A Clutch of Completed Creations

I’ve had a little flurry of finished projects over the last couple of weeks.

First, and most importantly, I completed my latest design. The yarn I’ve used is the most gorgeous yarn, Sublime Alpaca DK. I loved working with this gorgeously soft yarn and the colour choices were influenced by my inspiration, but it also comes in a wider range of delicious colours.
It still needs to be assessed by my City and Guilds tutor before I can publish the pattern.

The design was inspired by the little shell which I found on a walk form Warkworth towards Amble in Northumberland earlier this year, it is shown here with some of the yarn!

Now I was on a bit of a roll I dug out a vest/tank top which I had knitted but not sewn up and spent an evening sewing seams and stitching in all the ends, then it need a jolly good steam and, voila…another project sewn up!! (literally…sorry)

The yarn I used was Debbie Bliss Rialto 4ply and I knitted if from a magazine we had hanging around in the shop. I really like playing with this yarn which has very nice stitch definition and is 100% merino so feels really special.

I think it was the last couple of days that the shop was open and I’d got to the point where there wasn’t really anything much to do…no shelves to fill, no cleaning to do, no newsletters to write, no orders to send. Surrounded by unsold wool I picked up this unsold magazine from spring/summer 2012. Flicking through it I spotted a pattern I liked and looked at the Rialto 4ply on the shelves behind me, then I played a game of stacking up the different coloured balls of wool to see which colour combination I liked the best! This is a game I can play all day long and not make a final decision but I forced myself to choose a colour scheme, found the right sized needles and spent the rest of the day knitting!!!

At the moment I am on a mission to learn and explore the world of textiles, and my latest challenge to myself has been to sew a dress, which I finished off at the weekend. I want to write more about this project later but, as my first dress making project in over 20 years I have mildly impressed myself!!!