Lovely Linen Lace

 I've been knitting this for a while now, squeezing it in among everything else.  It;s been made using some very fine linen yarn I bought a few weeks ago at a fabric show.

 I did start a different pattern with it but found the yarn did not suit, so tried this slightly simpler design which shows off the yarn to perfection.

 The linen is slightly crisp since being washed, but I think will soften with wear.  Now for sale in my Etsy shop.

Strawberries & Lace...

Another quick little watercolour done while teaching one of my students.  I'm getting quite a collection of them now and am very happy that the boy is enjoying painting mini still life.  Not only is it great to see his progress, but it is very good for me too, working fast & as accurately as I can.  Next week we decided it will be vegetables so I have to keep an eye open for something that is interesting but can be achieved in one hour.

I've had this delicate linen yarn for quite a while now and never had the time to use it.  I began a lace scarf with it and then discovered once I had finished one ball of yarn that there was no way that the second and only other ball of it would stretch to making a full length scarf.  After searching the site where I bought it and finding it no longer in stock, and after a bit of soul searching, I started the scarf again but with half the width and it should make a decent length scarf.  I've reached the point of knitting from the original piece into the new one and trying not to think of the time wasted!

The next few weeks should be very busy - after a quiet couple of months, I now have three dog portraits lined up.  It's good that the work is coming in now that summer is drawing to a close.  One of them might be a little tricky - the photos are from about 25 years ago and very grainy and small - it could be a real challenge to get anything out of them!

Spring Cleaning and What I Found!

The state of the dining area in my kitchen was appalling....boxes and bags of all my crafting supplies and finished projects stacked high, the dining table barely visible under a sea of beads, papers, sewing machine and the like. It had got to the point where even if we wanted to sit at the table, there was no way we could even approach it. So this morning I had the time and energy to have a go at it all. Two hours later, it's still very jam-packed, but marginally tidier, a lot cleaner and we can sit down without fighting through cones of wool and boxes of acrylics (not all the mess was mine by the way - we are a family of arts & crafters & could do with a studio each!)



So although I'm not completely satisfied, (we wouldn't make the pages of House Beautiful in a million years) I am very pleased that in the process I managed to find a few hidden treasures made several years ago which should really be up for sale. The main one being the above knitted linen lace shawl that took me months, I mean months, of very hard work. I wasn't such an experienced knitter back then and lace really was a labour of love.


It is very soft and delicate, has a lovely natural scent from the pure linen yarn, and looking at it I can hardly believe it came from my own fingers!

The other couple of finds are two necklaces which I may well have shown here at the time but which have remained hidden in a box as I think they were a bit too 'out there' for the ladies in my little Hampshire town! Check them out on my Etsy store and see what you think - if you like fish or sheep, they may be just the thing for you!