Christmas Crafting Goodies

I hope the rest of you were as lucky as I was. Failing that, I hope that you all had a nice relaxing Christmas. I came off night shift and was ran round after by my dad and my sister. I even managed to win a game of monopoly in my fatigued state without stealing from the bank (which I would obviously never ever do).  It was a nice few days and I am now finishing off another week of night shift before I get to have time off for Hogmanay.

As every year, I was spoiled rotten but I got a lot of crafting goodies. It was extra special because they were picked out by people who clearly put a lot of thought into it. This first was not a Christmas gift. In the countdown to Christmas Homemaker Magazine were hosting daily giveaways of books that won their Arts and Crafts book awards 2016. When I see these things I always put my name down with absolutely no expectation of winning and usually forget I have even done it. So I was pleasantly surprised when Homemaker got in touch via twitter to say that I had won. I am now the proud owner of this lovely embroidery book. As you know I love a craft book and I can't wait to read through it on my time off. I promise to review it for you soon. They also sent me this months Homemaker which was very kind of them. I already have this edition so I will pass it on to my sister.

My sister's gift was mainly yarny related. Lorraine, as you know, is an artist and while she has tried her hand at yarn crafts it's not her thing. She picked out this lovely merino wool by DMC because it matched my room. The yarn is lovely and soft and I can't wait to work with it. I have plans for a cushion and I think I'll try out the pattern I learned from the hook role kit. Or I might use bobbles, I haven't 100% decided.

Now I have talked about Wool and the Gang before and how much I would love to try their product. I follow the company on Instagram and Facebook and I am always salivating (lovely image for you) over their images. Lorraine was completely unaware of this and she not only got me two balls of their cotton yarn but she got them in my favourite colours. Very generous of her as these yarns can be expensive. I can't wait to work with them.

 
She also noticed that I have been doing a lot of crochet of late and so I also got this lovely little book. It has some lovely quick crochet projects in it. I have earmarked the wool and the gang yarn for one of the hats within it.  This will be another book for me to review for you.

My dad also got my sister and I a colouring book. This was a surprise as I didn't think he approved of spending time colouring. I love Johanna Basford colouring books and I don't have this one. I have a thing for greens and blues and the moment and I plan to go made with them in this.

I equally got my sister some creative gifts in the form of art supplies. I got her some water colour pens that I knew she had never tried before and some lovely travel sketch books and pastels. I actually had a little gift envy as I picked them out for her. Can't wait to see what she does with them and I will encourage her to blow the cobwebs off her blog with a post on it.

I hope that you all were able to have some creative outlets in the festive period and I hope that you enjoy your New Year. I am planning on a final post for 2016 but if I don't manage all the best for 2017.

What's New In March

I am a little late with this one. I should have posted about this last month. Truth is I didn't realise how big a deal this was until recently. It's a huge event in the yarn world and this is only it's third year. Three days of classes from famous designers and teachers as well as a market with all your favourite yarns and designers. I am extremely envious of anyone who is going. It's actually very similar to the one I went to in Stirling at the start of my blog. It was called Knit Camp and I did a class in fair isle with Liz Lovick and another class with Jared Flood (one of my favourite designers).  There were a lot of problems in the organisation (where teachers had problems getting into the country) and they didn't do another one. The Edinburgh Yarn Festival has had no such problems and so many more classes that I would have had trouble restricting myself. Next year people! Next year! I have signed myself up to their mailing list so that I won't miss it again. This year, I will be working. If any of you who are going want to share your experiences here please do and I will try not to turn green with envy.

Brioche is a thing and I don't mean the bread. I mean the knitting stitch and I love it. I have loaded several patterns from ravelry and I have a plan to knit some of them. Brioche was initially made popular by designer Nancy Marchant. You can see her beautiful designs on website Brioche Stitch. It involves knitting with two contrasting yarns and you create this beautiful raised pattern. This has since grown and Stephen West of WestKnits has run with it. American born designer has lots of beautiful patterns based on this stitch. I have a few and ordered his most recent collection Bundled in Brioche. It's been fun getting updates when a new pattern has been loaded on to it. The above image is actually from another collection that I also have in my library. This is by Knit Graffiti a designer I came across thanks to Instagram. The good thing about these designs is that they look fantastic with a variegated yarn and a contrasting solid colour.

 Wool and the Gang is a company I came across via Instagram (Instagram has a lot to answer to). It was started by textile designers who were fed up with factory reproductions in fashion. They wanted to help encourage individuality in fashion and this is how it came about. You should go to their About page and read more on it. It makes for an interesting read. It appealed to me because of the images of chunky knits and their pop up stores in London over the Christmas period. I haven't purchased any of their yarn but heard only good things about it. Would be interested though to hear if any of you have knitted with their yarn.

Lastly I leave you with one for those who love crochet and colour. This person isn't selling anything. She doesn't appear to have a blog or facebook page or even and etsy page. Instead she shares beautiful images of her work. I have long been an admirer of her beautiful work and her colour choices. It isn't often that I don't ooh and ahh over her images. She's another person that I found thanks to Instagram.

Apart from that last one you can find all of the above list in one of my pages. Either Craft Blogs, Craft tutorials (brioche) or Craft Shopping. In fact I have created a section for events on the blogs page just for the yarn festival and yarndale.