Kaffe Fassett Outlined Star Jacket - Planning Stage

I gained a lot of confidence from knitting my first KF jacket and immediately started scouring his Glorious Knitting book for what to do next.

And this is what I decided on...

I just loved the vibrancy of the yellows, from pale primroses through to in your face golds, with the calming influences of the greys stars. Contrasting colours for the star outlines in pastel shades was recommended. He says the colours are based on seeing the costumes and sets of the Peking Opera.

Design put into spreadsheet and play around with the colours. It may look a little odd but it is knitted in one piece - front, back and sleeves.

Unfortunately I possessed very little in the way of the required colours in my stash - a couple of odd balls of yellow and a few part balls from some of the mixed lots.

So on to ebay and start bidding on required colours/yarns. A sustained campaign over several weeks with some failures and a few side-tracks but I now have enough to go for it. What I have found is that not much yellow yarn is on there, and what is is keenly fought over. Bodes well if I want to sell on what is left over. And I also bought the last of what I needed from The Black Sheep, along with a few other odd balls...

And here it is - jacket in kit form:

Background (needs about 600g total):
Some rather strange gold/yellow tricel/nylon £0.99 120g
Patons Cotton in a gold/yellow £3.20 200g
Silk/Wool/Cashmere bright yellow £6.65 150g
Silk/Wool/Cashmere yellow £6.45 150g
Debbie Bliss Cashmerino chunky mustardy yellow £6.51 150g
Debbie Bliss Pale Yellow cotton £3.33 200g

Stars (needs about 400g total):
DK dark grey £2.80 100g
DK grey/white mix £2.58 100g
Variata flax/wool silvery grey £2.20 400g

Star Outlines (needs about 200g total):
DK wool mauve £1.40 50g
DK acrylic/mohair mauve £1.56 150g
Silk/Wool/Cashmere turquois/coral/pink £6.23 150g
Debbie Bliss peachy orange cotton £6.50 200g
Jaeger 100% silk pale blue £12.50 275g (bargain- retailed at about £10/50g)

I also have got the buttons... an absolute snip at £1.24 and enough here for 3 jackets.

And not forgetting the postage - £19.15, although I take that into account when I am bidding. The silk/wool/cashmere appropriately has come all the way from Inner Mongolia!

A total outlay of over £100 plus some oddments I already had, but I will use under half of it on this project...

Win Some, Lose Some

I had a very pleasant long weekend at the Chester scrabble tourney. I didn't quite manage to win the required 14 games to maintain my rating but 13 was good damage limitation, and as the Phenomenon would say (but I can't, being a woman) had a massive sperm count amassing a spread of +1543. I lost my third game to Beverley when I emptied the bag taking off a spot for a 7 and she spotted a great outplay of (T)ONGSTER making 4 two-letter parallel words. I also lost to David Shenkin, giving him extra spread when I made a last-ditch attempt to win and he bonused out. My third loss was to Robert Richland - I had been keeping up with him as he played off all the goodies except the Q which he kindly let me have at the end when I had just opened a second bingo line keeping a bonus-friendly rack. My final loss was to Wayne Kelly by 2 points when I couldn't play out in 2 and score enough holding ACELNNV.

I did play some very nice bonus words over the weekend including GRYPHON(S) and picking INVADE? straight after playing MELTONS opening up a 9-x with S in sixth to finish the tourney with a 200+ win against Phil Robertshaw.

We finished playing at around 10 p.m. in the evenings which allowed some very enjoyable socialising, playing other board games and a few drinks...

I thoroughly recommend this tournament - 17 games, enough time to relax, very well run and the food at the hotel was excellent. Many thanks to Kathy and Dave for making my first outing here so much fun.

Now on to some things I have won!

Paul and I played in the Bobby Allan simultaneous pairs a week ago. We knew we had done well at the Berwick bridge club, scoring 73.7%. We then had a very nervous wait whilst all the scores from the other clubs came in. Our score came down slightly as the other results came in but the result was finalised yesterday and with 71.6% we finished well ahead of second place. I did notice that the pair in sixth place appear to be impostors, Stuart and Dave, as this was a mixed pairs event!

Having got back in to knitting and chatting to Mike O'Rourke over the weekend, who I was permanently sat next to other than the one game when I played him, he mentioned a friend of his who dyes and sells her own wool. On Monday he gave me a link to her website and I went and had a look. Glorious looking wool, but then I wandered off looking at other wool. And got drawn in to ebay...

After failing on a few bids I won my first auction this morning, 400 grammes of grey aran. My next deadline is in about another hour and a half. And I have bids in on another 8 lots and watching another 13! My mountain is in danger of becoming a range. However, I did see 'The Odd-Ball Knitting Book' on there and found I could get a second hand copy with free postage from Amazon at about the same price as just the ebay postage. It arrived today and is full of great ideas, with patterns for hats, gloves, scarves, socks, cushion covers through to a rather glorious looking entralac jacket.