I've been a fan of Louise Tilbrook's for quite a while, she's actually pretty local to me, was until quite recently a scientist like me, and her designs are simple and beautiful. I was a member of her Everyday Knitter group on facebook, although it soon became a bit too big to keep up with (and FB algorithms never help) but when she said she was setting the group up on Mighty Networks I was happy to join up there too. The Mighty Networks layout is really clean and easy to follow (no ads!) and it shows you stuff in chronological order, which is nice. To celebrate the new group we held a Knit-A-Long, although this time it was no mystery, it was Louise's Fuss Free Festival Shawl (FFFS).
 |
| Not a sponsored post. |
This is a nice, asymmetrical triangular shawl. Really good for one skein of fancy hand dyed yarn your not sure what to do with. There is also an option to have stripes. You could probably work it in any weight yarn to make it really big and squishy if you wanted.
Yarn:
Witch fibre co. - Dream Country (75% merino, 25% nylon) Fingering weight (400m). I brought this from a fellow knitters destash, I would share the link to the shop but I can't find it.
Needle/Gauge:
4mm. There's no gauge given, just instructions to make a fabric you're happy with. As it's a shawl you don't want anything too tight, like you would have for a sock, but also doesn't want massive holes in like lace (unless that's what you want!)
Difficulty:
Very easy. This is all garter stitch, knit every row. You need to know how to increase and decrease, but once you've got the hang of the pattern repeat then the tricky bit is remembering which side is the right side (and I stick a stitch marker on the right side so I remember). The cast off is a picot cast off which can be a bit fiddly, but some people in the group did an I-cord bind off instead or even just a regular bind off.
Worth Repeating:
Definitely. I've made this one as a Christmas gift and it's so easy to make I'll probably make more at some point. It took something like 3 weeks to make, but I was also working on something else at the time.
Kitchen
 |
| Its not a pan, its a cauldron. |
After finding that massive marrow in the garden, I found a chutney recipe for it. I don't know what sort of courgette this should have been, but the skin was really tough, it's not the sort I usually grow. I haven't tried eating this yet, but when I made it I expected it to break down more and it hasn't, so some of my jars have a lot of stuff but not much fluid in. The jars were properly sterilised before filling so I'm hoping that they won't spoil, I've had them on the side to keep an eye on and they're ok so far.
I did find a slightly smaller marrow in the garden the other day, so I'll have to find something to do with that.
Art
Since Covid and lockdown started a million months ago, the Natural History Museum (London) started a weekly #NatureDrawingClub. I've really enjoyed joining in when I can, but this morning I just felt like doing a quick drawing of my little carnivorous plant Errol the Engulfer. It's a small sundew, which has really flourished since I moved it to the front room window where it gets a lot of light. It's sent up loads of flower spikes recently and they're just so pretty and delicate. I wanted to try doing an ink and watercolour (although mine are watercolour pencils) and apart from the pen bleeding slightly I'm really pleased with it. Someone suggested using a dip pen and ink, so maybe I need to add one of those to my wish list as well as proper watercolours.
 |
| Errol was very impressed with his portrait. |
No comments:
Post a Comment