Glanalaw - delighting in pure song

This one has been a long time in the works!  Back in the winter of 2012 designer Becky Herrick (here are her blog and her Ravelry page ) asked me to be a test-knitter for her new pattern, which would appear in the pattern book " What (Else) Would Madame Defarge Knit? "  The patterns are all inspired by literature or characters from legend.  Becky's design was the "Iseult Dress", about which she says "My Iseult sweater dress is designed to call to mind the strength, grace, and beauty of its medieval namesake. Drawing on historical and modern design elements it can be paired with leggings and a steaming cappuccino or with a chemise and a stone tower." I went with a mixture of the two for my photoshoot - a more modern styling with tights, tall boots, and a leather jacket, but a woodland setting (and a pottery mug of tea.)  We were so fortunate to find exactly the setting and lighting I'd had in my mental picture of the shoot - during the half...

If it's been a bit quiet on the blogging front lately, it's because I've been up to my eyebrows in painting.  (No, really, I had paint in my eyebrow last Thursday.)  This is the "before" - pale pinkish-mauve walls, ugly blue carpet, and a chair that really needs a new slipcover! We decided that the living room carpet had to go - a combination of old, ugly carpet and the smell of cat - so then it seemed that this was a good time to just give the whole room a makeover.  So three weekends ago we moved all the furniture out, ripped out the carpet and the padding, pulled staples out of the subflooring (my opera workshop set-build and strike training at work there!), and commenced painting everything. Carpet gone, and I think this is after the application of cat-odor-killer. Oh and did I mention the mantlepiece had to come off the wall before we could get all the carpet out?  Yeah, there was that too. So most of the painting is finished now, but we...

I finished this shawl a few weeks ago for a friend, who wanted something she could use as a throw for her sofa or a shawl for herself, as the weather grows colder. The pattern is " Tango "(Ravelry link) by Corinne Ouillon.  I added several repeats of the body pattern and an extra repeat of the border as well, to make the shawl as large as I wanted.  The yarn is from KnitPicks new line of crochet cotton, Curio, in Cornmeal.  There really is little else to say about it, so I'll just let the photos speak for themselves!  I think this rich gold is perfectly offset by the colours and sunlight of early autumn.

A couple years ago I picked up a 1942 book called "Sewing for the Baby" for just a few dollars at an antiques store.  Somewhat ironically, I have never actually used any of the sewing patterns (though I keep planning to), but I've loved all the knitting patterns I've tried.  (My knitted elephants are adapted from a pattern in this book.) Now, I've made up a sweet little layette set for an infant girl.  Both the bonnet and the sweater are really simple to knit.  I made just a few adjustments - the sweater was supposed to have a more compicated border and also some embroidery along the front edges, but I didn't feel like adding that, and the bonnet was meant to have a crocheted border around the face but I felt it detracted from the simplicity and comfort of the design.  Other than those changes though I worked both these garments as written and I think they came out really nicely! I love that the sweater doesn't involve trying to slide anything ove...

I really have got to be better about keeping up with this poor blog!  The trouble is I've been so busy doing blog-worthy things that I haven't had time to actually write about them.  Between custom orders and the incredible apple harvest and two weeks spent out of state my blogging time has been limited.  But I have several finished projects and a lot of pictures of jam to share with you, so hopefully we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming very soon! In the mean time, have some socks.  These are the latest in a long line of travelling socks, and they're for sale in the shop , should you have a need for some man-sized footgear.