So much has happened since February, I don't really know where to start. When I was vacationing in Tenerife with my family in March, the house we were staying in got robbed. Within a couple of hours after arriving. So disappointing to start your vacation with all your electronics stolen. People must have been casing the place, knowing when people arrived at our vacation villa. And the puzzling bit was that they stole my knitting bag with a half finished shawl. The shawl was made from hand painted yarn in reds and oranges and was turning out really pretty. So, of course, when I got back to England, one of the first things I did was to take a trek into London to buy yarn. I started another shawl but in a different pattern - the Color Affection shawl. I knitted on this for the two weeks we were touring in Scotland in mid April and finished once I got home in May.
When I got home on May 2nd I started thinking about a weaving project. So I gathered a bunch of cones of gaily colored cotton and after much research and playing around, found a wonderful pattern in a digital booklet I got from Interweave called Winning Towels, the pattern we chose was Global Warming Reminder towels. There were about 15 towels in the booklet.
So , from this point on, over the course of the summer I knitted a couple of shawls. One was from a kit I bought at a cute little knitting shop in Aptos, CA, called Yarns by the Sea. It was a little extravagance on my part. This little kit was, for me, crazy expensive but I thought it was so pretty and it would be a project I didn't have to plan. This little shawlette is called the Jewelled Scallops Shawl:
The next shawl was from Cascade Ultra Pima Cotton and is called the Miami Beach shawl. It's in a really pretty violet colored cotton:
The next project was done because I wanted to learn a little more about Saori weaving from my friend Jill Sanders who owns Saori Santa Cruz. She has a lovely dream studio in her home in Felton, CA. I spent about a week with her weaving and sewing this vest. I used warp from Jill but most of the rest of the weft yarn was from my stash. The pattern was from one of Jill's Saori weaving books. The vest is open in the front and in the back on the other side. It's quite a puzzle to put on.
Somewhere in between the above projects I knitted a pretty vest in chunky wool. The pattern is called the Montague Vest.
Next I knitted a little shell out of Berroco Bonsai ribbon yarn. The pattern is called Badia, and is a free pattern on their website. It was a fairly easy knit and it feels drapey and nice:
The last thing I knitted was the Jolly Roger Shawl. It's a free pattern on Ravelry. You can't see it from the photo but it's got little red beads for eyes. The body is of acrylic/alpaca yarn from Michaels, kind of fuzzy and the white jolly roger part is made from white thick/thin handspun that is merino and silk:
That's it for now. I'll try to keep the blog more up to date so that I can talk more. :o)
