Name: Maisie

Breed: Cockapoo (Spaniel-Poodle cross)

Age: 7 weeks, with us for 1 day so far

Gender: Female

Size: About 20 cm high, and about 1.4kg, according to our kitchen scales – she’s small enough to sit on them…

Cuteness: Off the scale!

Alcatraz, San Francisco

Golden Gate bridge

Carmel Mission

"Look - I've got BB King's hands!"

Universal Studios

Route 66!

The Arizona countryside

London Bridge!!

The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon

Saguaro National Park, Arizona

Saguaro National Park, Arizona

It was a very special two weeks.

As well as spending time together  and enjoying the wonderful places we visited, my secret plan was also to try and find local yarn stores everywhere we went. In San Francisco I spent a happy couple of hours at the wonderful Artfibers (conveniently located right across the road from Fluevog, where I also may have spent a little too much time….). I visited (and bought yarn at) Monarch Knitting at Monteray, Loop and Leaf in Santa Barbara, and even found some locally-dyed yarn in the Navajo reservation in Arizona. We also paused our drive over Big Sur to stop and eat at Nepenthe, childhood home of Kaffe Fassett.

Although my plan had been to collect local yarn wherever I could, I was seduced by some beautiful handpainted Lace Merino by Ella Rae. Charmed by its softness and fabulous colours, I immediately cast on a Rock Island shawl by Jared Flood, and by the time we got home it was almost finished.

But. As I was knitting, I became increasingly aware that the colours, gorgeous though they were, were really not meant for me. I realised that I had inadvertently started to make something that by rights should really belong to my friend Cath – these colours could have been made for her. So – here she is, sporting her new shawl…

Here are the details of the shawl:

Pattern: Rock Island, by Jared Flood. A lovely pattern to follow, lots of unchallenging garter stitch with just enough lace thrown in to make it fun.
Yarn: Lace Merino, by Ella Rae, in the colourway Denim/Teal. Bought at Monarch Knitting in Monteray.
Needles: 4.00mm
Ravelry page: Here

This is the jumper that I made for Alex last Christmas. It was a particularly busy time last December, and I thought that, if I simply didn’t mention it, my boys might just forget that they normally get something knitted from my at Christmas. I thought it  might just be possible to avoid one of our family Christmas traditions: the one that involves me finishing off a sock or a glove at 3am on Christmas morning while Steve finishes wrapping the presents.

Well, that plan backfired on me rather spectacularly. Somewhere in the middle of last December, Alex asked me if I had started making anything for him for Christmas, and that if I hadn’t, could he have a jumper? At which point Will chimed in saying how much he’d like a jumper too, and could his one be a Fair Isle tank top? Also by Christmas? I didn’t quite manage that, but they both had their jumpers by the middle of February.

Here are the details of this sweater:

Pattern: Fjord, by Marie Wallin, published in Rowan 42.

Yarn: Berocco Peruvia Quick. Gorgeous yarn, just completely lovely. It doesn’t show in the photos, but each colour contains flecks of the other colours in the range.

Notes: Although the jumper turned out pretty well, this is not a pattern I’d recommend. I altered it quite significantly (although unfortunately I can’t remember all the changes). I think it is a salutary lesson, if you are browsing for patterns on Ravelry, to look at the number of people who have already chosen to make that pattern. Anyway, this version is Ravelled here.

This year? This year my boys will both be getting socks. And I’ll start knitting them soon – before they come up with any more ideas of their own!

He is sporting a sweater that I made for him last Christmas, one that is based on an original from a very different era.

This portrait of Edward, Duke of Windsor was painted in 1925. When Will asked me to make him a Fair Isle tank top I used this painting, in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, as the inspiration for Will’s version. You can see more details of the sweater on Ravelry.

Of course, starting new eras necessarily involves ending old ones. Our beautiful baby boy, with the broadest grin and the loudest laugh, has left his childhood behind and grown into an amazing, talented, considerate, handsome, witty and and endlessly interesting young man. I am bursting with pride as I watch him make this this transition and cannot wait to cheer him on as he embraces life as an adult.

But some things never change. Will, this is for you:

“So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.”

AA Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

Pattern: Leaf and Nupp shawl, from Knitted Lace of Estonia by Nancy Bush. I chose this pattern because the leaves in the lace pattern also reminded me of bluebells – a nice combination with the yarn, I thought.

Yarn: Posh Yarn Eva 2 ply cashmere/silk. This is the Bluebell colourway from Posh’s cashmere club. The colour is hard to capture, especially in the full sun in which these photos were taken. But it is a beautiful, utterly bluebell-y blue, with subtle tinges of lavender.

Needles: 3.25 mm

Notes: I spent this weekend at the wonderful Knitnation organised by the awesome Alice and CookieA. I’ll post more on that later, especially with details of my highly uncharacteristic stash acquisition (Wollmeise anyone??). But I also spent a day doing a workshop on Estonian lace making with Nancy Bush. I met some lovely people, and it was incredibly interesting hearing about this region’s history of making lace for the last couple of hundred years.

One of the things that I learned was that the nupps, that you can see in the photo above, work best in white yarn, because apparently light reflects differently on white than on any other colour. Which explains why they are not that prominent in my or other coloured versions, and made me think I’d like to try another nupp-based shawl in a natural coloured Shetland laceweight yarn.

I also wish I’d made the shawl larger, as it is really more of a large scarf size. Nancy Bush had a sample that she had knitted of the same pattern, in a pure Shetland wool, and it was much larger than my version. I hadn’t thought about it before, but once I saw the two together it was obvious that the silk content in my shawl made the yarn much less stretchier, and therefore block much smaller, than the pure wool shawl. Yet another reason to try a Shetland shawl!

And finally, just because a girl  in a sports car (yes, I am still harping on about our recent trip to France!) really ought to wear a headscarf, here’s one of me posing like mad…

Pattern: Featherweight cardigan (rav link), by Hannah Fetig

Yarn: Malabrigo lace, in the colour Natural 63

Needles: 4mm, and 3mm for the ribbing.

I chose to do 1×1 ribbing for the bottom edge of the cardigan, finished off with my favourite tubular cast-off. I worked the front edge and sleeves in stocking stitch with a rolled edge.

As this is for me to wear during the summer, I didn’t mind that the edges rolled back quite a bit, and I like the way the rolled edge looks at the neckline.

Notes: I was happily knitting away on this cardigan when I read Bell’s cautionary tale about laceweight cardigans. She, and many commenters, talked about the problems they had with some laceweight yarns felting and just not being sturdy to last. I looked more closely at my knitting and realised that the yarn was indeed starting to felt a little, even before I had finished working on it.

This is most noticable on the sleeves, where I picked up the stitches that had been knit earlier. Blocking the cardigan helped, as it made the newer stitches also felt slightly, but you can still see a ridge where the two meet:

I am happy with how this cardigan turned out but, given that it started to felt before I even finished it, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out not to have a particularly long shelf-life. On the plus side, it only took me four weeks to knit, so I guess I’ll just enjoy it while I can!

Photos taken here:

To celebrate our anniversary last week we spent a wonderful long weekend staying in a fairytale chateaux near Bordeaux. I couldn’t resist slipping a couple of photos into this post – if you’d like to see some more, the Flickr set is here. Not bad eh?