she had on display, and on realising it was knitted in Araucania Botany Lace, and that I had recently purchased a skein of said yarn in York, I decided that Mar Menor was the pattern to knit with the wool I had. The beads simply begged to be genuine amethyst and green lace agate, so that's what happened. 

It didn't take long to knit, and the decorative stitches were fun and so pretty. The beads went on easily enough, and I love the whole effect.

Find more Finished Objects here on FO Friday

Wonderwool Wales 2012

My goodies from Wonderwool Wales yesterday!

1. Hooking kit for me to do with my daughter.
2. THE bag.
3. Yarn Addict pretty shawl pattern.
4. 3 skeins of cobweb mohair from Artisan Yarns, to make the Wray cardigan
5. Plaited fluff from Krafty Koala for spinning.
6. Sparkleduck’s silk/merino 4 ply.
7. Natural Dye Studio’s silk 4 ply.
8. McAnarak buttons
9. Willo Alpacas orange fluff to spin
10. WhyNot alpaca 4ply.
11. HiyaHiya circular
12. Betty the alpaca (the brown one. I already had Al. From WhyNot Alpacas).
13. Alpaca (Valerie) fluff from Pembrokeshire Alpacas.
14. The mystery package in the corner is Bigwig angora/merino 4ply (2 balls).  

I had a wonderful time even though it was soooo cold. 
I tried out a new route (having tried driving previously, then train to Builth Wells from Wolverhampton, which only gave me 3.5 hours at the show. This time, it was train from Wton to Newtown, then bus to Builth Wells. Total journey there = 3 hours 10 mins. It meant I had 6 hours at the show which was great. On a warmer day I'd have sat and knitted for a while, but it was too cold for that. 
I seemed to attract abandoned men during the day. One lovely gentleman was telling me about his family and his wife's crochet. Another one was telling me about his rare breed sheep, chickens, and the alpacas he wanted to buy. 


I felt it essential to partake of a Scotch egg from the Scotch egg man, after all the hype. I selected a 'Valentino', which contained, in addition to the expected egg and pork sausage meat, cranberries. Very tasty. I'll dine there next year too.


It was great to meet in person sellers of goodies I've enjoyed over the last year, and people I've 'met' through Ravelry, blogs etc. It was lovely to meet Lydia (Shearer's Girl) and Amanda from the Natural Dye Studio. 


Although I'd been trying to think of terrible things to do or say to Mr EasyKnitter of Easyknits for lying to me repeatedly over my order from him (yes it was he of whom I spoke in this previous blog post), I satisfied myself by standing in front of his stall and thinking that I would never, ever buy from him again. (Oh and telling a few thousand other people about the experience via the cyberwaves).


See you next year, Wonderwool! And thankyou! It was lovely.

Open letter

To the owner of a well-respected yarn business:

Thankyou for your reply.

As an ex-Ebay seller with many thousands of sales under my belt, I
absolutely agree, that it is extremely rare for a package to genuinely
go missing. It is usually the fault of the receiver, when they forget
to change an address, or neglect to pick up a package from the
delivery office. I can rule out both of these possibilities. Never did
a package go missing twice, as of course, one would take the
precaution of posting Recorded or Special Delivery second time around.

I look forward to getting my refund.
Many thanks

Hand spun beret finished

I spun the merino myself in two batches as you can see where the colours and texture change.

Knit magazine scandal

If you've heard the stories of non-payment by a certain publishing company you may be interested in reading this story. http://annisknittingblog.blogspot.com/

If you read knitting magazines, it may also be of interest to you. Or some other craft mags too. Have a look and pass the word around.

Wip wednesday

Been working on this one for a while and there is only the collar to do. Its in New Lanark wool as usual.


More Work-in-Progress projects here

Wonderwool wales

Anyone fancy sharing a car and/or driving to wonderwool wales from midlands or en route? Sat or sun ok. Please retweet. Ta. X -- SecretSheep (@SecretSheep)

Poncho mitts & s11

Just testing blogger on android. Here's the mitts to go with the poncho. This pic was taken on my lovely new samsung s11.

FO Poncho

It's been finished for a while, but I've only just got round to blogging it.
I love it, it's cosy warm.
I've also knitted matching arm warmers, which work amazingly well, as your arms have to keep popping out from the warmth in order to do anything.

See more FOs from other folk here at Finished Object Friday

WIP dangerously close to completion

Nearly there.....

After all that work to make a horizontal cabled border panel, I undid it. It didn't hang right and it was too heavy for the poncho.
So I simply knitted 6 rows of garter stitch and I'm now adding the tassels.
I even cut through the border to try to get it to hang right, and it must have taken 10 or more tries to get the front point right. Oh well, it was all good experience.

I am particularly pleased with the hood and its tassel. But I don't have a pic of that yet.
Maybe it will be a FO this Friday!

Find more WIPs on Wednesday here

Next WIP Hat

Here is the next hat. This one was supposed to be blue, but it appears there is only one section of the blue in the whole ball of yarn. I cheated and cut out a couple of stripes of yarn so I could use the blue, which is the colour the recipient wanted.

The finished article will look similar to this one. 

This is the yarn chosen by my friend, so you can see why I needed to get some blue in there..!

More WIP Wednesday posts to be found here. 

Matching mitts

Finished the mitts to match the hat....

And enjoyed knitting with this unusual yarn so much that I agreed to make another hat for a friend, in a different colourway. 

It's Patons Landscape, which appears to be discontinued. My next hat will be in this colourway