Knitting on an Island

H is for......

A very peculiar custom here on the island called

Hedge Veg

Basically people put excess produce from their gardens or their greenhouses or mishapen produce or too open flowers that can't be shipped to market, out on their hedges or road side for others to purchase.

It works on an honesty policy, with boxes and milk churns attached to the "stalls" where you put the money for the goods that you have purchased.

Amazingly it works! You very rarely here of money going missing or goods not being paid for and there is an amazing variety of produce for sale. Fruit, veg, flowers, eggs, jam, chutney, picked onions....

Here are a few of the stalls withing walking distance of my home.


 

The asparagus was wonderful :-)

G is for.....

Yes I know I am horribly behind on this :-)

I tried and tried to avoid the obvious, but it is a bit like trying to ingnore an elephant in the room

G is for Guernsey - my island home.

I love it here, I cannot imagine living anywhere else in the world.

Island living isn't for everyone, some people go stir crazy and can't wait to go to the mainland (which is pretty funny seeing as the UK is an island too - just a bigger one - lol)

Although the island is only 5 miles by 7 it has a great variety of landscape

We have cliffs on the south coast

Long sandy beaches on the west and the north coast

Fortifications that span centuries

WW2

Napoleonic War

Castle Cornet 13 century

We have sport of most kinds ( though we don't actually have much call for an ice rink).

Watersports are popular as are football (soccer), netball, rugby, cricket, the list goes on and on - oh and we have a couple of World champions!  lady's singles bowls champion ( indoor and outdoor) Alison Merrien and Andy Priaulx World Touring car champion - three years running!

So we don't do badly for a small island :-)

I leave you with a photo of my favourite beach where I spend a good deal of my time summer and winter

Ah to be there now instead of stuck in the office :-)

Next up H. Which will be about a quaint little custom that seems to sum up guernsey life in a nutshell.......

Swatches

I never seem to find time to blog these days and I'm waaay behind on the ABC - along. I really need to find a G :-)

I still haven't got anything that I can show you because everything on the needles is for submission or actual designs about to come out , but I can show you some swatches

This one might become a stole

This one a shrug

This one a

And this one is with the test knitter ;-)

Finally my sock from Sock Madness - Reversai - is up for sale on Ravelry

Participants of Sock Madness 2 will get a copy with the extra size added free of charge

For everyone else it is available on Ravelry for $5.00

Two sizes in the pattern: Women's medium and large
knitted in sock weight yarn on 2.25m needles

My Blue Period

No I'm not depressed :-)

In fact I am pretty mellow. In the last two weeks holiday from school, I have designed and knitted a cardigan AND a stole - I blocked the stole this afternoon and its really pretty.....

The cardigan is for the new online knitting magazine Knotions that will be going live in August so look out for it ( I'll remind you nearer the time )  ;-)

The stole is a rectangular version of the  Autumn Gold shawl. It took a bit of fiddling to get the patterns to fit sideways rather than on the angle, due to  stitch counts, but  after a bit of  head scratching and  playing with the calculator I got there. The pattern is now with the test knitter and should be at the Unique Sheep  in a few weeks. I wish I could show it to you the colours are wonderful - it just shouts spring to me.

I cast on for yet another version of Sizzle - I love this pattern it is so versatile!

This one is in Elann Esprit, which is stretchy, which plays havoc with the gauge, but I have manged to fiddle it so that I can use one of the standard sizes for the width, though I will have to  play with the  waist shapings due to the row gauge.

Yes it is Fire Engine Red and I'm doing it with the lower neckline. This is going to be  the sexy one! ;-)

Ah yes, the title of the post.

I have been in a sock designing mood recently. I have actually designed (in principal) FOUR new sock patterns! What can I say I got inspired. The thing is, all the socks, when I visualise them need to be knitted in blue! Don't ask me why, but when I see a sock or any other design in my minds eye, I see them in certain colours - other colours, just. won't. do.

So one sock in on the needles (I can't show it to you because it is for a competition) - why yes I do seem to be entering a few of those recently - we will have to see how I get on in them.... All I can say is that it, along with all the other socks I have recently designed it has a back story. This one is all about fishermen....

The others are all going to be for sale in my Ravelry shop once they are ready and Laura at the Unique Sheep is dying me some of her wonderful superwash merino in various semi-solid shades of - yes you've guessed it, blue :-)

F is for......

Well this one is a bit late, but I have been hanging on 'til today because it seemed appropriate :-)

I have been at this blogging lark for a while now in fact today is my blogiversarry. when I started this little blog in April 2005 I would never have believed the impact it would have on my life. The friends I have made all over the world, the inspiration I have gleaned from all the knitting I have seen or the contacts I have made within the designing world.

The past year has seen many big changes,

The designing has taken off in a big way to the extent that I hardly have time to knit anyone else's patterns :-)

About this time last year I found Ravelry - and through them new friends and many contacts that have furthered my designing career.

I have taken on more responsibilities at work and my role is gradually changing to one of teaching and support which I love.

My MIL has not enjoyed the best of health and I have spent quite a bit of time supporting her - this has been time consuming, but has created a lot of knitting time so I try to see it as a bonus

My son has left home to live on the mainland - It has taken some adjusting to but as long as he is happy - I'm happy

So in many ways it has been a year of change.

There are many more changes to come I am sure

Daughter is completing the last of her A level exams in the next few months and hopes to study for a Masters degree in Astrophysics which of course means that she will be joining her brother on the other side of the water and there are moves afoot at work for me to take on more teaching.

So all in all life is good as I enter my FOURTH year of blogging

See you all soon, I'm off down the beach to contemplate life, the universe and everything :-)

Magknits

As those of you on Ravelry probably already know and for those of you who aren't or don't, Kerrie has made the decision to close the Magknits site as of yesterday to concentrate her efforts on Hipknits and Yarn Forward Magazine.

I wish her well in her endeavours and will be hopefully designing for both enterprises in the future.

I understand that there are plans afoot to try and host many of the Magknits patterns in a free archive on the Yarn Forward site, but until she has contacted the designers to obtain their permissions this will have to wait.

In the meantime along with many other designers I am working to ensure that my patterns that were on the site will be available for download from Ravelry in Pdf format.

I have thought long and hard about whether I should charge for these patterns, but on reflection I have decided that as they were originally available for free, they should stay so. Thankfully I have the original patterns and photographs for them all so it is just a case of making them pretty and checking formatting so I would feel a bit strange asking for money for something I have already been paid for.

It is a real shame that Kerrie has had to close Magknits, but I can understand why she has done it. Family has to come first, and families need to be fed :-) Magknits was not a profit making business and was never intended to be, I wish her well with Hipknits and Yarn Forward and hope that she is able to get things back on a firm footing as soon as possible.

If anyone is in need of a copy of one of my patterns and isn't a member of Ravelry - and why not! ;-) -drop me a line and I will see what I can do.

I don't Bloody Believe it!

It's April and it is snowing! Just a flurry, it won't stick and the sun is shining, but none the less we have our first ( and probably last) snow of the year.

Son texted from Brighton this morning - they have a blizzard - in April - Bloody Weather!

Two new designs in one week!

Wow it has been an insane week!

Work has exploded - it is the last week of term and there is so much to do before the "Easter" holidays.

On top of that I'm glad to say the designing side of things is marching along madly too!

On Easter bank holiday I completed a design for Kerrie at Yarn Forward and this week she emailed me to offer me another design chance. This one is going to be so much fun. all I can say at the moment is that in involves an unusual yarn and is also a very unusual construction......

In other news I have just heard back from the people at Knotions - a new online knitting magazine starting up later this year. I sent them in a proposal and had a reply within 20 minutes - I was somewhat floored but gratified at how keen they were :-)

Some of the yarn for that has arrived - Rowan pure wool DK and the rest, Rowan Tapestry, will be here next week. Think lace and garter st and cardigan.....

However there are actually a couple of designs that I can show you because they were released this week.

Yesterday was the beginning of round 2 of Sock Madness 2 and I was fortunate enough to win a place in their design competition for my sock pattern Reversai.

They wanted sock designs with a bit of a twist. I was leafing through some stitch dictionaries looking for inspiration and found this textured pattern that was reversible. So, I began to muse on how to make a reversible sock - easy to put on in the dark because there is no inside out! The rest as they say was history and Reversai was born...

Not the best photo in the world, but it was taken on a rainy afternoon in the back porch

Details:

Collinette Jitterbug - Velvet plum sock yarn - I managed to get a pair out of one skein with about 10 m to spare. but then I have little feet.

Knitted on 2.25mm knitpicks circulars these are the socks that taught me the two circular method - Actually I knitted the first sock on Dpns and then the second on the circulars. Amazingly my gauge was the same on both!

This sock pattern will be up for sale on Ravelry in a week or so, but before it is I think I a going to revamp the pattern to add a smaller size because a number of participants found the finished sock a little on the big side.

Secondly today is the 1st of April which heralds the new sock for the six sock KAL - yup it's mine :-)

Butterflies n Bees sock

Details:

Lorna's Laces shepherd sock colour: Mint

knitted on 2.5mm Dpns. This sock patterns contains both toe up and cuff down versions and a garter st short row heel.
You can get it free from the Six Sock KAL yahoo group ( you need to be a member of course - but that is free too!)

Just look at all the little butterflies around the top :-)

Easter

Well I don't know how your Easter went, but mine just sort of ....went.

The weather went from bad to worse to a bit better, finally the sun came out on Easter Monday evening, just as the sun was going down. It stayed around, mocking us for the whole of Tuesday,( when of course we were all back to work) before disappearing again today to leave us with heavy rain - ugg

Still that did at least mean that I was able to get a whole lot of knitting ( and a little spinning) done.

On Saturday I received a parcel from Kerrie at Magknits/Yarn Forward containing some absolutely yumm Blue Sky Alpaca 100% organically grown cotton yarn. I'm not usually a huge fan of knitting with cotton - it tends to hurt my hands - but this stuff is remarkable. I knitted an entire tank on 4.5mm needles in just over 24 hours! It was already mostly designed, I only needed to do a swatch to crunch the numbers and it is after all just a back and a front and a very simple edging, but my hands are fine and the design and the sample have both gone off to Kerrie for the Summer edition of Yarn Forward Magazine.

I also managed to finish Matilda Jane

Here she is

Sirdar Click Acrylic/wool mix DK in black

Sirdar Sublime 100% merino DK in Raspberry pink

Knitted on 4mm and 3.75mm circulars

I have to say this is a wonderful pattern to knit. Very clear instructions and very innovative shaping.

Here is the back view complete with the corset lacing.

I decided against a contrast colour as I think it will have emphasised the width of my hips :-)

Also in the parcel from Kerrie was the returned  sample of my St Peter Port Hoodie.

It was sent off to her in such a rush that I wasn't able to get and decent pictures. but now with the aid of Peggy I bring you

St Peter Port Hoodie

Debbie Bliss Donegal aran tweed

4.5mm needle

Size shown 38 inch bust.

In Yarn Forward Winter edition - available from Hipknits ( and hopefully soon on Ravelry)

Back view showing the natty hood

And finally a little shot of the shoulder detail.

I'm really please with this one - it has to be one of my best designs yet IMHO.

Hubby is moving office this weekend, so with a bit of luck I will be able to get this lace stole finished in time for the competition.

Next up will be more lace - I have some new colourways on the way for Laura at the Unique sheep, ready for more lace stoles and scarves.

I wonder when I will next get time to knit something for me? :-)

Hiya!

It feels like an age since I blogged.

I'm sure it isn't that long, but I don't have a lot to say. I have a lot going on... but not a lot I can tell you about...

I'm working on a stole for a lace competition, Laura at the Unique Sheep is in the process of creating THREE new colourways just for little 'ol me for a couple of designs we have discussed and there are a couple more in the pipeline after that.

I have nearly finished Matilda Jane by Ysolda, just the bottom picot hem and all the sewing up to do. It may be top down with sleeves in the round but all those picot hems! :-)

I also have yarn on the way for a summer top for Kerrie and Yarn Forward so I'm going to be busy:-)

I have managed to do a little spinning, but nothing worth photographing yet.

Ah well back to the knitting :-)

A la prochaine ;-)