Not Even a Fish

Yarn support for my knitwear designs was something I had never contemplated.

Why would anyone want to give me yarn? I am relatively new to designing - not one of the big names, not a big fish in a small pond. In the infamous words of Claude Littner on the Apprentice I am not even a fish...

So when I received a message out of the blue from Lael and Larry from Hearthside Fibers saying they loved my designs and were interested in offering yarn support I was in shock. We exchanged emails over the next couple of days, and the bottom line is that this arrived in the post today...

along with some small tester samples of their other yarns.

I am currently working on my first sweater design that I am hoping to publish. I have made many sweaters for myself in the past but they only had to (sort of) fit me! It's a whole different ball park having to write it up properly and grade it for other sizes.

This is where I have got to so far... Maybe I could leave it like this for the distressed look...

Maybe not.

Once I have finished this I will turn my attention to the above two skeins :)

Knitwear Designs in Action

I have a lot of very similar photos for my designs, trying to get one or two that I am happy with to use for my patterns.

And while Paul was getting my new travel laptop/notebook hybrid loaded with all that I need and a gazillion Windows updates Google Photos decided to play and made some animations with them...

I think Geoidh may have been more successful if I could have used this on the pattern page...

                               Bellatrix - 1, 2, 3, 4 and strike a pose.

But there are downsides. My chicken impersonation...






And finally... I love the way it appears to shrug its shoulders.

Pick Your Own 2015

I discovered last year that one of my blackcurrant bushes was actually a redcurrant bush. However, I never got to pick any redcurrants as when I went out to do so I found the birds had beaten me to it.

A year on and the bush has matured, and there is enough fruit for all.

I should be able to make it up to a pound over the next couple of days - 10 grammes shy.

However, to get to the redcurrants at the back I first had to pick the blackcurrants that were blocking my route.

I thought they were prolific last year, but compared to this year they were positively sparse!







Over a kilo picked just from the branches that were in the way and overhanging the lawn. I would guess I have only picked about 20%...

I have also pulled out a sack load of the tall weeds that were growing through the bush hiding the cornucopia.

And now I can see the apples growing around the edge of the wall and needing summer pruning...