Blendy Box

Look what Santa brought me as an early Christmas present:

A BLENDY BOX

I got:

• 40g sample 100% alpaca in Rosehip from Flagstaff Alpacas - So generous! And so soft!

• 10g sample from Knitsch in Evelyn colourway - Lovely blue colour! Not sure what kind of yarn though.

• 20g Artisan NZ Merino lace weight in a pale natural colour - Another generous sample because it’s 300m of lace weight yarn!!! It’s a very soft lace yarn.

• 10g sample 50/50 silk/merino in Forest from Spinning a Yarn - A beautiful yarn sample. The silk adds a wonderful shine.

• 2 yarn samples 80/20 lambswool nylon, one in a blue colourway and the other in pink/purple colourway from Stashable who also added 2 cute heart stitch markers - Very rich colours. I love the pink/purple colours.

• a generous handpainted silk/merino sliver from Fibre2go - I can’t wait to spindle this, very interesting colours!

• Stitch marker from Handmade-By-Sheri - Love the pink stone

• Circular needles and 2 patterns from Blendy - Very handy!

• a face cleanser from Huni made with manuka honey, kowhai and macadamia - Yum!

Cheezombie Test Knit

I was so lucky to test knit something for Cheezombie. The same designer who did the Slug, which is probably one of my favourite knitted toys. So feel very priviliged to be allowed to test knit another pattern for her.

And now, without further ado, meet Mr. Clam:

Meet Ahsoka

My 6 year old is a huge fan of Star Wars and Clone Wars (a cartoon version of Star Wars). I wanted to surprise him with a knitted version of his favourite character: Ahsoka.

I used the Poppy pattern from Ysolda for the body.

The dress I made a number of sizes smaller, because Ahsoka is a trainee Jedi (Padwan?), and a dress would just get in the way of fighting, right? I also added holes in her hands so she can hold on to her lightsabers, or flowers, when she's feeling particular girlie :-)

The pattern for the doll is really straightforward and I especially liked how Ysolda also isn't a huge fan of sewing

up seams, so this doll is knitted pretty much in one go.

If you're looking for a simple and easy doll pattern that also looks good, definitely get her pattern!

I als had to add head tails (that's what they're called) instead of hair. And after a couple of bad starts I managed to get something that doesn't look too bad. I did forget to add one band of blue on the outside tails, because I was just so concentrated on getting the curvature of the tails right, I totally forgot to switch colours. I also 'tattood' her face with tribal markings like she has in the series.

Going for a walk on the beach together.

Yarn Swap

A box filled with little balls of wool.

I take four plus a freebie from Vintage purls:

And add four (DKknits Sock yarn):

Sending it on to the next person and

eagerly awaiting my turn again!

Swiss Market

What a turnout! That's the first thing that springs to mind when I have to think about the market today. At times the hall was so packed that you could only shuffle forwards. I think every one was hoping for a good day, but this was really unbelievable. People turned up all the way from Hamilton and even Tauranga. Imagine that!

So what am I talking about? The Swiss Market was the first market organised by the Swiss Club in Auckland, New Zealand. And it was an opportunity for Swiss people living in Auckland to showcase their products or to sell typical Swiss products. There was cheese (of course), yummy bakery goods, beautiful Swiss style carvings, a good friend was selling her famous gingerbread products, I had sauerkraut next to me and there was so much more. The food stalls nearly all sold out at the end of the day.

I did pretty good too, and am pleased with the day. Tired but very happy.

I was surprised that the soaps were the number one sellers. Usually it's the Manuka Healing Balm or the moisturisers, but it seemed today was all about soap. I made a special Helvetia soap for the Swiss market, where I tried to capture the scent of Switzerland in winter: pine forests, Christmas markets, Gluehwein, apres ski :-) Those soaps were all gone by midday.

Another soap that went really well was called 'Dornroesli' which is Sleeping Beauty in german. It's a soap poured in a rose mold with some of the soaps all rosy pink coloured and some had a pink flower and green leaves. The scent I tried to create for that one was one of magic - the moment when Sleeping Beauty falls under the spell and the roses start growing around the castle to hide it from view.

And a new soap called Celebration (champagne, bubbly, celebration) went really well especially with the male customers. I did say that it was a soap and contained no alcohol, but they liked it nonetheless. Hm.... maybe I should bring back my beer soap? Not sure if my dear husband will let me 'borrow' one of his beers. LOL

So overall a great day and I hope they'll do another one towards Christmas.

Thanks to all to came and visited my stand! And I hope you all enjoy your soaps :-)

PS sorry about the quality of the photos, I only had my iPhone with me to take pictures.

Moonfleet

I'm doing another KAL this year. Last year I did the Secret Garden KAL which was a circular shawl and went to my mother-in-law. The shawl was beautiful, knitted with a silk/merino blend in a gradience colourway called peacock which went from green to purple.

I was so taken with the design and the whole KAL thing (KAL = knit along), that I decided to do another one this year with the same dyer (Unique Sheep) and same designer (Janine Le Cras).

The KAL this time round is called Moonfleet and is based on the same name book by J.Meade Falkner. It is a old tale, published in 1898, of smuggling, hidden diamonds and seafarers. I bought the audiobook and I'm hoping to knit and listen as I'm doing the KAL.

For the yarn I've chosen Marici, which is a 100% silk lace yarn, in the colourway Daybreak, a blend of yellows, orange, red, purple. It feels beautiful and the colours are just perfect. The design is going to be a rectangular shawl using beads. And that's all I know for now. The first clue is coming out this week on May 14th. I can't wait!

But we did get our swatch instructions last week and I got my first taste at using silk. It's nothing at all like wool or cotton. It's very very slippery and knots really easily. It took me 3 hours to wind the silk into a ball (by hand). I really need a wool winder! And then I had to try and knit with the slippery silk. It took me quite a few rows until I finally got the hang of it, kind of. If the yarn didn't look and feel gorgeous, I think I would've given up. But the end result of the swatch makes it worth it:

I'll keep you up to date!

New Lacy Neck Warmer

A few weeks ago I received my beautiful Blendy Box and to my surprise it had 2 whole balls of wool in it. I was thrilled to have gotten a ball of Zealana wool which is 40% possum and 60% NZ merino.

Possum is an amazing wool. The hairs are hollow on the inside making it especially insulating, which is how possums keep warm. Another animal with such unusual fur are polar bears. Unfortunately I don't think polar bears are quite as accommodating to parting with their fur.

Anyway, as soon as I held my possum wool in the hand, I knew exactly what I wanted to make from it. A lacy neck warmer.

It's knitted in three parts, a technique I learned from Anne Hanson, which I thought was quite clever. First you knit the bottom edge, then you pick up stitches from the top edge and lastly you knit the button sides. The nice thing about it is that there is no sewing up to do.

It took a while to come up with a nice pattern. I wanted cables and lace, and I wanted a nice edging to go with the cables and lace pattern. Also I wanted it to be rather fine even though I was using DK weight.

And then lastly I needed the right buttons to go with my Victorian style, lacy neck warmer.

The pattern is part of my Outside the Box collection which is available exclusively from Ravelry.