Blue House Yarns

I am so excited, after much waiting, my yarn shop officially can accept online ordering and payments. I am so happy. It was so troublesome before with e-mails going back and forth. I was getting a bit despondent but I feel excited again so I think I will have a look at my indigo vat to see if it's up to some dyeing.
You can visit it at http://www.bluehouseyarns.co.nz Any comments are appreciated.

Happiness

Today I was really clever and made tea before I picked the girls up from school. Mondays is a hectic day, we go from school to piano so that the girls can have their lessons; when one is at piano I'm with the other at Port Chalmers library and then we swap. Then home and I start to cook, but not today. Tea was ready, so we sat down in the sitting room to listen to stories, (first in Spanish, then in English) and knit. I worked on Tim's (son in law) hat, Sofia on her dolly that she's knitting and Cristina cast on 5 stitches and was going to do something very long.
Then Daddy arrived early (yay, yay!) and there was a bit of time for all of us to continue knitting. Yes even Martin, he's knitting an 8 ply blanket for the girls' dollies. My happiness is complete. I hope to be able to post a picture of the completed blanket before the end of the year.

Lacy socks

Well, I did say to myself that this would be the year of lace! And it is.
I've just finished my first pair of lacy socks. I have made a fair few pairs of socks since I learned how to four years ago; but of course this is my first lacy pair.
I'm so pleased with them. The pattern is from Barbara Walker's treasury of stitches. I chose the horse shoe pattern. Its quite simple as it's only an 8 pattern repeat. I designed the sock and the only scary bit was once I had turned the heel and I had to rearrange the lace pattern on the instep only. After a couple of attempts, it worked.
I'm so glad that I started with socks. It has really been worthwhile. I feel very confident and I'm going full speed with my pi shawl now. The cuff is 2x2 rib and the toe is a wedge toe with a beautifully grafted end. Yay! So if you have been wanting to try lace for a while but haven't dared...just give it a try. As my friends had said to me, all you need is a quiet place, a good way to mark where you on your pattern are and a pattern that's not too difficult to start with.

Birthday girl

That would be me. To be honest I feel a bit long in the tooth to be celebrating my birthday but I will say that some lovely things happened.
Both my little girls gave me the loveliest handmade cards. I so love their drawings. My big girl Emily gave me a beautiful coloured in card based on a Mexican drawing but the best things is that she wrote a very funny poem/ditty. Love it. It has become her "thing" and I think is great. Long may it continue.
Martin made me the funniest card which I will have to photograph at my friends 'cos my camera is not good enough.
So it's a picture of me knitting straight off a sheep which is standing below me but the the funny thing is the speech bubble coming out of her mouth and she's saying "ridiculous" . loved it.
So I'm pleased that I had a celebration otherwise I wouldn't have received those wonderful gifts.

Things that keep me humble

I am so absolutely determined to get good at lace. I have now embarqued on a challenging lace shawl project. I am doing a pi shawl as per Elizabeth Zimmermann intructions. I was just going to make it plain in between increases but as my friend said..."it's not that hard you know" so I took that as a challenge and here goes. I hope to finish it this year so that when my eldest daughter Emily decides to start a family she will have a shawl for the baby and it can stay in the family as an heirloom.

I am knitting it in a natural thinner than 2 ply wool. Am not really into natural colours but I might be able to dye it later.

I will have to keep blogging aboot it so that people don't think I've forgotten about it.

Aran style hat

I knitted some winter hats for the kids but Sofia's was a little too snug. I was trying to finish it quickly but somehow when I try to do that it just makes me slower. So here it is. It's an aran style with asymmetrical cables, knitted in the round and I managed to do the decreases in a really smooth way. I reused some wool that had been a cardie for her. I decided that it just wasn't pretty enough for me to keep for the grandchildren so I unravelled and here it is. I just love the colour. It really brings out the colour of her eyes.

I'm really pleased also with the fact that now I just knit things without the need for a pattern. I have a better idea of my personal and the children's taste and also I am more willing to take risks. I designed it to go with her mittens.

The old hat is now keeping her cuddly tiger warm.

Hope your are all keeping warm out there.

More minessota mittens

I have finished Cristina's mittens. My daughter is thrilled with them. I am pleased that they only took me a week, yay. I will do the next pair on 3-4 plky as I think it will be better and I might try thrumbing. I didn't know what this was until a couple of weeks ago. Thanks Lorna for the suggestion. Basically it's adding wool sliver every few stiches so that it is lined in sliver and very warm an insulating. there is a pattern for thrumbed mittens in Knitting new mittens and gloves bny Robin Melanson.

I can feel a real accessories phase coming on.

Reading Mason Dixon's latest book I realized that actually I don't have many handknits that are actually mine. I will have to sort this out soon. Are you in the same position. Do you find that you make a lot for other but forget a little about yoursel?

Blue house yarns

I've been allowed to put a display of our products at the local library. I think it's turned out nice, don't you think? You can view our complete range at http://www.bluehouseyarns.co.nz/. Hope you like it.

The idea was also to display lots of knitting books. I took the opportunity to display not just the modern American books but also a couple of good Margaret Stove books and also some on traditional Scandinavian, fair isle and Aran knitting. I hope it generates a bit of interest in the business but also that it inspires people to knit something for the winter. It would be great to see more people - adults and children - knitting at the library, the bus stop, the school gate.

Blue house yarns

Well today I spent most of the morning re-skeining the 8 ply indigo dyed wool. It was very repetitive but for once it was fine. I just love the effect that natural dyes have on wool. how the colour is not flat but the eye travels trying to follow the various hues that are together forming the blue. Anyway I could go on for hours. I told them at the knitting group last night that I thought that everyone should have an indigo vat at home.
So if you are interested in indigo but nervous drop me a line.
Our first advert appeared in the Creative fibre magazine. I am really pleased with it. We'll see what happens. It seems to me that it's more the ocassional knitter that is concerned for the environment that is into our product rather than the obsessive knitter. I could yet be proved wrong.
I'll post some pictures tomorrow. I'm too tired today.