Wonderhaul

It seems like Wonderwool was months ago now, as we've got so back to normal since our little holiday in Pembrokeshire (of which more in a future post), which we planned to coincide with the weekend of Wonderwool. We went to Pembrokeshire for a week and returned the Saturday of WW, so did a slight detour home through Builth Wells, the town in which it's held, to stock up on yarn for projects for the coming year. Ok, so I only bought yarn for two major projects, but we all know I, shall I say, take my time, over large projects. However, I'm hoping all that is to change as I've drastically changed my knitting style in the last month or so, intentionally, as I'm fed up of taking so long to knit jumpers which I want to wear, like, now! Like I've said before, my knitting is neat and consistant, but the reason I take so long is the method I used to create the actual stitches - I would take my right hand off the needle and kind of physically wrap the yarn around to create the new stitch; a method which requires much more time per stitch (ok, we're only talking mili-seconds but it all mounts up) than the new way which I've been working on, and which now feels like I've always used, of tensioning the yarn with my little finger as I used to do anyway, but then resting the yarn on my forefinger and holding it taught so I can just pass it over the needle tip without having to remove my grip of the needle. Sorry if that is rather impossible to visualise! I assure you though, it's made a huge difference to my knitting speed. I thought, after the Apres Surf, that I wanted a simple (but bot boring) project which was mainly stocking stitch so I could improve my new technique and speed up considerably. I chose Shellseeker by Heidi Kirrmaier as yes, it certainly complies with the request for lots of stockinette, but also has two colours, in the form of stripes, which is another new technique for me. So far in my knitting career, I've only worked with one colour, though I have a kit waiting for me for the Fiddlehead mittens, which the Midnight Sheep kindly put together for me quite some time ago, but which I've always found a little forbidding. I'm certainly fearful of all those colours!

Aaanyway... here is the lovely yarn I bought for Shellseeker. Its by UK Alpaca and I bought a cream and a muted lime green.

Actually, a more accurate description would be a mix between lime and mustard, which sounds rather revolting but trust me, its gorgeous! I've cast this on now, using yet another new technique - magic loop - which I wasn't sure about to start with, but it's turned out rather well. I was going to post a progress shot here, but I've only done seven rows so far so it may not be particularly interesting yet. I'm also not a huge fan of progress shots. One or two perhaps, but I like to save it all for the big reveal.

Ok, moving on. A few weeks ago, my friend Lorna showed me this beautiful pattern by Gudrun Johnston. It is rather reminiscent of something you may find in my very favouritest shop in the world (obviously I realize there is not such word as favouritest, in case you are wondering) - White Stuff. It reminds me of a cardigan I bought in there when I was pregnant actually, a size too big to accommodate growth (!). I couldn't get it out of my head, and found myself accidentally purchasing some gorgeous yarn from the most fantastic Jill of Jillybean Yarns. I bought her Knot Another Granny Yarn in Staying Calm.

I realize the colour looks different in each of those photos, but its somewhere between them all. Hopefully you can see why I couldn't resist it, and lovely Jill gave me a discount as well, so I couldn't refuse :)

I also bought some fibre for spinning. This gorgeous rhubarb pink, which I'm hoping to spin into yarn for a short sleeved, button up cardigan - well, it's in my head at the moment. Then the plain white to practise with and maybe experiment with some dye, and the bit of blue just because it was gorgeous!

Again, none of these colours are true. The top one is taken with the toy camera setting, and the bottom one on vivid. I'm looking forward to messing around with these though.

Time to go, as I've been trying to squeeze time out of my lovely boy, but he's fed up of me writing now and keeps dragging my arm away from the keyboard. I'll leave you with this photo of me enjoying some fibre.

x Sam